When making a home security checklist, you should know the lay of the land around you. Knowing the physical geography is a great start, but you also need to know the environment you are a part of. What are people's attitudes? What political trends may affect you? In a post collapse situation will there be hoards of hungry people headed your way? Are there groups in the area that could present a threat to your home?

 

While considering all these factors, you need to perform a risk assessment. This assessment should be done on each family member, on yourself, and on your home. You need to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The strengths and weaknesses are internal threats that may affect you. For example, your physical condition, home's construction method, your mother's medical condition. The opportunities and threats are external factors that could alter your plans. For example, hoards of people leaving a city headed your way, weather conditions that make it impossible to garden, a political system that is making it difficult to financially afford your current living conditions.

 

Use the information gathered from the assessment to formulate a game plan. As prepared individuals, we think about the worst of problems that may come down the pipeline but we tend to give it a best case survival outcome. Be careful of overconfidence. Murphy's law will get you, and even the best laid plans will be challenged. You need to have contingencies to handle problems as they arise. The military often says that no plan survives initial contact. You need to expect the unexpected and plan for the impossible. Try to identify any threats no matter how far fetched they seem, and decide how you are going to deal with that contingency. Plan an attack on yourself, and try to think outside the box. Use any idea no matter how crazy it may seem.

 

In our current society, securing your home is not too difficult. You can install security systems and cameras to ensure that the home is monitored 24/7. However if there is a collapse of society these systems may not work any more. You can not count on their protective bubble at that point. Use your risk assessment to define: What do you have to protect? What do you have to protect it with? What do you need to protect it from? You may have a family, a home, food, water etc. You can protect it with yourself (if trained), a dog, obstacles, a gun, etc. You need to protect it from bad guys, animals, pests, weather, etc.

 

Follow the five D's of security: Deter, Detect, Deny, Delay, and Defend. Deter people by making your home look less desirable to infiltrate than your neighbor's. In today's society that may be as simple as putting up a fence and cameras. In a post collapse society you will want to think of any way you can hide the fact that you have supplies they may need. The threat of getting to those supplies needs to be intense enough that the effort is not worth the investment. Detection is important because you need to know that someone has entered your space and where they are. You can detect people breaching your perimeter with a camera or a motion sensor. In a long term society that may not work. Get creative. Dogs are great noise makers. You can use infrared technology to see them in the dark. Then you need to Deny the trespassers entry. Funnel the perpetrator where you want them to go with landscaping and easy access that is firmly secured at the end of the tunnel. You can plant thorny bushes under accessible windows. In a post collapse society you will want to have plywood or chicken wire on hand for your windows. Delay a trespassor's entry with the thorn bushes, plywood, chicken wire, obstacles, etc. Time is your friend. If you increase time and distance you increase your chances of survival. Also, all these delay elements they have to face, tire the perpetrator out which will hopefully give you more of an advantage, if you have to physically defend yourself. Defend! Once the trespasser is through, you will have to determine how to defend yourself. Currently, you may be able to retreat to a safe, locked space and call 9-1-1. However in a post collapse society that will not be possible. You need to have your body physically prepared and owning firearms is a great idea for this purpose.

 

All of human activity is dictated by return on investment. If you are going to invest time and energy into an activity, you want it to pay off somehow for yourself. An untrained force with a normal mindset is going to be looking for the same return on investment. Every challenge you present them decreases their belief that the payouts are going to be worth the effort. This makes them wonder if the resources are really worth the threat of injury or loss of life. The more difficult you make it for them the less likely that they will want to participate in the activity.

 

In a post collapse society everything we take for granted now will fail. You need to be ready to detect threats without the use of modern equipment. Your creativity is your key to survival. You can get a device for a trip wire that pops a .22 round and makes a loud noise. You can use glow stick traps. Look at the glow stick because some of them expire. They also make infrared glow sticks that stay dark and can only be seen with night vision. You can hang a bullet casing or metal noise maker in a soda can and hang it so if it is disturbed it will rattle. Make it as painful as possible to come through your property and attackers may be heard moaning, groaning, and cursing. If you leave ground debris in your property, you will be able to hear them coming through it. Use spikes in doorways or car access points. If you can imagine it do it! If you want to know if someone is coming and going on your property put a log out. People will generally move the log to get in or out, and they won't move it back. It is a sure fire way to find out.