Keeping your home safe and secure involves good sense along with technology or weapons. The whole idea of home security centers on keeping unwanted visitors out while keeping your valuables safe. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to rely on monitoring services that contact police who arrive within moments of an alarm going off. You need to fortify your home and make it an unattractive place to plunder so that invaders will be more inclined to look elsewhere.

Appearance is Everything

Most people who get robbed are asking for trouble in the first place because they attract attention to themselves. Most crimes are committed by opportunists who are looking for an easy score. Flashing money, displaying valuables and being inattentive all combine to make many people prime candidates for getting ripped off.

The same could be said for preppers who broadcast their strategies and plans to the whole neighborhood. Keep a low profile. Hide your supplies, and put them in places where no one would think to look. If people think that you don’t have a lot of resources, then they are not going to come banging down your door when things get ugly out there.

4 Landscaping Tips to Deter Burglars

1. Protect with thorns.
   There’s more to rose bushes than lovely petals; they can also pack a punch. One look at the thorny rose bushes in front of your windows may make a would-be intruder think twice.
2. Maintain privacy without being hidden.
   Thick shrubs and tall fencing may be great landscaping for privacy, but by obscuring your new house from the street, these landscaping choices can also invite burglars.
3. Scare with sound.
   Lay gravel or stones in beds and paths below windows so you will be able to hear a would-be burglar’s footsteps loud and clear.
4. Light up the night.
   Keep your new property lit at night, but be considerate of “light pollution” that might annoy neighbors.

Put Up a Good Defense

Create layers of protection, barriers that are intended to discourage people from trying too hard to get to your stuff. Do you have a high fence or wall around your property in an urban area? Do you have multiple doors that prevent instant access to your home? Do you have dogs? Look at your property and decide how to fortify your home from the street to the shelter, and create obstacles that may discourage people from continuing to move in.

You don’t need an elaborate self-contained security monitoring system. An unkempt yard, lots of barriers, fences, dogs, motion detecting lights and even an alarm can do a lot to deter or discourage someone from going further. The trick is to frustrate someone from trying too hard to get to your goods while encouraging them to go somewhere else.

Practice Self-Defense

You may end up being the last layer of security between an intruder and your supplies. Learn how to fight. Learn how to defend yourself and your family, and train your family as well. This should include firearms training as well as self-defense courses. If all else fails and you end up face-to-face with an attacker or multiple attackers, how will you react and defend your family? How will they defend themselves if you get taken down? Train now so that you are ready when the time comes.

7 Rules of Self Defense

1. SELF DEFENSE HAS NO RULES – In a life or death situation, rules go right out the window. You need to use everything at your disposal to stop your attacker. Eye gouging, biting , throat strikes,  and groin attacks are all fair game when trying to defend your life. Do whatever it takes to win!
2. Don’t Put yourself in Bad Situations – Avoiding conflict is just common sense, but all to often people seem to forget this most basic of rules. To truly defend yourself means to avoid the conflict in the first place.
3. Confidence – Believe it or not, an attacker can smell your fear from a mile away. Criminals are experts at picking the right victim and they tend to go after people who they feel are weak, and or vulnerable to attack.
4. Stay Aware – Become an expert at body language. How an aggressor is standing, looking, or motioning can give you clues as to what he is about to do.
5. Control the situation – Don’t react, ACT. The person who can control the situation is usually the person that will come out on top.
6. Hurt them first – If a fight is unavoidable, hurt them first and hurt them bad.  Your goal is to immobilize your attacker, and physiologically defeat anyone who may be thinking about joining the fight.
7. Get Away – As soon as you can, get away….. far away! Don’t let your ego get you killed; remember, if your dead you didn’t win the fight.

Common sense goes a long way when establishing a defensive perimeter around your property or shelter. Keep a low profile, develop multiple barriers to entry, and discourage people from wanting to invade your space in the first place. However, be ready to take matters into your own hands as well.

Remember, you will not always be able to rely on monitoring services or the police to come to your assistance. Do what you can to fortify your property while being ready to defend what matters the most, and you will be in a better position to prevent or thwart intrusions. You are ultimately responsible for your own security, and only you can decide what measures will be necessary. Start thinking now about what you can do to create barrier after barrier between the bad guys and the things that you value.