Next to having a stockpile of food and water, maintaining proper home security is essential to your survival in a SHTF scenario. If society collapses, then the rule of law will collapse with it, meaning that virtually anyone could attempt to break into your home with no legal consequences whatsoever. As a prepper, you need to be ready for such situations and take the steps necessary to ensure that your home is the safest that it can possibly be.
As explained by ThePrepperJournal.com, “The easiest way to make it safe while still making it livable is to create designated zones throughout your home and your property that have different levels of inherent safety.” These three levels, from highest security down to the lowest, are as follows:
Level 1: The Panic Room
If you ever find yourself in a life or death situation where a gang of well-armed thugs are trying to break into your home with the intent of doing physical harm to you and your family, then you’re going to need a designated room – the panic room – to retreat to. A panic room should be located in the center of your home on the ground level, and should have only one point of entrance so that you don’t have to worry about a bad guy approaching you from behind. Given the fact that this room won’t be used as anything other than your panic room, it really only needs a weapons cabinet and some basic survival gear like first aid and a snack.
Also, as pointed out by Survivopedia.com, it’s a good idea to install electronic and manual surveillance in your home so that you can see what is going on outside of the panic room while you and your family take refuge. (Related: Here are some pro tips that will keep your home safe from burglars.)
Level 2: Your Home
The part of your home that you designate as level two security should have a nice balance between livability and defense. It’s important that you take the steps necessary to maintain your home’s structural integrity by following three tasks on a regular basis: getting a formal inspection of your home’s siding and roofing to ensure that it is structurally sound, getting an energy audit, and getting a thorough inspection of the trees and other obstructions that surround your home.
Repairs to your home likely won’t be cheap, but remember that there is value in knowing that your home is structurally sound and able to withstand outside threats, whether it be a strong storm with heavy winds or a violent gang in a SHTF scenario. (Related: Here are 25 things you can do right now to improve your home security.)
Level 3: Your Immediate Area
The third level of security is your immediate area, which is essentially the area around your home. While this can be hard to define depending on where you live, it has been established that for a suburban home that is fairly well spaced out, level three typically refers to the backyard. Preppers understand why the immediate area (as opposed to just the inside of a house) is so important to defend – this is where the majority of our family’s long-term survival preparations are held, from gardens, to rain barrels, to livestock, to outbuildings like greenhouses. If these essential supplies become damaged or destroyed by a violent gang heading towards your front door, then the consequences could be devastating in terms of your family’s ability to survive. As such, it is worth investing in a solid fence that runs along the perimeter of your backyard. This will both protect your property in a SHTF situation and also allow you to go about your business in relative secrecy.
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