How prepared are you for a home invasion?

I’m certainly not prepared enough but I’m much more prepared than a few years ago.

First Lights on at all entrances.
Motion control lights in the back

Camera at front door, basement door and one in the foyer which has a view of the bottom of my steps to the upstairs a and the door from the basement.

Door sensors including the garage doors signals beeper in hallway outside my bedroom anytime a door is opened.

Motion control sensor in all hallways on each level. They are on standby mode when we are home but still send a notification to the system, which shows up on my phone between 11pm-5am.

I have most of the lights in our main family spaces connected to a Zwave hub and I can push a button on my phone to turn on All of the lights connected at one time. I figured this may be one of the most useful things as it would probably startle someone unexpectedly.

Gun loaded in ready condition in a small safe in my nightstand with extra mags. 4 digit pushbutton code.

I practice getting out of bed and opening the safe every so often and can be armed in 4-5 seconds when awake and aware. I do need to figure out some way of practicing when I’m asleep.

My biggest concern is my college age son coming home unexpectedly. He knows better and has always communicated his plans but still worries me.

I plan on adding a wall safe in my closet to house a suppressed rifle at some point.

I don’t have a dog but I plan figure out how to program my Sonos speaker to play big dogs barking sounds when maybe the door sensors are triggered or the outdoor camera.

smokey0118 said:

We'd be good as long as the wife sticks to her rehearsed role and doesn't go off-script. A while back, we had a couple thunk sounds from downstairs. My wife wanted me to go down and check it out. I got a nearby gun, logged my phone onto the cameras, and went to the hidden position at the top of the stairs. I stayed and used the cameras to scan around downstairs. The plan was it's the wife's responsibility to get the kids and bring them to a safe room w/ lots of supplies while I hold the stairs if things go bad. For that, I said hold on a minute while I check things out(no need to get the kids out of bed if it's nothing)...wellllll she wasn't happy with that at the time and got impatient after about 10 seconds and kept pushing me about going down to check it out. I barely had time to use the camera to check my main floor when she started walking past me with a pissed off "fine I guess I'll check it out then"... and walked downstairs making all kinds of racketas I now had to change plans to move down after her to be able to cover her if someone actually was down there.

Needless to say, there was some conversations afterwards about why I chose to check things out digitally from the top of the stairs at first and what would have gone down if someone actually was down there. No, I wasn't just playing with my toys, there are well thought-out reasons why I had all those preparations made. Soooo... anyway, make sure everyone in your house not only knows what roles they have in an emergency, but that they understand why those roles exist and perhaps drill them a time or two. Had a home invader or home invaders been downstairs, I would've had quite the interesting firefight I'd have to manage.

It's also worth thinking about your medical plans. Assuming your door was kicked in right now as you read this and you are able to successfully defend your home...but you take a gunshot somewhere on your body... are you currently able to treat that gunshot wound in under 2 minutes? Do you have a tourniquet, hemostatic gauze, and/or chest seals somewhere dependable? Have you drilled getting to the supplies enough to be able to find them in the supply kit under stress without looking for them? Once you have them, do you have the training to effectively use them?

How about legal? You've defended your house and treated your wounds, what next? Police will be there soon. What will you tell them(such as where they may find evidence that you'll need to help clear you...like shell casings out in the street for example)? Does your entire family know to zip their mouths and say nothing but, "I want to have my lawyer speak for me"?

Fun mental games to play to ensure your castle is well defended.

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This made me laugh.
With covid, my wife is home 24/7, so training in the house is a no go, and she is seeing EVERY package that's being shipped to the house.

You raise a lot of good questions and scenarios.

Probably the best approach is to yell "I'm not wearing a mask!!". Just as effective as the sound of cycling an 870. Fear. Bad guy runs and back to Netflix.

If you get past my motion lights/ cameras, blaring alarm system and you’re still making your way up my stairs to the top floor where my family is, there will be a problem.

If I’m “red alert” because the world is burning then my plan/ easily accessible load out changes from primarily handguns to rifles.

Lights on every single defensive firearm I own. You can’t shoot what you don’t see.

With a 140lb Mastiff, a 80lb Husky and a 70lb boxer, even the delivery drivers throw our packages in the driveway instead of the front porch. We often leave the solid door open with only the glass storm door shut and locked (the delivery drivers don't know it's locked).

Bullfrog said:

Did I say that was all I had?

It requires a remote server.

I already have multiple cameras that upload to a local server I set up. The local server runs scripts I wrote that create web pages, one showing current view and most recent motion, others showing previous activity. It also emails me. There's a backup server, both on small UPS's.

Email obviously won't work with internet out, but everything else will work even with power and internet off, at least for a short time.

Ring and Wyze require both internet and power, unless they and your router are on batteries, but they are still both dead if the internet is down because they require a central server.

The Wyze is in a drawer because it doesn't fit in my setup.

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I need a stand alone that doesnt run off internet

wilcam47 said:

I need a stand alone that doesnt run off internet

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What I described will do that, you just can't get emails from it or check it remotely without internet. My cameras connect to my server on my own internal network.

All those cameras and alarms are not so useful if the power is out or if your wifi is being jammed.

Anything digital is vulnerable.

Yeah, I know, takes a pretty together adversary to cut power or employ a jammer.

Mark 1 Mod 0, good, old fashioned Dawg. Not fail safe but as close as you are gonna get. IMO of course. More dogs, more better.

As we age, our senses and our bodies begin to fail us. Also, unless you’re familiar with the effects of adrenaline on your system, don’t forget to account for it.

Alea Jacta Est said:

All those cameras and alarms are not so useful if the power is out or if your wifi is being jammed.

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I have a generator. If you are close enough to jam? That requires Power. Alot. You are in range.

About 20 + years or so ago i was woken up by voices about 2am. It was a spring day and I had the bed room windows open. I saw two people with flash lights walking up to my neighbors side garage door. They tried the door and it was locked, they were about 100 feet from my home. When I heard one say lets try that basement door which was the walkout door to my house.

I had my shot gun loaded with 00 Buck, as they approached crossing into my property my security lights lit them up. I yelled what the F are you doing on my property? They said they were lost, I racked a round so they could hear it. I yelled I will take care of you being lost as you will be dead. They took off like a shot, called the LEOs office when the officer arrived they saw the tracks in the dewy grass from the woods to my neighbors house and to my house. He stated he thinks he knows who they were and could I ID them I said yes.

Two days late I got a call and went to the Office where the 2 little dirt bags were sitting. Apparently they have been doing this for a while but no one could ID them. They got their just deserts, I even had one of their dirt bag parents threaten me. Well little did they know I was active duty USCG and under Title 14 USC Section 2 . 522 all USCG Officers and Petty Officers which are given law enforcement powers as Federal Police. He did this in court as their dirt bag kids got 2 years in juvenile detention. He ended up in getting a year for threating a Federal Officer.

Uh, you can access the storage on Wyze cameras without internet, and for free. You need to supply the microSD card. You can't access them without Wi-Fi but you can access them without internet. As long as your home router is functioning, you can check the storage and the live stream. I have a Powerwall which prevents power outages.

My house is tiny, with lots of windows. No kids, no pets. The main access doors are on one end of the house, gun storage on the other end. If someone kicked the door in during the day, we'd retreat to the end where the guns are.
We generally keep the doors locked during the day, even when we're home and awake. I'm not strapping inside my house in broad daylight, I don't live in downtown Baltimore. Many of the house's windows are those crank style "Jalouise" windows. They don't open very wide. I suppose a skinny squeegee kid could slip through. For that area I have a glass breakage sensor.

The house is surrounded by new, powerful LED streetlights. The damn things nearly keep us up at night. I live on a half acre so there is lots of open space around the house that is illuminated by the street lights. The surveillance cameras all have IR anyway. I check the camera logs each morning after my alarm goes off. I've *never* seen a human being on my property during the night. Lots of critters though.

I'm paranoid about putting rounds into one of my neighbor's homes so my weapon of choice is a shotgun.

As for the "home defense drill," my wife's instructions are to barricade herself in our master bathroom and alert the police that a "home invasion is in progress." According to Masaad Ayoob, this is the language that will get authorities to your home most quickly, and with the proper attitude. She will also inform the police that I am in the home, and I am armed. "Don't shoot the naked man with the shotgun." Once I hear the police arrive, I'll retreat to the bathroom with my wife and let them handle it, if I haven't already done so.

In extremis, our bathroom has a window. She can easily climb out by stepping on the A/C unit and then onto ground and run to the neighbor's house.

Harrys said:

About 20 + years or so ago i was woken up by voices about 2am. It was a spring day and I had the bed room windows open. I saw two people with flash lights walking up to my neighbors side garage door. They tried the door and it was locked, they were about 100 feet from my home. When I heard one say lets try that basement door which was the walkout door to my house.

I had my shot gun loaded with 00 Buck, as they approached crossing into my property my security lights lit them up. I yelled what the F are you doing on my property? They said they were lost, I racked a round so they could hear it. I yelled I will take care of you being lost as you will be dead. They took off like a shot, called the LEOs office when the officer arrived they saw the tracks in the dewy grass from the woods to my neighbors house and to my house. He stated he thinks he knows who they were and could I ID them I said yes.

Two days late I got a call and went to the Office where the 2 little dirt bags were sitting. Apparently they have been doing this for a while but no one could ID them. They got their just deserts, I even had one of their dirt bag parents threaten me. Well little did they know I was active duty USCG and under Title 14 USC Section 2 . 522 all USCG Officers and Petty Officers which are given law enforcement powers as Federal Police. He did this in court as their dirt bag kids got 2 years in juvenile detention. He ended up in getting a year for threating a Federal Officer.

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WOW thanks for sharing, after reading these posts I see we have to do some fine tuning around our home

smokey0118 thankyou for this info

Harrys said:

About 20 + years or so ago i was woken up by voices about 2am. It was a spring day and I had the bed room windows open. I saw two people with flash lights walking up to my neighbors side garage door. They tried the door and it was locked, they were about 100 feet from my home. When I heard one say lets try that basement door which was the walkout door to my house.

I had my shot gun loaded with 00 Buck, as they approached crossing into my property my security lights lit them up. I yelled what the F are you doing on my property? They said they were lost, I racked a round so they could hear it. I yelled I will take care of you being lost as you will be dead. They took off like a shot, called the LEOs office when the officer arrived they saw the tracks in the dewy grass from the woods to my neighbors house and to my house. He stated he thinks he knows who they were and could I ID them I said yes.

Two days late I got a call and went to the Office where the 2 little dirt bags were sitting. Apparently they have been doing this for a while but no one could ID them. They got their just deserts, I even had one of their dirt bag parents threaten me. Well little did they know I was active duty USCG and under Title 14 USC Section 2 . 522 all USCG Officers and Petty Officers which are given law enforcement powers as Federal Police. He did this in court as their dirt bag kids got 2 years in juvenile detention. He ended up in getting a year for threating a Federal Officer.

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Glad to hear some justice is going around and glad to hear you were able to follow through!

I have a 2 story home with finished basement....kids are grown. No matter what floor I'm on, I'm 5 seconds away from a weapon(hidden). No safes .

I'm a 1911'ista and they are kept in condition "1". Cocked and locked.

...---...

bratgirllcp said:

smokey0118 thankyou for this info

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No prob. I'm nerdly about this stuff and like the discussions related to it. Other things to consider are fortifying access points and what force you have immediately available to you. Since your home is your castle, you can treat it as such. Rose bushes or other thorny things under access points like windows provide good disincentives for a passing criminal to try them out. You can fortify exterior doors and interior doors to safe rooms with bigger plates and longer screws into the door jam. It may buy you an extra kick or two as someone tries to get in. Just having an ADT or other home security system sticker outside greatly reduces your chances of home invasion by itself.

For training, airsoft can be pretty awesome. You can just run through your house by yourself to drill movement, or include friends/family to run scenarios. Moving through your house really helps shake out considerations you may not have thought about, like where plug-in lights are. You may choose to move some so that you are not backlit by them in the dark.

Access to force vs securing them away from kids can be a big issue. Many people don't have a gun on their hip all the time just due to those types of things. Something to consider is mounting up some pepper gel cans high on walls around the house...
https://www.amazon.com/SABRE-Red-Pepper-Gel-Strength/dp/B002368VJ6

If you don't have a gun, these can give you the ability to hose down a home intruder from across the room with minimal splash back on you. If a kid breaks house rules and gets in to them, it'll just be a painful lesson with no long-term damage done. It does give kids the ability to grab something they can use as a weapon if they need to though.

Body armor probably isn't something super realistic, but if you've got time you can have some ready under the bed or nearby. I keep my backpack with a IIIa insert in it upstairs. I can quickly just toss it on backwards for some basic protection up to .44 mag. If I've got more time, I can grab the plate carrier with level IV plates. It may be something feasible if it's a situation where I'm holding the stairs while my wife has the kids off in the safe room.

https://rmadefense.com/product/level-iv-hard-armor-plate-model-1155/
these are the best valued NIJ CERTIFIED level IV plates out now. Use the code RMAPROTECTS to get 10% off. They also just came out with a multi-curve plate for $20 more that's probably worth it.
https://rmadefense.com/product/level-iv-multicurve-hard-armor-plate-model-1155/
Don't get steel armor.

****I would personally welcome a home invasion by the Elite Russian Female Paratroopers from another thread...

If not them.. yea, I have a few home defense guns, cameras, and mebbe some lasers and ninjas and shit ready to be deployed...

All I really need now are sharks with frickin' lasers beams on their heads and my home invasion defense plans will be complete!

Guns would work too, I guess. Guns I got. Also a phone and a lawyer. Prolly use the phone before I use the guns, so I don't have to end up calling the lawyer....

Rehearsed plans go to hell quickly and the second anything occurs outside of those plans there is typically a hesitation or mental lock-up if someone has drilled the same thing over and over again with any form of a predetermined chain of events and outcome. Rigid scenarios build training scars for anything that doesn't match the original training scenario.

We learned that quickly doing agency training and as the primary trainer now, I never run scripted scenarios for anything. I will put them in a general situation and let the whole event play out wherever it goes. No 2 events are ever the same even if they start the same way and with the same officer(s) and role players. The more rigid you make practice/training, the less people use adaptation skills and the less they actually assess a situation. Train yourself to respond to the threat wherever and whenever that threat presents itself. Have your weapon(s) in a location where you can access them if need be and know that like the back of your hand.

And the one thing nobody mentions - practice target discrimination and marksmanship under stress. This can't be stated enough and the need is evident anytime you run SIMs training and see the "range super stars" miss every single shot and/or kill a friendly because under stress their desire to send rounds overtakes their ability to see what is actually there.

So, I posted before in this thread but I'll tell my personal home invasion story. It's actually what prompted my interest in firearms. Prior to this I had not ever shot, nor even seen a gun that wasn't being worn by a police officer.

It was 2009 and I was living in Catonsville just outside of UMBC while attending college. I was living in a very inexpensive development (that unbeknownst to me was predominantly section 8) with a roommate, and my girlfriend and her roommates lived about 100 feet across a common area.

My girlfriend and I were on our way home from dinner, I parked the car and she said she was going to grab a shower at her place and be over in 20 or so minutes. So we each walk to our respective houses and I shut my door and locked it. About 15 minutes later I get a knock on the door. I open the door to two very large highschool age boys that immediately start trying to sell me new windows. I explain that this is a rental and begin shutting the door, when the barrel end of a handgun gets shoved between the door jam, and the second kid backs up and pummels the door open.

They quickly enter and hold me at gun point, verbally and physically threatening me in a way that still gives me nightmares. They tie me up with rope they had and start asking where I keep my money/valuables.

Thankfully I had about $300 in cash and a few random electronics to give them. After beating me up pretty good and taking a good pistol whip to the face, they were on their way. My GF came over not 3 minutes after that with not a single clue as to what just happened. I am most thankful of all that she did not come over while this was occurring.

Even after filing a police report, I do not think they ever caught the kids.

I believe they were sitting in their car in the parking lot and casing houses. My neighbor was convinced that I was targeted for being white, but who knows. In that development I probably did look like an easy/worthwhile target.

I was 20 years old when this happened. I have genuinely never feared for my life as much as I did in those moments. The kid with the gun to my head kept repeating "we are going to kill you (racial expletive) just for fun". They very next day I went out and bought myself a Mossberg 500 (not old enough to buy a pistol), but quickly realized I had no idea how to use it and had no friends that really knew either. So there began my quest into firearms, shooting, and taking self defense in the home much more seriously.

I have no doubt that I have moderate PTSD from those events. I am mentally unable to leave my front door open like my neighbors do, even though I live in one of the safest neighborhoods in town, I check every lock in my house before bed and before I leave, my alarm is on essentially all of the time, I've got front and back cameras, and I NEVER answer the door to unexpected arrivals.