HN's home security scenario

[HunterNurturer]

OK folks, here's the scenario (SCENARIO IS POST SHTF, PROPERTY IS ENTIRELY LEGAL UNTIL THEN):



You live in the house marked with the red X.
2 doors front and back, both with london/birmingham bars and front door barricaded when SHTF. Alleyway along side of house barricaded when SHTF. Anti-climb paint on alley barricade, back gate and front and back doors to prevent intruders from getting a solid kick.
Downstairs windows coated in anti-burglarly film, carpet grippers on outside window sills, windows boarded up from inside and the boards hidden by blackout curtains. Blackberry bushes underneath the downstairs window at the front of the house.
Upstairs front and back windows will be used for security ie. watchpost, shooting air rifle/crossbow, throwing boiling water. If absolutely necessary, super soaker filled with petrol to target group of attackers, then petrol bomb. Fire extinguishers and fire blankets throughout the house.
Unsure what to do with main "attacking" upstairs windows. Other upstairs window will be boarded. Main windows may be boarded half-way with only the opening side exposed, which may be covered in anti-shatter film and removeable boarding with small viewing hole.
Bulldog in house as early warning system. 3 bodies inside the house, 2 capable of shooting, 1 of those trained in hand to hand combat and knife fighting. The one incapable of shooting/fighting would be boiling water, arranging ammo and then guarding the opposite side of the house.

So - how would you improve security? What else should I be thinking about? What would be your main concerns? How would YOU attack this house? What little nasties would you put outside to secure the outer perimeter like tripwires or pyrotechnics? If other houses were abandoned, which would you choose as a secondary fighting position or temporary BOL?
I look forward to hearing responses. I know this is hardly the optimal location, but please hold yourselves back from advising me to move house, it's just not a viable option right now.

[NorthernRaider]

Plant vicous thorny hedge along front edge of lawn, invest in some glass bottles read to be made into molitovs AFTER rule of law has collapsed. Start your first line of defence at the edge of your property not against the window.

If you dont like militovs then go and buy they dry then dessicate and pound into dust a few pounds of hot chilli peppers that you can tip out the windows, works like CS gas.

With respect Sir the windows are the last place you want your lookouts after TSHTF, if you can look out they can look and shoot in, so to view and stay out of sight you have to stay in the back of the room moving sidways to view out the windows at restricted angles.
After TSHTF your lookouts need to be peeking out of slighly lifted slots in the roof tiles, or preferably outside.

Your clear field of fire is to the nearest building facing your house, only a mob is going to come up the middle of the street, real trouble will come in a vehicle.

The individual propetry to the south west of your property is the high risk spot, so much so it looks like it could be difficult to defend your home on more than one front, I would be investigating the back up plan AFTER TSHTF of knocking through from your loft to your multiple neighbours to give yourself an escape route to the north if it gets to dangerous and you cannot get out the back.

Do the sewers and drains run towards your house or away cos if they run towards you really nasty types could pump petrol down the drain and burn you out.

[HunterNurturer]

(23 September 2012, 12:29)NorthernRaider Wrote: Plant vicous thorny hedge along front edge of lawn, invest in some glass bottles read to be made into molitovs AFTER rule of law has collapsed. Start your first line of defence at the edge of your property not against the window.

If you dont like militovs then go and buy they dry then dessicate and pound into dust a few pounds of hot chilli peppers that you can tip out the windows, works like CS gas.

With respect Sir the windows are the last place you want your lookouts after TSHTF, if you can look out they can look and shoot in, so to view and stay out of sight you have to stay in the back of the room moving sidways to view out the windows at restricted angles.
After TSHTF your lookouts need to be peeking out of slighly lifted slots in the roof tiles, or preferably outside.

Your clear field of fire is to the nearest building facing your house, only a mob is going to come up the middle of the street, real trouble will come in a vehicle.

The individual propetry to the south west of your property is the high risk spot, so much so it looks like it could be difficult to defend your home on more than one front, I would be investigating the back up plan AFTER TSHTF of knocking through from your loft to your multiple neighbours to give yourself an escape route to the north if it gets to dangerous and you cannot get out the back.

Do the sewers and drains run towards your house or away cos if they run towards you really nasty types could pump petrol down the drain and burn you out.

Thanks for the well thought out response, much appreciated! I'll try and address the points one by one.

Unfortunately I don't have a front lawn, just a very small (about 2m x 1m) patch of grass directly in front of the door. But I may plant something like blackberries or other quick growing thorny bush on this patch and let it grow out if SHTF.
I completely agree about having the first line of security as edge of the property, but unfortunately I'm kind of limited on that front as I only really have a driveway.
So my thinking on this is my first line of security is the lookout and the crossbow. This should stop an individual or up to 3 people before they even reach the edge of the property if they're coming from the road way. The main advantage of my position I feel is the bottleneck created by the close.
I also have a preliminary plan involving a deterrant at the edge of the property line - I'm thinking a 5 litre plastic water bottle, petrol, 1 way air valve, duct tape, screws/nuts/nails in the bottle, spark plug wired up and the wires leading to the bedroom where I'll be sat with a 12v battery

Molitovs is def part of the plan. Defending against molitovs is a worry, but tbh in a situation where fuel is scarce I don't see many people willing to waste it for arson.

Homemade pepper spray type stuff is a good idea and I'll be factoring this into plans.

As for the window lookout, I don't think I explained it well. The windows will be boarded and will have blackout curtains, with just a small gap cut into the board to see out of, with those 1-way-view netting curtains obscuring the view in.
The roof tile lookout is a good idea though and I'll be taking a look at the practicalities of this later (I have food storage in the attic though, so I'm thinking about leaks).

Good point about real trouble coming via vehicle. I guess my only real defense against this right now is the crossbow, so I think I'll be stocking some quick dry cement in the shed from now on to knock up some quick vehicle barriers if SHTF.

Regarding knocking a wall through for an escape route, that's definitely in the plans which I forgot to mention. It's a semi-detached house so I would be able to knock through to that property and the next ones down are all attached, so if all were abandoned I could technically have holes through all of them as an escape route. The only problem is this means more property to defend and an easy way in for anyone who breaks into one of those houses. But doing it through the attics is a brilliant idea and something I hadn't thought of, and would allow me to put a tripwire or something in next door's attic with an alarm/explosive for early warning. Again much appreciated.

Regarding sewers and drains - NO idea whatsoever. How would I be able to find this out? Something I honestly never considered.
The picture doesn't show it but the road away from my home is downward sloping slightly which gives protection against flooding, so maybe this means the sewers/drains flow downwards away from my home too, but that's just guessing and any ideas of how to find this out would be appreciated!

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Oh, and I should mention the threat level from the immediate neighbours listed in the picture is relatively low. Mostly lesbians (seriously, 3 of the houses are inhabited by lesbian couples) and single moms who would almost certainly go stay with family within the first few days of SHTF - they have semi-bare cupboards at the best of times.

[Metroyeti]

Block the main road off with rubbish,smash up a couple of your neighbours houses and get a few building site signs saying demolition/works in progress. Wont fool the locals but would work for people outside the area.put gravel/glass on pavement/roads so you might here people coming.

Using nr idea,boobytrap your stairs or remove them so people carnt get to you whilst you escape through the attic.

[NorthernRaider]

"Good point about real trouble coming via vehicle. I guess my only real defense against this right now is the crossbow, so I think I'll be stocking some quick dry cement in the shed from now on to knock up some quick vehicle barriers if SHTF."

Naaa a visit to B & Q or scrounge a good length of 3/8 steel wire and go lampost to lampost across the approach road or house to house if they are abandoned, give ay drivers a nice new high tensile necklace as they drive up. OR going really wicked the steel wire goes to dustbin to dustbin full of something highly flammable, if the vehicle drives through it it pulls the bins full of petrol onto itself and from their your only a match away from a meat feast BBQ.

Neck high monfilament can also really ruin runners raiders days as well.

[Hrusai]

way i see it, several positions of fire will give the illusion of more people defending the area, therefore if you knock through the attics making 1 big attic, you can have people firing all along the row of houses, making it look like there are more occupants, throw in some mannequins nicked from a shop in some windows of the houses which you firing from (obviously not near the attic but in the other windows and not too many) will give any possible attackers other targets to fire upon, hopefully causing some confusion too

as for vehicular attacks, take a leaf out of the partizans book, use blockades, when someone gets out to remove the blockade, shoot em with a crossbow, this worked in world war 2 against tanks, im sure it'll work against less armored vehicles

also setup your own distillery, its piss easy and gives you a great source of fuel to use for those molotovs, saves wasting precious petrol...and you can use it for recreation and medicine too ^^

motion sensors would be awesome too, strategically placed in a perimeter around the property, alerting you to any intruders coming from different directions, what would also be good would be too tailor them so any signal sent by a motion sensors tells you which sensor it is, and therefore where it was set off

for any serious defensive scenario though i think you'd need more people, 2 that are capable of fighting is too little to defend such a broad area, but i guess it depends on what sort of attack and how organised etc

oh and a good place to get glass bottles....recycling places, like the bottle banks at tesco's it occurred to me the other day when i went there to recycle some bottles, when the SHTF who the fuck is gonna pick up the bottles to recycle? no one, so there should be alot of glassware there ready for the taking ^^

another random though...thermite (i bloody love the stuff) make some thermite packets ready to use (when i say that i mean rig them up with a rip cord or some such that you can easily set them off with, but not accidentally)...then have them in a box ready to use, you could use them for things like demolishing access to parts of the house, breaching locks and heavy duty doors, or if your feeling really really mean rig it above a doorway, nothing like a stream of molten metal on a raiders head ^^

[bigpaul]

the first thing that strikes me is that you seem to be concentrating on the FRONT> if i was attacking i would divide my people in two, one group would attack from the front, making no attempt at silence and draw your fire to the front, the other group would approach seperately from the direction of the motorway, over the fields and attack from the REAR, even if they cannot get in they can withdraw to a safe distance and cut you off from your water supply.

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(23 September 2012, 14:49)bigpaul Wrote: the first thing that strikes me is that you seem to be concentrating on the FRONT> if i was attacking i would divide my people in two, one group would attack from the front, making no attempt at silence and draw your fire to the front, the other group would approach seperately from the direction of the motorway, over the fields and attack from the REAR, even if they cannot get in they can withdraw to a safe distance and cut you off from your water supply.

OH says never mind blackberries plant Gooseberries, nobody will want to tangle with the thorns on them!! and a good crop afterwards too.

[HunterNurturer]

Exactly the kind of input I was hoping for, cheers guys
Some really great ideas in here that have given me a bunch to think about.
Boobytrapping the stairs is something I'd thought about before but dismissed as I would need an escape route, but if I knock the attics through as my escape route it makes it perfect!
Other stuff I'll be using thanks to this thread so far: gravelling my driveway and if SHTF spread broken glass outside (I laughed at the big black guy on doomsday preppers for doing this, didn't think about the noise factor), blockade the road, distill my own molatov fuel, some kind of remote explosive/trip wires in the back garden, and gooseberries

Funny, I thought after posting this thread I would feel less positive about my urban situation - but I'm actually feeling like I could really secure this area quite well from all but well armed and organized groups. Even then, one has to question how many explosives and crossbow bolts they'd be willing to face down when they don't even know if there's a reward at the end - I might just be a starving peasant trying to defend my life, not necessarily food

[NorthernRaider]

Molitov fuel is normally petrol or petrol and styrene foam mixed into it to make nice sticky Napalm, or you buy filthy rough dirt cheap vodka and use that.

[Hrusai]

when planning escape routes i'd plan multiple ones if i were you, with everything you do remember, 2 is 1 and 1 is none ...and remember escape routes often work both ways, but you can make it one way with enough preparation

a nasty trick for staircases is to remove a few steps, and fit false ones that break under the weight of a person, then fit razor blades to the supports, that way if someone who doesnt know the faulty steps runs up them, they'll put their foot straight through and shave off a bunch of flesh from their legs ...but make sure you and yours know exactly which step is the "faulty" one, or you'll have a hard time fixing yourself up

anyway im glad you feel better about securing your place now ...in some other threads there are some great ideas, like those door mines that you can put shotgun blanks into, or if your mean, live rounds

and as for the input, its what we're all here for ^^