Additional Home Defensive Preparations

Fortifying your doors, windows, and garage are all examples of defensive preparations you can make right now and use in your everyday life.  But when a large scale disaster happens, such as a power grid down or a natural disaster, there will definitely be additional defensive preparations that you will want to make to further safeguard your home against raiders and angry mobs.  

While these defensive preparations are undoubtedly going to make your home look like a war zone, they will also go a long way to keeping your home and family safe in the midst of the chaos of a disaster, and that’s what matters the most in the end.  

You can keep the materials you need for each of these additional defensive preparations in storage, and then set them up once disaster has struck.  Let’s go over what some of these preparations should be:

Sandbags 

Sandbags will be a vital part of your home fortification steps.  Again, you obviously don’t want to have sandbags set up around your home right now, but you can easily set them up to defend your house once the disaster has struck.  

There’s a definitive reason why sandbags have been used by militaries and law enforcement units all over the world for a long time now.  They are one of the best defensive preparations for absorbing ammunition.  What’s more, is they are extremely inexpensive and easy to set up.  Simply store the sand and the actual bags separately in big bins or containers, and then when disaster happens, you can fill them up and stack them around your house.  

The best places to set up your sandbags will be behind or in front of your doors and windows.  Should enemies ever start shooting at you, you can take cover behind them.  The more layers of sandbags you have, the more protected you and your family will be.  

An additional use for sandbags is that you can use just the bags for storing or transporting items.  

Barbed Wire Fences and Nail Beds 

Should raiders or mobs ever launch an assault on your house in a grid down disaster, your chances of survival will always increase if you can keep the fight as far outside of your house as possible.  

This is why that you should set up a perimeter surrounding your home, so that any raiders attack you will have to somehow get through this perimeter before they can actually get to your home.  You can then fire at them from your home and hopefully deter them from continuing your assault.  

The best type of barrier to serve as the perimeter around your house will be barbed wire fences.  Even if you don’t already have a fence surrounding your house right now to wrap barb wire around, you can simply pound tall stakes around your house and then spread a barbed wire between them.  

If you have enough resources, an even better thing to do would be to construct two to three layers of barbed wire fences around your home, so that once any attackers break through one layer, they’ll have another layer to get through.  

Meanwhile, in between each layer of barbed wire fence, you can set up nail beds covering the whole ground.  To construct a nail bed, take a square or rectangular piece of plywood and hammer nails through it.  Turn the plywood upside down and set it on the ground, so that the nails stick out.  

If you manage to set up two or three layers of barbed wire fences with rows of nail beds in between each one, it will be an excellent deterrent against attackers and you may even be able to deter any attack from happening in the first place.  

Additional Buildings

You can also build more buildings on your property as well to give you more positions to defend from. This will especially be advantageous if you have several people in your family or group and therefore have the manpower to have additional defensive fortifications. The last thing you want is for everyone to be bottlenecked up in one place for the attacking force to concentrate their attention and firepower upon.

There are many cheap options you can go with for creating additional buildings on your property as well, such as prefab garages. Don’t forget that such garages or similar structures can both be used for storing extra supplies and items, so they have many more uses beyond being additional defensive structures.

Warning Signs 

Let’s say that you don’t have the money or resources to set up a barbed wire fence and nail beds.  Does this mean that you’re out of luck in regards to defending your home?  

No, it does not, and the reason why is because you have other options for defending your home that will be cheaper and more reasonable.  An example is to set up warning signs around your home.  This sends a message to intruders or attackers that your home is well-defended, and they may then move on to the next home down the street.  

Examples of what you can do here is to set up a “BEWARE OF GUARD DOG” sign and have a dog house and dog toys or bones visible on the yard.  You can also set up rifles and shotguns behind your windows so that they’re clearly visible as well.  Even spray painting the outside of your home with messages such as “STAY OUT OF PRIVATE PROPERTY” will be quite effective as well (it worked in Hurricane Katrina).  

Make Your House Look Like It Was Already Looted 

As an alternative to leaving warning signs around your house, you can also  make it look as if it were already looted.  Looters are only going to put their lives at risk to attack a home if they believe the home has valuable items they need.  If you manage to look your home look trashed and looted, the looters will likely move on to the next house down the road.  

To make your home look looted, gather all of the trash in your house and garage and spread it around your lawn.  Tape black garbage bag around your windows so that the inside of your house looks dark.  

If you really want to go the extra mile, beat or destroy certain parts of the outside of your home as well, such as destroying the outside railings or taking a sledgehammer to make a dent to the outside walls.  

There is only one flaw to this method of protecting your home, and that is that you home could also look abandoned…meaning anyone walking by could think your home looks like a cozy enough shelter.  This is why you should still be at the ready from the inside of your home as well.