When I say the word, “security” what pops into your mind? Do you picture a prison, a fortress, an ordinary home, or a broken-down shack that you wouldn’t want to enter anyway?
In the preparedness realm, security can have different meanings at different times.
Right now creating a secure home for your family takes some effort. I’ve written about securing your home before. In today’s society taking steps, such as having a dog and security cameras (or even just look-a-likes) can go a long way toward deterring a burglar.
So Take a Mental Step Back and Consider Security
I want you to picture a home that has a security camera, whose yard is well mowed, the spaces under the windows are clear of any places for burglars to hide, the TV can be heard if someone gets close to a window. It’s a typical neighborhood house with the lights on and it is assumed that people are home.
If something big happened and we’re living in a SHTF situation or even TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), security is going to look 180 degrees different from what having a secure house now would look like.
Security in Your Home in a SHTF Situation
1.) Security Cameras
Did you put up real or fake security cameras during good times in order to deter thieves?
Take them down. If you have security cameras that you’ve installed before a SHTF situation, a security camera says “I have stuff that I want to protect.” It will make you an instant target.
2.) Outdoor Lighting 
Again, conventional home security wisdom says that during regular times, you should have solar powered motion sensor flood lights. During normal life, I would absolutely agree. It’s on our list of things to do with our home! But for security during a SHTF situation, you don’t want to draw attention to your home with lights that can go on and off every time a stray dog comes onto your property. It will be a magnet to draw unwanted people to your direction.
3.) Indoor Lighting
Whether you are using a generator (which is loud and a SHTF no-no) or battery-powered lights or gas lamps, being able to see your inside lights from outside your house is a problem. If you are going to put up lights, make sure that you put blankets over your windows to keep the light inside.
4.) Other visual cues
Smoke is something that you’ll need to consider. What is going on in your street? Are other people using their fireplaces during the day? If so then you’ll blend in, but if no one else is using their fireplace during the day, then you may want to hold off until the evening. You don’t want to clue people in that there is someone living in the house if you can help it.
Well-tended gardens are another 
cue to someone that a person or people are living there. If someone is living there, they must-have supplies that can be raided. How do you handle this? In an upcoming blog post, we’re going to talk about guerrilla gardening. How can you plant a garden in such a way that it doesn’t look like a garden? Two quick tips are that you don’t want to plant in rows or raised beds. If you choose to use raised beds, choose bushy plants that will make it look overgrown instead of cueing someone in that a person is living there who has some sort of supplies.
Take a good look at the other houses on your street. What do they look like? Do any of them have broken windows or refuse blowing through their yards? Do any of them have damaged siding or burn marks? You want to make your house blend in with the other houses around it as much as possible.
5.) Olfactory considerations
This is going to be a hard one because smells travel. That means that cooking smells travel. It means the smell of smoke travels. And while smells like smoke or food cooking can draw people in, remember that you can also use the sense of smell to repel people. If you come across rotten smells, they may work well in deterring people from coming too close.
General Rule of Thumb – Pull your visible perimeter in while extending your invisible perimeter out further
Visible perimeter
What do I mean? You don’t want to look any different than the other houses on the street. You don’t want people to see even a slight sense of normal living outside of your house. If you are living normally, you have stuff that other people will want.
Whatever normal actions or feelings or activities you want to do, these need to be cultivated inside your house where no one can see you. I am thankful that in this house our basement has no external windows at all! If we had to hunker down, we could use lamps and lanterns in the basement with no concern.
If we can keep cooking smells inside the house, we can cook. We can’t cook outside, even on our back deck or over a fire in our back yard, because not only can people see the fire, but they would be able to smell the food cooking. Pull your cooking activities in.
Children would normally be encouraged to play outside. But since children playing is a very visible act, this needs to be pulled into the house and kept relatively quiet.
Invisible perimeter
Now, this is one place where your survival group could come in. While you don’t want people to actually see you on patrol, you do want to be out there watching for potential problems. You don’t want to hunker down in your house and hope you spot trouble before it gets to you! You need to see trouble coming a ways away. So you need to be watching in concentric circles out from your position. Perhaps you post people at either end of your street watching for potential activity.
Then from there, you may want to post people at the entrance to your neighborhood or subdivision so that you have even more advanced warning. The more warning you have before a mob arrives, the better you can prepare to handle what is coming your way – the more time you’ll have to make a plan with the others who are still living on your street for the defense of your neighborhood.
What About You?
Have you lived through a collapse situation? Have you spent time reading and thinking this through? Do you have sage words of wisdom from which we can all glean and become better prepared? Leave a comment below so we can all be better prepared.
Together let’s Love, Learn, Practice, and Overcome
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security these days is getting more and more tricky, those little peep holes in doors allow the person/persons outside to see in, I prefer a surveillance camera preferably one that can see behind the person knocking on the door because they will hide a weapon behind them not up front. if shtf “DO NOT” allow your children to answer the door. make anyone knocking identify themselves before opening the door, if you don’t know them send them away. in the initial shtf I hope you have food stored, I can hide a garden in several areas on the property, if you can’t good luck to you. post your property with no trespassing sings, if they think they might get shot maybe they move on. get to know your neighbors, to avoid accidental shootings. be prepared to kill or run.
I’m curious how to set up a diy shtf security perimeter. Any articles on that would be awesome! I love your site!
I’ll see what I can do. Thanks for the feedback Tassey!
The perimeter has to be far enough back and secured well enough to allow you to cook, eat and be safe. We didn’t stop eating in the army when we went into places short on food. Begging will be the norm with some desperation that will need to be quickly and properly dealt with. Indoor cooking uses resources that are better for inclimate weather conditions or when needed light discipline happens.
So while that would be great, what are your thoughts if you were living in the suburbs of a city. Would you say, it’s just not able to be done and that we should be in the country instead? I’d love to hear your take on it.
If it’s really SHTF like it has been in places I’ve been then built up housing areas have a way of sorting that out. Places become abandoned, groups form with those that stay and things happen. It works itself out.
Look at the Balkans in the 90s and Venezuela today.
You better be thinking bigger than your yard or you ain’t gonna make it long.
Matt, I absolutely agree, and I deal with that indirectly in two other recent articles – this one https://ayearwithoutthegrocerystore.com/2019/03/13/how-to-evaluate-potential-survival-group-members/ and this one https://ayearwithoutthegrocerystore.com/2019/03/04/survival-group/. Thanks for your feedback!
Both great articles.
If I took my security cameras down it would be to relocate them in an area where the bad guys wouldnt see them.
If you could do it, that would be great.
Any ideas on safe indoor cooking?
There are a couple of was to go about safely cooking inside. If you have the ability to install a wood-burning stove, that’s probably the best long term solution. We bought a “Vermont Bun Baker.” You can cook on the top, bake in the oven, heat your house, and heat your water for your entire house (if you choose an additional part) with it.
Your other option is a butane stove. I got mine from Amazon. I would suggest that you have a battery powered carbon monoxide detector around just in case. These are heavily used in indoor cooking in Asia, but there are usually warnings on ones sold in the US. It doesn’t scare me off from using it inside, but I do keep a carbon monoxide detector on that floor of the house just in case.
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