How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [77]
Architectural Weakness
Secondly, one hundred fifty years of relative peace, stability, low crime rates, and cheap energy have worked together to push American residential architecture toward very vulnerable designs. Modern American homes are defensive disasters. They have huge expanses of glass, they lack barred windows or European-style security/storm shutters, they lack defensible space, and they often have no barriers for the approach of vehicles. Another ill-conceived innovation is the prevalence of floor plans that situate the master bedroom at the opposite end of the house from the children’s bedrooms, which is a nightmare in a home invasion.
For the past twenty-five years, one of the hallmarks of “bad neighborhoods” in the United States has been the prevalence of barred windows and beefed-up doors. These are neighborhoods where the prevailing crime rates have pushed the majority of the population into condition yellow as a full-time baseline mind-set. Given the upswing in crime rates that will undoubtedly accompany the coming depression, I wish that everyone in the ostensibly “good neighborhoods” had this same outlook.
One of the most chronic defensive lapses in American suburban architecture is exterior-door design. Typically, entrance doors have windows either immediately adjacent to or set into the doors themselves. Even worse is the ubiquitous sliding glass door. Nothing more than a brick or a paving stone tossed through the glass and bingo—instant access for home invaders, with the fringe benefit of startling the occupants.
The Ultimate Solution: Designing for Security from the Ground Up
Hidden Retreats Versus Visibility
This is one of the most frequently asked questions from my consulting clients. It is the classic contradiction: concealment versus defendability. The most defendable positions are on barren hilltops, but those are also the most visible from a distance.
Ideally, you would pick a retreat parcel that can provide both open fields of fire out to fifty or sixty yards yet not have a house visible from nearby roads. But of course this isn’t always possible. So you have to ask yourself: What do I expect to happen in my region in the event of a socioeconomic collapse? Will there just be an increase in burglary, or out-and-out attacks/home invasions by large, organized groups of looters?
In my estimation, light discipline will be more important than line-of-sight issues. A post-TEOTWAWKI world will be very dark at night. Just a few weeks into the problem, even the houses owned by people who have backup generators will go dark, as they begin to run out of fuel. Again, if you have an alternative power system, don’t flaunt it. It is essential that you put blackout curtains backed by black sheet plastic inside all of your windows. Be sure to check for light leaks, preferably using night-vision goggles. Even heavy wool blankets and drapes tacked up inside your windows will leak light, but backing them with heavy black sheet plastic (not just black trash bags) will do the trick. Tape the sheet plastic in place over the windows, leaving no gap where the sheeting meets the window frame, using opaque duct tape. Without proper blackout precautions, your house will be a “come loot me” beacon that can be seen for miles at night. But with appropriate light discipline, at least your house will look anonymously dark—like those of your neighbors who have no power.
Consider getting infrared (IR) floodlights to light the exterior of your house. They can be motion-sensor activated. That way, unless your potential attackers have night-vision gear, your house will appear dark, but your yard will actually be well-illuminated (as seen through your night-vision goggles).