How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It - James Wesley Rawles [81]
Safe at Home
I recommend that the next time you move, you buy a brick or other masonry house and upgrade its security, or better yet, start with a bare lot and custom-build a stout house with an integral safe room. Two good starting points for house designs are Mexican walled courtyards and buildings with square bastions (also known as Cooper corners). These projecting corners eliminate the blind spots that are common to typical square or rectangular houses.
For greater detail on this subject, I recommend Joel Skousen’s book, The Secure Home. My novel, Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse, also has some detailed design description for ballistically armored window shutters and doors, as well as details on constructing neo-medieval door bars.
If you are serious about custom-building or retrofitting an existing house for increased security and/or adding a safe room, then I recommend the architectural consulting services of both Safecastle and Hardened Structures (hardenedstructures.com).
Safe Rooms and Vaults
I can think of no better way to foil the bad guys than building a dedicated safe room. Such a room could serve multiple purposes, including panic room, gun and valuables vault, storm shelter, and fallout shelter. I’m amazed when I hear some of my relatively wealthy consulting clients tell me that they don’t own a home gun vault or safe room. Yes, they are expensive, but not nearly as expensive as having some of your key survival tools stolen.
Putting a lock on your bedroom door is insufficient. Since most interior doors are hollow-core, they typically use lightweight hinges, and they have insubstantial strike plates. Most of these doors can either be knocked down or kicked though, in very short order. I recommend replacing your bedroom doors with heavy-duty exterior-type doors (preferably steel) with sturdy hinges and one or more deadbolt locks. If your house has all the bedrooms isolated on one hallway, then you can add a heavy-duty door at the end of that hall and keep it locked at night, basically creating a safe wing. Then, inside that safe wing, you should have a far more secure, dedicated safe room that your entire family can retreat to.
A built-in basement walk-in safe room is ideal. In areas with high water tables, where a basement is not practical, a safe room/shelter can be built on the ground floor of a newly constructed “slab” house, or as an addition to an existing house, with a reinforced poured-concrete floor, walls, and ceiling. Regardless of the design that you choose, it is important to specify a vault door that opens inward, so that it won’t be jammed shut by debris in the event of tornado, hurricane, or bomb blast. The folks at Safecastle can do the engineering and source the vault door for you.
Another important thing to keep in mind for your safe room is that redundant communications are important, so that you can solicit outside help. Both the master bedroom and the safe room should have hardwired POTS telephones that are serviced by underground lines with no visible junction boxes. Be sure to test using a cell phone (as a backup) from every room. Having a CB radio in your safe room also makes sense.
I realize that most readers cannot afford an elaborate walk-in safe room, but 95 percent of you can at least afford a heavy-duty steel gun vault with a Sargent and Greenleaf dial lock with re-locker. Be sure to bolt your vault securely to the floor and, if possible, build it into a hidden compartment or hidden room. There are a lot of vault makers in the U.S. and Canada, so it is a very competitive market. Do some Internet research and comparison shopping and you can save a lot of money on your vault purchase. Vaults are quite heavy (typically around seven