I know that security is a bit of a show and its really more of a deterant, but I was wondering realistically how I could prevent someone breaking and entering a small-ish American home? What is actually effective?
Not really much, tbh.
Decent quality door locks
Clear line of sight from the street to likely entry points
Loud alarms so if they do break in they’re not likely to stay longIf someone wants to get into a house, there isn’t much you can do to stop them unless you’re rich and can afford exotic shit like bullet proof glass windows and thick metal reinforced doors.
All to can really do is discourage crimes of opportunity by making them seem like bad opportunities.Being a less attractive target than your neighbours, either by being a bigger hassle or by looking like there’s nothing worth stealing.
Any street-facing windows should always be shrouded by curtains or shutters. Don’t let anyone passing by just see into your home.
Learned that at apartments. Just having everything locked up tight and shutters meant our neighbor got broken into and not us one day.
Used to be a locksmith in Miami, this is exactly it!
Desperate people want money, not a fight.
Not wrong, however you gotta be really skilled to make it look like you got nothing worth the effort and at the same time not looking too easy to break in. Some people like to break in and just rummage through shit, even if stuff truly isn’t worth taking.
My grandmother lived in a rough neighborhood and got broken into several times. The stuff she got taken were old worn clothes and just old junk. There were never any valuables, they took her jewelry but it wasn’t expensive stuff. You get the idea. Yet it happened. And her house never looked like it would have valuables anyway. Still a nuisance for her and a very unpleasant experience.
Yeah I got broken into and I woke up from a nap mid-robbery. I literally just talked to the dude, he was some drifter who said he “wanted to get out of the rain and the door was unlocked”. A few of the houses in my little cut of town are vacants so he probably was telling the truth. I’m tucked away in the woods but still in the city.
Anyway I did ask him to leave and he went “I reorganized some of your stuff into that bag”, which was my bookbag lol. After he left I looked and he was def gonna steal some things but it was like a bunch of mail, some old movies, a couple video games, a set of drill bits I had just gotten and hadn’t opened yet. Just random shit.
That unfortunately doesn’t help if someone is targeting you/your house specifically.
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If someone is targeting you and your house specifically, maybe not even hiring private security will help.
Provide universal health care, low cost.of living to income ratio, free higher education, strong community building, and walkable cities.
I don’t really think OP can do that single-handedly.
It would be nice. But not something I can provide right now :D. Let you know if I become a billionaire.
Thank you. Now what can I do with the money left in my bank account after that
Buy a yacht
Those aren’t very secure from the modern super breakandentereptile, the buck toothed electric límpido snake eel dragon lizard.
Buy 2 in case one gets destroyed
As long as it’s over 150 feet it’s safe from orcas!
No, no. We want solutions to problems we don’t really have! Not something that would make life for 99.9% of Americans better…
Lesson from South Africa: by the time they are at your door it’s too late. Perimeter fencing, preferably a 2m high wall with razor wire AND electric fence on top (including on gate). Garden: floodlights, motion sensing alarms, beams, AI cameras. All doors and windows: bars and security gates. Inside: separate living and sleeping area with lockable gate in the hall between. Panic buttons…
None of that is going to stop a legal intrusion, each just buys you time before the paid security company arrive with guns to chase away intruders. Given time, any determined attacker will get in eventually…
How big does that perimeter have to be for the lesson to apply? In ZA I know they do whole gated communities, but we’re talking about a single house.
My cousin had a beagle ridgeback mix (accidental breeding incident).
His neighbours from two doors down showed him security footage of burglars jumping back over the wall when they heard it barking! 😂
As a locksmith, I can tell you what I tell my paranoid customers. Buying the greatest lock in the world doesn’t do shit if you still have first floor windows.
I always thought that was funny. Same with cheap, stick-built apartments with only the wood studs and two layers of drywall between them, the hallway, and other units, but tenants massively fortifying only the door.
I always wondered why we don’t read about more robberies like that. In a stick built home, the wall is a weak point. With a modern battery powered reciprocating saw, it would take less than a minute even on a standard external wall
I’ve heard of that happening in context of thieves breaking into stores. Never heard of it used for home robbery
I had my windows replaced … Last year, I think? That detail doesn’t really matter.
I always knew that normal windows negate any attempt at security, but it was still unnerving to visually confirm that they are easily removed, fragile barriers filling what are just holes in my wall.
Build a moat.
It’s not impenetrable, but let’s be honest, who’s crazy enough to break into the house with a moat?
Own a musket for home defense, since that’s what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
Don’t forget about your French neighbors who have been looking to get one over on those ruffians.
I mean, building a moat does tell that you probably are rich enough to either pay someone to come over and do all that, or buy/rent a machine to dig & fill it, or are well-off that you have enough free time & energy to dig it without a machine… (might also need something to line the moat with so that the water isn’t just sucked up by the soil)
On the other hand, if someone dug up a moat around a whole house with a shovel all by themselves, it’d probably be wiser not to mess with them…
It also tells that you’re likely to have a vat of boiling oil dumped on you when attempting to breach the walls.
Pirates. You’ve just escalated things a degree.
No. They normally operated on open waters. You have to go back to medieval armies.
Vikings. Cold pirates.
All right I’ll give you a Vikings for that.
The critical question is “who?”.
Most break-ins are targets of opportunity. Given that you can’t change to a less risky neighborhood, you could have no outward signs of profitability, no easy/quiet entrance, signs of people around, lights, cameras. And remember, they’re not coming in the front door: they’re looking for an Inconspicuous, weak point. You just need to be less of a target of opportunity than your neighbors.
Someone specifically targetting you will be much harder. Someone with skills will be much harder. At the extreme, no consumer lock is safe against lock picking and no consumer door is safe against police battering ram.
I have a side door with a broken jamb, and speculate that someone kicked it in at some point (before I moved here). One of the first things I did upon moving in, was add long screws to the latch and hinges so it’s anchored in the nearest joist rather than simply the jamb. Supposedly that makes it much more difficult to kick in - someone might give up when it is taking too much time and they are creating noise that could attract attention. I also have a light and a doorbell cam, so they would be visible and on camera doing it. And a dog
At one point I came across an article recommending steel supports behind the jamb, and would really like to do that when I replace the door. It looks like a normal door but the jam is no longer a weak point. Unfortunately no one seems to know what I’m talking about though
I have solid wood doors to enter my home, the front door doesn’t even have a peephole on it. If somebody wants in their coming through a window. U could put bars on ur windows, then the door returns as the weak point. If ur really worried u could step up and put a steel fire door in (like shops are required to have for fire safety) and one of those properly installed will make ur walls the weak point. At that point you probably should question if ur better off in an underground fort lol.
Reinforce your doorframes and window frames, preferably with steel. The dinky pine wood frames of residential doors and windows are hilariously easy to kick in, and the thickest steel door and the meanest window bars in the world won’t mean much when an attacker can simply kick them out of the frame with a minimum of effort.
You will probably find that doing this is in fact deemed illegal by at least one entity in your local hierarchy of state/county/municipality. I’ll give everyone three guesses as to why.
Because it keeps law enforcement out?
And, we have a winner.
Any properly framed door or window won’t be the failure point. It’s usually the fasteners. Deadbolts usually only come with dinky little half inch screws for the strike plate. Replace those with some 2.5" deck screws and it’ll be much harder to kick open.
Why do people say this? When I moved into my current house and replaced all the deadbolts, every choice came with at least one long screw to anchor into the joist. And that was 20 years ago
When I replaced my deadbolts about 5 years ago, none of them had it. Maybe we got different brands?
Is it because it’d make us less safe?
I believe in some areas fire is a valid concern. But I also imagine if you do it right, it doesnt matter as much.
Is it because it might be harmful to the environment?
No its just harder to get out in case of a fire. But thats just spitballing. I know that’s why you cant put bars on all windows or totally obstruct exits. Fire is much MUCH more likely to happen than a break and entering. At least where I am at. People need to get out in case of a fire. But im pretty sure there are still ways of protecting yourself instead of just bars.
There are bars designed to let people out and not in.
See Quick release security bars:
I think for firefighters you’d have to install some “fire key” system and they’ll ok it.
LEO would be able to get the key themselves with a warrant though, but at that point they’re checking your cavities whether you want to or not.
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I’ll split my guesses into characters:
L
E
O
Who is your enemy?
If it is just some random burglar, create some fear with triple locks and cameras and you are good.
If it is a government operation, you better leave the country before they even start looking for you.
Ageeed. If random burglar, dud cameras and the “secured by” lawn signs are plenty effective. The appearance of security is a sufficient deterrent for all but determined robbers, or those targeting you specifically (where a camera will not do anything for prevention anyway).
Ah, good old aposematism!
Fake cameras exist ;-)
Alligators.
This is the only answer that makes sense.
If you asking how you secure your residence against ICE…good luck with that. They have legal access to an expansion of the Patriot Act for warrants, and they have toys they’d love to use against any home security. All that physical security is going to do is give them probable cause.
They’ll claim it gave them probable cause.
Yeap. They don’t care about the law…they just care about what sounds good to their people in clips.
Top 3 tools that will get you most of the way there.
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Steel door frame reinforcement + steel or solid core wood door. The door jamb is the weakest link here. Cheap steel reinforcement with long screws are an easy win. A quality lock is a good idea.
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Security window film. Best done when the windows are manufactured, but they will deter most people who were counting on a quick smash and grab.
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Dog. No one wants to mess with a dog. Lots of dual purpose family friendly breeds who instinctively guard the home from intruders and can smell the adrenaline of people who don’t belong.
These three things will get you 80% of the way there for 20% of the cost. Cameras just give you memorabilia of that time you got robbed and rarely help prosecution and even less in recovery of stolen goods.
Interesting point about cameras. Why doesn’t the footage usually help?
Think about what the camera even can show.
- you’re not going to see a readable license plate, even assuming they took their own car and parked in front of your house
- so what if you capture a face? There is no universal facial recognition too, and database, nor any way to trace back to where they may be now. If the police capture them by normal means, it’s solid additional evidence, but not useful in itself
- doesn’t matter for insurance. If you make a police report of a breakin, they accept that, and it won’t show what’s been stolen or destroyed
Cameras are good for “the appearance of” security and may deter some. They can trigger lights and attention, which may drive some away. They can also be part of an alarm system which will deter more
Thank you! Interesting and helpful.
Masks, poor lighting, angles, quality and police that don’t give a shit etc…
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Home Alone has some solid ideas
Have you seen the film Home Alone 2?
Judging by the link in the OP, the concern is the possibility of ICE or other federal agents breaking in. It’s not the same as dealing with a random intruder. About the best you can hope for is to slow them down, maybe giving you time to get away or for legal assistance and the media to arrive.
Given that, I’d concentrate on making the house more sturdy: steel framed doors, steel rolling garage door, properly installed security bars/screens on windows and so forth. And maybe start with a solid masonry house.
Probably not realistic for most people, but then a few years ago I wouldn’t have considered the risk realistic either, and here we are.
Best case, my house gets a little more secure and nothing happens.
Worst case, we get time to bug out. I think its a 1/100 chance. But as the family has survived fires, water going out for weeks, electricity down for a while, etc…its better to be prepared just in case.
I honestly didnt want to make this post too political, but it could be a valid concern with people just up and pulling people out of homes and individuals advocating removing citizenship in certain circumstances.
Be wary of bugging out if they are at your door. If they were well trained they’d have people watching back doors and sides. Granted these buffoons aren’t exactly knocking on Mensa’s door, but still.
Thanks ill keep it in mind.
Make it so they won’t want to enter. If it smells incredibly unpleasant for example. Bonus points if some strange liquid is dripping near the front door.
Make it incredibly unpleasant to be around.
If ICE comes, I have no plans to escape alive. Take that as you will.
