You may feel a spike of anxiety when you have to leave your home. Hopefully, you won’t be leaving it entirely defenseless. You can take measures to ensure your house and everything inside is still protected, even when you’re away.
Try out these tips to protect your home at all hours of the day. Be prepared and you won’t be caught without a plan.
1. Tell Only Those You Trust
When people know you’re preparing for the worst situations, they’ll seek you out to mooch off your hard work when SHTF. While there are some people you may want to help protect, you don’t want to be responsible for everyone.
Kindness can improve your health and help you feel more fulfilled, but you should take care to ensure you’re not being taken advantage of. Protect your loved ones, but move without broadcasting your intentions so your home and family aren’t targeted.
2. Use Motion Lights
Solar-powered lights that detect motion are a must-have for any prepper. When SHTF, you need to know your security measures will work and as long as the sun is shining, you’ll be protected at night with these lights that detect motion.
They can stop trespassers in their tracks, thinking someone caught them. On another note, they can signal anyone inside the home to get to safety or prepare to ward off an intruder.
3. Rely On Protective Landscaping
Proper landscaping can be both beautiful and beneficial to your property. The right kind of hedges can serve as a natural fence — just one more obstacle intruders would have to overcome to get into your house. Bushes can also conserve natural resources like soil and water, and they are easy to maintain when you have other responsibilities.
4. Fortify Your Fence
If you have a fence, you may need to add protective measures to it. Some tall fences might signal to someone that you have something to protect inside your house — making you more of a target.
Putting barbed wire along the top of your fence could be a good way to keep people out if you’re worried about them climbing. You can opt for a wooden fence instead of a chain-link one if you want complete privacy without giving intruders as much of a foothold.
5. Lean On Your Neighbors
Making friends and allies is a crucial part of survival. Humans are social creatures and can’t always make it alone, so you should work with like-minded people to create bonds you trust.
You can ask these neighbors to keep an eye on your property while you’re out and they can contact you if they sense something amiss. You might even give them a spare key if you trust them enough to help protect your home.
6. Put Up Signs
While signs might not deter everyone, they might cause an intruder to stop in their tracks. You could put one up that stands firmly against trespassing or you might have a “Beware of Dog” sign, even if you don’t have a dog.
Some people may think twice when they think they’ll be met with resistance while trying to burglarize your home. It might be worth adding to your other defense systems in an attempt to keep people out.
7. Build a Safe Haven
In case the worst happens, you need somewhere to store all your gathered or harvested supplies, along with anyone in your home who may be vulnerable while you’re away. You can build a safe room directly inside your home — with its reinforcements, it can protect you and your gathered supplies from raiders and other attacks.
Once you choose a room, reinforce the door and hinges. Make sure the room is completely dry to preserve the items you store within. Being able to lock the door from the inside is a necessity and you can add extra protective measures to ensure your safe room can’t be broken into from the outside.
8. Leave a Vehicle Out
If you have more than one vehicle or don’t need yours for where you’re going, leave it out. Just having a car parked on your property can convince people there’s someone home — which means they’ll meet resistance if they try to break in.
Many people only want to target homes where they can get away unharmed. Even if you live alone, making it look like someone’s there might deter some forms of crime.
9. Cover Your Tracks
Your footprints could lead someone right to where you came from. The best way to cover your tracks would be adding things to your soles to confuse the prints, but you can take measures to conceal them better as well. Unfortunately, concealing your tracks can reduce how fast you move, which can be crucial when you need to leave and return quickly. Try to find an anti-tracking technique that works for you so you don’t have to worry about inadvertently leading someone back to your base.
Ensure Your Home Is Protected At All Times
You never know when danger could strike. Straying away from your home could be difficult, as it means leaving your current supplies without your protection.
By enlisting these tips, you can ward off strangers while giving yourself peace of mind that your supplies and the people you love are safe inside your house. You can never be too careful.
