You already know you’re leagues ahead of your neighbors when it comes to being prepared, but one area too many survivalists fail to account for is just how far hungry and deprived people will go when the SHTF. Your home, and all of your stockpile is like a giant target, and it’s in your best interest to know how to fight back when they’re trying to take what’s yours. Your job is not only to be ready for whatever comes, but to be able to protect and defend your home, from the criminals who were too lazy, or too unwilling to prepare themselves. In today’s post, I’ll share exactly how you can keep your home safe, and fight back from your homestead. Let’s get right into it.
Covering access points
For starters, you need to cover every entry point to your home, every route onto your property. Look to any driveways, roads or even potential access points, and pay particular attention to any open spaces that could be driven through with an ATV or a 4WD. You don’t want to give any intruders a straight shot to your house, so plan to cover these access points. Yes, they’re also your escape routes, but don’t let the bad guys drive up to your door. We’ve added quick growing pines along all of our perimeter (thick enough that a car cannot pass), to create a natural barrier that deters unwelcome guests. I’ve also got cattle drains on every road in, double spaced and dug out at least 2-3-feet-deep, so as soon as we remove the grids, you can’t drive a car over the gulley’s which means in a crisis it’s going to take real effort to get in close. In addition, there’s trees strategically planted that can be felled over both the entry points (and main drive in from the road) to conceal and cover the access points to our property. Unless you know it’s there, you are more than likely going to drive right past our homestead.
Mapping out distances
Next comes the range. If you’re used to long distance shooting you know how important it is for your accuracy to zero in your firearms for specific ranges. We’ve got an almost arsenal of weapons at our disposal, but even long-range rifles aren’t going to be effective if you’re not zoned in on your targets as they come up on approach. We’ve painted markers on the trees starting from 200 yards out, and then at 150, 100 and 50. I’m a good shot
on a target but I’m no sharpshooter, and I know I’m not going to be accurate shooting at distances over this. Plus, our property is pretty heavily wooded, and you can’t see much further than this anyway.
Digging in for cover
To fight back you need cover, and the best fortifications are those you’ve been able to plan in advance. From our home we’ve got heavily fortified shooting locations from the basement (which ties into our escape plan), but in our surrounding yard we’ve also created natural rises and defenses. I borrowed an excavator a couple of years ago to help with this, cutting into the natural hills and rises around our property, and building up those that were there. Right now, there’s at least 4 different positions you can shoot from with dense earth cover, and a couple of spots in the trees we’ve setup “for our kids” to play in, and as a high position for anyone with a rifle, complete with ziplines back to our home. The kids love them, while being completely practical too.
Using force multipliers
Unless you’re part of a large survival group you’re probably going to be on your own on your property, with a handful of close family members trying to defend against a more mobile, (and probably much larger) attacking force. In this instance, you’re going to want any advantage you can get, and that’s where force multipliers come into play, advantages that help to support and augment your defense. Anything that can give you an edge in a fight is a multiplier, and you’ve got an advantage already because it’s your property. I’ve got fences and razor wire protecting some of the more remote areas of my property, as well as motion-triggered lighting and security cameras. It may seem like overkill, but being able to tell you, at the click of a button, who has just walked up to our gate, or whether there is movement along one of the perimeter fences helps us sleep far better at night knowing we are safe and secure in our bubble. Not to mention the motion-triggered lighting that brightens up our home like a football field on game night, and the guard dogs which have been trained to be decidedly vicious to anyone not in our family. These are all force multipliers you need to take advantage of.
Planning for an escape
Of course, even with the best laid plans you can’t account for everything, and with enough people and enough time, even the most fortified homes can be overrun. Your job in this instance is to plan for your escape. To have a hidden way out that allows you and your family to run for safety when all hope is lost. Perhaps they’ve gotten close and fire-bombed your home, or simply overpowered your defenses with sheer numbers. You need an escape plan, otherwise you risk getting trapped and being at the mercy of your attackers. Ours is rather simple, though it was a headache to get built. From our basement you can access our safe room, which is essentially just an underground bunker. But the kicker is the hatch in the roof, which opens up to a tunnel just a couple of feet underground. Using drain pipes, we built a 50-60 ft escape tunnel, that gets you to the other side of a large thicket of trees, and a small shed containing two ATVs and a motorbike, so we can get out of dodge fast, and unnoticed, no matter what’s happening at our main homestead. It’s not ideal, but in a pinch the last thing I want to be is trapped, and at the mercy of those trying to break in. Being prepared is key when it comes to defending your home, and the smart survivalists, the ones who are actually going to make it through a SHTF event aren’t the ones who built up a big stockpile of supplies. The ones who survive are the ones who know how to fight back, and defend everything they’ve painstakingly put together.
