How a Layered Home Defense Strategy will Protect Your Family
Most people think that securing your home is locking your doors, setting an alarm, and having a firearm if necessary. But what I want to do is show you that protecting your home is much more than that and easier than you may think.
How Childhood Games Shaped My View on Home Defense
I remember playing with action figures as a kid. I would create elaborate battle scenes for the Rebels and the Empire. Part of my strategy was a layered defense using starships, physical barriers, and snipers. I did this because I wanted the Rebels to do everything they could to keep the Empire out and prevent them from fighting at close quarters, where all the important people were kept. Maybe my brain has always worked this way.
When I started thinking about my home defense as an adult, those concepts came in handy. As a protector, I wanted to do everything I could to prevent a physical encounter with an intruder at close proximity inside my home. That's a really bad day.
Being prepared is key to your safety and the safety of your family. A fully developed plan is what helps families stay alive in potentially deadly situations. When a house is on fire, it's not the time to draw up a fire escape plan.
The Secure Dad Layered Home Defense Strategy
Back in 2018, I developed *The Secure Dad* layered home defense strategy. This was a great shift in thinking when it came to protecting my family and my home. Many people just want cut-and-dry answers that are always going to work 100% of the time. Unfortunately, that is just not the case. Every family is unique, every home is different. That means that every family's needs for home defense are different.
Why a Home Defense Strategy is Essential
This is why a strategy is so important. This is not necessarily about specific minute details that are going to work across the board; this is a way of thinking and looking at home security that can be customized for every family and every home.
The 4 Steps of a Layered Home Defense Strategy
My layered home defense strategy is different from what other people call the five D's of home defense. If you know what the five D's of home defense are, that's great, but most people can't keep straight what they all are, and it can be overly complicated.
My version consists of four simple steps: discipline, deter, fortify, and defend. The purpose of a layered home defense strategy is to ensure that you have multiple means to secure your home and family.
If one part of the strategy isn't executed correctly, that's okay because you have the other three to fall back on. This way, families can ensure they have multiple ways to protect their home. You are not just relying on one single thing, like a deadbolt lock, to protect your home.
A Common Home Defense Scenario
I've been a guest on several podcasts that talk about home security, and they often ask me about one specific scenario. The scenario is: I'm sitting in my recliner watching TV when someone bursts through the door with a gun and tries to take control of my home. This is a very scary situation, but when we break down this scenario, we see that it becomes very close, very fast. A person is now standing a few feet away from me, threatening my life. So how do we keep that from happening?
Pushing Back Intruders: Starting from the Outside
First, we want to push this person from a few feet away back to my front door. What do I need to do to secure my front door? Then, we have to think about what made them choose my front door to kick in. Finally, we have to look at what made them decide to even target my house in the first place. This is the basic understanding of a layered home defense strategy. Protecting your home does not start at the front door; it starts at the street.
Layered Home Defense Strategy: Discipline
The first part of the layered home defense strategy is discipline. This is where you and I put in the work every day and develop smart habits to protect our home. This means teaching our kids to lock the door when they leave the house. It means making sure that we close the garage door when we leave for work and school in the mornings. This means creating a secure routine to check the doors and windows, ensuring they are locked, and arming our home security system before going to bed. We can have the greatest defenses in the entire world, but if we don't set them, they are useless. So we must be disciplined in prioritizing safety and taking these simple steps every day.
Layered Home Defense Strategy: Deter
The most overlooked part of home security is deterrence, in my opinion. Far too many people think that home security is passive and that no action will be required until somebody kicks in your door and the alarm goes off. What if we took simple steps to ensure an intruder never wanted to select our home as a target, preventing a nightmare scenario from playing out?
The deterrence layer of the strategy dissuades thieves from choosing to attack your home. Make sure your home is unappealing to a thief—not because your home isn't valuable but because of subtle warnings that indicate you know what you're doing. You can do this by adding exterior lighting to your home. This not only lets an intruder know they can't sneak up on your house, but it also adds curb appeal.
Using Dogs as a Deterrent for Home Security
Another great way to deter a thief from breaking into your home is by having a dog. Now, you don't need a trained German Shepherd; you can have a derpy Chihuahua. While dogs may not attack and defend you with their lives, they can bark and alert you to a developing situation. Most people think their Golden Retriever is suddenly going to become a canine superhero in a life-threatening situation. Unless your dog has undergone specialized training, they are most likely going to bark and then run and hide. Do not count on your dog saving your life in a defensive situation. The best thing you can hope for with an untrained dog is that they will alert you to a noise, point themselves in the direction of the threat, and bark. Everything else is up to you. I feel that dogs make a great deterrent for break-ins; they are like little security alarms with legs. But they are also security alarms that poop, so there's a trade-off.
Layered Home Defense Strategy: Fortify
The third layer of our home defense strategy is fortification. The purpose of fortifying your home is to prevent or delay an intruder from entering by force. You want to make it hard for someone to get in so they'll give up and move on. If they are determined to get in, you'll want to make it take longer, buying time to prepare and call for help.
Making upgrades to your home security is very important. Keep in mind that fortifications don’t need to repel a siege by a medieval army. Thieves strike quickly, and if they don’t get the results they want fast, they are much more likely to abandon the attack. Fortifications should be made to last for several minutes, not days.
The Front Door: The Weakest Link in Home Security
As I have said for a very long time, the number one way that a thief enters your home is through your front door. The third most popular way is through the back door, according to FBI statistics. So, as we can see, doors are very important to thieves—they can get in and take your stuff out through a doorway. One of the greatest fortifications you can make to your home’s exterior doors is a FlipLok. A FlipLok is a secondary lock that can withstand 1,600 lbs of force and will make it really hard for someone to kick down your door. Chances are, they’ll give up before they ever get through.
I also suggest, if it’s within your budget, that you get a storm door for your front door. Not only does this add a touch of class to your home, but it also adds a physical barrier. Storm doors are not just good for protecting your door from weather; they can protect your door from lock picking and being kicked in. Make sure you get a storm door that locks so that, if someone is trying to bypass your locks, you have added another lock they must get through. This could make more noise, alerting you or your dog that there is a problem. While storm doors can be broken, they make a lot of noise in the process, alerting you to the situation. So, having a storm door is great not just for weather but for deterring thieves as well.
Layered Home Defense Strategy: Defend
So far in our layered home defense strategy, we've covered discipline, deterrence, and fortification. These are the outer layers of the plan. They are designed to keep people out of your home and buy time to respond to any sort of threat. Now is the time to examine the layer of home defense that we call defend.
Creating a Family Protection Plan for Home Invasions
A family protection plan for your home, or a home invasion plan, is when you consider how you plan to respond to an intruder in your home. Just like a fire escape plan, you must consider how many people live in your home, who needs to act, where the danger is coming from, and how you can protect your family until help arrives.
A family protection plan for your home, or a home invasion plan, is when you consider how you plan to respond to an intruder in your home. Just like a fire escape plan, you must consider how many people live in your home, who needs to act, where the danger is coming from, and how you can protect your family until help arrives.
The layered home defense strategy is designed to keep you from reaching the point where you must defend yourself and your family inside your home. If we correctly execute a layered home defense strategy, the chances of a physical confrontation with an intruder are greatly reduced. If you must enact the defend portion of the strategy, that means all the other layers have failed, and you are now in a very serious situation.
Defending your home from a potentially armed intruder is a scary thought. The advantage of a layered home defense strategy is that it deters a break-in from ever occurring. However, this may not be enough to repel determined predators. Sometimes the intent of a criminal outweighs the concern of being caught. Or the attacker could be under the influence of alcohol or drugs and not behaving rationally at all.
Home Defense Tools
When defending your home, consider what tools you’ll need to protect yourself. This means a firearm, pepper gel, or another means of physical defense. Decide today what you are comfortable with doing and know the consequences of using those tools. Also train with them so you are prepared for this worse case scenario.
If you can flee your home during an invasion, that is a great way to create distance and give yourself time to respond. If you can’t get out then designate one room in your home as a safe room.
Using A Safe Room
A safe room is a place where your family needs to assemble in case of an invasion. If kids are old enough, they can get there on their own. Smaller children, elderly adults and those with special needs should be assigned a responsible person to get them to the room as quickly as possible.
Your safe room needs at minimum a telephone, windows facing the street and a limited number of doors. It also needs to be accessible by every member of the family. If all family members sleep on the second floor, then the safe room needs to be on the second floor as well. This room also needs to be used in the event of a daytime break-in.
Gathering in the safe room should be fast and simple. From here you can call for help, fortify the door to the room, and physically defend yourself.
Layered Home Defense: Bringing it All Together
In conclusion, securing your home goes far beyond simply locking the doors and setting an alarm. A comprehensive, layered home defense strategy—built on the pillars of discipline, deterrence, fortification, and defense—is essential for protecting your family from potential threats.
By practicing discipline, we develop daily habits like locking doors, closing the garage, and setting the security system. Deterrence focuses on making your home an unattractive target through simple actions like exterior lighting and the presence of a dog. Fortification strengthens your home’s defenses with physical barriers, such as a FlipLok and storm door, that prevent or delay entry. And finally, defense—the last layer—ensures that, should an intruder make it inside, you and your family have a plan in place to protect yourselves and respond effectively.
A layered home defense strategy is designed to minimize the chances of ever needing to physically defend yourself, but it prepares you for that possibility. By addressing security on multiple levels, you make it much harder for criminals to succeed, giving you peace of mind and a safer home. Remember, the goal is to be proactive, not reactive, when it comes to your family’s safety.
If you're looking for even more in-depth strategies to protect your home and family, I encourage you to check out my Amazon best-selling book, Home Security: The Secure Dad's Guide. In this comprehensive guide, I walk you through practical steps you can take right now to secure your home, covering everything from quick wins to more advanced layers of defense.
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