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?
Shotgun. Single best thing you can have.
Here’s the issue: your question is mechanical in nature and relatively vague. If the goal is to prevent someone from entering a home, there are many measures one could take. However, I do not believe that is what you mean. What you are actually asking is what to do once someone has already broken into your home. Unfortunately, the answer to that is simple: a 12-gauge shotgun. I understand that many people on this platform dislike firearms. I do not particularly like them either. However, if we are discussing this purely from a mechanical and practical standpoint, the most effective option for home defense is a 12-gauge shotgun. I mean that literally. It is the most reliable means of immediately stopping an intrusion from progressing further into the home. Everything else, moats, gates, high-powered security systems, armed guards, or a medieval motte-and-bailey setup, is either wildly impractical or financially inaccessible to most people. At that point, the question is no longer “How do you physically prevent entry?” It becomes “How do you stop an intruder once entry has already occurred?” That question has already been answered. A 12-gauge shotgun.
Window bars
Can’t break in if they can’t find your house. Hide it!
3" door screws and a good lock.
Also AR15, if you legally/mentally can. Last line of defense, but without it the last line is the door/windows.
Alligators.
This is the only answer that makes sense.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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…
Home Alone has some solid ideas
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.
Being a less attractive target than your neighbours, either by being a bigger hassle or by looking like there’s nothing worth stealing.
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.
Used to be a locksmith in Miami, this is exactly it!
Desperate people want money, not a fight.
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.
Have you seen the film Home Alone 2?
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 ;-)
Provide universal health care, low cost.of living to income ratio, free higher education, strong community building, and walkable cities.
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!
It would be nice. But not something I can provide right now :D. Let you know if I become a billionaire.
No, no. We want solutions to problems we don’t really have! Not something that would make life for 99.9% of Americans better…
