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If the SHTF tonight, how could you protect your home? Remember, calling 911 and hoping local heroes in blue arrive in time to save you and your loved ones will not be an option. Even if you have copious amounts of weapons and ammo, that won't be enough to thwart the panicked marauding hordes coming your way.
Let’s take this scenario one step further, as you sit in front of a screen running your self-defense survival plan through your mind. Let’s say you have a well-trained family or mutual assistance group of some sort. Will they all be home or able to make it home when disaster strikes?
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Lone Wolf Is For Fools
The entire homestead must be protected not just the night the SHTF, but around the clock for the duration of the disaster. If this is a grid down scenario, the disaster could last for months, if not years. How large the homestead is and where it is located will play a vital role in not just how you protect it, but how many armed attackers are headed your way AND how long it will take to get there.
What if the SHTF event is a pandemic and some of your tribe becomes stricken or otherwise injured? Can you still put a gun in every hand to go stand a post? A lone wolf prepper or a single family planning to go it alone will almost assuredly become a statistic and not survivors.
If I had $1 for every time I heard or read, “I will bug out to the country” or something along those lines, I could buy the pair of purebred Gypsy Vanners I have been eyeballing.
You must expect the marauding hordes of unprepared and panicked people to head your way. Sure, they won't all arrive the night the SHTF, but sooner or later, the armed and starving will be pushing on your gates.
In my rural and well-armed region (where violent crimes almost never occur) I have no doubt my peers will be standing on the county line holding up a “No Vacancy” sign in one hand and leveling the signs on their AR-15 with the other, as strangers try their bugging out to the country “plan” here.
That armed line of defense and the rugged terrain in our entire region plays to our benefit, but there simply are not enough people to cover every square foot of our small remote county 24/7. People will get in. They will try to steal from your garden, pond, barnyard, and your home.
As in all wars–and make no mistake about it folks, a post-SHTF society will resemble a battlefield during the initial phase–it will all boil down to numbers.
Get to know your neighbors if you haven't already. Integrate yourself into the community and form bonds with the men and women you will need to stand beside to protect what is yours from a collective standpoint. You want to deter the marauding hordes (or as many of them as possible) long before they are anywhere near your driveway.
I have no clue how many people who live in my county or even my township would label themselves as preppers, but I do know that down to the man (or woman) they also have guns and survival skills and can be relied upon to be part of the solution to the inevitable marauding hordes and not be a part of the potentially deadly problem.
Tactical Terrain
If your survival homestead is located in a rural area, congratulations, your smart location choice just gave you a substantial edge when it comes to protection from the marauding hordes.
But do not rest easy and merely assume geography alone will keep you safe. It took my husband and me nearly three years to find the right land to turn into our survival homesteading retreat. There is no shortage of great land in our region. We walked away from two almost-right properties even though they were priced for a buyer’s market.
We wanted land that would be easy to defend, and you should too. We live on a lonely country road that has now been closed on the end that connects town due to a cave in – and might never be reopened. Quite an unexpected prepper location bonus!
There is only one road in and one road out to our home. Our dirt driveway is a rugged half-mile uphill drive that is often only accessible by a four-wheel drive. You must drive across a creek that has only a rugged rock formation to serve as a culvert. There is no bridge and, much to our parents’ chagrin, we never plan to build one.
There is only one home visible from the lower end of the property by the road and no homes or roads visible anywhere else on the property. Pure prepper dreamland, right?
The sides of the property and the back cannot be traversed in any way but on foot. A horse could ride on some of it, but not even my beloved Ruby could cross all of the steep and wide ravines necessary to reach the primary living, barn, and working areas on our retreat.
Man-Made Obstacles
We were diligent in our search and got very lucky. If your land has similar terrain, kudos to you. If it does not, create some obstacles, both natural and man-made, that can be put in place now or are at least already constructed and can be quickly moved in to place when the SHTF.
- Dig ditches to create barriers that a horse or an ATV cannot cross.
- Grow osage orange or other prickly and dense natural fencing that will be quite painful for a human being or an animal to poke through.
- Cut down some trees and keep the logs next to your driveway so they can be rolled or chain-pulled into place to block passage.
- Invest in plenty of barbed wire and razor wire that can be strung up in needed locations to help prevent passage.
- Drive nails into boards that can be nailed in place onto heavy posts and placed alongside the driveway to deflate tires.
- Dig dead pits that can quickly be turned into deadfall pits during an SHTF scenario.
- Create low-tech surveillance systems using rat traps and glow sticks. These trip-wires glow when crossed, alerting you to the presence of intruders in your driveway or woods.
- Invest in some tannerite and set up exploding targets around the perimeter of your property that a trained shooter can hit when potential intruders appear.
OPSEC
Operational security will also be an essential part of your survival perimeter defense plan. Do not attract unwanted attention by grilling juicy steaks outdoors, showing off your generator power by running lights at night, or allowing livestock to eat in pastures visible by the road.
You also should safeguard the groceries you are growing by splitting them up into several and not just one large growing plot. Use Rick Austin’s camo food forest techniques to make your emerging produce blend in with the weeds and conserve space by growing in guilds and vertically near your home and far from prying eyes.
If you plan on using two-way radios to communicate with your perimeter patrol and to keep in contact on a large survival homestead, create a simple code only your tribe can follow to avoid your conversations being picked up by potential attackers who may also have long-range walkie-talkies or CB radios.
You should also build LP/OPs (listening post – observation post) in multiple spots on your survival retreat, making sure all possible areas of entry are visible at all times by someone.
Now, constructing tall towers on your land does not need to scream, “a prepper lives here”, and shouldn’t. A hunting blind style structure will not look out of place in any rural area. You can buy the materials for such a structure at your local hardware store and construct it in plain view without advertising you have preps stockpiled.
Consider building a second story deck on your home or a decorative rooftop lounge area that will blend in with common outdoor home improvement but can serve as an LP/OP as well.
Purchase or build typical tree stands that can be put into place around the property and can be used for observation, logistical positioning, or even a hiding spot, during a long-term disaster.
Wrap Up
No matter where you live, there will be both pros and cons. Some you will be able to overcome but others you will not. Spend some time reviewing potential weak spots and strongholds on your homestead. Then develop a plan to use the strength the land has provided to your benefit and bolster the weaknesses in a way that is feasible and affordable.
Consider the area 60 miles away from your survival homestead in each direction. That is the rough distance you can reasonably expect the marauding hordes to travel in search of a safe haven. Is there a prison in the radius, a violent crime-ridden area, a more advantageous place to invade for food and water?
Once you know the answers to those and similar questions, you can better gauge how vulnerable your area and homestead truly might become during an SHTF disaster.
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