Should You Have a Safe Room in Your Home?
Please note that we are NOT the original writers of this blog post. All credit goes to the original writers. Find the original post as published at this link: https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/blog/should-you-have-a-safe-room-in-your-home/
The post Should You’ve Got a Safe Room in Your Property? Appeared initially on USCCA.
- Have a layered home-defense program . Without sounding like a broken record, your first layer of defense is an alarm system and/or a loud dog. This pares down the number of criminal offenders willing to attempt entry.
- Select a specific room in your house that serves as a rallying point. The most important thing we have in our house is our son. His room, right is our rallying point. The plan is for me to be the outer line of armed protection for that room, taking a position in the hallway. They can escape through the bedroom windows, if things go south.
- If you would like to reinforce a bedroom more, you can add a deadbolt lock and sturdier door and frame. Your security layers deepen.
Scott W. Wagner has been a law enforcement officer since 1980, working undercover in liquor and narcotics investigations and consequently, sniper and assistant team leader of a SWAT team. He currently works as a patrol sergeant. He’s a police firearms instructor, certified to train revolver, semi-automatic pistol, shotgun, semi- and fully automatic patrol rifle, and submachine gun. Scott also functions as a criminal justice professor and police academy commander.
Around the year 2000, the notion of panic (or”safe”) rooms gained the attention of the news media. The idea of specially fortified safe areas within the home even resulted in the creation of the 2002 film Panic Room.
The thought of a safe room that is fortified is nothing new. I grew up during the Cold War, and the panic room of the time was called a”fallout shelter.” Fallout shelters weren’t designed to protect a family from a direct nuclear blast but rather protect them from radioactive dust that could settle over an area many miles from an atomic blast. Fallout shelters could be located in the basements of many public buildings and were stocked with food, water and survival supplies. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, my parents stocked food and water in the basement of our house — with no further modifications — in the event of a nuclear attack. Other people who could manage to do so made more elaborate modifications to their houses by building real bomb shelters.
Space limits me to talking what we fear most — being startled from a sound sleep by something which goes bump in the night. Make sure that you get a layered defensive system set up before you hear it.
By definition, a panic room is a reinforced room installed in a private residence or business designed to offer a safe haven from home invasions, natural disasters or, later 9/11, potential terrorist attacks. Top-end panic rooms are often quite elaborate — and expensive.
Today’s panic rooms exist to help defend those who, because they are either unable or unwilling to possibly take a human life, can’t defend themselves against a criminal attack. The idea of making this space in your house to hide from intruders while they loot your house just does not seem right to me. A castle with no defenders is no castle. I believe it is ideal to take direct action.
A More Effective Home-Defense Plan
But there is a happy medium to be found between getting no defensible safe area in your house and building a reinforced room for many thousands of dollars. Here are some simple steps to help you create a reasonable space that enhances your defensive safety.