As many of you know, Jan LeBaron, proprietress of Healthy Harvest, died suddenly on September 18th.  Jan touched each of our lives in a unique way through her friendship and her work at Healthy Harvest.  In order to honor her and have an opportunity for closure due to her untimely death, a small group of us decided to organize a simple event for those who would like to gather and reminisce about Jan.  This may also be a great networking opportunity as Jan was always encouraging people to connect and network with new people.   Whether you were an acquaintance or a friend, please join us for an evening of visiting and reminiscing about Jan.  There will be a potluck gathering in the gymnasium at Crossroads Community Church, 7708 NE 78th Street, Vancouver, Washington on Sunday, October 16th at 5:00pm.  If your last name begins with A-M please bring a main dish to share.  If your last name begins with N-Z please bring a salad or dessert to share.  Beverages and plates/utensils/cups will be provided. Please forward this e-mail to any of your contacts who knew Jan, and ask them to do the same, so that we can spread the word. To obtain a head count, please RSVP the number of people attending via e-mail to: froggyfriend23@yahoo.com  

James:
To follow up on the recent Letter Re: Internet Resources on Preparedness and Self-Sufficiency, I'd like to recommend some more great resource web sites with free, no-copyright files that would be of interest to those who are studying preparedness and self-sufficiency:

• CD3WD Colossal collection of freebies.
• Journey to Forever Lots of articles and e-books.
• S.S.R.S.I. Tons free stuff.
• Soil and Health Library Some rare, free e-books.
• P.F.A.F. Nice database of useful plants. The database itself can be downloaded for a small donation.
• Practical Action Many great free articles with innovative solutions.
• Appropedia Endless articles. Fun to browse.
• F.A.S.T. Has some good resources, though not as many as the others

With My Regards, - C.D.V.

I was tickled to see that SurvivalBlog was named as a recipient of a Stylish Blogger award by Judy of the Consent of the Governed blog.

This is a great exercise in fun and mutual back-scratching. Of course, as with any of these blog awards, there are rules. The “rules” that come along with this award designation are (1) I must divulge seven things about myself, and then (2) pay the Stylish Blogger Award forward to fifteen other blogs.

So here are seven things about me…

1.) I'm so secretive about the location of the Rawles Ranch that many of my friends don't know where it is. Nor my literary agent. Nor my book editors. Nor the movie and television producers. They simply don't have a "need to know" unless they come to visit. (And if you are wondering, no, I don't make them wear blindfolds.)

2.) I have a mania for collecting and restoring 1930s to 1950s vintage All-American Five vacuum tube AM-Shortwave radios that can operate on both AC and DC.

3.) I no longer rent table space at gun shows. But I still prowl the aisles at shows as far away as the SAR show in southern Arizona.

4.) Our family has a morning Bible study six days a week. I have found that it is an edifying way to both educate my children Biblically, add to my own knowledge, solidify our relationships, and prepare ourselves for turbulent coming events.

5.) I watch the movies Big Trouble in Little China and Groundhog Day at least once a year.

6.) Many of the plot details and the dialogue in my novels come to me in dreams. When get to a point where I'm stuck in writing, I just suggest to myself that I dream it, that night.

7.) I cannot ice skate or roller skate. (Thankfully, that is rarely required as a survival skill.)

Here are my Stylish Blogger Award honorees (in no particular order):

• Mausers and Muffins
  
• Of Two Minds (Charles Hugh Smith)
  
• Steve Quayle (Some of the posts are "out there" and should be taken with a grain of salt, but it never fails to be entertaining)
• Granny Miller's Blog
• Code Name Insight
• Financial Armageddon
• Paratus Familia
• Global Economic Trend Analysis blog (Mish Shedlock)
• Little Blog In The Big Woods
• Target Rich Environment
• Rural Revolution (Patrice Lewis of WND fame)
• Commander Zero
• View From The Porch
• Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest
• Ruminations Blog
  

James Wesley:
The often-quoted prognosticator Gerald Celente (of The Trends Research Institute) is predicting that the Survivalist movement will go mainstream next year. In a recent issue of The Trends Journal, he wrote:

"Back in the Cold War days, survivalism meant building a bomb shelter and stocking it with enough food to outlast nuclear fallout.

In the late 1970’s, with inflation soaring, Iran raging, and gold and oil prices skyrocketing, survival meant cashing out of paper money and heading for the hills with enough ammunition and pork & beans to wait out the economic and political storms.

In 2000, the Y2K crowd – the most recent breed of survivalists – expecting computer clocks to crash, infrastructure to break down and the world to go dark, were armed and barricaded with enough food to feed an army and enough ammunition to hold one off.

In 2010, survivalism will go mainstream. Unemployed or fearing it, foreclosed or nearing it, pensions lost and savings gone … all sorts of folk who once believed in the system, having witnessed its battering, have lost their faith.

The realities of failing financial institutions, degrading infrastructure, manipulated marketplaces, soaring energy costs, widening wars, and terror consequences have created a new breed of survivalist. Motivated not by worst-case scenario fears but by do-or-die necessity, the new non-believers, unwilling to go under or live on the streets, will devise ingenious stratagems to beat the system, get off the grid (as much as possible), and stay under the radar."

Well, it seems every good social movement deserves its day, and we are finally getting ours. Let's just hope that we don't get tarred with the same brush as the assorted Neo-Nazi/Skinhead/Racist/KKK/Anti-Semite fringe element types, as well as the relative handful of "Gray Aliens Abducted My Baby" types and "Its the End of the Mayan Calendar" Mystics. Knowing the tendencies of the Mainstream Media, they probably will try do do precisely that, by interviewing a few way-out-there whackos, and then attempting to portray them as "typical" survivalists. Lord help us. - Hal F.

Dear James,
In response to the person who asked about military manuals, most (at least US Army) are available online for free, from the following sources:

GlobalSecurity.org

The site has lots of military and world sitrep information updated constantly.

The Federation of American Scientists has tons of military hardware systems information. The pictures are useful for recognizing and there is data on each system's performance, purpose and use.

Also, the US Army maintains the General Dennis J. Reimer Training and Doctrine Digital Library at Fort Eustis, Virginia. It used to be mostly open access, but I believe it's changed to a more restrictive system. It's worth a look. FM 5-103 Survivability is great reading, very informative. One of my favorites! - R. in NH <><

Hi JWR,
The link which an earlier reader posted to Steve's Pages has an excellent copy of FM 3-105 Survivability. This copy has high resolution graphics which are readable, unlike many versions online.

The PDF of the Joint Forward Operations Base Force Protection Handbook and has more modern (Operation Enduring Freedom) knowledge on force protection. Kind Regards, - Craig

Dear Jim,
SurvivalBlog readers can find fairly new versions of all the field manuals you mentioned - FM 7-8, FM 5-15, and especially, FM 5-103 - online at Scribd.com. It is free to register there and you can download these manuals in either text or PDF formats.

The March 2007 version of FM 7-8, Infantry Platoon and Squad, is also numbered as FM 3-21.8. I just downloaded it all 602 pages of it as a PDF. If you only have dial-up, you may want to look for a printed copy as it is a 54 MB file. Thanks for all you do. - John in Waynesville, North Carolina

I'd like to extend an invitation to SurvivalBlog readers to visit the Baen's Bar Forums, hosted by the sci-fi publisher Baen Books. My forum there has ongoing, detailed discussions of ARs, Mausers, handgun choices, and preparedness, mostly for natural disasters. There are also shameless plugging of my books (since it's my forum). Be forewarned that there is some off-color language--PG-13, not R, and the religion and politics of members varies greatly, though there are other fora we send them to for those arguments. Registration is free, private and not shared.

My subforum is "Mike's Madhouse," and there are a variety of other fora of interest on the site. - Michael Z. Williamson

Earlier this month, I posted Etienne's guest post Seeking/Starting a Survival Retreat in Virginia / Maryland / Pennsylvania / West Virginia. Today, I had lunch with Etienne de la Boetie and another prepper here in Loudoun County [, Virginia]. We had a long discussion about survival retreats vs neighborhood survival. Etienne is a big fan of the survival retreat concept. He previously had a retreat where he did not own the land but where he was able to store a travel trailer recreational vehicle in which he pre-positioned various preps and supplies. Unfortunately, his friend moved and sold the property. There are four major flaws in the survival retreat separate from your home concept:

1. There are significant liabilities and social problems with communal retreats where one does not own the property - you are vulnerable to the actions of the others, particularly the property owner.
   
2. Property left at unattended retreats is vulnerable to theft and vandalism. This is going to be a growing problem as the economic depression gets worse, especially if we have economic collapse.
   
3. Getting to the retreat would be problematic in the event that it is actually needed - particularly in martial law scenarios where the military and law enforcement block traffic at key intersections or in cases where there are fuel shortages.
   
4. Relatively undeveloped retreats with a trailer and undeveloped land may not be sufficiently developed for long-term survival and offer insufficient space for storage of the various preps and other items you need. Many of these items would likely be at your day-to-day residence and you cannot assume that you can transport everything at the last minute.

My view is that survival retreats only work if you live there full-time. Furthermore, although remote locations are further removed from the masses, they are also further removed from jobs, markets, customers, hospitals, and many other useful infrastructure and will be harder pressed to gather a sufficiently large group to cover all of the tasks needed in a true long-term survival scenario. Even the best special forces operator cannot defend his property 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Unfortunately, we are rapidly running out of time and it is probably already too late to relocate - especially if relocating means trying to sell your existing home in this real estate environment -- in my neighborhood we haven't had a sale in over eight months and anyone who bought in the last four years and did the traditional 20% down payment fixed 30 year mortgage now has negative equity.

I am a big proponent of the concept that your family, friends, neighbors, and church are your survival group. Yes, I understand that many are unprepared and clueless about both the threats and what they need to do to prepare for them. However, your home is your survival retreat. Strengthen it to the extent you can, but your odds improve exponentially if you can organize your neighborhood and help everyone survive against the threat(s) you are facing in your survival situation. You and those in the group who are better prepared or who have the right skills are the cadre needed to get organized and do what is needed. The rest of the neighborhood are your foot soldiers and do'ers. My philosophy is to lead and organize but that charity starts with those who are willing to help themselves and help the group in the survival situation. In a survival situation, your first challenges are to assess the hazards/priorities/immediate needs, organize the group, secure the neighborhood, and scrounge/barter/trade for needed resources.

Be a leader. There are many things you can do to help develop your neighborhood group of family, friends, neighbors, and fellow church members and increase the odds of the neighborhood surviving:

• Get to know them.
• Have potluck dinners.
• Help them wake up and prepare.
• Start a garden club to help start victory gardens.
• Start a community watch program for your neighborhood.
• Give them a copy of Chris Martenson's Crash Course on the economy DVD. I bought a case of 30 and gave them as 2008 Christmas gifts.
• Give copies of Holly Deyo's book Dare to Prepare as gifts. I bought a case of 8 and gave them as 2008 Christmas gifts to family and several neighbors who got it and were starting to prep.
• Store extra preps for charity and be prepared to give when it is needed for survival.
• Learn about their skills, backgrounds, and interests - on my street we have a former Navy Corpsman/LEO/M16 Instructor/master scrounger/contractor/award winning barbeque chef who "gets it" and is starting to prepare, two nurses, a master gardener, an agricultural engineer / head of the 800-home neighborhood HOA, a Mormon family that does food storage, and six members of the neighborhood garden club run by our master gardener.
• Buy tools that would be useful that could be shared like tillers.
• Buy extra seed such as a seven year supply of Survival Seeds and be prepared to provide seeds for neighbors
• Build a survival library of books and skills that you can use to train them when they need survival skills.
• Buy several extra surplus rifles such as the Russian Mosin-Nagant or SKS rifles and stock extra ammunition to equip your "community watch" patrols.
• Invite them to go to a shooting range with you.
• Be prepared to give honest evaluations of whether individuals should relocate once a survival situation begins to relative's homes or even public shelters if that is the best option for them.

You will be pleasantly surprised how many of your family, friends, neighbors, and fellow church members that are starting to wake up and realize the reality and danger of our current position. This number is increasing every week. Don't simply assume that they are all clueless sheep - many simply need some education and a leader to show them the way.

James:
When it comes to real-world advice that applies to real people, Kathy Harrison's article ranks right near the top of the list. There is a sizable portion of the survival community (including my family) that believes that the community retreat model outlined in this article is, for most scenarios, the single best strategy for survival. While there are certainly some scenarios in which a remote retreat would be advantageous, those (in my opinion) are relatively few and unlikely. The community retreat strategy is one that can be used by just about anyone regardless of family or occupational requirements. It takes full advantage of the very reason that people have always congregated together. It's followers are well positioned for recovery efforts that leave out the isolated retreater, and it incorporates one of your key points - live at your retreat.
I look forward to more articles of this type by Kathy Harrison and others. - Stephen in Florida

Dear Mr. Rawles,
The recent post “The Community Retreat, by Kathy Harrison” prompted me to write with some comments about municipal retreats. Her comments are about a community retreat that is privately operated. I recently had an opportunity to see how a municipal shelter/retreat functioned. It was illuminating.

Recently we had a pretty severe ice storm here in the American Northeast. Many folks feel that it was the worst since 1987, when a storm knocked out power for two weeks. I wrote about my experiences with that storm here.

One thing about this storm that was new to me was that it was the first time my municipality had activated its Emergency Preparedness Plan (EPP).

I live next to a municipality of 1,600 people. The Village covers a little under two square miles and has 386 households.

Like most municipalities these days that receive Federal grants, the Village must meet certain eligibility conditions. One of those conditions is that there must be a municipal Emergency Preparedness Plan. This plan describes the village chain of command, who is responsible for what (fire, police, DPW, etc.), how to contact those departments/individuals and what resources they have. It also lists resources available in adjoining municipalities and what resources (fuel, water, etc.) are available within the village.

Another aspect of the EPP is that the village has to have a facility to shelter residents during an emergency. That is what I wanted to address here.

This was the first time the village had activated their shelter plan and I thought it might be useful to describe how it was supposed to go and how it actually went.

When the village wrote the EPP, the plan was that the American Legion [Hall] would be used to shelter residents. The Legion had large open spaces, a large commercial kitchen, was located on high ground and had ample parking. There were large bathrooms with many toilets and sufficient storage for reserve food and cooking items. To this end a trailer mounted military generator was permanently acquired from the Federal government and the buildings wiring slightly modified so that all one had to do was plug the generator into the building, throw a transfer switch and you were good to go. Sleeping cots were stored in the building as well as assorted small items that would allow for sheltering a large number of people. The American Red Cross would set everything up.

Like most municipalities, the village worked very hard on the EPP, sent copies to all the right people/departments, filed it with the Feds and States and then put it on a shelf and never paid attention to it until this ice storm hit. They –never- updated it. The plan was 2.5 years old.

The Legion hall is privately owned. About 8-10 months ago a decision was made by its owners to put it up for sale. When the time came to implement the EPP, the building was no longer available and a replacement had to be immediately found.

The –only- other building available was the Village Hall. It had emergency power and water and as a village owned property was immediately available. The downside was that it was considerably smaller; only about 25% of the capacity of the Legion [Hall]. The Village Hall contained both the police and fire departments so it was being used as a command & control facility. The Red Cross switched gears from Legion to Village Hall. A space was found for about 20 cots but fire and police personnel had to go through this area to meet with their commands. The radio room was right next to the sleeping area and the sandwiches and coffee for the firefighters and cops and everyone else was also in the same room. I don’t see how anyone could have slept.

While there was no disorder or major crime, the police maintained a presence in the shelter that did seem a bit ominous. People were allowed to come and go freely, but it would not have been a stretch of the imagination to foresee a time when people, once entering the shelter would not be allowed to leave. Commander Zero [, the editor of the excellent Notes From the Bunker blog] commented on the New Orleans, Louisiana authorities doing this at the Super Dome: They said that the citizens had [effectively] signed an unwritten contract with the authorities by entering the Dome and that they were being prohibited from leaving ‘for their own safety’. Commander Zero called this the "Guantanodome."

The food supplied to those people seeking shelter in the Village Hall was limited to grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee and water. There were no diapers, no provisions for pets, no toys or distractions for younger children. The bathrooms were small, each containing only two toilets. There was a single television but it’s volume was kept low so as not to interfere with radio communications.

Finally, there was no guidance or protocol from higher authorities on how long to keep the shelter open. After five days or so, staffing the shelter (all the staff were volunteers) became more difficult and a decision was made to close it down. By this time only about 10 people remained and they were directed to shelters in another town. I don’t know what became of those people when those shelters closed. I like to think that power was restored to their homes by then and they went home.

It would be very easy to say that this shows that an individual really should not rely on government in an emergency. In a large way, that’s correct. While I advocate that the goal of being prepared is to prevent having to go to this type of shelter, I do not think one should ignore the need for a municipal shelter. While I will still prepare and strive to not need to leave my home, I will work with the Village hierarchy to update and improve the plan that they have. If I know the village residents have a place to go and resources to draw upon then there will be that many fewer people out scavenging for what I have put aside for me and mine. - RMV.

Hi Jim...
It never ceases to amaze me how the majority of US survivalist wannabes adamantly contend they must live in the major cities. Fully 80% of all survivalist wannabes want to hunker down in their urban or suburban homes according to our polls.

Yet, they subscribe to and post 'survivalist' articles to survival forums like my Surviving The Day After list at Yahoo Groups], Rourke's Survival Retreat and Secure Home [list at Yahoo Groups], or Brad's HunkerDown06 [list at Yahoo Groups]. Their topics are often centered around a socialist/communist theme of a secure, remote survival retreat paid for by pooling money and resources of would be members and living a communal existence after TSHTF.

None of that is a viable plan, especially with the coming economic collapse of the USA, worldwide depression, and World War III. But, they won't even consider getting out of the cities now! It's frustrating to survivalists like me.

BTW, I am in West Texas and we are developing a problem here in such a sparsely populated area. Pecos, Texas is about 5,000 people around mile marker 40 on Interstate Highway 20. They have a 3,000 bed county-run prison that houses 3,000 Federal prisoners. Last Saturday night the prisoners rioted and burned out the R2 unit. About 45 days ago they had rioted and burned out R1 unit. My brother is a prison guard there and called during this riot to warn me the inmates were expecting help from MS13 [gang] contact/associates from Mexico.

The night before, a Hispanic youth gang called Brown Pride Gang torched six homes in and around Pecos. Two of those homes had Hispanic families asleep inside. Those responsible have been apprehended and are facing attempted homicide by arson charges. These gang "youths" were organized and incited to commit this attack by MS13 members in Pecos.

Glenn Beck was saying on Fox News that the border violence is intensifying and yet neither the Democrats or the Republicans are willing to close and regulate the border with
Mexico. And to top that off, Beck was warning that Texans will soon get fed up and take matters into their own hands, arming themselves and protecting their families and property from invasion.

This all has an effect on my personal survival plans long term of course. The lack of population, the distances involved here in the desert of West Texas, and the proximity of our paid-for mountain retreat to our paid for farm in the valley puts us in a much better prepared position than 95% of the populace. It has taken years of preparation and planning, though. And, none of it came cheap.

I am still a voice in the wilderness crying: Get out of the cities, now!

Regards, Lawrence R.
List Owner, SurvivingTheDayAfter at Yahoo Groups

Hi James!
Happy New Year and a belated Merry Christmas! I've just returned from a 'holiday' working on my retreat and found that over the holiday break my e-mail server fell over.
I have added those messages I could recover to my Groups Listing page - but I know I have lost at least a couple of postings .

As a significant number of people access this page [from the link at the Finding Like-Minded People in Your Area page] at your site, [I'd like to] explain what has happened and ask anyone who doesn't see their listing to resend it to me. Thanks, - John @ Survivalistbooks.com

Dear Mr. Rawles:
First and foremost thank you for your novel "Patriots" which I am currently reading.

I live in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex. As of late there seems to be a rise in the number of "home invasion" type of crimes in this area. Every morning that I go to work I hear about a new incident in the metroplex. This has led me to put inside locks on my bedroom doors and purchase my first gun. I consider myself one of those "know enough to be dangerous" people, but am planning on taking a handgun safety course . I'd like to know your thought on preparedness for these "home invasion" crimes which are on the rise. Once again thank you for your novel which has opened my eyes to just how unprepared I am. Sincerely, - Geoffrey T.

JWR Replies: You've surely heard the phrase "caught off guard." In my opinion, almost the entire American citizenry has been systemically "off guard" since the end of the US Civil War. There are two fundamental weaknesses that make American homes vulnerable to home invasions: a condition white mindset, and appalling architectural weakness. I'll discuss each.

Condition White Mindset

First and foremost is an almost universal Condition White mindset. This refers to the Cooper situational awareness color code for "unaware and unprepared". The vast majority of the urban and suburban population spends 90% of their daytime hours in Condition White. They do a lot of idiotic things, like failing to keep their doors locked at all times, and failing to keep loaded guns handy. Most folks lock their doors only just before retiring each evening. So most daytime and early evening home invasion robbers simply stroll in to unlocked houses and catch the occupants flat-footed. By adopting condition yellow as your norm, and by taking the appropriate security measures, you will tremendously lessen you vulnerability to violent crime, including home invasions.

Architectural Weakness

Secondly, 150 years of relative peace, stability, low crime rates, and cheap energy have worked together to push American residential architecture toward very vulnerable designs. Modern American homes are essentially defensive disasters. They have huge expanses of glass, they lack barred windows or european-style security/storm shutters, they lack defensible space, and they often have no barriers for the approach of vehicles. Another ill-conceived innovation is the prevalence of floor plans that situate the master bedroom at the opposite end of the house from the children's bedrooms.

For the past 25 years, one of the hallmarks of "bad neighborhoods" in the US has been the prevalence of barred windows and beefed-up doors. These are neighborhoods where the prevailing crime rates have pushed the majority of the population into Condition Yellow as a full time baseline mindset. Given the upswing in crime rates that will undoubtedly accompany the coming depression, I wish that everyone in the ostensibly "good neighborhoods" had this same outlook. I don't find it all surprising that criminal gangs now specifically target wealthy suburbs for home invasions, for two reasons: A.) That is where the good stuff is, and B.) These residents are sheep for the slaughter (given the prevailing condition white mindset.)

One of the most chronic defensive lapses is American suburban architecture is exterior door design. Typically, entrance doors either have widows immediately adjacent, or set into the doors themselves. Even worse is the ubiquitous sliding glass door. Nothing more than a brick or a paving stone tossed through the glass and bingo, instant access for home invaders, with the fringe benefit of instant fright and surprise for the occupants just inside, who will likely be startled by the crashing noise and flying glass. SWAT and MOUT trainers call this a form of "dynamic entry". There are umpteen variations. You may recall the use of a piece of patio furniture in Robert DeNiro's dynamic entry of Van Zant's house in in the movie Heat. Another is the vigorous application of a 5- or 6-foot length of steel pipe or a more specialized tool, in (the proven "break and rake" technique preferred by the British SAS and SFOD-D (commonly called "Delta Team") to quickly clear any protruding shards of glass).

America in the Near Future = Welcome to South Africa

In South Africa, the crime rate has been so high for so long that it has changed the way that people live in a day-to-day basis. Every stranger is viewed with extreme suspicion. Automobile drivers regularly refuse to pull over if they are involved in a minor traffic collision, for fear that it is a pretext for a car jacking.

Threat Escalation and Proactive Countermeasures

Modern military planners often talk in terms of threat spirals. In essence, a given threat escalates and it inspires a defensive countermeasure. The ideal situation is "getting inside your opponents threat spiral"--meaning that your anticipate your opponent's next escalation, and proactively take countermeasures, insulating yourself from the future threat.With that in mind, here are some thoughts on potential home invasion threat escalation and countermeasures (perhaps some SurvivalBlog readers would care to add to this list):

1.) More frequent home invasions. The worse the economy gets, the more crime we can expect. Home invasions and kidnappings are likely "growth" areas.

2.) Use of dynamic entry tools by home invaders. We can expect them to use commercial or improvised door entry battering rams and Hallagan tools--like those use by police. This means that just standard solid core doors by themselves will be insufficient. Switching to steel doors and.or adding sturdy cross bars will become common practice.

3.) Possible use of vehicle-mounted battering rams.

4.) More frequent and elaborate police impersonation by home invasion gangs.

5.) Larger, better equipped, and better organized home invasion gangs. Larger gangs will be able to invade a home--conceivably even when there is a party in progress.

6.) The potential use of cell phone jammers.

7.) More elaborate ruses as pretexts to get homeowners to open their doors. For example, not only will the "point man" be dressed as UPS driver, but there will be a very convincing looking UPS truck parked at the curb.)

8.) More home invasions at any time of the day or night.

9.) More use of pepper spray and other irritants by home invaders.

10.) Use of large diversion such as explosives to draw law enforcement to "the other side of town."

11.) More elaborate intelligence gathering by home invasion gangs--researching exactly who has cash, fine art, gemstones, precious metals, or jewelry in their homes. (BTW, this is just another reason to practice good OPSEC.)

Given these possible threat spiral escalations, you might consider building a dedicated "safe room". I can think of no better way to get inside the bad guys' threat spiral. Such a room could serve multiple purposes, including "panic room", gun and valuables vault, storm shelter, and fallout shelter. (And hence, provide you family with solutions for multiple scenarios. The folks at Safecastle (and other specialty contractors) can build these both aboveground or underground, with special order inward-opening vault doors.

You mentioned putting a lock on your bedroom door. This is usually insufficient, since most interior doors are hollow core, they typically use lightweight hinges, and they have insubstantial strike plates. Most of these doors can either be knocked down or knocked though, in very short order. I recommend replacing your bedroom doors with heavy duty exterior type doors (preferably steel) with heavy duty hinges and one or more deadbolt locks. If your house has all the bedrooms isolated on one hallway, then I recommend adding a heavy duty door at the end of that hall, and keeping it locked at night. (Basically a "safe wing" for your house) Then, inside of that safe wing, you should have a far more secure dedicated safe room that your entire family can retreat to, before the outer layers of defense succumb to physical attack.

Redundant communications are important, so you can solicit outside help. Both the master bedroom and the safe room should have hard wire ("POTS") telephones that are serviced by underground lines with no visible junction boxes. Be sure to test using a cell phone, as a backup, from every room. Having a CB radio in your safe room also makes sense. OBTW, one of my consulting clients in New Mexico intentionally installed a vertical 3"-diameter air exhaust vent from the ceiling of his safe room/fallout shelter to his roof. Using a broomstick, he can pop the slip-fit flapper valve loose, and then use the pipe as a conduit for flares from his HK P2A1 flare 26.5mm flare pistol! He reported that he has tested shooting meteor flares "up the spout", and it worked fine. Very clever.

The Ultimate Solution: Designing for Security from the Ground Up

I most strongly recommend that the next time that you move, that you buy a brick or other masonry house and upgrade its security, or better yet, start with a bare lot, and custom build a stout house with and integral safe room, from scratch. As previously discussed in SurvivalBlog, two good starting points for house designs are Mexican walled courtyards and building with square bastions (also known as Cooper Corners). These projecting corners eliminate the "blind spots" that are common to typical square or rectangular houses.

For greater detail on this subject, I recommend Joel Skousen's book "The Secure Home." My novel "Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse" also has some detailed design description for ballistically armored window shutters and doors, as well details on constructing neo-medieval door bars.

If you are serious about custom building or retrofitting an existing house for increased security and/or adding a safe room, then I recommend the architectural consulting services of both Safecastle and Hardened Structures.