security architecture

Security Architecture

SECURITY ARCHITECTUREIt used to be a mans home was his castle, but now that the federal government has decided that they have the right to watch you, attack you, or even burn you up in your own home, it's more like a castle under siege.

So if your castle is under siege, why don't you defend it like one? Wimpy $10 deadbolts, hollow doors that can be kicked to pieces, fragile glass windows, pathetic alarm systems, and all the other usual home "security" advice people get from the cops are all weak. The real threat isn't the burglar or rapist, it's the jack booted ATF thug who'll smash his way in with a battering ram, clad in body armor and armed with a automatic rifle. Him and a half dozen or more of his fellow thugs will attack in the middle of the night,and if you have the audacity to defend yourself, they'll set your house on fire. Remember, BATF stands for "Burn All Toddlers First".

This is when Security Architecture comes in. Security Architecture is the art of designing your environment and surroundings to prevent intruders from entering, or to delay them if prevention is impossible, giving you time to escape.

Just how well you want to fortify your house depends on what you're defending against. If it's the local punks, then you really don't have to invest that much effort. But if it's a federal government assault team, you'd better have spent some serious time and money, or they'll be all over you in a heartbeat.

Exterior Grounds Lights Doors Windows Walls Hallways Rooms Beds

EXTERIOR GROUNDSThe first step in securing your home is to secure the area surrounding it. How extensively you can do this depends on where you live (city or country), the threat (cops or crooks), how much you have to spend, the size of the surrounding property, and whether you rent the house or own it.

Fences & Walls

The very first layer of defense is at the edge of your property. If an intruder can just run up to your door then there's no "no mans land" to provide time to react to an attack. Keeping the enemy at a distance is vital to your defense plan. To establish this distance you need fences or walls.

Fences

Fencing comes in many styles; Iron, Cyclone, Barbed, Wood, Electrified, and so on. We're going to concentrate on the cyclone and wood variety since the others are either very expensive or require specialized installation.

Wood fencing has the advantage of blocking the view from the street, but this is a double edged sword since it also blocks your view of the street. It also suffers from the fact that it IS wood, and thus easily penetrated.

A valuable addition to your perimeter security would be to place reflective stripes of paint like that used for road signs and lane markers. It's pretty expensive at moe than $50 a gallon, but you'll only be painting a 2" strip at 6", 1', 1.5', 3', and 5' above the ground. This will show if a person is laying down, crawling, kneelng, crouching, or standing. You may also wish to paint a strip along the top edge of the fence or wall to show if someone is climbing over.

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With the reflective stripes across the fence, even though you may not be able to directly see what's out there, you WILL be able to see the shape of it as shown.

Can you guess what this shape belongs to? (HINT: it wears a uniform and goes well with eggs at breakfast time.)

When engaging a target based only on it's outline, you need to choose where to aim. The red zone is the traditional center mass that's suitable for most intruders and offers the best chance of a disabling hit.

But if the target is wearing body armor than the red zone will be uneffective. You'll have to aim for either the green head shot (very difficult unless using a rifle or the target is unawares) or the blue leg shot to immobilize the enemy and allow for follow up shots to the head.

Reflective stripes are very useful with the IR sensitive CCD cameras that monitor the exterior because the cameras aren't very sensitive, so the light form the illuminator wouldn't normal be effective past 60' (assuming a high powered LED illuminator). But the stripes reflect back the light from the illuminator from at least 3x the normal effective range.

Berms, Bollards, and Stanchions

These are usually used for flood control, traffic barriers, or landscaping features. But they also have the feature of being able to stop bullets and vehicles, more specifically police or federal APCs. They won't stop tanks or bulldozers, but if they bring those with them then you're fucked anyways.

Berms

A berm is, to put it simply, a mound of dirt. Not a loose pile of dirt, of course, but rather a nicely groomed and grass covered mound of dirt that (coincidentally) prevents bullets from going into your house or piggy APCs from ramming it.

There's two types of berm. There's the full berm which is a symetrical dirt mound, and there's the retaining wall berm which is a wood or concrete wall with a dirt backing.

The retaining wall berm can be used instead of a fence for marking your property line. The berm is at least 3' high with the flat side facing away from your home. The is so that a vehicle can't climb over the berm and drop down on the other side. The top edge of the wall is covered with broken chunks of concrete or other sharp cornered debris. This is a clear signal that this is a wall, not a place for people to rest their asses on. Don't use broken glass or spikes, this just invites lawsuits.

True, the berm does offer the police protection from your bullets, but it also offers you

protection from your own shrapnel.

A berm is also excellent protection against flood damage. For this purpose a berm must be totally enclosing around the house. The berm must be at least a foot higher than the highest expected flood level. This could vary from just a few feet or ten feet, depending on where



you live. A snail berm would be best, in my opinion, because of the natural strength of the circular shape.

SNAIL BERM

Normal security mode Flood protection mode

The driveway would be sealed off by a flood gate. This would be very expensive, but if you're able to afford building a giant berm around your house, money's obviously not a problem. Us poorer folks could improvise with sandbags to block it off. And you'll also need pumps to get rid of the rain that falls within the berm.

One possibility for getting free dirt for making a giant berm would be to arrange with local construction companies to dump their construction debris (concrete and earth) on your property. They have to pay landfills for taking it, so someone who'll take it for free are always welcomed. Depending on how much construction is going on in your area, you could expect a snail berm within 5 years or less. All you'll pay for is the use of a bulldozer or backhoe for piling up the dirt.

Bollards

Bollards are those concrete filled pipes set into the ground in front of stores, or the big concrete planters in front of Federal buildings. In both cases, the idea is to prevent vehicles from being able to smash into the buildings. Our purpose is the same, only it's the to protect a criminal from the police.

Bollards come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Steel I beams or 1' thick concrete posts set into concrete filled holes in the ground every 4 feet or so will stop a large truck. A concrete planter 3 feet high, 5 feet squared, and weighing several tons will easily stop an APC, maybe even a tank.

The planters could be bought, but that's rather expensive. It's much cheaper to make them from concrete blocks filled with concrete and rebar. Once you've made the planter, just fill it up with dirt and plant a tree in it. Such a planter, made to the above dimensions (3x5x5) would weigh about 4 tons and cost less than $200 each to make.

If you live at an intersection, corner, or bend in the road, you've got a perfect excuse. "I'm protecting my home from drivers who miss the turn.". And it's a perfectly legitimate reason too. And there's no law against planters either. Sure they're huge, but that's just because you like big trees.

Another form of bollard is made from used construction equipment tires. These are at least 6' in diameter. They're buried half way into the ground, the hole being filled with concrete.

Stanchions

A stanchion is a removable traffic barrier like those used at parking lots and border crossings.

The Branch Davidians at Waco could have really used this form of access control. As it was, the ATF was able to drive 2 horse trailers filled with about 50 agents right up to their doorsteps. If they had to get out and approach by foot from the road a quarter mile away, they may have been less likely to try their assault. At the very least it would have made their intentions obvious from the start.



For our purposes we'll be using them for restricting access to driveways and to prevent any thiefs or repo men from being able to steal your car from the driveway.

This stanchion is made from a length of I beam that's supported by a 2"+ diameter steel rod, to which it is welded, which is itself supported between two concrete pillars. The pivot rod is supported on notched blocks of UHMWPE (UltraHigh Molecular Weight PolyEthylene) which act as dry bearings.

The beam rests in a notch in a concrete pillar on the other side of the road. This prevents ramming through. A concrete counterweight allows for easy lifting.

The pillars are at least 2' square, with the pillars extending 3' into the ground. They're made of standard concrete with rebar reinforcment. It will require about one cubic yard of concrete per pillar, each pillar weighing about 2 tons.

The stanchion can be adjusted to either raise itself if not locked closed (Normally Open), or to lower itself if not held open (Normally Closed), by varying the amount of concrete in the counterweight. N.O. is the more convenient way to arrange it so you only have to pull it down when desired to secure the driveway. But N.C. is more secure because, even if not locked, it requires an attacker to have someone exposed to your fire to lift it up for an attacking vehicle to approach.

Here we see a suburban house that's protected by a number of exterior security features.

The lots perimeter is protected by a 3' concrete retaining wall with berm backing.

The side facing the street is protected by concrete planters with trees in

them for a decorative touch. Thanks Martha Stewart!

The driveway is protected by an I-beam stanchion.

The house itself is protected by berms.

HOME EXTERIOR

Lights

Exterior lights are vulnerable to being shot out, rendering a prime defense impotent. This must be prevented if you don't wish to be sitting in the dark guessing where the enemy is at. Not only do you need to protect the light, but you'll also want to know when someone has attempted to shoot it out since more SWAT forces are equipped with silenced weapons for this very purpose.

There's two ways of protecting lights from being taking out. One is to shield them behind bullet resistant glass or plastic. The other is to have them recessed into the buildings architecture and use reflective surfaces or mirrors to deny direct fire.

While bullet resistant glass is the typical approach, I'd suggest using the reflective surfaces instead. Not only is it much cheaper, but you'll also retain more light capacity in case of an attack because even if a bullet resistant window stops a bullet from breaking the light, the window itself will be broken and crazed. This will significantly reduce available light.

The reflective surface is practically immune to this effect though. Unless they unload enough ammo into the reflective area to completely destroy it, there will still be plenty of light. This presents an unexpected complication to those who attempt to take out the light.



An example of reflective lighting that most people are familiar with is recessed lighting. The lightbulb isn't visible, but the light reflecting off the wall or ceiling is. This is the principle you'll use, only in a more efficient manner.

First, the light must be situated where there's no direct line of sight to allow for a shot at it. Then the fixture must be protected from being shot out through the building material it's in. This requires use of steel or concrete, but it's cheap.

The reflective surface would ideally be mirrored mylar film because it's cheap, and an excellent reflector. If anyone tries to shoot out the mirror, they'll be disappointed when the bullet makes a tiny hole in it instead of shattering it to pieces. Mirrored metal plates also make good reflectors but suffer from corrosion problems unless constantly maintained.

Now you'll be wanting to know when some SWAT gooner has tried to take out a light. This is pretty simple to do. Place a piece of tempered glass with a conductive tape grid on it behind the reflector. When shot, the glass will shatter into little pieces, breaking the grid and sounding the alarm.

DOORS

Doors need to be solid wood, not the usual flimsy hollow core that most houses use nowadays. At least an inch and a half thick. In addition, you'll want to drill 3/8" holes the whole width of the door (aligned in the center of the door) in which are inserted 5/16" steel rods.

The rods are within an inch of each side of the door. The holes are sealed with dowel plugs and glued into place. The rods are spaced between 8 inches and 1 foot apart starting from the floor the entire height of the door.

The rods will prevent penetration from ax or chainsaw, add strength to prevent the door splitting if rammed, and in general just make things harder for anyone trying to break in.

The frame the door is mounted in needs to be metal or solid hard wood at least 2" thick to resist splitting. The frame itself is secured to the wall studs by very long and thick screws, not nails. Be sure to drill pilot holes for the screws to prevent splitting the wood and weakening it.

The door is hung on the frame using either a continuous hinge that runs the whole length of the door (ideal), or by using regular hinges, only using as many as needed to cover the whole length of the door. You need to use the whole door hinge concept to prevent the intruders from circumventing your lock security by taking out the hinges with a shotgun blast or ram.



The peephole has a 1/2" steel plate recessed into a space that has been routered into it, covering from the top of your head to your waist and both sides of your body. This protects against getting shot through the door.

There's also a peephole near the floor, also protected by a plate, for when you're in REAL trouble.

The door is secured against ramming by a crossbrace of steel bars or beams, that fit into steel brackets secured to the frame. They pivot up on pivot pins mounted close to the hinge side when the handle is lifted up. When not needed, a pin holds them up. But, of course, you'll always have the door secured when you're not entering or leaving, right?

Not shown is the aluminum flashing that covers the entire door to prevent radar imaging or detection, an emerging police threat detailed below in the "walls" section. If you have a metal door, than the flashing isn't needed.

A neat trick that will deal with intruders outside your door is to use a fire extinguisher on them. Take a piece of vinyl tubing big enough to fit over the nozzle of the extinguisher, and arrange it so that you can be some place safe in the room, and when you activate the extinguisher, the intruders will be blasted point blank with the shit. You don't want it to fill up the hallway, neat as that may be, simply because if they see it coming, they'll just close their eyes, hold their breath, and run through it. You want them to get a face (and lung) full that'll put them out of the game for awhile.

Peep Holes

Peep hole viewers are a common fixture in almsot every home and apartment door. And unfortunately they are also a vulnerability.

This device, called a reverse peephole viewer (~$100), allows a person to see the interior of a room through the peephole.

Here we see the reverse viewer in action. Just imagine what this piggie might see if he was at the door at the wrong time.

This also has obvious criminal applications. For instance, place it to the peephole, knock on the door, and if you see your victim approach, blast them right through the door. Much better than just shooting when you see the light spot disappear.

It's this very threat that you'll armor your door to protect against.

To prevent reverse peeping you need a cover. Simplest way to make one is to take a small coin and attach a piece of tape to it and tape it above the peephole so the coin covers it. The cover is always down.



Only when it's necessary to look outside is the cover lifted. This is done quietly to prevent anyone knowing by sound that someone is at the door. Be sure to get right up to the peephole before lifting the cover so no one can see any light shining through when you lift the cover. And don't let the cover drop down either, it will clink when the coin hits the peeper.

This 4 way peephole viewer gives you the ability to see not only who's in front of the door, but also who's below, above and side to side. Useful thing to be able to do since it's been known to happen that the piggies use someone you recognize to get you to open the door so they can come rushing in.

But if they know you could see them standing there they won't even try it. Ounce of prevention and all that.

This new style peephole viewer uses a prism to project the view onto a frosted screen. This style viewer is immune to the reverse viewer scope.

However, when you realize this style viewer requires a 2" hole in your door, and is made of plastic, it's not that good an idea anymore. A pick-ax through the viewer opens up a hole in your door big enough to slide a small pipe bomb, gun barrel, or any number of other nasties through.

WINDOWS

Windows

Windows are a big weak spot in a homes defense, but who would want to live in a windowless home devoid of all light? Not me. So the problem becomes one of how to have the advantages of windows without the vulnerabilities.

The very first step is the elimination of glass from all windows. Glass is incredibly fragile compared to the polycarbonate or plexiglass that you'll be replacing it with. Plexiglass is about 15x and polycarbonate 50x stronger than glass, By using plastics, you've foiled a major SWAT entry tactic called "break and rake" which is where they 'break' the glass and 'rake' it out of the frame so they can enter without getting cut up.

What would happen when they try to break your window is that their tool will bounce off the window. And it's been known for them to just throw a flash-bang through a window without first breaking it. Just imagine the surprise they'd get when it bounced off the window right

back into their laps.

But now that the window panes are unbreakable, you'll need to mount them securely into the frame so they won't pop out of it. Standard window mounting techniques of glaziers points and caulking just won't cut it. You'll need to either find frames intended for shatterproof



windows, or make your own.

Now you need to let light in without people being able to see what's going on inside. Tweakers usually foil over their windows which keeps it dark as night inside, but this looks weird to the neighbors and draws attention. Much better looking (and less suspicious) is frosted glass. Not the kind you see in showers, but rather the kind you see around christmas.

Spray snow is perfect for frosting windows. It's cheap, readily available around christmas, and lasts a long time if applied indoors. The advantage to spray snow is that it's not permanent so you can always remove it if needed, and you can control how 'frosty' you want the window. Just a little allows an almost unobstructed view outside, while providing enough haze to prevent outsiders from seeing in during the day. A thick coat prevents anything other than diffused light from coming in or going out. Good for those places that only need light and not a view, like the kitchen.

The next thing that people need to realize is that "security bars" over the doors and windows don't stop the cops one little bit. They simply attach hooks connected to strong chains to them and have the SWAT van yank them right out of the wall.

The hooks are simply steel rods that are bent and

sharpened with strong cables attached.

The hooks are attached to the 'security' door and window bars.

The SWAT van than revs up... and pulls the bars off quite easily.

All first floor windows need to be protected extra well since that's the most likely entry point. To start with, get a box of nails about 4 inches long and fairly thick. Take a plastic garbage bag, stick it in a milk crate, and fill the bag with a mix of damp dirt, horse shit if you can get it (because horse shit is the natural source of gas gangrene. :)) and the box of nails. Let this sit a month, watering occasionally. Afterwards, dump out the dirt and rake out the now very rusty (and lethally infected) nails. Be VERY sure to wear thick leather gloves while handling these nails be prevent being infected yourself.

You'll take the nails, placing them all around the frame, in a complete circle around your windows. Hammer them in, leaving an inch or so exposed, cutting off the heads with a bolt cutter. This leaves a nice sharp point on them for an intruder to impale his hand on the infected nails. You need to place these in a complete circle around the frame to prevent an intruder from having ANYWHERE to hold onto for support. Space them in staggered rows, apart about 1.5" in any direction so there's no gaps even a sideways hand could rest on.

The area outside of widows can be modified to help protect them by using very thorny plants like cactus, roses, and others to prevent an intruder from even getting near the window. You'd want to these plants to be very densly grown so they can't be pulled out easily. To make it even more effective, grow them on barbed wire trellises. Make sure the plant has very large thorns, more than an inch long, so it can penetrate even thick clothes. They also have to be year-round plants, so your protection doesn't die off in the winter.

WALLS



This cross-sectional view shows how the berm is abutting against the exterior wall. The top edge of the berm needs to be at least one foot thick and at least waist high to someone standing inside the house. One foot of compacted earth will stop an .308 (7.62mm, M-14) bullet, the most common large caliber for police weapons. The dirt thickness by the floor is sufficent to stop a .50 bullet, the largest bullet available to either civilians or police.

The slope angle needs to be less than 40 (preferably less) to prevent the berm from "slumping" when it rains. Wouldn't do to have your protection sliding away, would it?

Penetration Resistant Walls

It's been known that a SWAT team will use an explosive entry technique to blast a hole in a wall big enough for them to pass through if they don't want to risk a door entry. They may also use a chainsaw or ax to make a hole. While this is very rare, it will probably be the next thing they try after failing to get in through the doorways that you've modified into kill zones.

The wall is covered from the floor to at least 6' high with the fencing and rebar. The fencing is placed over the wall, and eye bolts placed, at most, every foot vertically, and 3 feet horizontally, in the wall studs.

Rebar (thick as possible) is passed through the eyebolts. Since you probably won't be able to pass a whole length of rebar through, you'll need to cut it into sections short enough to pass through. The rebar is secured in place by welding thick and heavy washers to the ends to prevent removal.



Once everything is in place, you secure 2" thick styrofoam board over the reinforcement, cutting slots in the board for the rebar and eyebolts to fit into so the board can lay flat. Then everything is painted over to look like a normal wall again.

This reinforcement will resist ax, chainsaw, and explosive charges. This is not to say it wouldn't be damaged, but it would prevent a person from entering through the wall. SWAT could use an APC (like L.A.P.D) to punch a hole through, but since the whole wall is tied together into an integral unit, it might fail just where the ram hit it, while remaining otherwise intact , instead of the whole wall collapsing as usually happens. Even with a hole punched in it, the jagged fence wire and rebar should be able to prevent entry.

One very important fact to remember is that this reinforcement DOES NOT stop bullets. It just prevents piggies from coming through the walls.

ROOF

Roofs are an often overlooked vulnerability in peoples security plans. As was seen in the Waco attack, the piggies will use ladders to get to the roof to attack you from multiple angles. If you have a steeply angled roof like an A-frame than this isn't a problem, but if you can stand on it, then so can a pig.

The type of roof you have and the likely threat determines the type of protection needed. If you're expecting the local SWAT team you'll need less protection than from a fast-roping Ranger squad.

Flat roofs are the most vulnerable and require the most protection. Since most flat roofs have a raised edge, you can cover it with coils of razor tape, crisscrossing strands of barbed wire, piles of broken bottles, boards of nails, etc, and no one from the street will notice anything.

If the roof is large enough for a helicopter to land on, like a warehouse, then you'll need to string steel cables across the roof from tall poles to ensnare the rotors and prevent this from happening.

The charge is made from a rounded "half-moon" hubcap covered with 3/8" steel bearings lightly glued to the outside.

The inside is filled with a powerful explosive and rear center primed.

The charge is set on top of a large box of pumice that's at least 3' above the roof to absorb the blast and minimize damage to the roof.

Radar Imaging Threat

The government, in their ever increasing search for power, have spent huge amounts of money on developing new surveillance equipment. One of these new developments is the wall penetrating radar scanner.



The scanner is capable of penetrating brick, concrete or cinder block, and reinforced concrete walls up to 2' thick. It CAN'T penetrate metal or metal coated objects such as aluminum siding, mirrors, foil, or metal doors.

With a 30' range, and the ability to detect motion as small as arms moving or heads turning, you'd have to stand as still as a display mannequin to avoid detection. But the next generation (already being developed) will be able to detect breathing and heart beats, so you're basically fucked. It's not like looking through a window, but it doesn't have to be. They only need to be able to know that there IS someone in the room, how many there are, and where they are in the room.

So, since you can't hide from them by standing still, that leaves you the option of countermeasures. That's right, we're going low-tech, anti-tech on their asses! The military has had to deal with the RADAR threat for decades and have developed many techniques for dealing with it. So we're going to do the same.

The easiest way to defeat them is to get aluminum siding for your house. This is expensive, though a worthy home improvement regardless. This protects the exterior only. For the interior, you need to either use aluminum foil, or metal flashing. This is stuck to the walls, either glued, nailed, or stapled, and then painted or papered over. If you do this to the walls that face the exterior, then you don't need the siding.

For more details on the detector threat, and countermeasures, go here.

Roofs

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HALLWAYS

Kill Zone Hallway

SWAT teams know that doorways are choke points where they are at great risk which is why they train so much on getting through them as fast as possible. Hallways are also choke points that they try to avoid as much as possible.

As you'll see in this SWAT entries video, the SWAT team rushes in as fast as possible and spreads out once inside the room. This mimimizes their time in the 'killzone' of the door and hallways, and makes it more difficult to hit them since they're all spread out, not bunched together.

Naturally, a defender wishes to make SWAT life much harder (and shorter) by forcing them into a literal kill zone where there's no escape, and no way of fighting back. That's why all entrance ways are modified as illustrated below.

The advantage the defender enjoys over the attacker is clearly illustrated here. Whereas the defender literally can't miss, the attackers have only a very tiny target in trying to hit a gun stuck around a corner.


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For even greater security, a gate made of chain link fence is placed within arms reach of the defenders end so he can open it without exposing his whole body or head. It's locked so attackers can't throw grenades into the room, and to prevent robots or dogs from being sent in.

Pocket dragons would be absolutely devestating in the confines of the hallway. Remotely operated version using solenoids with electronic igniters would offer push button pig roasting.

It would be quite easy to modify a doorway in this manner by using concrete cinder blocks, rebar, and concrete. The blocks are laid out in the appropriate pattern, rebar inserted, and the hollow cores filled with concrete mix. This is done till the bricks are up to the ceiling. If there's any gap between bricks and ceiling, it's filled with concrete mix so there is NO gap.

I estimate it would cost about $300 to build a choke point like this. Cost would be much less if you "borrowed" material from a construction site. Salvaged material is also much cheaper.

When using the hallways, you should have a video camera and remote door release installed so you can see who's at the door and unlock it to let them in without risking getting caught in your own hallway.

ROOMSUnder the RTPB "Plan for Failure", you must assume that they (whoever they may be) will eventually get into the house. How do you deal with them then?

However you deal with them you'll have to be quick about it because they'll probably be coming in numbers, from multiple directions, and with guns blazing. This means you're not going to have time for any fancy plan or to get to any special part of the house. You're going to have to deal with them NOW!

There's various ways to throw a wrench in any assualt plan, but you're going to have to be able to implement it in a moments notice. How can you do this, regardless of where you are inside, day or night, without using remote controls that you may misplace or malfunction?

The "Doomsday" Switch

This is what the "Doomsday" switch is for. For when the day comes that they are in your home, you have only to pull the cord and all hell will be unleashed.

The idea for this came from riding a bus on day. One cord, running the whole length of a bus, would signal the requested stop.For our purposes, there's a switch attached to one end of a vinyl coated steel cable, the other end being anchored to the wall. The cable runs through eye bolts set into the wall every 5 feet or so. Ideally you'd only use one cord per wall, but you could have the cord do a bend using



either an eyebolt or pulley. But this isn't advised.

The cord, when pulled, would activate any suitable non-lethal security measures you may have set up. It's VERY important that they be non-lethal because there's always a risk of accidental activation if there's anyone besides you in the house.

All it would take would be one disobedient child or curious visitor to pull the cord to kill all of you if you had it set to destroy the house. After all, it's one thing for the room to fill up with harmless smoke, but a little harder to explain flamethrowing jets popping out from the

ceiling.

The pull cord is set high enough so that an adult would have to reach up as far as they could to be able to pull the cord. This prevents accidental activation (which could be unpleasant) and keeps it out of reach of small children.

One way is to blind them. Not literally, as in ripping out their eyes (as much fun as that would be), but rather blinding them to their surroundings.

One such way is fill the interior with incredibly dense smoke that makes it impossible to even see a hand in front of your face. This type of security device is often referred to as a Smoke Cloak.

This device pumps a glycol based fluid through a hot metal block, producing a dense, but harmless, smoke that fills up a room, totally obscuring all vision, making any rapid or coordinated assualt impossible.

The device has just been activated... and 20 seconds later nothing can be seen.

While this sort of device would be highly desirable, it's also very expensive. The cheapest I've seen such devices selling for is $800, and going up past $3,000 for a large installation. If you have the money, get one.

For the rest of us though, we'll just have to improvise. Since this isn't something that you'll be using except in extreme emergencies, you can afford to invest in quality smoke generators.

For our purposes a pyrotechnic smoke generator (smoke bomb) will be more than adequate. There's many different places to buy these things, but they all come from the same source, #######. You can buy them in several different sizes that burn up to 3 minutes long. But for our purposes we're interested in speed of production, not length of time or total volume.

This size produces 8,000 cubic feet of smoke in 30 seconds. That's enough to fill an average 1 level house.

The problem then becomes one of dispersing the smoke through the house as rapidly as possible. This is easy enough to do if you have central A/C in your house. The smoke generator is placed inside the air intake vent of the A/C, past the filter, and the A/C control wired so


http://www.evhill.com/products/White_Smoke.htm


that when you pull the doomsday cord, the A/C turns on in fan mode as the smoke is ignited. Within a few seconds, smoke will start billowing out of every vent in the house.

An even quicker way to disperse smoke is to have each room wired with it's own smoke generator inside of the air vents. This way, when the A/C is turned on, each room immediately begins with smoke, rather than having to travel through the air ducts, which takes precious seconds.

Ideally you would have the air vents to your bedroom and kids room closed to avoid getting smoked out there too. You'll also need respirators, half face with particle filters, because the smoke is toxic in the concentrations achieved indoors. It doesn't, however, contaminate anything so once you switch the A/C to vent to bring in fresh air, the house will quickly be flushed free of smoke with no smokey oder or damage to anything.

BEDS

Bunker Bed

It's been known since the days of antiquity that the best time to attack is just before dawn since this is when a person is deepest in the sleep cycle, thus making them easy targets

Police SWAT teams make use of this fact to smash down your door and rush you while you're asleep. Often times they'll catch a person still half-asleep in their beds wondering whats' going on.

Since it takes the average person about 30 seconds to fully wake up, before which time you're still in a less than fully capable state, it makes sense that a person should be able to retreat to a place of safety with no thought required, even if the intruder is already in the bedroom.

There's been a trendy idea floating around of building a "Safe Room" where you can retreat to, but if your bedroom is your "Safe Room" and the intruder is inside it, now what? You'd be fucked.

But with the bunker bed, you'd merely roll over the side furthest from the door, down into the BB, and the door automatically locks behind you. You're now safely ensconced inside a 1/2" thick steel box that will stop a 30.06 AP rifle bullet. If an attacker brings a .50 caliber rifle with them then you're S.O.L.

This picture demonstrates how a person gets into the bunker bed.

You simply roll over the side, drop to the floor (cushioned of course), and roll down into the BB.

The BB is a regular bed when not in use, so there's a mattress and covers on it, which also camouflages the fact that it's not a normal bed. There are false panels (perhaps with drawer handles?) attached to the sides of the BB on spring loaded hinges that, when released from inside, fly up, revealing the gunports. This also lifts any sheets out of the way.

For aiming, a small video camera hidden in a corner of the room is attached to a pocket LCD camera inside the BB. This allows the people inside the BB to aim by putting either a laser spot (from attached laser sights) on the intruders, or by walking their fire into the intruder, noting where plaster and such fly off from the misses.

Ideally you own your home and can make any modifications needed, but if you're renting, living in an apartment, or sleep on the second floor, you can't bust through the floor to install a full BB. In this case, you'll have to just set the BB on top of the bare floor (removing the carpet where needed) and attach it to the floor. Not that an intruder is likely to be able to lift it up, but you can never be too cautious. If



you're BB isn't directly on the ground (2nd story) then you'll also need to install a base plate to prevent being shot from below.

In these situations you'll be prone on the floor, rather than squatting down, so you're mobility will be rather limited. But you're still encased in steel, so you're well protected, while the intruders do not have this advantage.

All this steel weighs a lot, almost 1,600 lbs for a queen sized BB, so if you're on the second floor you need to make sure the floor is strong enough to support this much weight. On concrete slab foundations, weight isn't an issue.


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