Most often, sound and light are your friends - audible alarm and turning on the lights in the living space. An intruder with any smarts or experience will turn tail immediately at the sound of an audible alarm, the clock just started ticking on his possible escape. And light will benefit you in many ways - you can see and describe the intruder or intruders, you can more easily fight someone in the light than in the dark if it comes to that, and (I realize this is the wrong thread) you can more easily acquire the target in the event the situation escalates and you need to fire upon them. No way would I put a round out into a darkened room, flashlight or no flashlight.

An audible alarm is fairly inexpensive mitigation - a siren mounted in your attic space, wired to your electricity (and I recommend a battery backup), with a wire running to a convenient panic button or switch that takes a few seconds to operate (I don't recommend an open button to on/off activate; a key panel that requires a code to activate (Command-7) and stop the alarm is good). Then take a few minutes to chat with your nearby neighbors, and tell them you have installed an audible alarm that should be activated in the event of an emergency only, to please call 911 should they be home and hear the alarm for more than 30 seconds. Also tell them that every month or so on a saturday afternoon you may test the alarm's operation and battery backup with a short, 10 second burst. You can of course install more home alarm with tamper switches on doors and windows, but this option is inexpensive, and requires activation to work - far fewer false alarms, in my case none since I installed this 8 years ago. It took my brother and me an afternoon to install this, albeit he has work experience in the home security business and still had the equipment to pull wires etc.

Light - the light switch to the living area is right now just outside our bedroom, but I flip that switch and the living area is illuminated. I'd prefer it was inside the bedroom such that I could turn on lights without opening the door, but my son also sleeps in the bedroom next door,and I will be opening the door to establish that he is safe too. I don't know, but I imagine any responding officers would rather have a lighted space to operate in than one that is dark. A wired phone and cell phones are always in our bedroom to make the oh so important 911 call.

So it goes like this: intruder alert, hit the audible alarm, siren begins to wail. Wife dials 911 and reports the intruder, I access my Mossberg (sorry again for polluting the non-lethal thread, this is part of my response scenario, you can substitute whatever non-lethal personal protection you want). I open the door, hit the lights, make sure the immediate area is clear of threats and check on my son. then I stand still, and wait for the police, making sure to put down the Mossberg as soon as I see their lights in the front yard.

And did I mention our big dog with a loud ferocious bark? He's a coward, but you wouldn't know that by his bark.