As for burglars, theft is the least of my worries. I have insurance.

You really can't "harden" your home to any significant degree. You can make it "better", but you'll never even get up to "good" without spending a ton of money. Bars on all your windows. All steel doors in reenforced frames. Remove skylights. Replace any siding with brick or rock - solid - all the way around. Etc. In other words, turn your house into somewhere you probably wouldn't want to live in the first place.

If someone is intent on a "home invasion", as was the topic of the first post in this thread, you better be ready to detect and repel that.

Reenforce your home to a reasonable degree. Not expecting to "harden" it, but to make it more time consuming to get in. Even slowing someone down for a few seconds will help. Get large dogs as a warning device. Put in an alarm system (if you can afford it). The alarm system would be to alert YOU, not necessarily the authorities. By the time the authorities respond to your alarm, the invasion is probably over and you are already dead.

The only things I care about in an attack on my home are the safety of my family. So if someone breaks in using force, they can expect to be met with overwhelming counter-force. I want my family to survive the encounter. We heavily stack the deck in our favor. If you find yourself in a "fair fight" when someone breaks into your home, your tactics stink.

You will never "keep them all out" if they want to get in. So your plan should be early alert, and tactics (including weapons) that will allow you to survive.

Burglaries when we're not at home? Insurance is the answer for that. Home invasion? $500 door locks will not save you from that. The best you can hope for is a few extra seconds for you to rally your defense. Spend your money with the understanding that you are buying yourself a few extra seconds to respond yourself, not hardening your home to any significant degree.

Depends on your AO. before I moved out of the city limits the police didn't respond to alarms and there were cars that were not right and people wondering the neighborhood all the time.

To add to to haertig's post, one size does not fit all. If you look at urban areas, solid Medeco locks, and even multiple locks are common. If you look at a small Midwestern town, the doors can easily be kicked down, and some people don't even lock their doors. Why is that? Those expensive locks actually serve a purpose. You can strengthen the residence against opportunistic and low-skill burglars/robbers, and in urban areas there are a lot of those "plying their trade." No, these defenses won't work against determined thieves with enough time, but there are a lot of thieves in urban areas who aren't as determined or prepared.

Insurance itself isn't quite enough for opportunistic thieves. Your premium is going to shoot up if you get robbed three times a month because you don't have a good lock on your door. (Some of you are perhaps imagining big bad guys with guns. How about a small fast 12-year-old who sneaks into your house, grabs the closest electronics, and runs like hell? I've seen this sort of stuff happen to people who relocated to the city from a more rural area. They didn't get what they were in for.)

But armed home invasion is a completely different ball game. Yeah, I'd agree that you'd better be ready to repel the invasion.

I tell the story about the well-fortified house (see earlier in the thread) to people who think having some weapons in the house is good enough. There are skilled burglars who can get through serious defenses and steal your stuff without waking you, without using weapons. By the way, some people do live in fortresses, and these can be decent, comfortable, and even luxurious places to live in. But you pay a price for security, especially if you like a lot of natural lighting, windows with a nice view, fresh air, and not having to stick with a security routine every night. But it's really not a big deal if you're used to it.

Should you invest in locks for the door, iron bars for the window, and bricks in place of sidings? Should you get a watch dog? That depends on where you live and the threats you face. I think we need some good ideas about doing risk assessment and figuring out how much to invest in security.

Right now my only guideline is to make my place less attractive than my neighbors, in the hope that the bad guys will be encouraged to move on to the next target.

Actually, the space issue is certainly one reason why the Japanese typically either have a sliding or outward swinging entrance door. Things can get pretty cramped there.

And I was just thinking that typhoons are probably another reason. Aren't outward facing exterior doors a feature in some homes in hurricane country? Izzy, help me on this one!

Outward swinging doors seems like a good idea for hurricane territory. Regarding burglars with tools, what prevents a burglar from rigging the door to their truck and driving forward? Yeah, the door may be hard to bash in, but it's also easier to pull.

Anyway, as others have stated above, in my home and probably every home of a regular person, the front door is not the weak link and never will be. So, this discussion about the front door is mainly for interesting conversation.

That may be true, but it seems to the most common point of entry. Depending on the source you cite it seems that in around 70% of break-ins and home invasions the perp comes thru the front or rear door. One or two good kicks will generally dislodge the strike plate on most homes (ie two x 1" screws basically not really going thru the jamb). It makes sense that thieves would use the door not only because it's usually easy to breach but also because if you have to break a window you'll make noise, leave visible damage and risk cutting yourself up climbing thru it.

To update: Yesterday I beefed up that problematic back/side door. I installed an 8" strike plate with 6 x 4" deck screws sunk right into the king studs. Then I placed a 28" heavy steel strap tie where the door trim should go. This ties the frame/jamb area together and anchors the plate to the studs so the bolt would have to go thru that & the strike plate. Not perfect yet (can there be perfect?) but at least 10X stronger than it was a week ago.

One thought is about structure once the outer perimeter is breached. Decent locks and a dog mean I am confident no one gets in quietly. But I won't bar my windows so smashing your way in is always possible.

Second phase involves barricading the stairs (furniture handy to do that, calling the authorities from upstairs (always a cellphone on the bedside) and keeping the family secure. No desire to go mano a mano with intruders - loot downstairs if you will - try to mount the stairs and get close to the family and I will stop you in your tracks.

There is a way out of the upstairs window in case of fire - and there is no reason for anybody to believe we have valuables in the house (through the cunning strategy of being too poor to have any valuables!)

A good plan is always the core to success.

Hahaha! Being poor is my defense, too!

Gun safes aren't really that safe, as you've seen. Real (as in UL rated) safes start out at about 1/2" thick or more. But a properly installed gun safe will still provide better protection than spending the few thousand trying to reinforce the exterior of a house. The key point is that it has to be bolted down, a safe that isn't attached can pried open much easier than one that is bolted down, or just carried away. There was a recent burglary in the news a few months ago where the homeowners claimed their safe was stolen with $10 million in cash and jewels, the theives just carried the small safe out the door. It is surprisingly easy for a normal sized person to move a 500+lb safe, even easier if you're not worried about damaging anything. 2 people who knew what they were doing could probably handle 1000+ easily without special equipment.



If a theif could rig something strong enough to withstand the pull, nothing will stop them from doing that. It won't matter which way your door swings, even if it's bolted on all 4 sides, you're screwed. No matter how strong you reinforce the door or jamb, the entire frame and surrounding studs are still only held into the top and bottom plates by at most few nails and screws.



I thought most tornado (and I assumed maybe hurricane) shelters have inward swinging doors to prevent the occupants from getting trapped by falling debris? I don't know anything about this. Many people think the hinges might be the weak point, but it's not easy to remove a locked door from the hinge side, and there are special security screws to prevent this.



I'm sure that 6 x 4" screws are plenty strong, but sometimes deck screws are more brittle and will snap rather than bend like a normal wood screw or even a nail.

You may be correct about a dedicated shelter, but for the ordinary front/exterior doors, I believe I have seen outward opening doors on homes in Florida and IIRC the reason given was for hurricanes.

In terms of hurricanes, I have heard that one of the primary weak points is the garage because most garage doors are not that sturdy. Once that door fails in hurricane force winds and there is an opening, it's much easier for the wind to start tearing apart the garage from the inside. I assume the same danger would apply to a home, so an outward opening door would normally be more resistant to that scenario than an inward opening door that might only have one point of contact (just that little latch on many doors) keeping it closed against strong winds from the outside. Obviously, windows are also a weak point, but that's why they get boarded up.