Thanks for the reminder - Home review in progress. (Check you smoke detectors and fire extinguishers while you are at it.)

Kind of interesting to see no one mention a rather obvious and more common security measure -- cameras. They are not as expensive as they used to be and if you have some networking savvy, you already have most of the equipment in your home (computer and wireless router). I can't tell you the number of times I have seen scofflaws ready to scale my fence take one look at the big Axis PTZ on the side of the house and change their minds. Remember the guy that repelled the home invaders in Phoenix a couple of years ago? He saw them coming via a camera pointing at his driveway.

Another measure that has really been incredibly effective are outdoor motion detectors. Dakota Alert makes some nice ones that can be hidden by a fake bird house. They are wireless and activate an audio tone in a receiver inside the house when someone breaks the perimeter. Different tones can be programmed to identify the location of the motion detector that is activated. These things give you an opportunity to react before the house is breached.

In short, hardening the castle is great, but I'd rather catch them before the cross the moat.

I just just checked the detectors and purchased a few new fire extinguishers. I had that same thought- why spend cash on security then have my house burn down for want of a $20 tool!

Cameras are probably going to happen for me down the road. I thought it prudent to beef up the physical infrastructure a bit first. They are cheaper than they once were. Something I can network and monitor from my PC would be ideal.

For deterrence, you can get fake cameras. I've seen them at Home Depot. Not sure how well they work to fool burglars. I mean, if I were a burglar, I'd try to familiarize myself with all the countermeasures home owners might use against me. But then again, maybe that's why I'm not a burglar.

I had a neighbor with fake cameras, corner house. Coming home from the gym in broad daylight, he walked in on two burglars. He tried to take them down. I'm not sure what he was thinking. I guess he was feeling confident from his workout. He got beat up pretty badly. He was lucky that was it. Anyway, the cameras didn't deter those burglars.

Wow! I guess that either 1) they didn't even see them, 2) knew they were fake or 3) simply didn't care. At least if the cameras were real & recording there'd be a record of the encounter. If nothing else that would help for insurance and aid in ID'ing the perps for the police.

I imagine you'd want to network the cameras and have storage offsite. Otherwise the bad guys could probably just steal the hard drives for the cameras!

Off-site storage is a little tricky and is very bandwidth intensive, but little NAS hard drives are getting cheaper all the time and are pretty easy to hide or store in a hardened container.

Its all about time. If an alarm is wailing, dogs are barking, and curious neighbors are nosing around, the perp is not going to be spending time looking for a hidden NAS.

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.
George Santayana


IMHO:Anything and everything that I have can be taken away from me at any moment. That is the baseline assumption of all psk and edc discussions: what is the minimum tool set that is necessary for survival and portable. Each possession that I add after that becomes a burden, requiring upkeep, repair, and protection. Every defensive barrier can be improved, but every barrier can be breached.

What is left? Love, my brothers and sisters, in the form of community. Knowledge, in the skills to make what you need. And hope, a belief that through love and knowledge, community and skills, that which has been taken can be replaced.

And insurance. I suggest comprehensive homeowners and a solid disability package: sure saved my sorry butt. YMMV.

I've read that you put a fake camera in a spot that well hidden but hidden a little to not make it an obvious decoy then have a well hidden camera elsewhere that catches the people trying to steal or tamper with the fake camera.

Look, plenty of crimes have been caught on tape by the surveillance camera, so I don't think even real cameras will necessarily stop a robber. To get anywhere, it seems like we need some sort of statistical study that can never be done. We need to survey criminals and find out how they respond to each form of deterrence. Without that, we are just left with anecdotal evidence. My neighbor was robbed in spite of fake cameras. My neigh has fake cameras, and he's never been robbed. My neighbor decided to confront the two men robbing his house, and he was badly beaten up. This guy I know confronted the two men invading his house, and beat the crap out of them. (This is a true story -- the criminals followed his wife home and broke in in the middle of the night.)

Are we making home security decisions based on fear and fearful or impractical thinking? Or are we using evidence and fact? So much of this seems to depend on what we know/expect from the "opposing team," the robbers/burglars.

I like what Nurse Mike has to say.