I just bought a fixer upper house for low 5 figures in toothless, eastern KY. There’s insane drug related property crime in the area and it has me a little paranoid. What are some things I can do to my house and garage to prevent the fent zombies from stealing my shit?
350 million fortresses isn't exactly what I'd call the "Land of the Free".
it's better than one big fortress built by the government against its people
Put a "now hiring" sign on your lawn.
Get a dog.
Motion activated lights.
>zombie threads are back
not sure about garage, but exterior doors are easy, just get one of those extended strike plates and replace the hinge screws with 3" deck screws.
For windows there's security film, that will stop the whole window from shattering if someone throws a rock through it, it'll just leave a hole the size of the rock.
For the garage, I'm pretty sure they make locks that are like the ones for sliding doors or something.
Also it might be a good idea to get an electronic deadbolt so that it can be engaged while you leave and no one's home.
Why would ya make such a purchase anon? I'd say just cameras but crimes aren't prosecuted anymore. My honest answer is to stay strapped, shitty bars in the windows, and make yourself look like one of them when you go out. Lurch around and everything.
Inner window bars and heavy duty doors, then a surveillance camera system that alerts your phone when motion is sensed, so you can call 9-1-1 the second some scumbag approaches your house. Also, really bright property lights. Criminals are like wienerroaches .... they scatter when the lights come on. Keep all your valuable in a heavy duty safe that is bolted to to floor, so that it cannot simply be carried away.
Long quality screws for the doors around strike plates and hinges
Additional steel front door as an extra layer
Ring doorbell cam + floodlight motion detection cameras around all 4 corners
Basic cheap separation bar alarms for all windows
Dog (if properly trained and not a shitbull)
No trespassing/soliciting sign in clear view
All this is a good start and you'll be good to go, motion sensing lights will freak out any crackheads.
This is the sane basics, really.
1) Make sure your exterior doors are good and solid.
2) Make sure the hinge, lock, and strike screws are all long and go into solid framing lumber. You can get door frame reinforcing kits which are easy to install and not crazy expensive, those are worth considering. For example:
https://securitysnobs.com/DJArmor-Gold-EZArmor-Combo-Kit-for-Standard-Doors.html
3) Change your locks. You never know who has copies of your existing keys. And don't go with the cheapo shit like Kwikset. Spring for decent locks, and make sure you have a redundant safety lock of some kind that can only be accessed from the inside of the door, like a chain, manual deadbolt, etc.
4) Safety pins/bars for windows, sliding doors, etc.
5) Motion lights & cameras. These are cheap in the digital age.
6) If you have a safe make sure it's properly secured to the floor so crooks can't just steal the whole safe. Ideally locate it in a tight area, like inside a closet, so it's difficult to attack it with tools as well.
7) Don't allow thieves to attack you with your own tools. Don't leave things outside like ladders that crooks could use to access 2nd floor windows. Lock up your power tools so they can't be used to attack your safe.
>Lock up your power tools so they can't be used to attack your safe
Or you.
I had a family friend in South Africa who made the mistake of not locking up his power tools (or not locking them up well enough). A bunch of Black folk raided his farm and used his own power tools to cut through the security gate separating his bedroom from the rest of the house. Once they got in they killed him with the angle grinder and his wife with the power drill.
>Harden any exterior doors. Cheap option is to just replace hinge and strike plate screws with 3" deck screws. More effective option is to buy a Door Devil or similar with an extended strike plate, reinforcement for the door around the bolt itself and hinge bolts. Next step up is that combined with a steel-core door and an additional external security screen door.
>Harden windows. Security film is effective if installed and anchored properly. Security screens, shutter systems and bars are also options.
>Alarms. Cheapest option is just a glass break alarm on any ground floor rooms and tamper alarms on any exterior doors. More effective is that combined with motion sensors, remote monitoring and push alerts to your phone.
>Motion sensitive exterior lighting.
>A garden with clean sightlines and nowhere for intruders to hide (partly from you inside the house but more importantly from neighbors and passers-by).
>Plant thorny bushes/hedges under windows, beside doors and potentially along the property margin (bearing in mind any concealment they offer).
>Build a fence or wall around the property.
>CCTV with push notifications to your phone. Even just a smart doorbell will help, burglars will often knock on the door to check whether a house is empty before breaking in, if you can tell them to frick off even when you're at work then you may scare them off.
>Microdot or similar property ID system (may not stop your tv or power tools being stolen but it can help you recover them when they show up at the pawn shop).
>Exterior-grade, lockable door to your bedroom or any other room with valuables inside. Yes, if they broke through your front door they can break into your bedroom door but criminals are in a rush (especially if you've got an alarm system howling away), home security is all about playing for time.
>Safe
>Friendly neighbors who know your appearance and phone number.
>A fence or wall, and potentially a hedge
You've got a choice here between something high, sturdy and probably spiked that will provide a serious barrier to entry vs that is more of a symbolic barrier.
The downside of the former is that anyone who makes it into your yard is then hidden from your neighbors and free to take however much time they need to penetrate your doors/windows without worrying about how suspicious they look (I guess you could go with a tall chain-link fence that is a serious barrier without blocking sight lines but most people don't appreciate the military compound aesthetic). It's also fairly hard to build a fence that is actually all that hard to climb for anyone with even a little bit of athleticism (although, if you gate is locked .
For most people I think a symbolic barrier (e.g. a simple, 3', white picket fence) is probably the better option. Sure, anyone can just hop over it but that requires deliberate action, they can't just say they accidentally wandering onto your lawn if you catch them casing the joint (in some jurisdictions this may be particularly valuable if you end up shooting them) and the moment of jumping a fence marks them as an obvious intruder to any neighbors watching.
What are some more autistic options /k/? Stuff I can think about is..
>Security screen doors, check out the videos for it. they're pretty good.
>Steel window frames with containment-grade plexiglass used by prisons/loony bins
>Steel doorframe
>Steel door with steel fiber chop reinforced concrete poured into its interior cavity
>That same exterior door/frame/lock setup for your masters bedroom/saferoom
>A safe room made of that above mentioned concrete
>Deadbolts with that Bowley lock that even LockpickingLawyer can't open
>Extra deadbolts on the doors' corners
>Security pins for the hinges
>Airgapped open source CCTV home server running a human-recognition AI
>Routing climb-detection fiber optic cables around the fence
>Gimbal security cameras retrofitted with 1000 lumen flashlights to point at anyone it sees
>Thorn bushes under the windows
>Retracting weather stripping under exterior doors to prevent wire bypass tools from unlocking them from the inside
>Filling drywall with gravel for bulletproofing, at least the interior walls so your heating bill won't get fricked
I'm out of ideas that arent 'moat of piranhas' or 'a castle wall and portcullis' tier
>I'm out of ideas
Proper hurricane-rated shutters for windows
Defense-oriented landscaping, even things like ornamental ponds, rock wall features, etc, can make accessing the property (or ramming it) with a vehicle difficult. Ha-ha walls, guard animals of course. Dogs are good but not the end-all.
>Hedging or bushes along the outer side of a perimeter wall to impede placement of a ladder (also because some HOAs will block construction of a fence over 8 ft but allow hedges to grow well past that and a dense enough hedge is pretty much impossible to climb through anyway)
>Roller spikes along the top of the wall (simple spikes or broken glass can be defeated by throwing a welcome mat over them, roller spikes are harder more challenging)
>A trellis of roses or similar set back from the inner side of the wall so that anyone who manages to make it over the top is likely to drop down into them
>Something to impede ram attacks through your front gate (e.g. concrete a slot into the driveway just behind the gate for a bollard and set a couple of steel loops into the wall on either side of the gate to hang a reinforcing chain)
>Something to impede ram attacks though the perimeter wall (e.g. raised garden beds built into the inner side of the wall, they also act as a firestep if I need to look over the wall)
>Something to slow or redirect movement across your yard (garden trellises with climbing plants are the obvious choice but make sure they don't provide cover, in an emergency you can also make some trip hazards with T-posts and wire)
>Install anticlimb downpipe guards (or just make sure pipes are placed away from balconies or vulnerable windows)
>Build a boot room behind your front door so that anyone breaching is immediately faced with another, similarly hardened door
>Place cover within the house so you have hardened firing positions overlooking key choke points
>Have an exit strategy (concealed staircase from bedroom, hooks to hang rope ladders from windows, offset some of the bricks on the inner side of the perimeter wall so it's easy to climb out but not in)
>Climb-detection fiber optics
I'll look into that. Currently my plan is just to lay trip wires along the perimeter wall with those spring-loaded 12g detonators but that's shtf-only sorta thing
gun
Motion activated Perimeter lighting
Cameras
Hang a few of the local boys from tree posts in the yard
Cameras. Get some cameras. Meth heads are more clever than you think, they'll break in when they know you aren't home. Only remedy is to have cameras so you can show their faces to the cops when you make a report
>house
>Eastern KY
You can just say trailer, we won't judge