How to keep your Home from getting Burglarized. . .have the burglar skip your house and go to the next one instead...

Big dogs barking usually deters burglars too.

My 2 labs patrol my place at night. they allow no one to come unannonced.

exactly right!
(I did not mention it because not everyone has a dog)

You're wrong about not killing. Always aim to kill. Dead men tell no lies. Sauce: sister is assistant DA.

Apparently they fear wireless burglar alarm systems and a sign showing you have a wireless alarm system is a big deterrent.

that's from 6 years ago, the burglars are hip to the sign trick

besides a wifi signal jammer is prob pretty easy to build

good advice OP.

I like that

You must be security specialist. And great idea about leaving the tv on a news channel so we can have a banner burnt into our screens.

big calibers to also .12ga or .357 does the trick.. let them bust down the door

Make sure you drag the body inside your house

'Look like a Pauper, live like a King' applies too.

That's no longer true. Wifi cameras are easy to jam. Even a security system that uses cellular, instead of wired phone lines that can be cut, can be easily jammed.

A guard dog is great, but they are also a pain to raise and expensive to feed.

A clue that nobody is home is no car to be seen in the driveway. Yes, some people always park in a garage. But when there's a car parked in the best spot nearest the house, that usually means someone is home.

A hell raising loud alarm outside will scare them away. But, it can annoy neighbors when triggered by false alarms.

Motion activated lights all around your house works great, and then make triggering security cameras at night more reliable.

No trespassing signs usually indicate you're damn serious about unwelcome intruders. A no solicitors sign tells everyone you don't answer knocks at the door when you don't know the person.

Have lots of wired cameras, especially inside, that can trigger a loud alarm outside. Also be careful about wired cameras outside. Use a security NVR that can alarm on camera and network tampering. And keep your camera network separate from your home network so hacks can get into your stuff from outside.

Some lights left on inside should be set up to turn on/off periodically, randomly.

Inside your home keep bedroom doors close. A burglar might not want to item them in case someone is sleeping in there.

An easy way to monitor your home while going shopping of whatever is to keep an audio only channel open on one of your cameras. You can monitor this on your phone and use a Bluetooth ear piece to listen to your home while shopping. It's low bandwidth, like listening to music. If you hear any suspicious noise, you can immediately call the po po. This is one of my most reassuring defenses. I used this in my RV when traveling and stopping to shop. It was really reassuring and allowed me to shop without feeling a need to hurry up and get back to my RV. I use the same at home now when going grocery shopping. No way any burglar could steal much. At best they might be able to dash in and grab one thing and leave before the po po arrived. I live at the end of a 3.5 mile long dead end road too, it's gravel and winding and max safe speed is 30 mph. That means for 7 minutes they could be caught leaving too.

If you have a cheap video projector and translucent curtains, you can also project a shadow walking past the window occasionally too. A protector is also better than a TV left on, as it throws off a lot more illumination than today's LCD TVs. I like them because watching a movie with one at night is like watching a movie in a theater.

Also, I'm retired, and a night person. I'm always awake at night. I also live out in the country in a large forest. Getting burglarized out here is a greater concern for me. I have multiple sensitive mics deployed outside. I do this primarily because I love the sound of nature, especially at night. I hear the sounds of outside inside my house 24x7. I love it. The wildlife, the barn owls, coyotes, wolves, crickets, etc. But the added bonus is I'll hear anyone, anything, that merely walks around within 100 feet of my house, garage, car, RV. 99% of the time it is a deer, a raccoon, a possum, a deer, a cat. One time though it wasn't, and I immediately knew it was human. They fled when I opened the door to go check. They also tripped over an rain gutter extension that ran 6 feet from the house. Now I place other things someone could trip over walking around here in the dark. I also have solar motion lights all over the f'n place. They work great and are 400 lumen.

I seldom go anywhere so my bigger concern is home invasion. But I'll hear anyone getting near here, and I have guns strategically placed/hidden where I can get to one quickly. I also often take one along just going out at night, along with a pellet gun to chase away unwanted wildlife.

Thank you for sharing. Some great ideas. Clearly you've been giving this some thought.

cops here tell us that if you shoot someone drag their asses inside past the door since this is a castle state

Your welcome.

BTW, I also have what I now call security cats. Since moving here exactly two years ago yesterday, I've befriended and domesticated 10 feral cats. 6 live on my balcony/porch out back, 3 live inside, and 1 lives nearby (he's the alpha male, a big buff muscular male). I built them a heated habitat box about the size of a horizontal freezer. I use silent heating panels in there. There's also heating pads to sleep on. It's raised about a foot with 2 entrances underneath. This keeps the wind out, and it makes them feel safer inside. Nothing can see them from outside the box. Nothing larger than a cat can enter. If something sticks its head in there, they can attack it or flee out the other exit. They can leap from the balcony giving them a hesdstart fleeing to the nearest tall tree. Anything larger needs to use the stairs and go around a hedge to chase them. They really like the thing and thus stay close to the house almost all the time. I've a camera in there to watch them too.

Anyhow, these cats know the sounds of the forest well. When they hear something out of the ordinary, day or night, they react to it. They must, because there's a lot of coyotes around here. I can clearly tell when they hear something suspicious that I can't hear, yet. They'll exit that box and walk to the edge of the balcony from which the sound came from. When I see this happen, 100% of the time it is something suspicious, dangerous, or unusual. Sometimes it is a coyote. Other times it has been a car creeping along the front of my property at 2 or 3 AM with its lights off. These are the things that lead to someone breaking into a garage, or a car, or a catalytic converter being stolen off a vehicle like my RV, or a vehicle being stolen, late at night. When I've gone out to investigate, the vehicles have always sped of. This has happened about 8 times in the last two years. And maybe not always it's a suspected burglar. Dudes have driven their Tinder dates out here to frolic in the forest (yes, I've heard moaning sounds just north of my house in the forest, lol).

When I moved here 2 years ago, I found evidence of previous break-ins. I found damaged around the doors that was consistent with it having been kicked in. Same with the garage. This would have been really concerning to me if I wasn't retired. Being retired now, and a night owl, it doesn't worry me enough to move or overreact. If however I was gone a lot, this would really concern me. I would probably want to build a tall fence around the entire immediate yard (I've 5+ acres here), put bars over the windows, put in steel frames doors, get a couple pit bulls, etc.

I like it here, a lot. I can shut the outside world off being here. I feel a lot more safer here than when living in Minneapolis area prior to moving here. The Minneapolis riots from a few years ago was one of the reasons I decided to get out of the cities. The decline of society was another. The large numbers of Somalians was another. And just loving nature and wildlife and this huge forest was another. And the sudden increase of property values is the cities 2+ years ago was another highly motivating reason to get out of there at that time. From the day I decided to move, two months later I had closed on selling the house in the cities and closed on this place and started moving in here. Best decision I made in the last few years. I feel safe and relaxed out here, while all alone too.

The best defense is always being here, and having enough weapons and ammo. I also have a flamethrower in case of a flash mob attack.

We had some windows on our garage that were bugging me, since somebody could look in and see all of my stuff, so I taped newspaper over them but I left a little section where a person could peek through.

Inside the view when peeked, you could only see the back of a filing cabinet which was backed up to the glass.

On which I had written, "Death Awaits."


One day we came back from work, and in the snow, there were footprints to the peeking window.

Somebody got the message.

I'm usually up and active all night.
Periodically walking outside for fresh air.

I keep the outside lights off, and the lights inside dimmed, so I can see out.


Sneaky.