Urban Survival Preparation – Home Defense Preparation Re-Visited

Since we just spent some time using a blackboard at work to illustrate some home defense concepts to Jim, we thought we would develop that impromptu discussion into a post re-visiting home defense.

Even if your plan or your Urban Survival Decision Making Matrix calls for an immediate withdrawal from your Urban home to a Rural Safe Location, you still need to be intimately familiar with your home in case it becomes a defensive position if mobs or organized gangs attempt to attack you and loot your home.

You need to identify what sectors of observation, and therefore sectors that can be covered or engaged with small arms fire that can be accessed from every window (fighting position) in your home. If you make a sketch, like the one below, you can determine what areas cannot be covered from a fighting position. These are called Dead Zones or Dead Areas.

If you have a two story home, you may be able to see past the Dead Zones or Dead Areas, however these areas that you cannot see into and therefore cover with small arms fire are potentially very dangerous to your security as they allow approach and access to your home people very well intended to doing your harm.

Typically, military units cover dead zone with indirect fire (mortars, artillery, etc.), anti-personnel mines and explosives, and obstacles. Sometimes surveillance equipment like seismic, magnetic or light beam breaking sensors are used.

The average Urban Survivalist won’t have those type of assets. And prohibited by law and just good common sense, UrbanSurvivalSkills.com will not delve into field expedient or home kitchen explosive or fire mixes other than to say there are a multitude of books available on-line where the average person can, at best, learn a little something, and at worst kill themselves and set their house on fire.

By and large the base method to protect these dead areas are going to be either firing positions outside the home to engage these dead zones, either just outside your home or from another home. (Hey, didn’t we talk abut Urban Survival being a team sport and that it’s take a group to survive?). OR, obstacles such as barbed wire, that force movement around the dead zones into areas covered by your fighting positions.

Assigned positions at windows are actually two assigned positions or two assigned areas of responsibility. The defender should be located off to the side of each window assigned to and covering the areas oblique to the window. At best this requires two defenders. The stupid thing to do is sit below the bottom of the window frame and observe/shoot over the top of the window sill. Instead stay off to the sides of the window edges a few feet back from the interior portion of the house’s exterior wall. See diagram below:

Even better if the interior side can be enhanced for protection with sand bags, steel sheeting, multiple layers of thick plywood, etc. The brown rectangles in the diagram below depict added material that enhance protection from direct fire from attackers.

If you are in such a location that provides a lot of open area from your house where you may be engaging armed bandits or organized and armed groups of looters at various distances, say beyond 100 yards, then a Range Card that allows defenders to remember what the distances are at known and recognizable locations could help you and your defending survival group more accurate engage attackers. Of course you need to be a little better trained on ballistic and how adjustment of your scope or iron sights on your firearms are used to ensure accurate engagement at these distances/locations. The diagram below depicts a Range Card.