You’ve invested in food, water, and gear. But if you don’t have a fence, you’ve created a target with a wide-open invitation.
The truth is, your stockpile isn’t at risk only when disaster strikes, but it’s also vulnerable today, while the world is still struggling to stand. Unfenced properties advertise easy access, making them prime targets for casual theft and intrusion today. The right fence goes far beyond a property line; it is a layered security system, acting as a deterrent, a physical barrier, and an early detection tool.
But be warned: there is one common type of fence that looks secure but is virtually useless when true security matters.
Types of Fences that Every Prepper Should Have
After carefully testing and analyzing the pros and cons, we’ve identified the best solutions for securing your property.
Hedgerow Fencing
Thorny shrubs, bamboo, and dense hedgerows can form barriers that are difficult to penetrate without specialized tools.
Historically, this was on full display in Northern France during World War Two, when well-established hedgerows gave tank drivers all kinds of headaches.
Pros:
- Blends into the environment and avoids drawing suspicion.
- Great visual block.
- Can be planted with edible or medicinal plants.
- Self-repairing and low-maintenance compared to wood or wire.
Cons:
- Takes time to grow and mature.
- Requires planning and ongoing care.
- Not as immediately effective as a solid man-made fence.
Keep in mind that natural fencing works particularly well when layered with a physical barrier. For example, planting thorny bushes along the inside of a chain-link fence makes climbing almost impossible.
Barbed Wire
Relatively cheap and effective at slowing or injuring anyone trying to cross it. Even so, it’s only really practical for rural preppers, where it’s often used to control livestock while also doubling as a perimeter deterrent. It’s also easy to add electric fencing wires to a barbed wire fence to further boost its deterrent value.
Pros:
- Highly effective psychological and physical barrier.
- Affordable and easy to deploy over large areas.
- Works well with other fence types for reinforcement.
Cons:
- Doesn’t provide privacy.
- Posts need a very firm foundation.
For serious prepping, barbed wire should rarely be your only fence type. Instead, it works best as a secondary or tertiary layer on top of chain-link or wooden fencing. In rural retreats, you can combine barbed wire with natural obstacles like ditches, hedges, or thorn bushes for maximum effectiveness.
Here’s a video that shows you how to make barbed wire effective when bugging-in:
Moreover, if you buy the right type of posts, you can also apply plastic snow fence to a barbed wire fence, this is a great option for preventing drifts on a long rural driveway, without having to install two different types of posts.
Bramble Fence
Instead of surrounding your garden with a seven-foot-high fence, which deer can easily jump over, you can try a different approach. Install two four-foot-tall sections of rabbit fence, leaving about three feet of space between them.
Then, plant brambles such as raspberries or thorny blackberries in the gap. This creates a natural barrier that deer are less likely to cross. Also, deer are afraid to try to jump a fence like this as they’re afraid they’ll get stuck in the middle.
Planting rosemary at the corners of the fence further adds an aromatic defense perimeter, as deer hate the smell of this perennial herb.
Pros:
- Inexpensive
- Easy to install and maintain
- Provides you with berries
Cons:
- Not effective for a property perimeter fence.
- Takes 2 to 3 years to reach full maturity
Pro Tip: If you plant pumpkins or other types of winter squash with thorny vines outside the bramble fence, it will also help deter raccoons. Their hands hate the feel of squash thorns, and it adds another level of food production to the fencing.
Wooden Privacy Fence
Wooden fences could keep neighbors or passersby from knowing just how well-stocked your property is and can also serve as a windbreak if your property is adjacent to an open field. However, the posts for the fence need to be firmly anchored, or whole sections can be pushed over.
If you live in an urban or suburban area, a wooden privacy fence is one of the best ways to maintain discretion. But certain areas and HOAs have strict rules about how a wooden fence must be installed and maintained. Make sure you know these, or you risk the fence drawing unwanted attention.
Meanwhile, find out if you’re making these mistakes when installing your fencing:
Pros:
- Provides excellent concealment of your home and property, keeping neighbors or passersby from seeing valuables.
- Can be designed to blend in with suburban neighborhoods, maintaining aesthetic appeal.
- Acts as a solid barrier that is more difficult to climb compared to chain-link fences.
- Can serve as a windbreak if your property is near open fields.
- Adds a sense of privacy and security, creating a defined boundary around your property.
Cons:
- Can be expensive, depending on the length, type of wood, and materials used.
- Requires regular maintenance to prevent rot, warping, and weather damage.
- Vulnerable to fire, especially in dry areas or during wildfire season.
- Posts must be firmly anchored, or sections can be pushed over, compromising security.
Pro Tip: Plant thorny landscaping like rose bushes or raspberries to add an effective deterrent while still looking “normal.”
Retaining Block Wall
For the ultimate in security and privacy, nothing beats a solid concrete or retaining block wall. These fences are expensive and labor-intensive to build, but they offer unmatched durability and deterrence.
Pros:
- Extremely strong and resistant to intrusion
- Provides complete privacy and sound dampening
- Resistant to fire, weather, and most forms of attack
Cons:
- Very expensive to build
- Requires professional installation for structural stability
- Can look suspicious or militarized in suburban settings
- Drainage needs to be addressed when planning the wall
If you have the budget and the property, a concrete or brick wall is the gold standard for long-term perimeter defense. Some preppers integrate steel reinforcements or even embed broken glass along the top for additional deterrence.
But even if retaining block walls can be useful on an off-grid property, they’re still not enough to keep looters away. That’s why my advice, even for experienced preppers, is to focus on making it as difficult as possible for intruders.
This means learning how to secure entry points and build multiple layers of defense, starting with a solid concrete wall. And there’s no better resource for this than the Bug-In Guide. This book belongs on every prepper’s shelf because it doesn’t just tell you what to do, but it also shows you how.
Step by step, it walks you through fortifying your home, setting up traps and alarms, and creating a property that’s as hard to breach as it is to ignore. When chaos comes, knowledge is your best survival tool!
The Fence That May Betray Your Security…
Is the chain-link. Even if this fence is affordable, easy to install, and durable, it often provides a dangerous illusion of protection. While it certainly marks your property line and offers excellent visibility, its woven wire structure presents numerous weaknesses that a determined intruder can exploit with alarming speed and ease.
The open grid provides built-in handholds and footholds, making it simple to scale, and basic bolt cutters can silently breach the entire perimeter in minutes.
Relying solely on this type of fence means you have invested in a visible boundary, but you have fundamentally failed to establish a genuine, time-consuming deterrent. This vulnerability means that for serious preparedness, a standard chain-link installation cannot be considered the final solution.
⇒ What Every Looter Hopes You’ll Ignore…
In a crisis, the fence is the first line of defense; if it can be easily bypassed, the rest of your security measures are immediately compromised.
While its low cost and durability make it appealing for enclosing large areas, preppers must recognize its inherent flaws and commit to upgrades. Adding features like privacy slats, reinforced materials, or deterrents such as barbed or razor wire are necessary steps to transform this budget barrier into a functional security measure that actually slows down a threat and gives you precious time to react.
For a more thorough guide on how to build a sturdy fencing, you should check out No Grid Survival. This book is a solid resource for securing your property, offering step-by-step instructions for projects that keep intruders out.
Inside, you’ll learn how to build reinforced barriers, layer natural obstacles, and set up backyard traps and alarms that actually work.
While others wait for help that may never come, you’ll be fortifying, securing, and taking control of your own perimeter. Every instruction is practical, every method proven, giving you the confidence to defend your land when it matters most.
FAQ About Prepper Fences
Are there laws against fencing?
Most counties, townships, and HOAs have rules about the type of fencing that’s allowed. This includes strict rules on how it needs to be installed and how far from the property line it must be. If you have an HOA, this information is included in the bylaws. In a rural area, the county zoning office can give you all the pertinent fencing regulations.
Is razor wire a good option for a prepper fence?
Razor wire is highly effective at deterring intruders, but it comes with drawbacks that often make it prohibitive for preppers. It’s expensive to install, requires regular upkeep, and is visually obtrusive.
Just having a row of it could draw unwanted attention to your property. Some preppers use it sparingly as a secondary barrier rather than their primary fence. It’s probably better to keep some stored in an outbuilding to install around your home only after SHTF.
How tall should an effective fence be?
For basic security, a 6-foot fence is usually sufficient, but preppers often opt for 8 feet or higher to discourage climbing. Adding angled extensions, barbed wire, or natural barriers like thorny hedges can make fences even more difficult to scale.
Final Thoughts
A fence alone won’t guarantee the safety of your property, but it does add another layer of defense to your prepper strategy. Fences provide delay, concealment, and deterrence, all of which buy you time to respond. The right choice depends on your location, budget, and long-term survival plan.
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Very well written article! For all the designs above the silent issue is “depth of the system”. Many items on the strength, appearance, and height but only passing reference to “adding a layer of thorny bushes” and “adding a bramble space”. Depth of the system adds deterrence functionality and security but at a cost, everything costs something. In the case of the “bramble additions” that cost is usable physical space. If you have a large property that space may be available and you may be willing to dedicate it (make unusable) to this need. If you have a smaller property that usable space may be of premium value. If land and space is at premium value level then walls and solid fencing are typically preferred and worth the higher build costs. If “expenditure resources” are limited then the “costs” become lost usable spaced in the layered systems. Back to the earlier statement everything costs something.
Remember if it deters someone or something else it will also deter you! It can be just as hard get out as getting in so plan accordingly! Not all reasons to leave are man-made, you do not want to trap yourself in a fire, flooding, storm, etc,
“It will also deter you”
Ever hear of a gate?
Justme – Gates are weak points and “activity funnels” on both side of the fence, so I stand by my statement. A system with more gates than fence is not much of a deterrent. Keeping animals from entering is far different that a security barrier. The people you may be trying to keep away will eventually build breaching devices to get in so it pays to have a breaching device of your own to get out anywhere along the wall or fence if need be. Fortified gates are engineering solutions that cost significantly in material and time to create versus the basic wall or fence spans so most people will only build the minimum needed for typical ingress and egress. An old solution is to have a “stile” or fence ladder stored inside the enclosure. A modern folding ladder (like Little Giant) will do the same and is a usable item in everyday life.
One of the methods of breaching a chain link fence is cutting the wire strand at the top and bottom, grabbing one end and pulling the strand out of the connecting wires. It acts like a zipper allowing the person to slip between the two sides into your area. It also allows a small footprint of the breach.
You’ll have to do constant tours of your fencing unless to have anti-intrusion devices attached to your fencing. But that will get expensive and require a power source.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Some interesting ideas in there, though my article focuses on practical tips for avoiding chain-link fences. The main takeaway is that material choice and visibility are what really matter in real-world situations.
A comment on buttressing walls and fences. Buttressing is adding a diagonal support member to prevent tipping of the structure. Most buttressing is done to the interior of the wall or fence due to the structure typically being placed along a property line and you do not want to give people outside the wall or fence additional items to climb on or assist scaling. Buttressing is very effective in preventing pushing loads on the fence (compression of the buttress). Buttressing is weak in pulling loads (tension of the buttress). Masonry is the weakest in tension followed by metal piping (chain-link). You can have a very robust buttressed wall or fence that can survive someone driving into it, but it could still be pulled outward and toppled relatively easy. The way to deal with this is to introduce a tension component into the buttress design. This is often a cable parallel to the buttress with robust anchors in the structure and the ground. That gives you both push (compression) and pull (tension) support for the wall or fence structure with only inside the perimeter application.
Can’t stay on topic? Last I looked the discussion was about fences not monolithic walls.
Fences are like locks They keep the honest people out. There isn’t a fence that could keep me out if I wanted to get access to a property. That doesn’t mean I oppose them. I have a wood privacy fence. It keeps critters out and young children in.
Justme – Fences and walls for security purposes are just as you stated “time delays in breaching”. The better the wall or fence the more time delay incurred before breaching. That time delay prevents those inside from being immediately overrun (time to respond) and the breaching effort act as attention diversions for the invaders. An individual focused on breaching is not focused on assault nor defense which make them vulnerable during the time-frame of the breaching effort. Classic example is an outer gated into a fortified ally with a fortified inner gate, I believe the actual name for this design is a “murder hole” or “murder gallery”. Even an individual trying to cut through a basic fence is taking time and diverting their attention making them vulnerable.
My war on the neighborhood dog walkers who like their dogs to poop in your yard instead of theirs is a good start for preppers to deal with .Although come to think of it …a yard full of dog poo is probably a deterrent at some level .I also would strategically plant trees and shrubbery for blocking line of sight of neighbors …snipers….etc. ….working in edible plants for that purpose would be a bonus for any prepper . Keeping out mother natures forrest friends is a continuous battle for me. It’s like I’m prepping for the animals and not me .But i am taking notes on edible plants that bugs don’t like in my area .and survive the winter .Keeping the neighborhood kids out of your yard is also a good start for preppers in learning how to deal with future looters and scavengers without getting into to much trouble with the law . Good fence makes good neighbors have respect for a fence no matter how flimsy it may be .
the Comments are all good points ! ! !
Extra credit to Ozark on these. Other comments cover most all the important points to ponder.
chain link, with an inner and outer layer of PRICKLY
Some ceramic fence insulators, for slickery, and a mile of 60 lb test spider wire hidden in the bush, any pull triggers a pull and contact made on an electric signal, light , buzzer etc. Just make sure your bushes are BIG enough so they have little choice but to hit the spider wire they cant see. With any barrier fence, if they are INSIDE, they know they are wrong.
if its after TWAWKI event, you decide how to react to just the intrusion.
GATE, is how you say WEAK POINT !
2,000 acre compound, you better have a stealth way out, for you and your 2 1/2 truck, LOADED, to exit IMMEDIATLY.
Other fence, well you can last how many days if your safe zone is small enough to hide behind wood or concrete fence ? Not long, you need area , to have and make more resources. AND, with big area comes stealth. A house, just off the STREET, aint going to last 24 months, unless everyone else dies for you. Deep in the woods, you can have a place thats self sufficient and UNKNOWN.
BREACH, yup, like the man said, I can breach ANY fence.
Bring in an A frame ladder and I am over almost any fence in 3 minutes.
if not, I start every night at 3 AM and work till 5 AM cutting just a little, until another night, i open it completely. If I do that, I also need to set up Observation to see if you have found my work, so I dont step in your waiting for me trap. It Aint a surprise party if the only one surprised is the guy giving the party.
Fence is temporary ! , after SHTF.
a real good, a great fence, is nice, before shtf, the police help you maintain that border, but later, everyone remembers the BIG FENCE, Important things are hidden back there, what ever is back there, it MUST be important. DEC 25 disease takes over, back there is, food, fuel, vehicles, food, power, medical, weapons, woman, a dog and a cat, cake, ice cream, its all back there, behind the BIG fence. Be a shame to die protecting the last twinkie – Thousand year survival food.
LOTS more to think about than the material to use for building the fence.
I Think
Adding ‘Noise Makers’ along fence perimeter for alerting fence crossings is a deterrent as well for people who aren’t sure it is worth the effort. Marbles in a can – that sort of thing. Panels of ‘tanglefoot” are another option
i have a lead fence
i have a wood slat fence with a 2×4 flush across the top of the slats. i then screwed carpet tack strip across the length of the fence. its low profile and cheap. anyone who`s been stuck by it know it is really nasty stuff. i originally put it up to deter critters but soon learned its defensive benefits after accidently touching it to pull my latch. i dont have a handle latch on the outside its just flat fence with no indication there is a gate there. instead i installed a hidden pull ring at the top on the inside out of sight then ran a wire down to the latch. it works great!
Wow, that’s a clever setup! I love how you turned a simple critter deterrent into a hidden security feature. The hidden pull ring and wire to the latch is genius, because it keeps it low-profile and discreet while still being functional. Definitely a great example of thinking outside the box!
Anonymous
Geezer
rug rat
lead fence works well, AFTER TWAWKI
Gate, hidden gate, problem is, the worn down trail to it gives it away.
noise makers, dont forget, a slow mover will make almost no noise if its a rattle can. The Pull style that causes electric contact, which sets off light or sound (close to you) is fully engaged with a slow easy touch
Anyone who recommends planting blackberries as a fence is a pest. ))
This creature will spread throughout the entire property, and you’ll be fighting it for the rest of your life.
you will be MAKING blackberry Jam / pie FOREVER
You are absolutely right, unmanaged blackberries can absolutely take over a property. But in as I said in the article, the idea wasn’t to let them run wild, but to use controlled brambles in a confined strip between two fences. When they’re planted in a contained gap like that and pruned regularly, they act as a thorny deterrent without spreading across the yard. Of course, anyone using this method should choose the variety carefully and stay on top of maintenance!
Andr, agreed. I had blackberry show up, and it’s showing up all over my yard. I now have a good sized patch that deer keep trimmed. Along one of my property lines is a swale that sometimes has a small stream. It is covered in poison ivy along the banks, and the blackberry has grown there, too. It doesn’t do much in winter, but in other seasons, it’s a pretty good deterrent. One of my neighbors set up a fence to keep their dogs from running all over the neighborhood, so I draft off their fence, so to speak.
A few years ago, I was able to obtain several thousand feet of concertina wire! A local prison was replacing theirs and a company I was driving for was contracted to haul it in for recycling! They couldn’t recycle it so I ended up with 8 pallets of it! Talk about a barter item! 3 of my prepper friends got some and I kept enough to stretch out around the yard if needed! I know, off subject, but it’s interesting, no?