During emergencies or civil unrest, intruders can become a real concern. Looting tends to focus on locations with useful or valuable supplies, and prepared households may draw attention when normal protections break down. That’s why awareness and planning matter.
Placing deterrents, booby traps, or countermeasures may be illegal in your area, but when the government falls and the laws are no longer enforced, you can begin to deploy whatever deterrents you wish.
Disclaimer: Several of the deterrents that I will describe here might be illegal in your state and could result in serious injury. These are mentioned for informational purposes only, and I do not suggest ever considering building or deploying these methods.
Bright Lights
This is one deterrent that will be quite effective against most looters.
In a grid-down environment, having bright exterior flood lights or motion lights signals to anyone around that you are prepared and ready to repel any attack.
Therefore, looters will think twice about trying to loot your home if the outside has lighting that exposes them and also blinds them.
Barricades
With some simple brackets and a 2×4, you can fabricate effective barricades on the inside of your main entry doors. These will make breaking the door down exceptionally difficult if not impossible, and stop looters in their tracks. You can also purchase metal barricades, which can be installed on the doors instead of using… Read more here…
Reinforcing Main Entry Doors
When your home was built, the contractors probably used the cheapest materials and faster building methods.
The screws on the hinges of your entry doors and the strike plates are easy to upgrade, and both will greatly improve your doors’ security.
Replace the hinge screws with the biggest screws that will fit at a length of three inches. Replace the deadbolt strike plate with an upgraded version and use long screws for this as well.
In this case, the best way to reinforce your main entry door is to install a looter proof kit, especially made to keep intruders away. This kind of kit was especially created to reinforce your main entry door at its weakest points, where most break-ins actually occur. Instead of relying on flimsy factory hardware, it strengthens the door frame and locking area so forced entry becomes extremely difficult.
The anti-looter kit contains:
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Heavy-duty reinforced strike plates designed to resist kick-ins
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Extra-long, high-strength screws that anchor the door hardware deep into the wall studs
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Reinforcement brackets that distribute impact force across the door frame
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Industrial-grade steel components built to withstand repeated blows
Unlike alarm systems that only react after an intruder gets inside, this kit focuses on stopping break-ins before they happen, making your home a far less attractive target for looters and burglars. So, if you want to make sure your home is protected, click here to purchase this kit with my special discount (Limited time offer!).
Booby Traps
There are many booby traps that can deter, startle, or slow intruders without causing serious injury. Common options include tripwires or pressure triggers that activate loud noises, alarms, air horns, or strobe lights to draw attention and disrupt movement.
👉 These Every Day Items Will Get You on FEMA’s Radar
Modern setups avoid dangerous traps and instead focus on environmental deterrence. Uneven ground, loose gravel, collapsible covers, or shallow obstacles can cause an intruder to stumble or rethink their approach without serious harm. Fence and entry deterrents like angled extensions, roll bars, or hanging obstacles also make climbing difficult and noisy.
When using booby traps, the goal is to discourage access and, most importantly, to buy time without creating unnecessary risk to family members or neighbors.
Razor wire
Razor wire is an effective way to protect property by creating a clear physical and psychological barrier that discourages entry and controls movement. It’s commonly used by preppers to secure perimeters, block access points, and slow vehicles or foot traffic before they reach a structure.
My advice is to skip the expensive razor wire and make your own instead. This method I tested can provide a similar deterrent effect using just a few basic materials:
Vehicle Barricades
These are not as easy to build but are worth considering. A vehicle barricade can take on many forms, from a simple purposely downed tree to a Czech hedgehog barricade welded together from heavy angle iron. Depending on the size of your property, you may have several points where vehicles may enter and approach the house. Consider vehicle barricades in these areas.
Felling a tree across your driveway or other access points is a decent barrier, but it is not practical if you need to clear the area to get your own vehicle in and out.
A roll of barbed wire laid out three or four strands high will entangle the tires of a vehicle and hinder its forward progress. This can be set up so you can roll it out across the area, but still be able to roll it back on itself to open the area back up.
Also, there’s one more method most people overlook. This secret Special Forces tactic can protect your home in ways you didn’t think about until now:
Moreover, in case you are building a fence, consider cementing long poles filled with concrete to use as the core of your layers of defense. If you make the spacing between posts narrower than the width of a car, then you’ll have a barrier that most vehicles will not be able to drive through.
But, if you have some welding equipment and some fabrication skills, you could easily construct some Czech hedgehogs from heavy angle iron. These will stop any civilian vehicle and many military vehicles from proceeding through the area you place them in. With a little engineering, you could design these to be assembled with bolts, which makes storing them easier and deploying them as simple as taking the parts to the area and bolting them together.
Entanglements
Running wire or rope in a wild pattern around your yard will create a massive net that will take a significant amount of effort and time to move through. Also in the dark, many looters won’t even notice the entanglement until they find themselves inside of it and tangled up. These are also easy to build and require a small amount of materials that are easy to obtain. Read more here…
Happy New Year, dear reader!
Even if looting becomes a serious concern during times of unrest, your health may end up being the bigger threat.
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Final Thoughts
In an SHTF situation, no one will come to defend your property against looters. There looter deterrents are good to install right now, but others, like booby traps or vehicle barricades, should be saved for when you actually need them.
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