James:
Yesterday my wife went over to our new house that we’re moving into. It has a gate and about 100 yards of driveway. She told me that while she was there a van full of strangers drove up through the gate and right up to the house. Several people then came out uninvited. It turns out that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now, I’ve got nothing against them but you don’t drive up into another persons property unannounced, especially in numbers. I thought, if they we Mutant Zombie Bikers that’s not a lot of time to get inside. I looked into tire spikes that roll out onto a road but they were $$$ ($300-$530). I figure a 4×4 with brown spray painted 6″ nails driven into it at 1 1/2 inch intervals should do it. A 4×4 trench across the driveway by the gate would let me put the improvised tire popper nails up or nails down depending on my needs. This serves four purposes:
(1) Loud popping sounds from blown tires are a form of perimeter alarm
(2) Ditto for screaming sounds of a burglar stepping on one at night
(3) Depending on the length of the driveway, you get a few extra seconds to situate yourself in case of home/retreat invasion
(4) You get to have that ‘Well what did you expect trespassing on my property’ look when uninvited salesmen, process servers, or Jehovah’s Witnesses want to make an unannounced visit and ask to use a phone to call a tow truck. – SF in Hawaii
JWR Replies: One word comes to mind: liability! In my opinion you should use tire spike trips only in an absolute worst case situation. (Total collapse/anarchy.) Even then, I’d worry about my friendly neighbors or their livestock accidentally encountering the spikes. But it might be prudent to buy the materials, just in case. (Namely, 2×6 boards, camouflaging paint in various flat earth tone colors, and 10 pounds of timber spikes. For the latter, I would recommend 6″or 7″ long timber spikes, galvanized, with a square cross-section. These are typically made with a spiral twist. Steel belted radial tires are no match for these spikes!) OBTW, Be sure to pre-drill holes for the spikes so that the board isn’t split to pieces when you drive the spikes through it.
My preferred plan for slowing down looters in vehicles is more low key and less likely to inspire a lawsuit: This works best in heavily wooded or very steep country where vehicles cannot avoid using a road: use a series of 1/2-inch diameter steel cables across your road, each secured with keyed-alike padlocks. In “peacetime” you can put up and lock just one of the cables, festooned with flagging tape, so that visitors don’t accidentally run into it. The cables should be supplemented by a MURS intrusion detection system, pyrotechnic trip flares or chemical light stick trip flare actuator frames (using the latest generation ultra high intensity light sticks), as well as trip noisemakers. These can be made from tin cans (as described my novel “Patriots”) and from the pull actuators New Years party streamer poppers. Use three or four of these pull string noisemakers in bundles on each trip wire. By placing the cables at roughly 50 foot intervals, the bad guys will have to stop several times to reduce each obstacle. This should give you plenty of warning time to man a defense and make it clear (ballistically) that the bad guys need to go find someplace else to loot. Unless they are suicidal, they will hear your gunfire and quickly depart in search of easier pickings.