HJL,
Home safety is an assumption that you need to fully analyze, being just 40 miles out from a city. I’m two hours away from NYC and about a 40 minute drive from the NY border, yet I see NY plates all of the time. (They often come here, day in day out, to escape their city lives for whatever reason.) Cars/mobility make it possible; a tank of gas will get you around 350 miles in a small car. Some of the people here have roots in NYC, meaning when things get bad the relatives will appear. Being only 40 miles out, they could walk to your location in two days if they are in great shape or in a week if they aren’t fit. Granted they have no reason to unless you’re located near a prime target location (i.e. super market, Walmart, or chain distribution center). Some smart people will know how the food is handled, where it comes from, and what they need to do to acquire it. Those people will seek those locations out. So, if you are down the street from Walmart, you are in a more dangerous area then you realize. Once the fools are done looking for big screen tvs and Jordans, they will be hungry and have to work at finding calories.
At some point the house you occupy might be taken over or burned, and you will have no choice but to leave it for your life and family’s life. Prepare for that now. Siege warfare has been around a long while. It isn’t a new concept.
o o o
Hugh,
Reading the critique responses I was a little disappointed in them. B.M. offered an idea that has some merit. We as fellow preppers should not be too quick to pull the trigger with a dismissal of such. I do not want to become that “armchair quarterback” and poo-poo an a idea on face value. I remember that one idea leads most of the time to better ideas, case in point, those of us that grew up in the 50/60s time frame remember rear fender skirts on classic auto, which were a fad back then; the removal of which was by a lever mounted on the underside/inside of the skirt. Thieves would spend about 10 seconds to pop them off and run for the hills. I had an occasion when it happened to my car. My solution was to glue single-edge razor blades to the hidden lever on my replacement ones, and while coming out of a local movie place late one Saturday night I discovered a fair amount or blood on the pavement and also on the side of my car. Yes, I was a happy camper that the person(s) unknown had received a little “street justice” and also that the skirts were still in place.
For any given circumstance there are solutions– some good, some bad, some ugly. Our goal should be to take a problem and come up with a better mouse trap solution versus just trashing one solution on its face value. Let’s all try to offer our “expertise” with a positive solution to people who are trying to do it right. To all of us, if I was living in a primary residence 40 miles outside of any major population area, my focus should be (and in my case was) to get the hell out of Dodge. (I did that in 2012.) Relocation to a redoubt location in the western states for me is a better solution than trying to focus on maintaining a potentially unattainable location.
The old sniper’s Credo “locate, isolate, eliminate” should be food for reflection. B.M. you at dealing with a tremendous problem, and my prayers and sincere hope is that you find the best one that gives you the return for your efforts.- John in NV