Defense of a fixed location (multi-acreage homestead or retreat))
 

Like the thread title says, I'd like to start a conversation about taking steps to defend a large multi-acreage homestead. In this case, a relative's you have recently arrived at that is NOT fortified nor otherwise upgraded other than having a good roof on it, a well, and in a sparsely populated area.

If you were expecting small raiding parties at some point? Night attacks?
If you had a few weeks and up to 1 month....where would you start?

How would you determine the best/better place to defend the property and your group?
The way I figure, if you're shootin from your windows, you've already lost!!

Situation:
Wooded lot backing up to the mountains
> Expect the grid to be offline and sheriff/fire/EMT response to be ZERO.
> Expect there might be SOME kind of neighbor mutual assistance going on but unknown what kind of (shootin) background these folks have.
> No earthmovers (ie backhoe) available; only heavy duty pickup trucks with full tanks

My initial thought process:
A) Quick Inventory
B) Quick Secure (ie locking fences)
C) Detailed Secure (ie fixing fences)
D) Time consuming clearing/fortification tasks
E) Everything else that is time consuming

First 1-3 days
1) Inventory all defensive items & munitions; clean and lube, load magazines, properly secure from children/prying eyes. Start a simple logbook with description & function of each item.
2) Quick inventory of all food items, medical supplies & equipment. Check the water situation.
3) Quick evaluation / minor adjustments to all vehicles noting fuel level, tires, problems, etc. Top off fluids, air up tires, spare tires. Park in a defensive position such as pointing toward the road.
4) Examine local maps noting roads, streams, lakes, other notable locations.
5) Survey the property noting natural boundaries, obstacles, wooded features, natural defensive positions.
> Take ranges and create range cards from shooting from designated positions
> Repair downed fences and gates if possible
> Chain & lock lockable gates
> Repair and/or install flood lighting (if applicable)
> Scan the property from tentative defensive locations
> Establish a simple procedure of locking doors and securing windows at nite

5) Create some kind of 'master butcherpaper' tasksheet detailing
"Need to do (now)
Need to do (soon, sooner, later)"
&
"Current Tactical Situation or SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (including wild animals)". Something like that.


Days 4-7
1) Begin to establish a nighttime or 24 hour watch depending on the situation
2) Detailed sitdown conversation / evaluation with all family members (kids included) of the neighbors and other likely avenues of threats (ie 100k city 2 hours away). Put those thoughts onto paper.
3) Gun safety refresher sessions
4) Do's and don't's of the current situation
5) Figure out communications....FRS radios? Something else?
6) Start to dig a forward observation post ????
7) ????? NOW WHAT ??????

I know the concept is to create a path that "steams" raiders into firing lanes.....???

By the way, I have started to read the tactical classic Defense of Duffer's Drift
http://www.colonialwargaming.co.uk/R...oads/Drift.pdf

This is also a useful article from the fictional viewpoint of a raider:
http://www.survivalblog.com/2009/10/..._your_wor.html

#1 on days 4 through seven should be immediate.

If your attackers are that close in a wooded area, your structure is subject to burn-out.

Don't know exactly where to look, but frontier farms/ranches in the US West of the 1800s had that set of problems.

ETA - 'watchman' article published Friday, by happy chance: http://www.survivalblog.com/retreat-security/

dltd

Great thread.

I suggest a dog attack at night. Learn to train a pack, they are great sentries.

Ive heard of geese, but have no idea how they'd hold up in the mountains.

I also suggest lots of wood that's dried. You'll be off line so fires to cook and warmth, but smoke travels for miles. Solar cooker if possible.

Concealment is your first line of defense.

Wild animals suddenly acting different would be long distance alarms. Plant vegetation to keep game and birds around.

Ill be subscribing to this thread.

Maintain the idea of always having a BOB accessible with known (& practiced) escape routes.

Maintain a good relationship with your neighbors.

Have roaming centuries (even outside of your controlled area, neighbor contact is important here) that do not follow a set path/time but can report back immediately.

I love the canine idea.

Someone else in one of the other forums listed the idea of an IR camera on a black ballon linked with a black rope for survalance. If that's up during the day it will give your position away.

I live in the foothills on acreage. We live down a long gated road and we know all our neighbors. We all have dogs. We are all like minded. We all help each other now doing everything. Our common bond is family and religion.

We just need to keep vehicles from getting close to us. This has been taken care of. The rest is just distance and being able to defend it.

We know our area perfectly and know how to defend it and flank anyone. Remember it takes a 10 to 1 force to take a dug in defended position and most forces will withdraw with about 15 % casualties.

Don't own a bug out bag, don't need one. We are completely self sufficient.

If things get real bad we will keep any traffic from getting within 4 miles by closing one bridge.

+1 - and good thread idea :)

I'd also add the radios and communications into the picture much earlier - from an inventory standpoint. You'll want to start assessing how many and of what kind of radios the entire area has, to facilitate some kind of mesh network to provide early warning and mutual assistance.

The union creek journal was a pretty good read and had some examples of exactly this situation. Use the chronological listing if you are catching up.

I have also thought about how to build a defensible retreat starting from scratch that is very strategic yet doesn't look like a bunker. How to make your bunker seem like a resort.

In todays world of electronic motion detectors I will say they beat a live sentry who is holed up because of weather or dozing off. Many ways to perform this including remote driveway alarms etc. Leave the fences unrepaired. Just shows somebody is working on them. Fences only keep honest people honest.

Pile up some rocks and dirt 80 yards out that can be shot from several locations. When you see intruder and start shooting the first thing they are going to do is look for cover. When they get behind the rocks have second shooter take them out from secondary position. Of course pre-positioned explosives buried behind the ricks ends all problems for the bad guys.

If you have plenty of warning vacate the premisses and move to firing positions and wait for bad guys to get in to killing box and take them out. Then again throwing your hands up and running around and crying may work also.

That last paragraph sums it up for me. Move just off the property into prepared firing positions. have your vehicles and other items set up as a "funnel" to bring the BGs into the preferred killing zone. If they don't meet initial resistance when moving onto the property they will not suspect that you are there at all. Fire coming at them from multiple angles is a must.

Knowing they are on their way is key to this.

When considering this I think it's important not to forget the analog systems that have been in use for thousands of years.

The idea that you can be tipped off, bail on your camp and set up a crossfire - all without tipping anyone off - is a bigger feat than it sounds, and it relies on EVERYONE being in their right place. It also counts on a silent alarm, and the intruders finding no clues that tip them off to such a situation. Again - highly unlikely.

Get the shovels out, pile dirt and rocks against the outside walls, establish fields of fire. This can't be done with gasoline, it's backbreaking work and like anything else, the investment will make a huge difference.

This goes without saying, but it's critical to have your firebreak maintained, or everything is for naught.

As far as alertness, get into the mindset of would-be raiders. Would you attack midday or in low-light or night conditions? Like a previous poster mentioned, you would strike when the long odds were most tilted in your favor. Expect organized and experienced raiders, by the time they get to you, this isn't their first rodeo.

Use the low-light to your advantage. Simple noisemakers and fishing line could be surprisingly effective. Check out Ragnar Benson's Mantrapping. Put a guy on spikes and morale fades fast.

Be a smart monkey, and work with what you got.

If you have nightvision, you have a great advantage.

You need more people to be alert. An attack could come from anywhere at night. If you can build up fortifications then do that. Every deterrent is good. You can kill them while they are trying to get through the deterrent. Chokepoints are good. If there is only one way to enter that makes it easier to and you can have less people defending it. That's what the spartans did at Thermopylae. The only reason they lost was because a traitor told the persians about a path that went around the mountain.

Excellent thread. I'll be checking in as this progresses.

I talk about this in detail during my SHTF seminars.

Yeah your classes always sound pretty interesting.

THIS!!!

I've been alerted in the past by doves suddenly flushing out of the front yard. If you can maintain habitat for doves, house finches, pheasant, quail and any other year-round resident birds then you have a very inconspicuous early warning system that unlike a camera or a dog, cannot be easily shot, poisoned or lasered out. Avoid using chemical pesticides and you'll have food that keeps the insect eating stuff like warblers and whatnot around.

In the 1700s, a band of natives on the coast of Belize or Honduras or whereabouts was alerted to marauders by the resident parrots (conures of some sort) raising a ruckus.

Guys you've got some really great responses and I thank you. I have the idea I will turn these thread into a living document with the intent to have something that can be a "crib sheet" to print out as a reference.

I will summarize this in the top thread as we go along

----------------

Question for you guys:
Let's say the site has a 5k watt generator that we will encase in sandbags and a hut (to deaden the sound) and attach a muffler to (to deaden the sound). And a few hundred gallons of fuel (300) and 8-10 Sears-type 1000watt tripod arrays.

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...vkEWcSRi9nM1RL

Let's say we are NOT running the generator on a normal basis to conserve precious fuel as well as maintain OPSEC.

The question is: what would be the best response to DUSK or NIGHT contact at 1) hearing intense gunfire at the adjacent neighbors property or 2) at our own perimeter?

Fire the genset and light the perimeter? Or hold off????

What would be the best tactical location for these light arrays? Some hidden up in a tree? Lets say there was unlimited extension cordage available.

I figure once we fire up the light arrays, they become targets themselves.

Those old halogen lights are energy hogs. I use
LED outdoors now even tho they're still expensive and don't make the 500 to 1000W output yet. I can use thin gauge extension cords.

Another option might be to try car headlights with an inverter or car batteries at various points.

Also, how long does it take to fire the genset and throw the switch? That can be a serious time lag. I prefer to have current ready to flow and lights that come on instantly the minute something is detected. I base this concern on experience with compact fluorescent replacements for the old incandescents and halogens in outdoor fixtures. I could run by and trip the lights and be long gone before they came up to full power. Sometimes I'd trip them on purpose because I needed to do chores outside at night and the things took forever to get bright enough so that I could see what I was doing.


As far as placement of the lights goes, since they'll be lead magnets, don't place them too close to where your firing position will be. Lots of smaller lights will take longer to shoot out than fewer bigger lights. You might even hang them on swinging and/or spring loaded mounts so that they'll jiggle and swing and be harder to hit while still blinding the enemy, or have someone who's job it is to yank a cord at irregular tempo to get the lights swinging unpredictably.

Several years ago when I was travelling on business and the scaredy-cat wife was left at home alone, I rigged about 300 watts of motion detector lights in the front yard so that anyone approaching would be lit up like crazy from multiple angles. They would be staring blinded and blinking into a literal wall of light from behind which, my wife could draw a nice bead on their center of mass. With LED lamps, those same units and more could be switched on by a remote switch used for the outdoor Xmas lights while connected to much cheaper, longer and thinner extension cords.

Now I just have several IR illuminators up on the roof, in trees and against walls blasting 850nm into the area so that that it lights up like a prison yard with the cameras and NOD but the human eye only perceives dull red glows from the street. If you have NOD, preferably PVS-14 variants of some sort, IR might be a good option as well, or perhaps a good backup, the scenario being that your visible spectrum lamps get shot out pretty quickly and you have to fall back to IR.

There's a lot of things to consider. Once you get it all set up, it's time for wargames to test it all out in realistic conditions.

Guinea fowl.

Those are tree-roosting alarm systems, and they work for chicken feed.

Used to live on a farm in Florida when I was a kid; we'd come home late at night and wow! what a racket!

In your scenario above communications are going to be extremely important as well as pre-planning with the neighbors. Identifying your avenue to support this adjacent property without drawing fire and getting killed by the neighbors should be a big concern.

As far as lighting up the perimeter I'm torn, maybe the combat arms guys will weigh in.

I know I've been looking far and wide for a little battery (+solar would be cool) powered motion sensor that would light up a small IR light and maybe send a short audio warning over RF ala the MURS sensors. Ring a property about 50 meters out and have the watch with night vision. Then you could make a decision about the threat and engage appropriately.

Prior planning of mutual assistance in a neighborhood would help avoid blue on blue as well. Communications will be very important.

You might also want to look at attacks on farmers in present day South Africa & Zimbabwe.

I thought this was a decent book if you haven't already seen it:

http://www.amazon.com/Holding-Your-G...ng+your+ground

step 1 is a rifle ready to rock slung up in front of your armor that you are wearing. then procede with your plans.

ah yes, and if you are really trying to prepare large property defense (and that means night ops), you need to put a an/pvs unit as minimum equip on your roster. civ legal IR pointers and ilu's are cheap as well (tnvc.com has those). otherwise you are just gonna get over run in your theorized situations as the **** will happen at night.

here is some must reads

http://www.morovision.com/mnv-articl...-14-part2.html
http://www.ir55.com/night_vision.html
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_6_18/22...s_.html&page=1
www.tnvc.com

second hand can be found even in our marketplace, just do a search.

Peacocks work also, and scream loudly.

The trouble with birds and fowl is they squawk and make noise at everything. A owl hoots and they raise heck, a cat walks in the general area and it's a bird emergency. I have had them, not worth a spit and you cannot keep them out of a garden and they poop everywhere. Peacock does taste better than turkey if you are curious.

When my dogs alert, something is amiss. Cross the line and you get get attacked.

Have any of the posters with all these tactical ideas ever lived in the country, it sure doesn't seem like it.

Fire breaks are a way of life every year. People watch too much TV and read too many books written by people that live in the city and give advice they think they know about.

Drones, that is funny, flood lights work both ways, wild animals acting differently is beyond belief.

I wish all of you good luck.

+1
He recommends Night Vision as a game changer. I'm considering on of these as a starter. http://www.opticsplanet.com/atn-nigh...eneration.html

My advice: get out.

Based on the modern day experience of ethnic cleansing of white landowners in South Africa, "defending the homestead" is a bad strategic move. When the bad guys make their move they will have done some homework beforehand. They'll know you have cameras and your specific security arrangements, they'll know your daily patterns, and most crucially: those of your family and loved ones.

As such, any protracted engagement without backup won't end well for the defenders. Unless you know an outside party can arrive to back you up, the bad guys will win;because they can come and go. You can't. They can evacuate wounded and substitute/rotate personell. You can't. They can resupply their ammo and food sources. You cannot.

Against a temporary threat like the Katrina situation, bugging in makes sense. When all bets are off and no government assistance is forthcoming, you're an isolated target. Sure, a huge stash of ammo and determined resistance will stop a poorly armed and desperate raiding party. It won't stop a crew of well equipped and motivated thugs who won't stop until you and yours are dead because of your race, creed, religion, etc.

It depend so much on what is actually happening and that cant be predicted.
Your best defense other than being basically prepared ( equipment ,basic food), is to use your brain and be fluid.

True, I guess, but it assumes 'super-predators' will be the norm. To some extent, the premise of the thread assumes 'better than average' preppers, too.

I think it's reasonable to assume a temporary disruption. A long term problem - years - gives lots of time for both raiders and defenders to evolve (losing the weakest, probably) and consolidate.

South Africa is a bad example. Much more murder and violence in the urban areas. The farmers who take even mild approach to their security are rarely attacked. The bad guys are hunted down and killed.

Distance is always going to be friend of the rural land dweller just as it is now. Far more bad things happen in the city because they are close to you. Out here in the sticks, everybody knows everybody and their business. A band of marauding thugs won't last long. Remember they have to get here first and bring everything they shoot, drink and eat. This is a daunting task even of a supported military force.

Nope I'm staying put, time and distance is my friend.

Had a pair of Eclectus parrots about 25 years ago. They lived in the living room about 10 feet from the front door. The bedrooms were waaaay in the back of the house, down about 40 feet of hallway. One night they made sounds we'd never heard them make before or since. I yelled at them to shut up and fell back to sleep. That morning the screens and potted plants were removed from a particularly low front window.

Spent my time 20 miles from the nearest town of 14,000 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Did a lot of moving and keeping out of sight there. Spent plenty of time in Apple Valley when it was population 5000. Miss that.

One thing that was pretty reliable in the "UP" was whitetails grazing stupidly at the edge of fields at regular times and places from the first growth in spring to a few weeks after the killing frosts. They were pretty darn reliable indicators that someone or something was approaching. Of course they always disappeared 24 hours before opening day...just like the damn lobsters here when bug season starts.


True dat. That's why its important to get this stuff sorted out now. I treat the floods like a weapon mounted light: turn it on just long enough to identify and destroy the problem's scotopic vision and then turn it the #%$& off and don't turn it on until you've moved to a different location.




This has been my concern. For this reason I'd advise having the option of GTFO. You can always regroup and snipe targets of opportunity. I'd hate to be a marauding party holed up in a farmhouse taking fire from a treeline a couple hundred yards off.

Our little Hamlet has the 2 bigest above gound water storage units of their type in North America. The topography is quite naturally defesible with little work. We're an ag community so there's lot of equipment available, we would muster for sure, and then still grow crops. PAX

Now, the classical response to this problem is the feudal system - the interpersonal obligation and acceptance of rank and status included - with castles or other strong-points for the low-level productive types to retreat into in times of danger, and the parasitic soldier types to patrol, respond to some incursions, and defend the strong points.

This coincided with walled cities; castles and walled cities were pretty good answers (barring the occasional traitor who might open a gate) until effective artillery could knock holes in the walls.

That level of defensive prep and capability is a couple of steps higher than the OP.

If you if you gave a topographic map, I'm pretty sure others would suggest what to do with the choke points, where they're at, exit routes and so on.

Just draw it best to scale and post it.

Some techniques here: http://ebookbrowse.com/msl-201-l07b-...-pdf-d54759783 (part of FM 3-21-8)

Don't know how much can be used - aimed at an infantry platoon.

Then, there's chapter 5 of FM 3-06.11(FM 90-10-1) (Combined Arms ops in Urban Terrain) and MCWP 3-35 (Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT))

A simple plan is boobie traps. A nice spike pit works great as an early warning sign. You can hear the blood curtialin screams for miles when they impalile themselves. It is also a great demoralizer to raiders to see your buddy impailed. snare traps that are made out of barb wires. I can go on. I do not enjoy killing others but If it comes between my family dying and you dying I chose the later. If we learned anything from nam its that boobie traps are deadly.

Absent an active insurgency which has institued a policy of random acts of violence, it simply informs the group whose member just got impaled that there is something worth defending (and thus worth looking for and attacking) in the area.

I seem to remember it "demoralizing(?)" our troops in Viet-Nam right into razing whole viliages in retaliation. Not exactly the type of reaction you are looking for in a protect my family scenario.

No we learned that booby traps work great at wounding people which puts a burden on the rest to care for and transport them. VERY few people died from booby-traps.

Solar charged motion detectors with IR lights would be a good solution for early warning without letting potential invaders know they have been spotted. Have your sentry wear NV, the IR lights in the distance should be clearly visable and allow for identification and potential targeting if needed. For monitoring roads and trails further away from the homestead, IR lasers could be used in place of IR lights. Have the laser pointed straight up in the air, the beam should be visable with NV from quite a distance. Having them set up along a trail at specified intervals could also allow some estimate of the size of an opposing force. If the sensors light off one at a time, probably a small group. If more than one sensor is popping at once, potentially a larger force could be moving along the trail.

Using IR illumination and lasers in conjunction with NV is one method, but the same concept could be applied to sensors using other types of remote indication. Sensors wired to send a radio signal might actually be a better idea, as they would work equally well at night or during the day.

In a SHTF scenerio wounds will become fatal esecially if done right. The raiders will not have any airlifts to get them medical treatment and if they did they are already too big a force for you to handle. Boobietraps are used as a buffer zone far from your property you shouldnt use it if you have a small property If you want concealment. If its a small property though you would have already been discovered and you might want boobie traps as a last line of defense say spots for them to take cover but its realy spike traps or whatever. You shuld always have a hidden esscape path aswell from your house if you need to get out say a secret tunnel. Make sure you have a concealed fall back position too with hidden supply stash say burried or in a hidden wall or something. and remeber a wounded raider is more easy target. Thats the military thinking behind the 5.56 nato it often doesn't kill but wounds and then that guy needs medical help and you shoot the guy who trys to help him. As my brother taught me(a marine) shoot them in the pelvis it breaks their bones and they cant walk and when their budy comes to help him shoot that guy too lol. Remeber a SHTF scenerio is a war of attrition not an all out war.

I forgot to mention the best way to defend a position is to harden the position. Make a multlayered defensive structure. If one position is compramised or close to it fall back to the next spot. Make sure that all the entrances to it are chock points. One way the Japanise were able to defend from invasion so well was how their castles were desigend this way from invading sameri. You could have ports to shoot out of for your cover but as you retreat close them so they cant use them. This forces the raiders to get slaugtered. I also recomend getting dragons teeth. These are used to stop tanks. This will prevent them from being able to use any vehicles or tanks they have gotten along their way from raiding partys. A good way to make them cheep is rebar them with your own homemade cement. A good minumum size is four feet high and at least three feet wide. If you want to go over kill with the dragonsteeth use a fence post to have it ancored in the ground. If you want a hardned structure you need to think castle and make sure everything is fire proof otherwise a well places maltove cocktail ends it all.