Looter Deterrents You Never Thought Of

There are many ways to prevent looters from entering your home or to deter them from trying.

You can use traps, cameras, lights, and other methods which have been written about extensively, but there are several ways that you can deter someone from trying to loot your home that you may not have ever thought of.

Signs

One way to deter someone from looting your home is to convince them that it would be unwise to make an attempt.

Posting signs around your property is a great way to inform anyone approaching the house that there are going to be obstacles in their way.

The signs you post don’t have to be true; if you have a chain link fence around your property, you can post a sign that says ‘Danger Electrified Fence.’

While it may not deter everyone, most people will not want to test that claim in case it happens to be true.

A few examples of signs that can act as a deterrent are:

Guard dog on duty
Premises under video surveillance
This home is insured by Smith and Wesson
Trespassers will be shot

? Why You Should Never Put A Tall Fence Around Your House

The critical thing to remember is that being so overt about your home being occupied and well-defended should only be considered in circumstances where looting appears to be rampant and indiscriminate.

Don’t Look Like A Victim

One way to deter looters, that may be our current neighbors, is to never look like a victim starting well before SHTF. Walk around with your head up and shoulders back, always being aware of your surroundings.

When you exercise, ensure people in the neighborhood see you so they know you are fit. If you practice martial arts, don’t hide that fact; ensure that the people around you know you are training to defend yourself.

Without disclosing how many firearms you have, you can drop into conversation that you train with firearms regularly. If you win any shooting competitions, you can also drop that into conversation with your neighbors.

If you are proficient in firearms, offering to take your neighbor out shooting is an excellent way to show them how skilled you are without seeming threatening.

If your neighbors see you as someone who should not be messed with, they will be less likely to target your home for looting.

Fake Cameras And Security Devices

Since video surveillance is so affordable, there is no reason why you should not have the perimeter of your home covered by video surveillance.

However, even if you have complete surveillance coverage, adding a few fake cameras in visible locations will give anyone approaching the building the impression that they are under more surveillance than they are actually under.

Likewise, you could install fake security devices as decoys to funnel looters into a particular area or deter them altogether. For example, fake motion sensors, trip wires, or visible alarm devices can divert attention from hidden devices.

Audio Traps

There are a lot of traps that one could set up to alert the people inside the home to anyone approaching the house.

Another type of trap that you could set would be one that, when triggered, plays an audio file through a hidden speaker. The sound played could be simply a loud siren or, better yet, your voice challenging the intruder.

The trigger for the trap can be a pressure switch, tripwire, motion sensor, or anything else you can think of.

Dogs

When your dog scrambles to bark at everyone who comes to the front door or walks by the house, it can be more than a little irritating and many people will train their pups not to bark.

However, I always recommend encouraging your dog to bark whenever someone approaches, regardless of who they are.

Ideally, we want our canine companions to believe that their job is to guard us and the home so that they will be woken from a dead sleep whenever they hear footsteps outside or someone knocking.

The great thing about the sound of a barking dog coming from inside the home is that no one can see how big the dog is or whether or not their tail is wagging furiously.

Any would-be looters would be left with the understanding that entering the house may result in being attacked by an angry fur missile. If you do not have a dog, you can use an audio trap that plays the sound of a dog barking and growling.

Making The Property Look Looted

Looters will probably pass by any houses that look like they have already been ransacked. All you need to do is spread a few household items, papers, boxes, etc., around the front of the property.

The goal is to make it look like someone went into the home, grabbed a bunch of stuff and discarded whatever they didn’t find value in on the front lawn.

Another thing you can do is spray paint some graffiti around the house to send home the point that unsavory characters have already been inside, and the home has been looted already.

Even if the looters decide to see if anything is worth looting, they will do so, assuming that the house is empty and you can take the looters by surprise.

Obvious Barricades

Typically, when preparing our homes against looters, we aim not to make our preparations obvious. The countermeasures we deploy usually work best if the people who walk into them are unaware of their existence.

There is a time and a place to fly under the radar, not drawing any attention. However, there will be a time that you may want anyone approaching the house to know you are ready for them. An excellent way to do that is to barricade your home’s entrances and windows and make it obvious that getting into your home will be very difficult.

Heavy shutters or thick plywood over the windows with shooting ports cut into them will announce to anyone approaching that you have put some serious thought into hardening the structure.

These were six looter deterrents that I was able to come up with that many people may not have considered. But, of course, there are many other ways to deter looters; the only real limiting factor for coming up with new and inventive ways to do so is your imagination.

At the end of the day, when faced with looting in your neighborhood, you will have to be creative and adaptable to deter people from seeing your house as a target.

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