Here’s what to do during a home invasion:
- Immediately get to your designated safe room
- Call 911 as soon as you can, staying quiet
- Decide whether you can escape
- If not, stay there until police can arrive
- Make a fatal funnel
There is nothing worse than the thought of your home security system failing or being disabled, allowing a criminal access to your home.
For your safety and peace of mind, it’s a good idea to have a home invasion survival plan.
In this article, I’ll elaborate further on these tips, including how to train for a home invasion. I’ll also discuss your defense options and what you should do after the home invasion has ended.
Home Invasion Survival Tips
Before a home invasion ever occurs, having a plan of action will be your best option.
While you may think you’ve taken care to beef up the security of your residence, you can find weaknesses by thinking like the bad guys.
Assume that your alarm system, door locks, security cameras and every other defense mechanisms do not work. Which room in your home will be a safe place to hide?
That is where your designated safe room comes into play. If you have other family members in your household, you may decide to create a safe word, as well.
Using this code word is a quick, easy way to tell them to get to the safe room immediately. The simplest word of that nature is “escape.”
Now that your family safety plan in place, here’s what to do during a home invasion.
First Thing – Let Everyone Know What’s Going On
The sounds of a break-in might not wake everyone, especially if you have senior citizens or heavy sleepers in the house.
Quickly and quietly go from one bedroom door to another and let everyone know that someone is in the house.
Then, Get To The Safe Room Immediately
Usher everyone to the safe room. Once you arrive, you should take the following preventative measures:
- Secure all the doors and windows.
- Don’t turn on any lights or anything else in the room such as electronics or an overhead fan.
- Stay quiet and listen.
- Should the intruder be outside the door, you might see their feet through the gap under the door. You might also hear their footsteps.
Next, Call 911
Now – as quietly as you can – call 911. Emergency operators are used to situations in which all you can do is whisper your responses rather than talk at normal volume.
Try to speak clearly and distinctly so the emergency operator can get your information and dispatch a police officer to your location.
What if the intruder is right outside your door and you’re afraid to even whisper?
In a dangerous situation like that, the emergency operator may ask you to press a button on your phone’s keypad.
Pressing a button once might indicate a “yes” response and pushing the button twice could be code for “no.”
Decide To Stay In The Room Or Escape
If you’re pondering whether you should stay where you are in a home invasion or try to get out, the former is usually the safer and better option.
That said, in some instances, escaping is warranted.
For example, if the intruder is trying to get into the safe room and you don’t have anywhere to hide, you’d want to escape.
You must have a means of escaping, such as a window. If the window is too high up and you can’t land safely, then you’ll have to stay where you are.
You also have to consider that, among a group, all of you must escape. This can take precious seconds – an amount of time that you may not have.
Wait For Police To Arrive
Once you’ve called 911, the local authorities should be on their way. Stay on the line with the emergency operator, who will tell you when it’s safe to come out.
How To Train For A Home Invasion
According to the most recent FBI statistics (2019), violent crime accounted for 1,203,808 cases across the United States.
Although these figures actually show a slight decrease from 2018, you still don’t want to be an easy target for potential home invasions.
Your chances of survival increase when you take the appropriate safety measures I mentioned in the prior section.
They go up even more when you take steps to form an escape plan, then follow that up by training to hone your skills in case of a potential threat.
When most people talk about their skills, they’re usually referring to being proficient in things like basketball or video games or writing – not so much surviving a home invasion.
Yet your survival absolutely comes down to possessing a certain skill set.
The good news? It’s never too late to learn.
Here are the three pillars of home invasion survival you should train in:
Evasion
Standing up to a home invader in a one-on-one or even a group scenario is rarely a good idea. Instead, the best course of action is to evade dangerous situations as often as possible.
This isn’t as hard as you’d think considering we have a built-in fight or flight response that will alert us of potentially bad scenarios and help us escape.
Evasion starts long before the home intrusion. It’s in the preventive measures you should already have in place.
For example, before you go to bed every night, check all your locks, including window and door locks. If any are unlocked or askew, immediately lock them.
Monitor your security system operation, especially in cases like a power outage or when your Internet goes down.
If it’s too late for all that and the home intruder is already inside, evasion skills will help you decide whether you can safely escape.
Remember, if your safe room’s window leads to a seven-foot drop with nothing but hard ground or grass underneath and you have no makeshift rope to slide down (even bedding), then you have to stay put.
Arming Yourself
If you own a defensive weapon, now would be the time to arm yourself with it.
We’ll talk more in the next section on how to use your defense weapon, but you want to always have it accessible in your designated safe room.
This room should be locked otherwise or the gun stored in a safe, especially if you have children in the house. Kids and guns never mix!
Barricading The Room
The last part of your training is barricading the safe room. Yes, there’s a right and wrong way to do it.
You want to create a barricade that’s 90 degrees from wherever the anticipated movement or place of attack is, which is typically around the door.
How To Defend Yourself In A Home Invasion
The doorknob of your safe room jiggles. You can feel your breath hitch in your throat as you sink down lower behind your barricade.
After a bit more jiggling, the door swings open and you see the shadow of a figure standing in the entryway.
You cannot safely escape at this point, as what if the home intruder has a weapon? If you try to get to the window, you know you’ll be shot immediately.
You also cannot hide, as the intruder will likely find you.
Your only option is to defend yourself, but how?
1) Choose A Firearm
Should you decide to use a firearm, you have to select a type. Each firearm has its advantages and disadvantages.
For example, shotguns can do some serious damage, but they’re lengthy firearms that can be unwieldy to some. They’re also not quick to aim precisely.
Rifles are powerful guns as well, but they have the same disadvantages as shotguns.
Handguns – which are not the same as pistols – are the most viable defense option against home invaders.
Guns aren’t your only defensive weapon, by the way. If you have access to them inside the house, then a shovel, a steel baseball bat, a stun gun, or a knife can all work for defense.
You can also use mace or pepper spray, but be aware that pepper spray will only temporarily blind the intruder, not injure them in any significant way.
2) Know How To Use Your Own Weapon
No matter the defensive weapon you choose, you do not want to be face-to-face with a home intruder the first time you use your weapon.
If you falter for too long, it could be your life on the line.
Fire your gun at a shooting range until you gain confidence. Practice on a dummy with a baseball bat or shovel so you know which areas to target.
Even pepper spray or mace isn’t as easy to use as it seems, so try spraying it a time or two.
3) Make A Fatal Funnel
With your weapon at the ready, create what’s known as a fatal funnel. Choke points, stairways, and doorways are all fatal funnels.
In your safe room, there’s a fatal funnel or two, as well. When standing in the corner of the room that’s opposite the door, this space is your fatal funnel.
What’s the advantage of a fatal funnel? You can see the intruder – often before they see you – and then decide to attack.
4) Aim And Fire
While shooting someone is always a last resort, for the safety of your family or yourself, you need to be prepared to follow through with deadly force.
When the home intruder enters the safe room, aim your handgun. You want to stick to their center mass, which is the middle of their body.
Anticipate that your shots won’t be perfect and will likely miss.
When shooting around center mass, the possibility exists that you could kill the home invader. That’s also true even if they’re shot in the legs or arms too.
What To Do After A Home Invasion
The home invasion is over, the police took the criminal out in handcuffs, and now you’re left with the wreckage and trauma.
Your mind will be in a million places, but what you do next is very important, so make sure you follow these steps.
1) File A Police Report
Even if nothing was stolen, a criminal breached your home and terrorized you.
You will definitely want to press whatever charges you can, so make sure you file a police report while the cops are still in your home.
2) Document Everything
With your smartphone, go from room to room and take photographs of all the destruction.
Don’t touch anything, only take pictures. You can jot down notes as well.
3) Contact Your Home Insurance Company
Your home insurance provider needs to know what happened.
Depending on the extent of the damage and what was stolen, your policy should kick right in.
4) Consider Therapy
A home invasion is incredibly nerve-wracking, and that’s putting it mildly. You could develop anxiety, depression, and/or post-traumatic stress disorder from the event.
It’s not a bad idea to schedule an appointment with a counselor or therapist to talk through your feelings on the break-in.
5) Make Your Home Safer
When the dust has settled, think logically about why the home invasion occurred in the first place. What vulnerability was the criminal able to exploit?
Whether you upgrade your security system with more motion sensor lights and alarms or you get new windows or doors, your home will be harder to invade.
Have I Answered Your Questions About What To Do During A Home Invasion?
A home invasion is one of the scariest things that can ever happen, especially if you live alone.
It will be hard to maintain a clear head, but remembering the information in this article is important for your survival!
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