How to Create a Safe Room in Your House or ApartmentDaisy Luther Some folks may read this and think to themselves, I dont need a safe room when I have my 12 gauge shotgun and my 9 mm. Thats just running away. I completely understand your point. Most of the people who read prepping and survival sites are not of a retreat mentality. But, if a gang of 12 thugs (possibly wearing badges) kicks down your door, how likely are you toshoot every single one of them before someone gets off a lucky shot and hits you? Hint: If you arent tactically trained, the likelihood of this is pretty slim. Heres another reason: do you have vulnerable family members in the house? Children? A spouse or elderly relative? Someone who just isnt a fighter? Even if you intend to engage, you may have people in the home who are not willing or able to do so, and it will be better for you if they are safely out of the way. A safe room is honestly just another prep. It doesnt mean you are cowardly. It means you are ready for a variety of scenarios and that the safety of your family is paramount. Itis a layer of protection that allows vulnerable peopleto retreat until help arrives. Heres a perk: another great use for your safe room is that you can stash your valuables there. Most break-ins occur when you arent home. If your valuables are locked away, a random tweaker searching for things to sell to support his habit is not going to be able to access your important papers, your fine jewelry, your firearms, or your most prized possessions. When you retreat to your safe room, you have one goal: to end any possibility of interaction with an unwelcome person. Please dont call it a panic room. That indicates that you are a scared victim. You are retreating to a safer location because you dont intend to be a victim. In a military gun battle, do soldiers move behind sandbags or into trenches? Of course. They want to limit the likelihood of being shot or otherwise injured. You may or may not be a trained soldier, but your goal is the same. It isto avoid being injured by a person who may be intent on injuring you. A safe room is not a bunker. You probably arent going to be holed up in there for days during a stand-off. It is a point of retreat until help arrives. The #1 rule of the safe room:DO NOT LEAVE IT UNTIL YOU ARE SAFE AND YOUR HOME HAS BEEN CLEARED. NOT FOR ANY REASON.A criminal will threaten, cajole, manipulate, and bully to try to make you come out.DONT DO IT. Weve often talked about the importance of having a plan (as well as a few back-up plans) and running practice drills. A safe room is no different. All family members who are physically able should be able to quickly access the room. If you have several people in your household, you might want to put a keypad access on the door to the safe room so that whoever has retreated first is safely locked in without worrying about admitting the other family members. Map out as many different ways as possible to get to the safe room from various locations in the house. This is a great time to get the kids involved, because children are explorers by nature. They may know routes that you had never even considered. Practice, practice, practice. Run timed drills and make a game out of how quickly all family members can get to the safe room and get the door secured. Of course, the success of moving quickly to your safe room rests upon being alerted that someone is in your home. You should have security measures in place that let you know that the home has been breached: The more of these early warnings you have, the better off youll be. Someone might get through one of the alarms, but how likely are they to get through 3 or 4 without you being alerted? If you are building a new home from the ground up, you have the unique opportunity to have this special room added to the plans. In this case, youre far less limited by the existing design and layout of the house. In fact, there are companies whose sole purpose is designing safe rooms for homes and businesses. One of the most reputable, Gaffco, offers consultations, plans, and even construction of these rooms. Additionally, they offer pods that were originally designed for the US military, which can be incorporated into the design of your home or connected to the home via a breezeway. These options are top of the line, and may be out of the affordable price range for the average family. Most of us arent in that building process though, so we need to adapt part of our living space to make a safe room. Some people adapt a large walk-in closet or pantry, while others refurbish a room in their home.DuPont offers a Stormroom that is reinforced with Kevlar and is epoxied to your garage floor. Its designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, so its a good bet that it will also withstand your average home invasion. These start at $6000 for the smallest size. Here are some important qualities: Of course, finding all of these things, sitting there in one room, waiting for you to reinforce the door may not be likely so you have to work with what youve got. Some good options are: If you intend to go full out and reinforce the walls, it will be less expensive to convert the smallest area that will house the required number of family members. It is of vital importance to locate the safe room in a place that can be quickly and easily accessed by family members. If you have to run past the entry through which intruders just burst, you probably arent going to make it to the safe room. Remember, the most ideal safe room situation is one in which the criminal has no idea that you were home or, if he knows youre home, has no idea where you may have gone. One important thing to remember is that your safe room doesnt have to only be a safe room. The best use of space would have the room used regularly for other purposes. Most of the modifications youll make dont have to be obvious. For example, if youre reinforcing the walls, you can drywall over your reinforcements, paint the wall a happy color, and carry on with your life. An attractive exterior type door can be painted to match the other interior doors in your home. Even if you live in an apartment or condo, you can make some subtle changes to create a safe place to retreat. The key here is to do the best you can with your resources and the space you have available. Lets talk about the most important modifications. The very first line of defense is the door you will slam behind you. For many of us, this is where the majority of the money will be spent. Forget about flimsy interior doors. Most of them are hollow core and your average everyday axe-wielding murderer or gangbanger intent on mayhem can get through them by kicking or punching through. Go to Home Depot and get yourself the very best exterior steel slabdoor that you can afford. If your safe room is an ordinary room in the house, look for a door that can be painted to blend in with the other doors in the house. Theres no sense making it obvious that this room is special. Theres no point in having a great door in a cruddy door frame. Your door is only as solid as the frame that holds it, so replace your standard interior door frame with reinforced steel. Get the absolute best quality you can afford, then paint it to match the rest of the door frames in your home. Hang your door so it swings inward. Then you can add extra layers of security to the door. You want to add more locks than just the doorknob type. For your primary lock, choose a heavy duty reinforced deadbolt system. You can also add a jimmy-proof security lock like this one for an added deterrent, but this should NOT be your primary lock. You can add a door bar, the hardware for which would be fairly unobtrusive when the bar is not across it. If you make all of these changes, NO ONE is getting through that door by kicking it in. Windows are a definite weak point in a safe room. If you are using a room that is also used for other purposes (like a master bedroom) you probably have them. Dont despair they too can be reinforced. The biggest threat with a window, of course, is that the glass will easily break, allowing someone to either get in the room or shoot people who are in the room. You can go all-out and replace the window in that room with a bulletproof security window. Although they are very expensive, you may decide its worthwhile since its just for one room. If this is out of your price range, you can purchase ballistic film and apply it to your existing window. This video shows you how much a high-quality ballistic film will withstand. If youre doing this, do NOT skimp on quality. This is where the serious expense comes in. A round from a 9mm handgun can easily penetrate the walls of the average home. Dry wall does NOT stop bullets, not even from a weaker caliber gun. Thats why one of the most important rules of gun safety is to not only know your target, but what is beyond your target. If your walls arent sturdy enough to withstand bullets, then youve basically just put your family into a box to be shot more easily. One way to lessen the expense of this is to choose a room in the basement. If you build your retreat into a corner, then you have two exterior walls that are concrete surrounded by dirt virtually unbreachable. Then you only have two walls to worry about. If you are in an apartment, the laws in most states insist that walls separating two apartments must be fire resistant. Therefore, the wall between your apartment and the next could be made of cement, providing one wall of safety. Free plans for a variety of safe rooms are offered by the Department of Homeland Security. As well,FEMA offers free plans for a safe room that is designed to withstand natural disasters. This could be easily adapted for home security purposes too. There are a few different ways to reinforce the walls of your safe room. Some of the following options may be out of your price range or skill level, and some may not be practical for your living situation. Temporaryoptions: For the average family, many of these solutions can be out of reach. If you rent, you probably wont want to do major construction, either. Its best to choose a room that is already as sturdy as possible and then reinforce the weak points. Although these options arent anywhere near as resistant as the ones above, they are better than nothing. The Camouflaged Safe Room Even though safe rooms arent really a fun topic, a secret hidden safe room is the kind of thing that stirs the imagination. After all, how many awesome movies from your youth began with the magical discovery of a stairway or room hidden behind a bookcase or a mysterious doorway at the back of the closet? The success of a camouflaged safe room rests on the residents of the home quickly moving into hiding without the intruders even knowing that they are home. This is the best-case scenario for an event during which you need to retreat to a safe room. You dont have to have a mysterious Victorian mansion to have a hidden safe room. Amazon sells a hidden door hinge system that you can use to create a bookcase door. (You can also buy plans for installing a bookcase door or even an entire bookcase door kit.) Other options might include a trap door in the floor hidden under an attached throw rug or a discreet door at the back of a closet behind all the clothing. Dont rely strictly on the secret entry for your security. It should be followed up by the reinforcements described above, in the event that the intruders discover youve gotten away. As was discussed in the introduction, a safe room is simply a retreat. If you dont have help coming, you could remain trapped in there indefinitely, particularly if the intruders decide to wait you out. Remember the #1 rule of the safe room?DO NOT LEAVE IT UNTIL YOU ARE SAFE AND YOUR HOME HAS BEEN CLEARED. NOT FOR ANY REASON.A criminal will threaten, cajole, manipulate, and bully to try to make you come out. DONT DO IT. You may not have had time to call 911 or your well-armed neighbor before sheltering in your safe room. If that is the case, then you need to be able to summon assistance from within the safe room. Here are a few suggestions: Once you have 911 on the line, be sure to let them know that you are armed. (Cops hate surprises.) If at all possible, stay on the line with the 911 operator so that you can confirm that help has arrived without opening the door of your safe room. Supplies You want to have enough supplies to stay in your safe room for 24-48 hours. Since this is a safe room and not a bunker, you dont need a years supply of beans and rice in there. Defense Heres the bottom line: If an intruder somehow manages to breach your safe room, the time for retreat is completely over. Theres no option left you have to be prepared to fight like your life depends on it. If an intruder has gone to the trouble to break through all of your defenses to get to you, your life most likely does depend on your ability to mount an aggressive defense. Aside from your primary defense weapon (which youre probably carrying with you), all of your other weapons should be stored in your safe room. Your extra ammunition should be stored there too. Is every person of reasonable age in your family able to handle a weapon? If not, its time to sign up for classes or go to the range. You need to have a plan in the event your defenses are breached. You dont want any friendly fire injuries to occur. This plan will be different for every family based on individual skills, on available weapons, and on the set-up of your safe room. The safe room is your final point of retreat. If someone brings the battle to you, you must be prepared, both mentally and physically. Otherwise, you and your family are like fish in a barrel, neatly corralled targets for the intruders. What would you add to this list? Whether you actually have a safe room in your home, or youve considered building one, do you have some things to add to the lists above? Please share them on the original articleso thatthe suggestions may be added to benefit other readers. Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, where this first appeared, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca If you enjoyed this article, please Vote for The Organic Prepper as a top prepping web site. 