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Lighting Stratagy for Home Defense

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#1 ·
Three things that are involved in tactics of all types are light, movement, and angles. Effective tactics is knowing how to exploit all three to your advantage. Let's talk about light- application is home defense.

The majority of home invasions and burglaries occur during the hours of darkness. A basic principle is outside bright light / inside no light. Let me explain. Bright lights on the outside of your house accomplish three important things.

They illuminate the exterior of the home, warding off those who prefer to operate in shadows.

Help emergency personnel identify your residence by description or address.

Detract from the night vision of those entering the home. This hampers not only their ability to operate in a dark environment, but makes their eyes hungry for light. That is an asset when you utilize hand held or weapon mounted lights. For those that utilize dogs as part of their layered defense, this is in the dogs favor as well. They have good night vision. The only thing worse than getting attacked by a dog, is getting attacked by one you cannot see.

When you go to bed at night and "button up" the house for the night, the darker inside the better; especially on the floor that is most likely to be breached by an intruder.

A principle of tactical light use is to work from darkness into light whenever possible. Bad guys seldom carry flashlights, either because they are too stupid to be prepared, or smart enough to know how much attention a small light in a dark area can attract.

In your environment, you need to control the light. Both room lights and hand held or weapon mounted lights. You are in control. You know your floor plan and where the furniture is. They do not. They are entering into your dark cave.

If your layered defense has failed until this point and you are confronted by an intruder in the darkness, his eyes starved for light, will be quick to focus on your light. This give you two advantages.

One, after naturally focusing on the light, they will reflexively bring their hands up to protect their eyes. The darker the environment, the more severe the reaction. This will allow you to assess for weapons.

Provides you with a temporary "wall of light" to operate behind, whether it is to engage a threat or move to another area.

When possible, use light on a threat like you would cover them with the muzzle of a firearm, from cover. Do not be pulled from a good position closer to a threat unless for some reason it provides a better advantage.

Light is in every environment, either by it's presence or absence. Learn to use it as a tool.
 
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#3 ·
On another thread sometime ago a poster stated that he keep a night light on behind the chock point areas in his home so a BG would have to move through it and be silhouetted for defensive action by the homeowner.

The homeowner would then be taking action from the dark at the silhouetted intruder in his house.

Personally, I do not know if this would work better than the idea of a totally dark house and the use of a bright light used by the homeowner.
 
#4 ·
FWIW, we keep exterior windows covered with blinds so no one can look in from outside. Inside is partially lit. Unless power were cut, there would always be sufficient light to easily see and identify.

While this gives up the advantage of working from behind a light, it has other practical advantages --notably not having to fumble with a flashlight or rig a gun with a rail light, and it is easy to find your way to the frig.

There have been a few reports about spouses being shot when they went to the kitchen or bathroom and the shooter didn't realize the spouse was not still in bed. With some lights on, that solves the risk of this problem.
 
#6 ·
The only thing worse than getting attacked by a dog, is getting attacked by one you cannot see.
I came home from work one night when our power was out. I have a big black lab and he thought I was a bad guy. I came in the door and heard GGGRRROOOWWWLLLLL!!! I nearly pooped my pants. An angry black dog in the pitch dark is scary! I called to him and then I heard his happy "I'm glad you're home" panting and tail wag thumping on things.
 
#7 ·
Thanks for the information Mercop and especially throwing in this part.

When possible, use light on a threat like you would cover them with the muzzle of a firearm, from cover. Do not be pulled from a good position closer to a threat unless for some reason it provides a better advantage.

A lot of people fail to realize, just because you have a light and the BG doesn't that automatically gives you the advantage, not necessarily true, you possibly could be opening yourself up to instance fire because that light also pinpoints your position to the BG in case you don't pinpoint his/her position perfectly.

Another option is to have your house and it's not all that expensive anymore, have your lights hooked to a remote control device, thus you control the lights anywhere in the house and you can turn that lamp on in the corner from cover and the BGs attention is diverted to that area and you've got them.
 
#8 ·
Lighting Strategy for Home Defense

All of the interior and exterior lights are on a whole house X-10 system. We have a master all on/off control in the bedroom. It is also set up for all in or all out at the same time. So if someone gets in and starts turning things on, I can turn them back off.
 
#14 ·
All of the interior and exterior lights are on a whole house X-10 system. We have a master all on/off control in the bedroom. It is also set up for all in or all out at the same time. So if someone gets in and starts turning things on, I can turn them back off.
Thanks BT, I couldn't think of their names, but knew they were out there.
 
#10 ·
We have motion lights on our outside doors. My wife was coming in with a neighbor one night. They noticed an unfamiliar man approaching the yard quickly as they rounded the corner of the house going to the front door. My wife made a point to walk into the motion detected area and set off the front door light. The guy was a couple steps into the yard by then and immediately turned back into the road. Now if I could find one that worked at the driveway.
 
#11 ·
I never really understood the value of light until I put in a security light system on the perimeter of Pepper Grinder Ammo Dump in Thailand. It was a very flat site with revetment hardstands and classic earth bermed magazines. The design engineer placed perimeter quartz iodide floods ~6 foot above grade and removed all the street type lighting inside the compound. When I first saw the plans, my thought was negative. During the project and after completion, I went outside the wire at night and tried to discover weakness. There really was none. You could not see movement inside the compound and the opposite side lighting was so low that it did not set up silhouette situations. Surprising how few times over the years I have seen really good defensive lighting designs.

When I built this house, I set up the outside floods to be controlled by inside switching. The inside of my house is kept dark. I know the layout and can get into cover in the dark. My plan - intruder into silhouette and keep myself out of silhouette. My house is small and has an open floorplan, so I can cover most movement lanes from two cover positions that are in the dark and do not have back lighting. Hope I never have to try this plan.
 
#15 ·
Tip from CCW class regarding light

A tip that came up during my CCW class that I have since incorporated into my home defense plans, is to have a couple "chemi-lume" sticks available. I have a two-story house, with bedrooms upstairs, and so I have a good "choke point" for any BG trying to get to us. At night, the upstairs is totally dark, and if I toss one of those chemi-lume sticks down at the bottom of the steps, any BG would have to walk through that pool of light to get upstairs. A BG doing that would also remove any doubt about "intent", and from my position upstairs, I would have a clear view. We call 911, and as long as they arrive before the BG tries to come upstairs, the BG goes to jail. Otherwise I will protect myself and my family.

The thing that really hit me about the chemi-lume sticks is that there are no worries about power failure etc.
 
#16 ·
Motion detector lights on all your entrances / sides of house are a good thing, I think. That will help you spot intruders on your property, as they approach your house.

The night light (or just a low wattage lamp) is a good idea too for the ends of the hallways/stairs leading to your bedroom. That way any intruder who gets inside your home will be silhouetted. Yea it is a little more money in electricity but is much better defensively I think.
 
#17 ·
My motion sensor lights are on all 4 sides of the house, mounted high enough, not to b tamperd with. If all were on at the same time, it would look like a helo-pad! lol. They are all set to stay on for 10 mins. My dog tends to notice when one of the lights are on, and she usually checks things out. She has a meen bark if something is not right. If I heard a bump in the night, and my dog was still at my side, im comfy in saying it is one of my loved ones stirring in the night. If she is not, i go condition orange, and secure my family first(wake wife if she is not, gather in my seven year olds room) and then see what the dog is doing. iIf she is freaking, I am at condition red, and wife is dialing 911. If the house alarm goes off, someone has just made a mistake. WRONG HOUSE!
 
#18 ·
Also consider strobe lights.

For outside lighting in wooded areas where there are a lot of nighttime critters, I suggest infrared beams outside the doors, mounted on the landing at the top of the stairs. To prevent false triggers from small animals, use the type that require a large break in the beam to activate (i.e. not just a single beam type like used on garage door safeties.) Large animals are not likely to come up on your deck or front stoop (except the occasional bear)

Inside the house, remote controlled strobe lights (X10 system or similar) that you can activate/deactivate as needed. - Basic configuration is X10 controlled power source wired to an infrared motion sensor, wired to a strobe light. When you go to bed, activate all the X10s in areas where BG are likely to enter. If a BG does enter, he gets the strobe response, which most likely disorients him.

If you decide to go confront the intruder, you can use the X10 remote to disable the strobe(s) in the room(s) you are going into and activate normal lighting or make the room go dark and use your weapon light / flash light to illuminate the target.
 
#20 ·
Related to the posts here about motion-activated lights:

I've purchased several solar-powered, motion-activated flood lights for our yard over the past few years.

The best one has worked perfectly for about a year, and now has died. While it worked, it was exactly what I needed; when anyone stepped into it's coverage area, it immediately lit the area with a strong light, and the light stayed on for a time period you could set. It also had an integral audio alarm, but I never used that.
The others worked anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.

I've searched the web for the one that worked well for us, as well as any others I could find; they all seem to come with only a short (30-60 day) guarentee. My impression is that most of these products are not well built, although it seems to me that the principle they work on is fairly straightforward.

Does anyone have any experience with these products? Can you make any recommendations?
 
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