We’ve seen no shortage of projects that use the ESP8266 or ESP32 to add “smart” features to existing home appliances, often by pairing the microcontroller with a radio or IR transmitter. If your device has an existing remote, integrating it into a custom home automation system is often just a matter of getting a few cheap modular components and writing some simple code to glue it all together.
But what if the appliance you want to control doesn’t use a common frequency? That’s a question that [eigma] recently had to answer after finding the remote control for the bedroom ceiling fan was operating at a somewhat unusual 304 MHz. Something like the MAX1472 could probably have been tuned to this frequency, but the chip doesn’t seem to be available in a turn-key module as the popular 315 MHz transmitters are.
There were a few possible options, including using a software defined radio (SDR), but [eigma] didn’t want to spend a fortune on this project or wait months for parts to get shipped from overseas. The most straightforward solution was to design a custom transmitter tuned to the proper frequency using discrete components; something of a dark art to those of us who’ve been spoiled by the high availability of modular components.
What follows is an fascinating look at the design, testing, and troubleshooting of a truly scratch-built transmitter. You won’t find any ICs here, the carrier signal is generated with just a transistor, some carefully measured pieces of wire, and a handful of passive components. By modulating the signal with an ESP32, [eigma] successfully makes the oddball ceiling fan an honorary member of the Internet of Things.
For sheer terror, there are few emergencies that will be closer to home and statistically more likely to occur for the average prepper than a home invasion.
Home invasions may not have the region-wasting punch of a major natural disaster or some other exotic event, but I can guarantee you they will be more than disastrous enough for you and your family. There’s precious little time to react during a home invasion situation and absolutely no room for error.
Successfully preparing for and defending against a home invasion involves a lot more than having a gun and a flashlight on the nightstand ready to investigate some bump in the night.
A comprehensive, holistic home invasion plan will wrap your home in layers of security like an onion: you want to dissuade, slow down and hopefully stop the bad guys from getting in in the first place.
If you can’t stop them at least funnel them into an area where you can engage them on your terms.
There’s a lot to learn about home invasions in order to craft a good plan. You’ll need to know about interior and exterior defensive strategies, criminal behavior and psychology, and know how to handle yourself in a fight.
And you need to do it all while your family is in the home with you. It won’t be easy, but today we are presenting you with a guide to arm you with the right stuff for surviving the terror and chaos of a home invasion.
Home Invasion Facts, Figures and Statistics
A home invasion is one of those crimes that most people, whether they would admit it publicly or not, think will never happen in their neighborhood.
At least, people that don’t live in high-crime areas think it will never happen to them.
I hate to say it, but the chances are increasing all the time that they may be wrong. Possibly dead wrong.
A home invasion is defined as a criminal entry of a dwelling while the occupants and/or owners of the dwelling are present. This is different from a cat-burglary which occurs when the structure is unoccupied.
We are fortunate that overall crime and violence is going down, but regrettably home invasion is one category of crime that is becoming more popular over time. Some more facts about home invasions in America:
Compared to conventional burglary, the rates at which home invasions occur are growing.
Home invasions are not solo acts; you will encounter multiple home invaders as a rule, and they typically number between 2 and 5.
Your average home invader will be armed with a knife or a gun. Weapons of opportunity, i.e. tools and other implements that may be used as weapons found on site, are used in nearly half of all home invasions.
Most assailants invading your home will use force to get in, kicking in a door, or forcing a window. Unbelievably, over 30% of home invaders will enter through an unlocked door or window.
Most home invasions occur in hours of darkness.
Homeowners are victimized regularly during a home invasion. More than one in four home invasions sees the occupants of the home wounded by the assailants.
It cannot be overstated how shocking, how fast and how violent a home invasion is. You must be prepared.
And the first step in preparing for a home invasion is understanding the mindset, the tactics and the objective of the criminal scumbags who will be kicking in your front door.
Know the Enemy: Criminal Tactics and Objectives
The prospect of facing a home invasion strikes a nerve with many preppers and with good reason. The notion that you could be so brazenly attacked in your very own home by a posse of criminal scumbags is a bitter prospect.
And unlike most self-defense scenarios that people typically practice, there will be the added pressure to perform with an environment full of the people that are most precious to us.
If you are unfortunate enough to be one of those one million-plus homes that are invaded every year you or your loved ones will then have about a 25% chance of being violently assaulted by the criminals. Ponder that…
We are not going to let that happen to you, though. Unlike the naive, shiftless and cowed masses you are ready, willing and able to do something about.
Your first prerogative is to know when you are most vulnerable. Statistically, most home invasions will occur after sundown with the vast majority taking place between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.
Compare and contrast that with your typical burglary. Most of those take place in broad daylight. Does that seem strange to you? It shouldn’t; the burglars are counting on the occupants to be gone when they break in, meaning at work, at school or elsewhere.
Home invaders are just the opposite; they are counting on the occupants to be home and they use maximum speed and violence to intercept and then corral them before they can mount an effective resistance or call for help.
That being said, you are never safe, not entirely, from a home invasion and they can and do occur and hours of broad daylight.
The next vital piece of the home invasion puzzle you’ll have to put together is understanding why your house was chosen among all the other houses on your street, in your neighborhood and in your town.
Most criminals do this stuff for a living; many of them are not stupid, and there is a reasoned calculus to their decision-making process.
Typical indicators that home invaders look for when choosing a target house are things like poor lighting, line of sight blocking obstructions between neighboring houses and the target house, signs of inactivity, easy routes of ingress and egress, and so on.
There is far more to the average home invader’s selection process than a simple checklist, however, it will definitely help you to understand how they make their decisions.
Once you start to get inside the criminals’ decision-making process, you can then reverse-engineer defenses and countermeasures for your house and property that will hopefully keep them from considering it at all.
Your typical criminal will plan and execute a home invasion or other crime in six steps, listed below.
Intelligence Gathering
Before they do anything, your average criminal looking to make a score has to take in some information that will direct them to where the loot, or the easy mark, is.
It could be something as innocuous as a social media post revealing that you will be home alone while the rest of the family is out of state at a competition.
It might be the conspicuous pile of valuable electronics boxes you set out for the trash pickup. It might just be a property configured just so that makes them feel really safe breaking in.
Criminals will usually gather intelligence on potential targets, read that as victims, until they have enough to choose from.
Victim Selection
After sorting, sifting and comparing all of their gathered intel, our criminal element will compose a list of potential targets worth their time. Here there are many variables.
The skill, ambition, habits and preferences of the criminal are all factored into this decision-making process and they may filter and sort potential victims for days, months or even longer.
Some may choose a victim within seconds after minimal intelligence gathering. You could get sighted today and robbed tonight in some cases.
Observation
Believe it or not most criminals don’t blunder straight into a crime. They will surveil and closely watch the selected victim to gather even more information.
They will look for habits, vulnerabilities and size you up to try and determine if you will fight, run or just give up. Observation will likely continue right up until the point of the attack and all the way through the next phase, planning.
Planning the Deed
The planning phase may occur concurrently with the observation phase, and both could be concluded in as little as a few seconds.
No matter how much time or how little the criminal takes in the planning phase, they will begin to figure out the best way to get close to your house unobserved, make entry to the house and hopefully find you and overpower you so they can get to work extracting a toll from you and in either treasure or blood, or both.
Movement to Victim
Once the planning is wrapped up, the bad guys will move. It is on the approach to the target that the victim has the best possible chance to catalyze the attack, and either repel the attacker or get them to break off.
Defensive measures that will slow, halt or confuse the attacker work best while they’re in this phase. Anything that costs them time or injects uncertainty into their decision-making process increases the likelihood that they will break off.
Contact and Attack
It is now that the criminals actually break into your home, if they are not stopped. Keep in mind that the bad guy always gets to choose the duration of the attack unless you stop him!
If he has no incentive to halt his attack he will keep going until he has achieved his objective.
Break Contact and Escape
No matter if the criminals succeeded or not they will move to escape and do so, hopefully, without getting shot, shanked or beaten up.
Of special importance to your average criminal is the desire to escape without attracting any attention from potential witnesses or being pursued by police.
Here is a small homework assignment for you before we move on to the next section.
Glancing over the above steps in the criminal’s decision making process, at what point in that process do you think you would have the best chances to stop him from victimizing you and picking your house?
The answer is during the intelligence-gathering or victim selection phase. If there is ever a chance to avoid being victimized, to avoid a fight, you must take it.
No matter how good you are, no matter how skilled, no matter how heavily-armed there’s always a chance that the fight can go against you, and that may see you or your loved ones be grievously wounded or killed during a home invasion.
In the following sections we will move on to the practical elements of getting ready to defend against a home invasion, including making your home a hard target and preparing yourself to deal with the difficult task of repelling invaders.
Protect Your Home From the Outside In
Defending your home from a home invasion is a full-time gig, but luckily there are some techniques and procedures you can employ it will be on duty 24/7 without you lifting a finger once you have implemented them.
I’m specifically talking about hardening your home via some choice upgrades, careful landscape revisions and, potentially, the installation of some new vegetation.
You’re not going to have to build an 8-foot wall topped with broken glass bottles around your home to protect it. You won’t even necessarily have to put in a fence.
All you’re going to do is alter view landscape features, upgrade some door and window hardware there and before you know it criminals will take one short glance at your home before saying ‘nah’ and moving on to what is potentially on easier score.
If the criminals skip your house for someone else’s, that is a win right out of the gate.
There are four areas of consideration on your property that will need your attention:
Curtilage
Home Exterior
Home Entry Points
Home Interior
Before you do anything, take the time to go outside and stand in front of your house. Now look at it, observe it as if you were the bad guy.
If you were the bad guy, where is the safest approach to get close to this house and hopefully get into it without being seen by the occupants or someone else? This is called a clue.
Now repeat this exercise from various angles, up and down the street and even potentially from your property line with your neighbors.
Carefully assess everything you can see. Look at all the windows, look at all the doors. Which one looks most likely to let you in easily? Are there any nearby tall trees they could be climbed to reach a second-story window?
Repeat this exercise from the backyard. Is a concealed approach to a big, juicy, easy-to-break sliding glass door available from the rear of the house?
If you are like most homeowners, no matter what kind of home you have and no matter where you live if you take this exercise seriously you will see plenty of ways to get inside the house.
That’s okay; we are going to take what you have gleaned from your observations and implement that into a troubleshooting plan to eliminate those shortcuts and “easy ins”.
Curtilage
Curtilage is just a fancy word for the grounds of your house that are part of your property. Your curtilage extends from the exterior of your house all the way to the sidewalk, the road or the property line depending on what borders your property on that side.
Consider the curtilage to be the sort of outer perimeter for your house.
Assess your curtilage by looking at the terrain features inside it. Look at the rocks, the shrubs, the trees. Look at any large decorative features like fountains, rock gardens and the like.
Do you have any large children’s playground equipment they could offer concealment for someone? How about a shed or outbuilding?
Of particular importance is your perimeter is fencing. People love privacy fencing because it makes for good neighbors, and good neighbors are nice but being safe from home invasion is better and fences make your home more likely to be targeted for home invasion.
Why? As soon as the criminals cross the line of your fencing on approach to your house they get more concealment on your property. If your neighbors can’t see what you are doing, they cannot see any scumbags sneaking up on the back door.
Also, don’t assume that a fence is a real deterrent to illegal trespass or entry on your property: the vast majority of privacy fences are way too short to be anything but a mild inconvenience.
Yes, you could crown the fence with barbed or razor wire and in a SHTF emergency to shore up the old home protection factor a little bit, but doing this in normal times is not going to make you any friends.
Dense, surrounding privacy hedges works similarly to fences but are practically even worse from a defensive standpoint. Hedges will block line of sight on your property, but are easily crossed compare defenses.
If you are fortunate, or unfortunate enough to have a wall around your property, you can take comfort knowing that they do afford you a little bit of ballistic protection from gunfire and may stop vehicles cold, but they have all the other vulnerabilities and shortcomings of fences and hedges.
Make it a point to trim back all plants and hedges that could afford bad guys a hiding place or a concealed approach to your house.
Make sure you do one more assessment of your curtilage at night. Assess the lighting.
Any predator wants to work in the dark if they have the choice, and that includes home invaders. Ideally, we went to deny them the use of the darkness by installing bright security lighting.
But you must be cautious: light that is placed or aimed carelessly can create even deeper, inky pools of shadow that can completely conceal someone.
A combination of bright spot and flood security lighting combined with softer wide-angle landscape lighting can keep your yard attractively lit, and also make it hell for home invaders to sneak through.
Home Exterior
It is the rare homeowner who does not want some attractive plants to enhance the beauty and value of their property.
Many preppers will surely want the same thing, but preppers will also want their plants to serve double-duty as defensive countermeasures to a home invasion.
No matter where you live, no matter what the environment or the weather, there is some variety of plant that will grow there that will feature thorns, spines or some other ripping, snagging and tearing organic apparatus.
You can cultivate these plants beneath your windows, and potentially on either side of exterior doors leading into your home. This will certainly disincentivize home invaders from attempting to enter via the window, or lurking in ambush near a door.
Even if the spines themselves are not vicious enough to completely deter someone from moving over them, many of these plants will often raise enough racket to help give you a little bit of early warning if someone is trying to traverse them.
No matter which ones you choose, make sure they grow tall and wide enough they cannot be easily bypassed.
You have two choices when it comes to planting these prickly defensive plants: you can grow them from small, potted cultivars, or transplant mature plants. The latter is risky as it stresses the plants significantly, and might kill them.
The former is much easier, safer and less expensive, but you need to get a jump on that as soon as you can since plants take time to grow.
No matter which option you choose, give your defensive flora the care and feeding it deserves so it will stay healthy and keep on defending your castle for as long as they live.
Another option worth considering is the installation of security cameras on the outside of your house. The ability to remotely check the exterior of your home and additional parts of your property is surely handy and can increase your safety.
But this is a double-edged sword: the visible presence of security cameras may tip-off potential home Invaders that you are protecting something valuable inside.
The counter to this, of course, is to install cameras that have very little or no physical footprint. You should carefully consider the cost-benefit ratio of security cameras before committing to a system.
Home Entry Points
No matter how fastidiously you prep the grounds of your property in order to dissuade home invaders there is a chance your number will just come up. Maybe they have decided your house is worth the risk. Maybe there’s someone personally known to you that has a grudge.
Whatever the reason, the attackers have decided that they are coming on and are now going to attempt entry into your home.
The next phase of home fortification involves the entry portals into your home itself. I said portal in this case, not just doors, because we must consider every possible way into the home.
Windows, doors, exterior attic access, everything. Hardening these entryways will go a long way towards keeping the bad guys out or at least held at bay until you can mount an effective defense.
I mentioned it up above and I’m going to say it again here: roughly a third of home invasions begin with the invaders entering through an unlocked door or window!
Don’t be one of these poor, unfortunate homeowners! Keep all doors and windows closed and locked at all times.
If a window must be open for ventilation, make sure it can lock in the partially open position so it will at least slow someone down or force them to break it if they want to get in.
The most common way that home invaders will break in is simply kicking an exterior door right off its hinges or busting a sliding glass door or large bay window. We protect and fortify doors and windows in slightly different ways.
Let’s start with the physical makeup of the doors themselves. Absolutely every exterior door that could yield access into your home must be made from solid core hardwood or metal, no exceptions.
But the sturdiest door does no good if it is mounted with cheap, flimsy screws and other hardware. You might be surprised to know that it is the screw set itself, not the door proper, which absorbs most of the force when a door is rammed or kicked.
If you cannot afford to upgrade the doors themselves with thick, sturdy versions, at the very minimum you should upgrade all the hinges, all the locksets, and the screws themselves.
Adding additional hinges will increase the strength of the door as a system.
Just as important, actually more important, is upgrading screws to high-grade fasteners which go into the door frame at least 6 in. long and preferably more.
Stronger, longer screws likewise mean more strength is needed to breach the door, and will buy you time. If you are lucky, your home invaders may give up after a few failed kicks.
One of the best and lowest profile options for preventing a door Ram or kick is the cleverly named anti-kick device, typified and made famous by a company called Door Devil.
An anti-kick device is a low profile frame that will install between the edges of the door itself and the door jamb.
When activated, the metal framing of the anti-kick device transfers all of the shock and force into the structural frame of the door and surrounding wall, not the vulnerable screws or lockset.
They are very affordable and easily DIY installed on most doors. Definitely look into these for all exterior doors!
Now we move on to windows. Windows are somewhat harder to fortify compared to doors because of their vulnerable nature. They are made of glass, after all!
If you live in an older home with worn-out, drafty windows you should consider having them replaced with modern ones if at all possible.
This will obviously take time, and not an insignificant amount of money, but replacing windows is actually pretty simple and can be done yourself if you are reasonably handy. That can help keep costs down.
Window bars and security gates or shutters other good options, but almost always conspicuous in the way the security cameras are conspicuous. It might tip-off potential home invaders that your house is worth invading.
Also, bars and shutters that are not quick releasable are a major liability in case you need to evacuate the house rapidly through the window, say in case of fire.
A clever, low-profile option for fortifying a window is the application of a protective or ballistic-grade window film.
Mylar is one common application among several others, and is commonly encountered on homes near coastlines or in the Great Plains since they will make windows resistant or even partially invulnerable to airborne debris blown by powerful winds from hurricanes and tornadoes.
Thicker, stronger varieties of these window films can even afford you some protection against bullets, blunt impacts from tools and even cutting forces.
As with doors above, you must always, always keep windows locked and preferably shut.
Home Interior
The most obvious defensive upgrade for the interior of the home is an alarm system.
Do-it-yourself installed or traditional monitored systems can alert you when anyone busts a window or a door, and monitored systems can even summon help if you are too busy to get on the phone and call the cavalry yourself, say because you are repelling four masked bad guys with your trusty shotgun.
Alarm systems with a loud klaxon or siren also have a psychological effect on most criminals. Once the alarm starts howling, they know the clock is truly ticking and that reinforcements will likely be on their way.
No matter which alarm system you choose you must make sure every single door and window that could be a potential entry point into your house is rigged with a sensor that will activate the alarm whenever tampered with.
Ensure that your alarm system is more sensitive, not less, and not particularly forgiving of wrong key codes being entered.
You don’t want a 15 or 20 second warning countdown before the alarm actually goes off. Set that thing to 5 seconds, tops.
You also might consider an ancient primitive alarm system, or as most preppers know them, dogs!
You can get a big dog, or a small dog, it doesn’t really matter so long as the dog goes completely ballistic whenever it detects anything near or around the house.
The keen senses of canines far exceed the puny ones of humans, and so long as your dog is alert and sounding off when it detects something, you can be assured that your faithful pooch will hear the bad guys coming along before you do.
Larger dogs have additional advantages. Big dogs can deliver powerful bites, and many people are instinctively terrified of an aggressive dog.
Note that you must not delude yourself into thinking your faithful canine friend will go to attack mode just because he perceives someone in the home or threatening the family.
Yes, many dogs will but just as many will either do nothing except bark, or run away to save their own skins. If you are serious about using a dog in a truly defensive role, you will need to embark on protection training for you and the dog.
Oh, and one more thing about the alarm systems, if you choose to install one of the now popular over-the-counter wireless camera and alarm system combos you should keep in mind that the criminals of today are not the criminals of yesteryear.
They are increasingly technologically savvy and the installation of one of these systems means you’ll need to now become versed in and apply home network security procedures and other information system defenses to prevent your system from being breached remotely, turned against you or just disarmed.
Repel Boarders!
Dealing with attackers inside your own home has a lot in common with dealing with them out in a public space, but also has some important differences. Let’s get into them.
First, the most obvious restriction: If you live at home with your family or just loved ones, in all probability simply trying to escape your own home and flee from home invaders will not be an option.
Chances are you will not be able to round up everybody inside and ensure they get out with you in time.
During a real home invasion, you must keep in mind that your attackers are trying to find you in your master bedroom, likely, as quickly as possible in order to overwhelm and subdue you.
They won’t be creeping around looking in the silverware drawer in your kitchen affording you the time to tiptoe across the hall, upstairs, back downstairs and then out.
This means you will have to make a stand and fight. If you are lucky, or just very good, you might be able to consolidate everybody in one room or one wing of the house, and then lock it down with lethal cover with no ensuing fight.
But the chances are good you will have to fight. That means you need to start training and learning how to fight now, and not making it up as you go along on that fateful day at 3 a.m. in the morning.
This is where you will have the principal advantage over the bad guys: They will only have one live trial run of going through your home on that day.
You have every day up until that day to prepare yourself and prepare your home for the fight ahead. Don’t squander it.
They have to get everything right and do it very quickly in order to win. If you can get into the fight quickly enough, stopping them, catalyzing the attack, you will very likely drive them off.
Weapons – Firearms
No matter how fit, furious and talented you are when it comes to hand-to-hand fighting, you don’t want to be bringing fists and feet to what is an all probability going to be a gun or knife fight.
You will want to obtain a weapon, preferably a gun, and learn how to use it. There has been an ocean of ink and countless bazillions of electrons spent on going over which gun is best for home-defense and under what circumstances.
I and other authors have done plenty of just that on this very site. I will go over briefly here a few factors to consider when choosing a home defense gun.
Since the turn of this millennium, rifles have become a surprisingly popular choice for home defense, dethroning shotguns in many areas.
The preponderance of over-the-counter legal short barreled rifles in the form of “large format pistols” has seen this type of firearm skyrocket as a self-defense choice.
Rifles afford a home defender immense stopping power, typically large magazine capacities and often excellent handling, but depending on the caliber one must be concerned about overpenetration.
Larger rifles and some carbines may also be difficult to maneuver in the cramped quarters of a home.
Handguns are in many ways the ideal home defense weapon since this is likely the weapon you are already the most comfortable and proficient with if you concealed carry on a regular basis.
Handguns have the advantage of being extremely easy to maneuver, are able to effectively be used with only one hand and are easy to protect from takeaway attempts, a legit concern if you should bump into a home invader at bad breath distance.
The disadvantages of handguns include limited effectiveness and being very difficult to shoot well, especially under stress.
For many preppers the shotgun remains the king absolute of home-defense weapons.
A classic and steadfast choice, typical defensive loads for shotguns have absolutely devastating effectiveness on human bodies, have the added bonus of being very easy to hit with if shot is employed and also allow you the flexibility of changing shell types for different circumstances or home living situations.
Some disadvantages include ferocious recoil, limited capacity and typically heavy weight.
You must consider a great many factors before choosing a home defense firearm. The layout of your home, location of bedrooms in the home, proximity of neighbors and other factors will all play a part alongside your own capability, proficiency and confidence with a given type of firearm.
Weapons – Other
Alternate lethal weapons include things like clubs or bladed weapons. You can use anything from a sturdy piece of lumber, a common hatchet or felling axe, a baseball bat or even a spear for home defense.
No matter what you choose, you need to practice with it if you want to be effective with it. Long handled weapons have the advantage of affording you some standoff distance from the attacker if they are armed with only a knife, but this will obviously do no good at all if they have a gun.
Shorter weapons like knives can certainly be lethal, but you must necessarily be within range of the attacker for you to bring your weapon to bear.
One often overlooked option for home-defense is pepper spray.
High quality, hot pepper spray is immensely effective when it comes time to take the fight out of someone and even if they choose to continue fighting it will seriously degrade both their vision and their breathing, giving you an advantage.
The obvious, major disadvantage of pepper spray is that cross-contamination is a thing; you may very well be affected by your own spray.
Additionally, pepper spray is obviously, purposefully not lethal, and if you don’t have a lethal force answer to a lethal threat against you, you might have a serious problem.
If you’re going to choose pepper spray for home defense make sure you get one of the extra large riot size cans that will yield advantages of more range, more solution going towards the target, and greater capacity for an extended defensive scenario.
Safe Rooms for Home Invasion Protection
If there is one scenario where a safe room would truly shine it would be a home invasion. A properly built and properly equipped safe room would be completely proof from even a team of bad guys trying to force their way in or shoot their way through.
Ideally, you and your family can hustle into the safe room, close and lock the door, and be all but assured that you’ll be safe as soon as the bad guys leave when the cops show up.
A properly equipped safe room will have redundant, independent communication systems to allow you to summon help no matter what has happened to the phone lines or the electricity. Keeping weapons, medical gear and other supplies inside is always a great idea.
One often overlooked element of safe room construction is the inclusion of a hidden and secured emergency exit that can allow you to bail out of your safe room and home in such a way that will evade notice and detection.
This may be the only thing that saves your life if someone decides to burn your house down around you while you are cowering in the safe room. Never leave yourself without a way out!
Safe room construction is an entirely separate topic, but suffice it to say it is often easiest to do while you are doing a major remodel or scratch build of a house.
If you aren’t, you can still install a safe room or convert an existing room into one, but this may involve extensive work and modification.
That being said, you should seriously consider a safe room for home invasion protection. Many preppers choose to make the master bedroom the safe room, since all they will have to do is gather the family members there and then close and lock the door.
Tim’s Home Invasion Protection Pro-Tips
For the truly serious preppers there are a few additional measures you can take to help minimize the chances that your house will be chosen for home invasion.
Some of these may seem fairly extreme, but they will contribute to your overall chances of living your life peacefully without having a team of scumbags kick in your door at zero dark thirty.
Bar Entry to All Strangers
If you are not expecting company that is known to you, be that family or friends, don’t let them into your freaking home.
Traveling salesman, friend of a friend of a friend, “neighbor” that lives down the street, around the corner and across the glen, service and maintenance personnel, anybody and I mean freaking anybody.
Don’t let them into your home. You don’t know these people from Judas, and you don’t know their friends.
It is entirely possible that they may moonlight as a criminal scum bag, and are taking copious notes on their daily rounds…
Keep Doors and Windows Locked at All Times! No Exceptions!
You would be disgusted, astounded and horrified to learn how many home invasions that end with the death, dismemberment or maiming all the occupants begin with the attackers simply turning a knob and letting themselves in.
We are talking almost a full third of home invasions occur under exactly that scenario.
If you do nothing else but habitually, obsessively keep your doors and windows locked at all times, and you triple-check every single one of them before you go to bed at night, you will go a long way toward preventing a home invasion, or at least making it easy on your attackers.
PERSEC, PERSEC, PERSEC!
PERSEC is a military acronym that is short for “personal security”.
Maintaining personal security means keeping personal details- things about your life, job, purchases, travel, habits, schedule, etc.- private and out of the ears, off the lips and off the airwaves of anyone who is not within your circle of trust.
Criminals constantly troll open sources of intelligence, read that as social media, to build their list of potential targets.
Aside from keeping the entirety of your life except your love of dank memes off of social media, stop blabbing to people you barely know about the comings and goings of your life.
Conclusion
The stereotypical idea of defending against a home invasion is often thought to be bolting awake, jumping out of bed in your jammies and grabbing your favorite flavor of gun before racing off to confront the bad guys.
Doing the job well involves an awful lot more than that, including defensive adaptation of your property and your house, careful planning of your defensive strategy and honing your skills for the fight ahead.
Use the information in this guide to get yourself pointed in the right direction and start preparing now. Pray that day never comes, but if it does, you’ll be ready.
If you are looking for a fun project while you are cooped up and you have some spare coathangers, why not try this 4-element Yagi antenna (PDF)? [Pete N8PR] showed it off at his local ham radio club and it looked like something good for a lazy afternoon. If you aren’t a ham, you could adjust it all for a different VHF or UHF frequency.
For the boom, [Pete] mentions you can use wood, but it isn’t weather resistant. He chose half-inch PVC pipe. He also offers you a choice of material for the elements: #8 wire, welding rod, or — our favorite — coat hangers.
This is a big upgrade from a simple dipole or a vertical made from coax. The yagi should have about 8 dBi gain in the direction it is pointing. The center of the boom doesn’t have any elements, so that simplifies mounting. The insulating boom also makes mounting the driven element a breeze.
If you use the coat hangers, we’ve heard an easy way to get them very straight is to put one end on a vise and the other end in a drill chuck (see the video below). The method will weaken the wire, but the elements won’t have much stress. If it worries you, just go slow on the drill and you might consider annealing the wire with a torch afterward.
It would be easy to make this portable like some other designs we’ve seen. If you want the history and theory behind the venerable yagi antenna, you’ll want to revisit this post.
You will commonly encounter preppers stocking, stashing, praising and pillorying MREs, those ubiquitous pouched meals that seemingly never expire. Everyone that has ever served in the military is well acquainted, but these infamous transportable rations, and probably learned to hate them.
But for us preppers, even if not the biggest fan of the taste, you probably do appreciate how stable and convenient they are as a survival food. What you probably don’t appreciate is the cost. Why are MREs so expensive?!
While not exorbitantly pricey compared to other shelf-stable Staples, MREs do cost quite a bit more per meal than other comparable survival foods.
With the cost of a case of 12 going anywhere from $70 to $100, the cost of a complete MRE goes anywhere from $4.50 just $6.50. Much of this cost comes from the packaging, each meal component typically being housed in a heavy duty plastic wrapper inside a cardboard box, and the entirety of a meal’s contents make contained in a heavy vinyl plastic. Processing and extensive packaging are responsible for much of the cost of an MRE.
$4.50? Is That Really So Pricey?
Yes. Yes it is. Preppers typically calculate their ration expenditures as a function of cost per calorie.
This makes sense, since calories are really just fuel for our bodies, and while we cannot anticipate how fast will be burning fuel we do generally know how much fuel our bodies require to remain functional at a low, moderate or high level of activity.
Not really much different than calculating how many batteries you need for your electronics or how much fuel you’ll need for a generator!
So for what they provide in terms of raw calories, MREs are not terribly efficient and are costly compared to other foods, even long-life, shelf-stable foods.
If you’re on a budget, you may not want to make MREs your primary meal option for your survival stash.
Handling Considerations
Costs aside, cost per calorie is not the end-all, be all consideration for survival. The biggest advantages of MREs are convenience and durability.
Durability is not something often considered as a positive characteristic when discussing food, but for our purposes it might make a difference. MREs are designed to not only be shelf-stable in various temperature extremes for a long time, but they’re also packed to last.
Their robust, heavy-duty seals and internal redundant packaging make MREs resistant to all kinds of rough handling and mistreatment that would compromise the packaging and ergo the longevity of all kinds of other foods, cans included.
If you know you’re always going to be on the go, are constantly transporting your preps by vehicle, or want some food to bounce around in your BOB with no ill effects, MREs make a lot of sense.
They can be jostled, bashed, mashed, shaken, dropped, punted and slammed while remaining completely safe to eat and nominally tasty.
Now, some of your fragile items like candies and crackers will probably fall apart under such duress. Powdered or not, they will remain safe to eat!
Logistical Considerations
Beyond their durability, MREs have other advantages over similar survival foods.
In a bind or just in a big hurry, you can open up an MRE and eat it with no more preparation necessary than mixing up your powdered drink in a cup of water.
While their efficacy is highly debatable, MREs also include a flameless ration heater that takes just a little bit of water to steam your main entree to a more palatable temperature. I know, it’s usually lukewarm at best, but sometimes it beats cold.
If you want to think of it another way, you’re paying a certain amount of money for the convenience of having, literally, everything you need for a meal and want easy to transport, rugged package.
From the silverware, heater and napkin to the hot sauce bottle and the food itself, there’s nothing else to transport and nothing else to buy. Convenience, as with all things, commands a certain premium.
Also worth consideration is the fact that a case of MREs is easily grabbed, hauled or taken on the road. While not as efficient as freeze dried food, MREs are still quite compact compared to a shelf full of the usual staples.
Combined with their above-mentioned longevity, this may make MREs more appropriate and useful for mobile operations, like a bug-out, than other foods.
Cost-Benefit Analysis is King
There’s no two ways about it: MREs are expensive on a per-calorie basis. Whether or not they are good value depends on your preferences, plans and other factors unique to your situation.
For those who would rather spend a little more on food with the assurances that will last a long time sitting in storage, is durable enough to survive being crammed into a pack or their container, and would prefer a variety meal options with no additional planning, MREs are good choice.
If you plan predominately to bug in, or don’t mind and are already set up for cooking in austere conditions, storing bulk staples or conventional freeze-dried survival food may be the better option.
And why not both? There’s more than enough room in the average pantry for staples, freeze-dried foods, and MREs.
MREs are ideal for bugging out, especially when their packaging is broken down they can be more efficiently packed into a BOB. Freeze-dried foods are extremely light, very compact and fairly easy to prepare.
All they need is a little boiling water. Staple foods, like beans, flour, honey and rice can keep someone alive for a very, very long time for little money and they themselves are pretty easy to store long-term though pests are an issue.
So while you are not wrong in declaring MREs expensive for what you get, if you’re just looking at calories and not capability your analysis may be skewed. Be sure to consider all pertinent factors for choosing your survival rations.
Water is an absolutely essential survival provision, typically to be used for both drinking and cooking, since you cannot go more than just a few days without it before dying of dehydration, and you will be in bad shape significantly before then.
While some may rely on large storage barrels or tanks, most of us buy water by the bottle or the jug and stack it deep on shelves and in pantries. Most of us are meticulous about our food shelf life but never spare a moment to consider if our water expires.
Perhaps you haven’t either. But now that I have mentioned it, you probably question whether it will or not. Does it?!
Bottled water that is factory sealed does not really expire, even if it loses volume to evaporation over time. What is commonly called the expiration date on bottled water is really a “best if consumed by” date. You may though notice bottled water that is sealed will over time develop an unpleasant taste as chemicals leach from its container into the water. Also any sealed bottle or jug of water that has it seal broken or otherwise compromised may be contaminated by microbes or algae.
We will dig a little deeper into this occasionally confusing issue below.
It Sure Looks Like an Expiration Date…
It is understandable that you and other consumers might think that, and in certain locales it may actually be an expiration date as required by law. But that is all! That does not mean that the water really expires as do other perishable foods and drinks.
Because of this, manufacturers who sell their product at a regional or national level will probably look to keep costs to a minimum by standardizing any and all packaging in any way that they can.
This means that if any bottles must be embossed, engraved, inked or otherwise marked with this expiration or best-by date, then all bottles will likely be even if they are not heading for a market in a state that requires such dating.
While the savings per unit of making their bottled water this way is likely only fractions of a cent, when you look at the economy of scale over many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of bottles of water, that adds up.
Nonetheless, any printed date on a bottle of water is only a recommendation, and one that might not even have a basis in reality. Your water might taste just fine way beyond that prescribed date or it might start to taste off well before it.
The only way to know for sure is to conduct experiments using your chosen brand under the actual storage conditions you keep it in.
Is There Any Way to Tell My Bottled Water Is Bad?
Unfortunately, not really, not without opening it and tasting or testing it.
Even though your bottled water is good practically forever, with “good” in this case meaning “safe to drink”, it is not immune to evaporation and certainly not immune to a change in taste over time due to the leaching of chemical compounds from its container into the water itself.
This does not necessarily make the water unsafe to drink; not by any stretch, as the compounds may not be present in the water in any quantity that causes harm.
Before you listen to the prattling of the crunchy granola, Birkenstock-wearing types who would tell you that chemicals X, Y, or Z are going to make all your hair fall out, or make you go blind…
…remind yourself that the clearest and freshest tasting water taken from the remotest natural source could be contaminated with all-natural pathogens that could pose a far greater health risk.
The reason why your water develops this nasty taste over time is because water is a powerful, if slow-acting, solvent. Given enough time, it will start to dissolve and degrade almost anything on Earth.
Assuming that the bottle was not already contaminated when the water was poured into it at the factory, the compounds that make it taste funny (oftentimes described as a slightly burnt or metallic taste) simply come from the plastic packaging itself.
These same compounds are actually present in the water from the very moment it enters the bottle.
Modern scientists at major universities have assured us time and time again that these chemicals are not harmful in any amount that is typically to be expected in a bottle of commercial water, even if the water has been sitting for a long time.
Effects of Broken or Suspect Seals
All of the above information is only good and applicable if you are dealing with water that is factory sealed with a high degree of quality control.
If you are dealing with bottled water that was not sealed or has a compromised seal, or even worse has been drunk from before being put away, you can count on the eventual blooming of bacteria and other microorganisms in that water.
As a general rule, if you open a sealed bottle of water you will want to use it within two weeks at the most, else the risk of microorganisms multiplying dangerously becomes too high.
Bottled water that has its seal broken and has been contaminated before being put away can see microorganisms start reproducing extremely quickly if the conditions are just right for their life cycles.
Everything from bacteria to viruses, parasites to prions can make you terribly ill or even be fatal in rare circumstances. If you are ever in doubt about water’s quality or safety make sure you run it through a filter or boil it before consuming it.
One quick note about algae… Algae multiply fast and furious when exposed to sunlight, and will coat the surface of water as well as the inside of the container holding it in a way that is liable to turn your stomach just from looking at it.
But, perhaps surprisingly, most species are harmless, and can even be eaten right along with your drink of water with no ill effects! You can, of course, always filter water that has a colony of algae in it to improve its flavor and appearance.
Conclusion
You don’t have to worry about your bottled water expiring, though if you leave it sitting for a very long time it might start to pick up a bad taste from its container in addition to losing some of its volume to evaporation.
This nasty taste has been judged by scientists to be non-harmful, as it only affects the palatability of your water.
Any bottled water that you purchase that has its seals broken or otherwise compromised will likely eventually become contaminated by microorganisms and made unsafe to drink.
It is still best to treat any suspect container or bottle of water if you fear its seals have been broken. Aside from that, you can completely ignore the expiration date printed for embossed on your bottle of water when storing long-term.
You may sometimes see the Crosley name today on cheap record players, but from what we can tell that company isn’t connected with the Crosley Radio company that was a powerhouse in the field from 1921 to 1956. [Uniservo] looks at two of the very early entries from Crosley: the model VIII and the XJ. You can see the video of both radios, below.
The company started by making car parts but grew rapidly and entered the radio business very successfully in 1921. We can only imagine what a non-technical person thought of these radios with all the knobs and switches, for some it must have been very intimidating.
The model VIII had two large knobs, three small knobs, and a switch. Oddly enough there were very few markings on the knobs, as you were expected to know how to use a tuned RF radio. The large knobs were for tuning capacitors and the switch was for coil taps, while the three small knobs controlled the tube filament supplies.
We thought at first that each filament control knob had a jack above it. As it turns out, they aren’t jacks but peepholes. You sight through the holes to see how brightly the filament burns to adjust them properly. With the three tubes, you still needed headphones or an external amplifier. The variable capacitors are “book style” which is a rarity now. Watching the cam and spring adjust the capacitor makes you wonder how many other ways you could build a variable capacitor.
The XJ is similar although you’ll find an extra tube and peephole. There’s also a normal headphone jack. You can see some cost-cutting measures in this radio. It still used the book capacitors, though. These old radios are almost like craft pieces and we wonder what the person who wired them by hand would think if they knew we were looking at their work almost a century later.
It’s never too late in life for new experiences, but there’s a new experience I had a few weeks ago that I wasn’t expecting. I probably received my first piece of test equipment – a multimeter – in the early 1980s, and since then every time I’ve received a new one, whether an oscilloscope, logic analyser, spectrum analyser or signal generator, I’ve been able to figure out how to use it. I have a good idea what it does, and I can figure out whatever its interface may be to make it do what I want it to. My new experience came when I bought a piece of test equipment, and for the first time in my life didn’t have a clue how to use it.
That instrument is a Vector Network Analyser, or VNA, and it’s worth spending a while going through the basics in case anyone else is in the same position. My VNA is not a superlative piece of high-end instrumentation that cost the GDP of a small country, it’s the popular $50 NanoVNA that has a fairly modest frequency range and performance, but is still a functional VNA that can take useful measurements. But I’m a VNA newbie, what does a VNA do?
A Quick VNA Primer
The NanoVNA block diagram.
If you work with radio frequencies, it’s relatively easy to measure amplitudes, but usually very difficult to take phase and impedance measurements, especially across a wide frequency range. So for example I was able to fire a set of frequencies at a filter in a previous Hackaday article using only a Raspberry Pi and an oscilloscope, but all I could measure was its bandwidth, I knew nothing about its impedance and the phase relationships between input and output. This type of analyser is refered to as a Scalar Network Analyser, and all the measuring device knows about the signal is its frequency and amplitude. Where the scalar analyser simply has an oscillator and a sensor, the VNA mates the oscillator with a reflectometer to measure impedance, and replaces the sensor with a software defined radio receiver. Both oscillator and SDR are in perfect synchronisation so the device can keep track of phase as well as the rest of the measurements. A computer controls it all.
The first playground for the NanoVNA, an RF demo board.
The NanoVNA originated a few years ago from [edy555], and has since been cloned in huge numbers by Chinese manufacturers. It’s a surprisingly simple piece of hardware, with an Si5351 clock generator providing the phase-synchronous oscillators, a brace of three balanced mixers providing the RF-to-baseband downconversion, an I2S codec digitizing the measurements, and an STM32F07 ARM Cortex M0 microcontroller doing all the math and running the show.
If a VNA is that simple, you might be asking why commercial ones are so expensive then, but the answer lies in the rather limited capabilities of the NanoVNA. It has a fundamental frequency range of 300 MHz, it uses an audio ADC, and its RF components are not of a particularly high spec. Compared with a commercial model that will have a frequency range in the GHz, a much higher specification ADC, a much lower noise figure, and a hugely more capable computing system to drive it, it becomes rapidly obvious where the extra cash goes before you have even considered matters such as calibration.
The NanoVNA is a real VNA and it’s very useful for radio amateurs and hobbyists, but it’s still something of a toy in the scheme of VNAs. So having discovered what the NanoVNA is, how do we use it? This isn’t a review of the device, instead it’s a write-up of my experiences with it as a first-time user.
Diving Into My Toy VNA
The first step this voyage of discovery is to calibrate the device, which is to say to establish its baseline for measurements. It’s shipped with a set of SMA connector loads and shorts and open-circuits, and it is here that these are required. Rather than step through the whole process pretending to be an expert it’s easiest to link to the site on which I found the calibration procedure. In short: you hook up each of the standards in order to your VNA, and run the appropriate calibration routine. The NanoVNA is controlled by a little jog switch and a not-very-responsive touch screen, so there is a bit of a learning curve in getting to know its interface. Little tricks such as finding the on-screen keyboard and then understanding that the “M”, “K”, and “G” buttons refer to megahertz, kilohertz, or gigahertz, and also function as return keys are essential.
What a Baofeng whip antenna looks like on a VNA
Once you have calibrated it and understood the interface, it becomes a very straightforward instrument to use. I also picked up an “RF Demo kit”, a PCB with a set of test RF networks, filters, and attenuators. This allowed me my first chance to play with it, and immediately the ease of taking readings became apparent. There are a variety of traces as well as a Smith chart, and a group of measurements at the top of the screen that correspond to a set of markers on each trace.
The jog switch on the NanoVNA allows paging through the frequency range, and each reading can be seen for each frequency. I could zero in on a particular frequency and see its impedance, pick out the exact cut-off point of a filter, and hook up an antenna and tell straight away whether it needs tuning. The cheap-and-nasty dual-band whip antenna on my Baofeng was revealed to be perhaps not as nasty as I’d supposed at 144 MHz, but somewhat off frequency at 430 MHz, for example. The VNA was living up to its reputation as the Holy Grail of RF test equipment, and even after only a few days of owning one I can’t quite see how I ever managed without it.
What I discovered after my initial bafflement at my NanoVNA was that a lifetime of playing with RF and also being used to figuring out new test equipment has held me in good stead. I will probably never become a VNA savant in the way that a lifetime of using all types of oscilloscopes has made me with those instruments, but I can now use it to quickly make measurements I wouldn’t have thought possible before I owned it.
Ayn Rand was right. She was. But I have little doubt even the title of this article will make a certain percentage of the readership’s heads explode, a font of impotent rage. This is a shame, and one of the fundamental reasons needs addressing.
The fervent and widespread misunderstanding of Rand’s philosophy, Objectivism, and the instinctive revulsion it engenders in people unable or unwilling to understand it beyond a second-hand or shallow interpretation.
Don’t worry, this article won’t be a deep-dive on Objectivism. Rather, we will be illuminating the most essential elements of Rand’s philosophy while trying to defend this particular ethical philosophy’s applicability to our modern world and prepping in particular.
Ayn Rand: A Short Bio
In order to fully comprehend and understand someone’s philosophy, it is helpful to first learn the circumstances of their life, upbringing and maturation.
Without the proper context of someone’s life experience, you might blindly be trying to fit the pieces of their philosophy into spaces that don’t necessarily exist in their psyche and worldview.
For those who are oblivious to Ayn Rand, here is a brief bio. Rand was born the eldest of three daughters in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905 to a family of non-observant Jews.
Her father was a successful pharmacist, but sadly his business and holdings were seized by the government in 1917, prompting the family flee to Crimea. It was there that Rand finished high school and university.
She was later granted a visa and moved to the United States in 1926, living first in New York before moving to California where she primarily worked as a screenwriter before turning to her own fictional works and straightforward philosophical publishing.
Her magnum opus was the philosophical novel, Atlas Shrugged, a book encapsulating the doctrines of Rand’s Objectivist philosophy in its most complete form, weaving them into a fictional setting.
The tenets of Objectivism could be surmised as holding reason as the highest value, rational self-interest as a moral good, and the rejection of collectivism and altruism.
Published in 1957, it took Rand over 10 years to complete the book and she described the theme as “the role of the mind in man’s existence—and, as a corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest”.
In the following short sections, we will dissect the three principal tenets of Objectivism.
Reason Above All Else
The guiding and essential tenet of Ayn Rand’s philosophy is Reason above all else. Embracing reason, and embracing fact above emotionality, feelings, and intuition is paramount.
Reason should be applied to all areas of one’s life: business, home, soceity and love. The outcome or determinationresulting from following reason to its logical conclusion is to be adhered to and accepted whether it is pleasant or unpleasant.
Active reasoning is something that does not happen all by itself. It does not bubble up out of the wellspring of the ego or the heart. Reason will not apply itself automatically. To reason is to think, and thinking is hard.
To think means one must choose to apply their intellect, their mind, and keep it in motion working on the task or problem at hand.
The essential task as far as reason is concerned is to gather and understand facts, draw conclusions based on those facts and then evaluate those conclusions.
Ayn Rand was an adamant believer that one had to choose whether they would think or not, and in this case choosing to not think or abstaining from thinking was a choice in itself.
Rand allowed no deviation from her essential logic that choosing to follow reason, actively choosing to follow reason, was to reject emotion, reject authoritarianism, and reject faith as allowable guides for the direction of one’s efforts and intentions.
One Can Only Face Reality
Another essential creed of Ayn Rand’s philosophy is that of accepting reality as it is, not as you wish it were. Furthermore one must accept that reality is, well, real to begin with.
Objectivism makes no room for pie-in-the-sky theories of alternate realities, alternate universes or pseudothaumaturgical phases of being.
Reality is all there is, and by striving to live it is best if one would discover reality’s true nature and learn to act in accordance with its inarguable laws.
Reality is not something to be subverted, denied or run from, but is instead something one must stoically face and deal with. Man might command reality, but its laws must nevertheless always be adhered to, whether you would want it so or not; man does not get a vote in the matter.
There is no alternate reality or alternative to reality. There is nothing after it, no “land” beyond.
Ayn Rand’s assertion that reality is the sum total of existence, or at least the entire “field” within which our existence takes place, means that in accepting it one must reject any and all ideas and notions of the mythic and the supernatural, including God.
You might tersely and pithily codify that idea with the aphorism that admonishes a person who is “wishing-hoping-dreaming” for reality to be anything besides what the current state is to “Wish in one hand and s*** in the other, see which one fills up first.”
A Person is the End and the Means to that End
What role does morality serve? Furthermore what role does morality serve in a man’s life?
The answer for most westerners, especially most western Christians, often sounds like something along the lines of morality is a required governor or throttle on man’s baser, vile instincts, and only through morality is it possible for one to deny their own interests and happiness, especially short-term happiness, in order to be good and kind to other people and to serve God or some other higher purpose.
Morality serves as a sort of “Board of Education” to that end.
Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy turns morality on its head in a drastic and severe way. Rand argues that the only purpose of morality is to inform a person what will produce happiness for them, and what actions are thereby in their self-interest.
In the most drastic departure from religious and inherited moral codes, Rand espoused that man must choose his own code in order to determine what his values and goals should be, and thus determine what actions he should take. The criteria for what is good or best is only weighed against what is proper for man- nothing else.
It is only through the establishment of this personal moral code that any person would be able to achieve much less maintain and enjoy their own life. Under Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, a person’s own life is the ultimate value, and that life is the end in itself.
She famously, or infamously, postulated that man born as he is has no automatic code of survival, and could not rely on his built-in senses to determine what was best or most beneficial for him. Additionally, man had no way to determine innately what was good or evil for himself.
Capitalism Without Restraint
Ayn Rand is perhaps most popularly known among those less familiar with her life, works and philosophy for her lobbying and espousing of absolute laissez-faire capitalism. To be perfectly clear, this looks nothing like the capitalism that America and Europe practice today.
Not economy bordered by federal laws, not an economy with government controls wormed and sprinkled throughout it, but a complete and total separation of the economy and state power in the same way as in for the same reasons as a separation of church and state.
Under Rand’s view of capitalism, the government’s sole function is to protect every single individual’s rights to pursue capitalism by maintaining the ability to use force in defense of all individual’s pursuit thereof.
In other words, the government, while strictly limited, reserves the rights to use force against those who would use force against another.
Rand’s ideas on this topic are commonly misinterpreted, accidentally or not, and misconstrued. She saw this type of capitalism as a natural extension of the rational mind. A rational mind that makes its own life the highest possible moral purpose would naturally demand its own freedom.
Following this logical, reasonable train of thought total freedom would extend to commercial activities, the freedom to own property, freely associate and trade with others and generally pursue the accumulation of wealth unfettered.
True capitalism, Rand argues, is merely an extension of the individual’s rights in an economic direction.
Acceptance and Rejection of The Objectivist Philosophy
“The morality of rational self-interest.” That’s intense, and not particularly palatable to those who see generosity and selflessness as virtues.
Her detractors take that statement as proof of a deeply rooted selfishness inherent to Rand’s values. The most popular rejection of Objectivism holds that the concept of rational self-interest is plain greed.
Greed is a vice or sin in the majority of the world’s established moral systems, and has gotten a bad rap over the years as miserliness or covetousness.
But that isn’t at all the meaning of rational self-interest. “Rational” self-interest is holding one’s own life and their achievements as the highest and most moral aim of their life.
This includes some facets ignored or overlooked by Rand’s naysayers. A deeper exploration of her speeches or writings reveals the flaws in the critique; One cannot succeed long-term by dealing unfairly or dishonestly.
Rand, a fervent capitalist, recognized that trade and mutual voluntary exchange were generally necessary for prosperity.
I hope you can believe that people will not for long deal with you if you are a cheat, or fail to deliver what was agreed to in the terms of the exchange.
Therefore, the sort of Mad Max-dystopian, apocalyptic, smash-the-weak-and-take-their-stuff fear-mongering of the rabid critic of this tenet is completely misplaced and totally absent from Rand’s explanation.
Okay, so what does rational self-interest really mean, then? It simply means the pursuit of your own good in line with your rational values. You might say that is maybe vague or quite broad. You’d be correct.
It does leave a great deal of wiggle room for your personal interpretation and implementation. I fancy it akin to the author, Joseph Campbell, in his book “The Power of Myth”. He said, “Follow your bliss. Find where it is, and don’t be afraid to follow it.”
I think the few exceptions that Rand might have professed would be any pursuit that negated or ignored reality. Being a drug-addled misanthrope would be an abdication of both Reason and rational self-interest.
But any field of pursuit that inspired you, was in line with your values, and to which you applied yourself with dedication to higher achievement would fit into this ideal. Not a bad bit of philosophy so far, right?
Interestingly, most of the resistance to Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy encounters the most rejection and resistance not from counter-leaning political and social philosophists but from those whose religious or spiritual morality is staunchly opposed to some of the tenets of Objectivism.
Religious systems as a rule include a fixed and sacrosanct set of virtues and morality, delivered from on high by a flawless, omnipotent and unimpeachable God or Creator.
The internal logic of these religious values follows that those bylaws, or commandments in the case of Christianity, are the starting point for morality, the fixed, perfect and immovable fixed point from which all other judgments on “correct”, proper and right morality is defined.
These religious doctrines reinforce themselves by reaffirming the correctness of these commandments constantly as the only immutable “truths” that should govern human decision making.
That is quite a contrast with Rand’s Objectivist philosophy which asserts that reality and the acceptance of reality is the only truth, the fountainhead, from which all other decisions and deductions flow.
When one starts to think this through it is not hard to see how obedience to reality and a too-staunch belief in one’s own perception combined with a fundamentally selfish focus on the self might give rise to a person who is, by traditional standards, dreadfully flawed or even evil.
These conflicts and conundrums that arise between the “Self as Moral High Ground” and “Living for the Greater Good” are part and parcel of what makes Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy so contentious, and so appealing.
Conclusion
Ayn Rand was and remains one of the 20th century’s most celebrated, influential and contentious thinkers. Her Objectivist philosophy informs and influences social and economic policy to this very day.
To her adherents and fans, she is a paragon of rationality, a person above the petty emotions and distractedness of common people.
To her opponents and naysayers she’s an avatar of selfishness and self-centeredness that borders on cruel nihilism. As with all such things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
[TJ] is a surfer, and drives his car to get to the beach. But when he gets there he’s faced with a dilemma that most surfers have: either put his key in your baggies (shorts) or wetsuit and hope it doesn’t get lost during a wipeout, or stash it on the rear wheel of his car. Hiding the keyfob by the car isn’t an option because it can open the car doors just by being in proximity to the car. He didn’t want to risk losing it to the ocean either, so he built a waveguide of sorts for his key out of aluminum foil that lets him lock the key in the car without locking himself out.
Over a series of trials, [TJ] found out that his car, a 2017 Chevy Cruze, has a series of sensors in it which can determine the location of the keyfob based on triangulation. If it thinks the keyfob is outside of the car, it allows the door to be locked or unlocked with a button on the door handle. If the keyfob is inside the car, though, it prevents the car from locking via the door handles so you don’t accidentally lock yourself out. He found out that he could “focus” the signals of the specific sensors that make the car think the keyfob is outside by building an open Faraday cage.
The only problem now is that while the doors can be locked, they could also can be unlocked. To solve that problem he rigged up an ESP32 to a servo to open and close the opening in the Faraday cage. This still means there’s a hidden device used to activate the ESP32, but odds are that it’s a cheaper device to replace than a modern car key and improves security “through obscurity“. If you have any ideas for improving [TJ]’s build, though, leave them in the comments below. Surfers across the world from [TJ] to the author would be appreciative.
Ah, glorious Spam. That beloved blue can is a staple in pantries all across America and the world. Greatly favored by campers for its convenience, homeowners who want a quick bite and even preppers for its long lifespan.
Spam is a tasty, versatile and, most importantly for our purposes, shelf-stable source of protein and calories.
Spam’s iconic status has led to a fair share of urban legends regarding its composition and lifespan. The latter is an important question at least: how long does Spam last? How long before it spoils on you, potentially making you sick?
Spam does not keep forever, but it will last for a very long time in your pantry. Despite having a shorter sell-by date Spam, in a can that is undamaged and in good shape, should last anywhere between 3 and 5 years sitting on the shelf. Temperature extremes may alter this time somewhat. The manufacturer, Hormel Foods, recommends that you always consume your Spam by the sell-by date on the can.
What?! I thought SPAM was supposed to last forever?!
I know, I know. Spam will spoil in the end. It turns out that, just like Twinkies (another member of the eternally fresh mythos), they won’t keep perpetually.
Despite rumors of being made from at least 50% meat preservatives, Spam in actuality only has six ingredients, and none of them are super preservative. Per Hormel Foods website its ingredients are pork and ham, salt, sugar, water, potato starch and sodium nitrite. That’s it.
So the good news is Spam is not some crazy unknown mystery meat product. And even more good news, at least for the purposes of making sure we have fresh meat to eat in a SHTF situation, is that sodium nitrite is an effective and potent preservative.
This is the ingredient that ensures Spam will maintain its texture, color and of course freshness.
So, hopefully now you can enjoy Spam with a little less guilt and concern that you’re eating some quasi-food. But perhaps we should dig a little deeper.
Even three years is a long time for canned meat. What processes or ingredients yield such a long shelf life, and how dependable is that estimate?
The Rest of the Shelf-Life Story
The preservatives in Spam are not solely responsible for its long shelf life. The cooking and packaging process at the factory also has a big role. Spam starts its life as pork and ham, which are then pre-ground and mixed together.
After that they pile in the salt (itself a preservative), the sugar, and the rest of the ingredients then mix it all up for 20 minutes. Once this mixture comes up to temperature it’s time to put it in cans.
12 ounces of the delicious Spam mixture is added to the familiar oval metal can. These cans are moved by conveyor belt, not human hands, to a machine where the lids are added through a vacuum sealing process.
The vacuum sealing process by itself destroys any microorganisms in the can, halts enzymes from reacting, and prevents bacterial growth from occurring. But we’re not done yet.
After the vacuum sealing process is finished the cans are cooked and then cooled in a process taking about three hours.
The cooking process renders the Spam ready to eat, of course, and further kills off any microorganisms that may be lingering. After that it’s off to get a label and adios!
That’s the sum of Spam’s shelf life: meat preservatives in conjunction with minimal human handling, and excellent food preparation and packaging at the factory means unopened Spam will reliably have a several-year shelf life. Depend on it.
Caution Advised
But that being said, you shouldn’t assume any old dusty can of Spam you find is safe to eat if you don’t know when it was purchased.
Any canned food, meat, fruit or vegetable is completely dependent on the structural Integrity of its can and the seal to ensure freshness and safety.
If you ever knew anyone in your family who was always cautious to inspect the cans before buying them at the grocery store, now you know why.
A dent, a ding or any other incidental damage can potentially ruin a can seal, or breach the can liner if present, and render the cans internal environment no longer germ-free.
Cans that have those easy open pull tab tops, of which Spam cans are one, seem to be especially vulnerable to breaching from dropping, smashing, denting, etc.. What I’m trying to say is that these cans are not indestructible!
Don’t worry too much about it though. If you take care to pick out good intact cans at the grocery store, and then treat them with a modicum of care transporting them home to your shelves, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Boldly mark your cans with a sharpie for date of purchase, and use that for making your stored food rotation decisions.
How long will Spam last after it’s been opened?
While I don’t expect an open can of Spam to last in a survival situation, considering you’re going to be eating it in short order, if you still have power or live in a colder climate you’ll be happy to know that it will keep for quite a few days.
After Spam has been opened, you can expect it to last for anywhere between 7 and 10 days – with refrigeration! Now, this is a bit of a deviation from what Hormel Foods recommends.
They will tell you the open Spam will only last 2 to 3 days with refrigeration. But considering Spam’s composition, use of preservatives and significant salt content, 7 to 10 days is in all likelihood the more accurate figure.
The reason for this is that it is highly similar to other preserved canned meat products, namely corned beef and deviled ham, that will last for 7 to 10 days under refrigeration after being opened.
I’m not sure why Hormel Foods would prescribe such a short lifespan for Spam and not similar meats, but there’s absolutely no reason why you should expect your Spam to keep any less than 7 to 10 days under refrigeration after being opened.
Conclusion
Contrary to popular opinion, Spam will not keep forever, not even sitting patiently on your pantry shelf. While it does have a longer shelf life than the sell-by date would suggest, it is not indefinite.
In ideal conditions with an intact can and seal, you can expect to get anywhere from three to five years of fresh, delicious, salty life out of a can of Spam.
A versatile, tasty and stable source of protein, Spam is a good choice and low-maintenance option for any prepper who wants to add some shelf-stable protein to their survival stores.
There were a few possible options, including using a software defined radio (SDR), but [eigma] didn’t want to spend a fortune on this project or wait months for parts to get shipped from overseas. The most straightforward solution was to design a custom transmitter tuned to the proper frequency using discrete components; something of a dark art to those of us who’ve been spoiled by the high availability of modular components.
