Salty & Spice talk about some security ideas that require no power, and one that does.
Check us out at Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You!
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Salty & Spice talk about some security ideas that require no power, and one that does.
Check us out at Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You!
Leave voicemail for Salty (May be used on a future podcast): Click Here To Leave Voicemail!
Hello, everybody.
Salty:Hello everybody and welcome to the show the biggest show the most important and critically acclaimed podcast is recorded. Big breath, they're in our car, and today we are in the Hemi studio. That's right, we are in the 397. Hemi studio, and we are going down the road. Beautiful day and we're here to talk about security. We're gonna talk about security, actually, we're gonna tie it to kinds of security. We're gonna talk about just observations from sort of security we've done and then we're going to talk a little bit about security that we can you a person can do that is both stealthy, and will be effective, at least to an extent if the power is on or off. And we're not talking about combat type security, we're talking about home type security,
Spice:keeping somebody from Boston in your door and taking your stuff.
Salty:Now, first, we're going to talk about some things that we've done in our, in our, or at least one thing that we've done at our home that has made a huge difference in the amount of, of security basically, that, you know, we have in, in our little, our little piece of land in town, we live in a town of about 1200 people, and it's not a very dangerous place to live. There are no riots going on in our community. And it's not the kind of place that I can never imagine there being riots going on short of full scale teotwawki because, frankly, the little old ladies in town just really don't scare me that much. And half the town is the ladies a good portion of the roster, Amish and Mennonites and they're really not
Spice:not very violent,
Salty:violent, no.
Spice:But to the rest of us aren't all that violent or prone to taking other people's stuff either
Salty:in the few that are everybody knows. So, you know, we know who to look out for. Now, let me give you the caveat here of we do not live where we live by accident, okay. We don't live at what other people would consider a bug out location. By accident, we live there on purpose. We've lived there on purpose for many, many years. We live there because we like not having to worry about city and suburb things.
Spice:As well as liking to be out among gardeners creature the Wild Things Are,
Salty:yeah, absolutely. Where the Wild Things Are. And so anyway, one of the things we've done though, is we've had a we years ago, we live in a town or a little town, one of our quirks for our town is we have a I don't call it assisted living because it's not assisted eliminated residential
Spice:cares, residential care
Salty:facility for people who have
Spice:developmental disorders
Salty:and mental problems, but they're non dangerous. And they're non criminal. They're just people that need a place to stay. But it's a residential, residential facility. It's not a lockdown facility because they're not criminals. And they just are there because you know, that we have some things yeah, they get fed, they have good hygiene, well, enforced hygiene kind of stuff. And you know, that's, that's, I think, but they can get out if they want to, there's no it's not there's not a lock on the door.
Spice:And they frequently are, frequently are
Salty:out at night. And we I noticed a bunch of footprints in my yard one night in the snow. And I was like what in the world is going on? So I started trying to figure it out what was going on and what was going on. And some of these people were out at midnight or 1am wandering around the neighborhood just looking around at stuff. They weren't stealing anything. Nothing was missing. Nothing was broken into. They were just out wandering around
Spice:poking around, poking around. Yeah.
Salty:And you know that that does not fascinate me at all. I'm, that's not my dance. I'm not into that. So I went out and bought an inexpensive Do It Yourself 12 camera home security system and I put up the cameras one day, one weekend. And it was interesting what happened to the snow, the footprints in the snow immediately stopped. Okay. And then within the next couple of weeks, we started hearing comments when we were at the grocery store in the gas station. Some from people who I really didn't even know and who I was pretty sure and had no idea where I live. I mean, it's a small town, but it's not that smaller. Everybody knows. Well, there's two subsets of people, one subset of people, they No, no, everybody know everything and everybody,
Spice:they would say we live in the Helen Gibbons house. That's
Salty:right, which is right across the street from the Hudson house. Okay, and Helen and Gibbon have both been dead for 30 years, but has been dead for almost 40. But we live in her house. And you know, was a little old lady. Where do you live? We live in the Helen Gibbons house. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, hello there for 60 years. And, you know, anyway, pushing right along. The security system went up cameras, and we got the little red eyes on and we started getting people commenting. Say, Hey, we haven't put the security system up for I noticed you have those security cameras now. And people just driving around. They noticed that we had a security system.
Spice:These weren't people who drive around town casing people's houses so they can break in. No, no, I don't recall a break in in town for years. I'm sure there have been.
Salty:Well, there was that. You talk about?
Spice:Oh, yes. The guy who did it on a snowy day in the tracks lead right back to his own back door?
Salty:Yeah. He broke into the neighbor's house and stole their coin collection so he could use it to go out and buy some drugs. I mean, there's there's these types of jewelry. But it was a snowy day. And the guy just walked out his back door, walked across the yard, broke into the neighbor's backyard and walked back to his own backyard or door. And there were tracks are sure have figured that one out right away, too. Yeah, that was not a city police. That was not a really desperate, hard case to crack.
Spice:Yeah.
Salty:Those are those kind of idiots. And every time no matter what you're doing,
Spice:yes, crime, crime can happen anywhere, which is why we got this thing. But I started hearing it from people. Salty knows a lot more people around town. He works in town, I work in a different town. I don't know nearly as many people. But I heard it from more than half a dozen people in a single week. Many of whom I really, I knew there are townspeople, but I really didn't know who they are. So these were people who are driving around casing the joint they just noticed. And if they're noticing that a whole lot of people are noticing,
Salty:yeah, people actually people, the Relay for Life, I was on the committee. Hey, tell us all about that security thing you put in there like? No, I thought we were gonna put your plan the survivors parade not talk about my home security system. Anyway, long story short home security system. I've just, this is something people will notice. Now a caveat, we live in a town where there are no professional home security companies. We live in a county where there are none. You can get the national ones. And you can get the ones that you know, that are internet based. Sure. But there are no we will come and install these internet or the security system in our county. And again, we live in a county that is doesn't have a stoplight that changes color.
Spice:We have more deer than people.
Salty:We do we have a lot more here than people.
Spice:Yeah. The point is, though, that I actually was like, yeah, whatever, if you want to get one, I had no confidence that it would make any difference in our lives at all. But I was amazed at how many people had noticed. And if people are noticing, that means it's going to be a deterrent. Because these days, you know, if that little red lights on the camera, the probability is high that there are images going up somewhere on the cloud. And people are going to be noticed if they're messing with stuff,
Salty:that's exactly how it works, you know? Yeah, like I come in, go into my house and steal the steel. The thing is, yeah, but it's it's uploading it onto the cloud storage. So that's not gonna help.
Spice:Yeah. So we just got a picture of you and we can come track it down.
Salty:Okay, so this is just an observation of people do notice this stuff. So what are some things you could do? That would help you with your home security, that don't require power, and the people will not notice because you don't necessarily want people noticing your home security stuff. This is not necessarily the goal is Oh, yeah, they've got security. It must have Something steel. You know, that's not necessarily the goal. You don't
Spice:want to look like a soft target either, though, no.
Salty:Certainly, backyard fence would provide a small, very negligible amount of security, it would keep people from wandering in. But, you know, backyard fences, I don't care what kind they are. They're easy to get over.
Spice:Frankly, I think the most important value of a backyard fence is it's just you may have a dog. Right. And dogs are much bigger determined than a little backyard fences.
Salty:And speaking of dogs be clear I see this this out there all the time. People saying guard dog watchdog using them like they're in an interchangeable term. They're not. guard dogs are the big you know, German Shepherd, Rottweiler. big, powerful. legal right there. Yeah. Driving within a few feet of him. He was just right there. I'd say within 30 feet of him. beautiful bird. We were shooting pictures of Eagles all morning, all afternoon long
Spice:that our first Eagle of the day, but
Salty:this is not our first. This is our closest equals. Now mine. Oh, and it got both.
Spice:Yeah, got both.
Salty:You know, it's one of those deals where a little bitty Chihuahua can be a great watchdog totally useless as a guard dog. But a fantastic watchdog. yappy little ankle biters can be great watchdogs as long as they make a lot of noise.
Spice:Yeah, and we say watchdog we don't mean the golden retriever, who's gonna watch him come in and wag his tail. Or somebody who's gonna at least make noise. Did you know Cardinals are good, there were like six or
Salty:seven male Cardinals all hanging out. She must be a hottie. She must be the bomb. There's a whole we're driving. And there's a whole flock of male Cardinals, which I
Spice:don't generally associate
Salty:recall seeing before, that's kind of cool. Anyway, I guess the Cardinals are gonna have a good year, not that the football Cardinals because my beers just bounce them out of the playoffs. But that's what I'm pressing right along.
Spice:The Happy dogs will dissuade people, often who want to break in and take stuff. I have read from writings purportedly by people who do break into houses for a living. But they don't want to mess with dogs. They don't care if it's a little handful of dogs they could kick into next week. They don't want to mess with dogs. They don't want the noise. They don't want the hassle. Certainly, if it's a bigger dog, they don't want the bitten. So even a small dog can be a fairly big term. Besides saying you have a dog may well be with.
Salty:And then the first version of this podcast. This is actually the second version of this podcast. Not that it matters. The battery died on us. We're making any big change to it. The battery died on us while we're recording it. She talked about peacocks. Oops.
Spice:peacocks are something that a lot of people out here in the country. Oh, not a lot, but a few. Some will. They'll buy a couple of peacocks and put them out there with their domestic fowl. Because if somebody and by somebody I generally mean a coyote or a hawk or something else that's going to eat fowl. Anything starts to mess around that the peafowl consider a threat. No, it's not like they're gonna go out and kick its tail, but they're gonna start screaming. They're going to literally cry for help because if you've ever heard a peacock's distress call, it sounds a lot like it's calling for help. And people will put a peacock or two out there with their fowl. Anytime the peacock start going off at night, they know to let the dog out and turn on the lights and see what's up. So they don't lose too many chickens to the foxes or whatever because the beef fowl are a lot better at alarming than the other domestic follower. And they're pretty. So bonus.
Salty:A slight diversion. You're driving around the country and you're driving by and you see a bunch of sheep or goats and you see one llama out there. There's a reason the llama is out there not just because people like llamas,
Spice:it will kick things tail.
Salty:It is a guard llama and we're not kidding. It's not a watch llama. It's a guard while suckers
Spice:will take out Coyote. Oh, they
Salty:hate coyotes. They will take the biggest threat to protect. Llamas are some of the sweetest animals in the world up until that time when they're not. And they're very, very very dexterous and they Got a kick, literally like a mule.
Spice:I have seen videos of one that grabbed a coyote and just shook it said until the coyotes back was broken and then tossed it into the bushes. We'll look to the next one. So people know that and don't mess with those either.
Salty:Okay, now we are not recommending that you go out and get a watch guard Llama
Spice:Llama? Yes.
Salty:We're not recommending that you suburbanites out there were people of any type.
Spice:The idea is that an animal that alarms can be about as useful as an animal that actively defends your stuff. It serves as a very large deterrent. And it scares off a lot of trouble you might otherwise have and it alarms you that you need to go and watch for things. So you don't necessarily have to think big bitey things that you may or may not want in your apartment or something like that.
Salty:Now one big advantage the yappy little ankle biters have as a dog over guard dog is they eat a lot less a 50 gallon. 50 Gallon 50 pound bag of dog food goes a lot farther with the shihtzu then it will with a golden which are useless except to pet their heads. I'm not sure anyone that what's your tennis ball hunting? golden retriever like exactly what you want. Okay. All right. Anyway.
Spice:I even know some people who put up beware of the dog signs when they don't have a dog. Because they are of the belief which I think is not entirely unjustified that it will discourage some people from trying to come in and mess with their stuff when they're not there.
Salty:Or even when that dog is a golden retriever. You know it does does serve a purpose though you might trip over one of them in the dark, just laying there sleeping. But anyway, I like goldfish. I'm not down on Golden Retrievers I just not really what you would call a practical service.
Spice:They're just not.
Salty:If you got a tennis ball here, you're in business, you're their friend. Anyway, long story short, pressing right along doors, doors, doors, one of the things you can do. Or if you're wanting to do something to harden your house a little bit, the best thing you can do, the single best thing you can do is to replace your doors, your entry doors with, it's not just about the door, a solid core door, it's about the frame, a really difficult or metal frame. To hold that to really anchor that door in will make that door a lot more
Spice:robust, and the hardware that holds the door shut, so you can't just kick through it.
Salty:Right. And we've got one of those things on the cabin. We bought one and just kind of as experiment It was a heavy chain and has a loop that goes around the door handle. But this isn't one of those little hotel room chain things. This is a real actual heavy duty chain that bolts into a plate that runs up and down the side of the side of the doorframe and it has to be big, deep set hard bolts that run deep into the doorframe and a full full sized person can kick it, kick it and kick it and it will not let go it's really a thing.
Spice:They would probably kick the hinges off the backside of that door, which would be quite the trick before that cheap little door handle would give way
Salty:wasn't that cheap.
Spice:The handle itself is cheap. The cheapest kind of outside door handle. It's just a little
Salty:right. Okay, that is all in cabin. But the anti kick open mechanism was not cheap.
Spice:No, but it is quite robust. And the angle you would you would be pulling on it if somebody was kicking on the door would make it extremely hard to break that door handle and break in that way.
Salty:Right now. It's kind of there's only to a point because that has a big glass window to the door does so I mean, we're not trying to we're not trying to stop a gorilla from getting through the door.
Spice:No, but if I often sleep at the cabin by myself and it's a rather isolated spot and there's no lights or anything else. And should somebody try and come in that door when I'm in there at night. I want to know what's happening and have time to react.
Salty:In other words, say hello to get through the door. They step in and it's like that Gunny commercial. You pick the wrong house because She's gonna be there saying hello with Mr. Glock in her hand.
Spice:Yeah, I, I don't actually think anybody's going to mess with me there. But it's a very flimsy door and it's very isolated. So we put something on it to give me a little warning, give me time to wake up and figure out what's going on. If somebody does decide they want to come in while I'm in there.
Salty:Now one thing you can do, if you don't want to really go too crazy under door is you can buy brackets and nice big strong bolts and get some two by fours or two by sixes. In make, have the makings on hand, so that you can put brackets on all of your doors and then put two before bracing. on them, you don't have to leave them on that 20 473 65. But if you have the stuff on hand to do it, if the situation deteriorates on you, you can always you just go back into pull the stuff out of the out of the storage area and bolt up your doors. Same thing will work for Windows,
Spice:as long as you put the attachments out of reach. So you can't just break the glass and reach in and remove it.
Salty:Right Well yeah, but you can you can easily put down system that you couldn't just reach into the grass
Spice:and it doesn't have to make your house look ugly or look like Fort Knox or keep you from opening the windows or do anything else.
Salty:And it doesn't even have to affect your daily life because you don't even have to install that up until you need it. But just have the trick is to have it on hand and know how to put it in if you need it. Another great thing that that we really like and have actually done some of at our booth at the place of the yard. We've we've got some some entanglement type of bushes,
Spice:berry bushes,
Salty:berry bushes, yeah. berry bushes, they have a foreign talk on them. You don't have to have thorns on them. But ours have thorns on them. As they grow berries is food, food food in the summer, you're always growing, you're growing food, you're printing stuff that you can dry and have in the winter, get your vitamin C's in the winter if you need to. And it gives you the ability to have your car pooped on by with purple poop for birds.
Spice:Actually, that doesn't happen that much. No, because if they start stealing too many of my berries, I throw fruit netting over him for one thing. But I put them in frankly, on the fence that divides us from our neighbors, just because it was a fence that was up and it would support the berries. And it would make it easy for me to go pick the berries and I didn't have to build furniture for them. But man, I wouldn't eat it completely lousy little excuse for a fence. But it would be such a total pain in the rear end to try and get through even the ones that don't have thorns. Unless you've ever tried to get through something like that on foot, especially in the dark at night. You probably don't understand just how much of an motivational it is to try and do that if you don't have a really strong reason to go there.
Salty:Now, one thing that you could do with these these pages, you can put these up. And you can make them look realize there's no reason they can't look nice, keep them trimmed and, but like roses, you can put roses right up underneath your rose bush and roll your
Spice:windows or Holly. It's a beautiful plant. It attracts birds, it makes nice shelter for him in the winter.
Salty:And your neighborhoods. If you have one of those neighborhood associations, don't just gonna complain because they meet the standards of the neighborhood association.
Spice:We just like your place to look nice. It still looks nice, and nobody's gonna want to stand in it and get get through there. Where I grew up my neighbors notice somebody hanging around outside, it was out in the country, they ran a dairy farm. But still, they noticed somebody hanging out outside in the yard one night and made them feel less than completely comfortable. So she just went out, planted a bunch of rose bushes under the windows and wasn't anybody out hanging out right under the windows after that. Just no fun to do. An average person who's going to try and break into your house is not looking for awards for getting through the most difficult barriers. They're looking for easy targets often.
Salty:Yes. Another thing that you can do is if you really can, convinced that you want to have some Home Security safely is you can put in blackout curtains, or at least stocked blackout curtains. Because there are times when you don't want to be the only house in the neighborhood with lights on. There's another Eagle right up there.
Spice:Yep, I see him
Salty:right a little cemetery that always forgets there. There's a little bitty tiny cemetery like eight graves must have been a primary cemetery family cemetery. And there's another one right on the other side of the road that is a little more than that. mibbit a church there one time. I know people there was probably a church that looks like might have been a church scrapyard. I've never seen a sign there. Anywho I know you don't care, but we're driving down the road. And there's a there's, there's things to see there's debtors all over the place. Okay. That's pretty much what I wanted to say about the subject. So
Spice:lots of things you can do without disturbing the look of your house. Useful for day to day useful if there's a larger problem. Doesn't, you know, take a crazy amount of investment. pretty effective. Now, this
Salty:is the takeaway here isn't dogs isn't rosebushes and it isn't. Barring your doorway, stay not peacocks. And certainly not peacocks. Unless you do live in the country. They're kind of cool looking anyway, the takeaway is, just think of things now. Think of things now that you can do, that are fairly non invasive, that are something nobody else would notice. And you know, stuff like, you know, preparing door blocks and stuff like that. If you have a spouse that is absolutely adamant that you're not going to mess up the house with your prepping stuff. You don't have to you just take the stuff, you get it, you put it in the garage, or wherever you store your stuff. And you forget about it. Well, she needs to know
Spice:you don't forget about it, you remember where the heck you put it. That might be an issue once you've got a lot of prepping stuff.
Salty:Well,
Spice:maybe we admit,
Salty:this is not a denial,
Spice:but you don't have to mess with it until you need it. But then you got it. And you don't have to be one of those people go Oh, but they're sold out of X, Y and Z. And I desperately need x, y and z. So you don't you got it right there. And it was a couple of brackets. It wasn't, you know, your paycheck.
Salty:One of the things that spice and I always harped on and we have a podcast on it or two, we have stories on three b y or two is one of the one golf I think most preppers should have it that don't is the whole you know, every time you hear people on the prepping farmers and stuff like that, what's the last thing you have one last trip to the store? What are you going to pick up now, I'm not going not going. My goal is to not ever need to go to the store for that one last trip. Because that one last trip puts you out amongst the chaos. And that's the last place you want to be is in a store with panicky people
Spice:and driving around on streets
Salty:drive around the streets with panicky people know you want to be home by bad or you want to if you're bugging out, you want to be out of dodge by them. And for those of us who actually have been to Dodge City, we know that getting out of dodge is easy. But then you're in Kansas and it lasts for ever. Darcy's way over there. I mean, it's way over there.
Spice:It is middle of
Salty:middle of nowhere. So getting out of dodge isn't that hard, but getting to where you want to run dodge.
Spice:It's gonna take a while to pay what you need. All right,
Salty:that's what we have today. Thank you. Bye bye.