Gunner Quinn
(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)
If you have a large property or a self-contained housing tract, layered defense could work well. Imagine an outer barbed wire fence, maybe one of those extra-sturdy five or six strand ones along an Interstate. Next, there would be (ideally) 100 yards or more of open ground with little to no cover that is easily observed from defensive fighting positions. The inner perimeter has a wall or tough, tall chain link and barbed or razor wire fence. Gates are ramming-resistant. If someone gets past that, the inner compound is further subdivided for easier containment.
All these spaces should be monitored by remote cameras (hardwired to defeat jammers) and possibly even a drone. Finally, the houses are cordoned off with their own fences or enclosures. Each home is hardened against rifle fire and is set up so they can support each other. Homes should have the bedrooms and panic room/shelter segregated from the rest of the house with an interior gate as they do in South Africa. You can’t just wrap your property in a single fence and call it a day.
When it comes to actual guards, they need to be serious about their purpose, not a rent-a-cop who is there to check a box against potential legal liabilities. They should be well-trained and well-equipped, ready to meet the potential threat. In times of trouble, a homesteader or neighborhood watch must maintain a constant armed guard force that can put up a credible defense long enough to delay the attack until off-duty defenders can turn out. The best person to protect your home is someone who cares; you and your neighbors.
A credible response team is necessary to survive an incursion by a serious force. In the Israeli communities where defenders mounted an organized resistance, they managed to slow or repel attackers, reducing overall casualties. Teams of half-a-dozen men were able to inflict outsized casualties on Hamas and threw wrenches in the attack. Remember, the police and army were not just around the corner; it was a literal “no one is coming, it’s up to us,” situation, just like our pioneer ancestors faced.
The biggest difference between Israel and the United States is gun ownership. Israel, despite its history of terrorism, invasion, and genocide, does not have an enshrined right to keep and bear arms. Most households are gun free, and those who do own firearms own pistols with limited ammunition stocks. It was a big announcement that one of the emergency regulations in the immediate aftermath that Israeli handgun owners were temporarily allowed to double their ammo stocks at home from 50 to 100 rounds!
Real defensive weapons like rifles were required to be stored communally, supposedly to make them less susceptible to theft, being kept in a central armory. Without a “minuteman” concept, the defenders had to get to their weapons before they could react. One heartbreaking story was from a man who was just feet away from his gun but couldn’t get to it, so he had to listen helplessly to the killing around him. While many Americans are unarmed, things certainly would not play out in the USA as they did in Israel.
Having a gun and knowing how to use it made the difference in the lucky kibbutzim. It helped that virtually every participant was a military veteran, reservist, or active duty. Owning the gun is only one part of the solution. These men had at least basic firearms and tactical skills and probably more than that. They could shoot and communicate effectively as a team while under fire. A CCW qualification every few years or firing off a box of ammo at the range every couple months just won’t cut it.
When SHTF, you may be forced to create an ad hoc civilian militia to defend yourself against militaristic adversaries. Train with your friends, neighbors, or whatever mutual aid group you have in force-on-force dynamic situations, such as airsoft and paintball. Learn to make use of cover, concealment, and tactical movements. Hamas had a modicum of training but were inexperienced, undisciplined, and faced no resistance. Imagine had they been facing a few dozen armed, veteran defenders moving and shooting in coordinated squads!
Lone-wolf survivalist fantasies will get you killed. Sure, there were some intrepid defenders that went it alone or found themselves isolated, but the defenders who were successful were not just lucky, they were armed, experienced, and organized. Defensive planning needs to go beyond just having guns, but training, teamwork, and integrating intelligence.
Another notable point of divergence between Israel and a potential American SHTF scenario is that the government was functional. It took time to deploy, but cavalry in the form of SWAT teams and soldiers did arrive. If our country goes so hard off the skids that we are facing our own versions of the Hamas attacks, no one is coming to our rescue. Even during our frontier days it was impossible for a rancher to pick up a phone/radio and call the local fort for help. If help doesn’t come from your neighbors, the best you can probably hope for is a punitive raid in the future, which is only cold comfort.
Israel is a nation where such attacks have recent historical precedents and were actively planned for. The IDF is one of the most competent, battle-hardened militaries in the world, and even they were caught off guard. Given the small size of the nation, they were in a better position to rush forward people they did have on hand to directly enter the fight. Very few military bases in the U.S. have that ability.
The U.S. military lacks any rapid-response “flying squads” capable of handling a mass-casualty, multi-front attack. The National Guard is not on alert standby, and even when mobilized, they take hours or days to deploy. There aren’t enough special units who are on short notice standby like Delta Force that could intervene, even if such units still exist after SHTF. Even in the best of times, local SWAT teams struggle with responses. Most active shooters that are taken down by police are handled by the initially responding patrol officers. Do you really think that if law and order collapses that police officers will leave their families behind at home, undefended, to come rescue you from the cannibal raiders?
Dedicated security teams are likely to exist on compounds or in very close-knit rural areas after some preliminary destabilizing event has occurred. Border areas that have seen an influx of illegal aliens and smuggling traffic already have such elements in place, but not so much in the rest of the country. For the prepper, survivalist, and patriot, organizing and training together has always been a weak point. Though neighbors will no doubt band together during and after a critical event, the question is, will it be too little, too late? More prepared groups or those defending a compound who can plan and practice ahead of time have a better chance of a successful defense.
An American October 7th will look more like the brutal Indian raids of our Wild West era than something out of a film. Israel saw it happen firsthand and over there the S hasn’t even truly HTF yet. Anyone thinking that defending a survival compound against raiders is going to be like a video game or their escapist fantasy; think again.
What Homeowners Can Do
Americans face a significant disadvantage in any similar terrorist attack because our communities are not designed with a defensive mindset. Neighborhoods are open and inherently difficult to secure; our homes provide little resistance, and our yards are easily accessible. A purpose-built compound or rural property is in a far better position, yet most of us don’t live there. Even so, there are steps that the average city-dweller can take.
Most suburban homes, regardless of construction, are not bulletproof and are shockingly “transparent” to many common calibers. 5.56mm AR-15 rounds can penetrate stucco walls, but a 9mm round will penetrate through multiple layers of sheetrock. Bulletproofing is expensive. Sandbags are much cheaper if it’s coming to a gunfight and you are on a budget.
The most cost-effective way to harden a home with bulletproof materials would be to create an interior safe room. While the house would probably do a decent job of keeping most rounds from penetrating too deeply (mainly out of erratic deflection), the shielding should stop any “lucky” rounds. If bulletproofing a front door or creating a fighting position below a window, the panels could be added around the opening. Frankly, if I were building or remodeling a house I’d spend the money for expensive bulletproofing solutions on a single safe room with a stout, locking, and bulletproof door.
Security cameras were used to great effect in some cases by kibbutzim security teams to coordinate surveillance with counter-terrorist operations. Blind spots can be covered by cameras. Cameras should always be hardwired whenever possible. Wireless connections, especially those using cellular or Wi-Fi frequencies, are easily jammed. Put a central camera display in a “safe” area where someone can watch the feeds and provide updates to defenders.
Communicate via radio with your family, neighbors, and fellow defenders. A messaging app like Signal is great for routine communication, but in an emergency, you don’t want to be unlocking your phone and looking down. There’s a reason why the US military uses squad radios and doesn’t text message in the heat of battle. An easy start is using GMRS radios to coordinate and agree upon a common channel. This way, everyone can stay in touch and informed without relying on cellphones.
What Israelis Did Wrong:
- Allowed their citizenry to be disarmed; no right to keep and bear arms, leaving households unarmed with no way to fight back.
- Separated the community defenders from their weapons (centralized armories).
- Did not enlist all able-bodied residents into a defensive militia.
- Assumed that the police/army would do all the protecting and rescuing.
- Having the basics of an easily defendable compound but failing to sufficiently harden it.
- Use grid-reliant communications systems (cellphones, WhatsApp) rather than radios.
What Israelis Did Right:
- Fought well and bravely when they had the means to do so.
- Armed defenders took charge and counter-attacked despite being outgunned and outnumbered.
- Had interior and reinforced shelters that could withstand some ballistic threats.
- Stayed indoors and in hiding rather than fleeing unprepared outside where they could be intercepted by Hamas.
- Knowledge of Arabic helped Israelis understand what the terrorists were saying to one another.
- Smart rescuers took secondary, not main routes, to lessen the chances of being intercepted by Hamas when joining the fight.
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About The Author
Don Shift is a veteran of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office and author of the book Lessons from Israel’s 9/11: What Preppers and Citizen Defenders Can Learn from the October 7 Massacre.
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