Consider this #6: planning a safe room

[Robin]

The safe room is an interesting concept. It conjures up images of steel vault doors and impregnable rooms that will take hours or days to penetrate. Real life is a bit more mundane and for most of us "safe room" really means the one room in your house that everyone goes to in an emergency.

TBD already touched on some ideas to harden the safe room's entrance. Safe rooms are a complex concept but here are a few more things to think about.

1. The safe room is probably your bedroom if it's just you and spouse, or the kid's bedroom that's furthest from all entrances. It doesn't make much sense to run towards home invaders in order to get to the safe room.
2. Once in the safe room, the best location to take cover is in the corner on the same wall as the door. This is known as a "hard corner" and even people trained in room entry tactics can forget the proper way to clear them. This position gives you the most time to identify and react to anyone that enters the room.
3. Regardless of where you choose to take cover, try to fortify that position to give you as much hard cover as possible. Put a bed there. Have a dresser nightstand on the other side of the bed. You can extend this concept to the rest of your house by thinking of likely intruder access routes and corresponding defensive locations you'd take. The reverse is also true--try not to arrange furniture to give intruders good cover.
4. Think about your backstop. Now that you've chosen a cover location and fortified it, think about the direction your shots will go. You'll likely be crouched down and shooting up, so try to arrange things like tall bookshelves outside the room as your backstop.

[1776 Rebel]

Good idea to have a safe room. I personally thought that TBD was pretty much a fast blow through on the topic. My two cents are to take a look at several other products/options for hardening...

For windows (especially like the large patio window in TBD but also a safe room window) you can apply a number of films on the market. They do make it quite difficult to penetrate the window. Enough to seriously slow down or discourage a BG. One is the 3M product....

http://tinyurl.com/yqumbf

For doors you can screw a 3/4" plywood panel  to the back side of the door. Use as many screws as you like (10 per side) to bond it to the door panel. Cheap and effective.

Also while using long screws for the hinges and lock is better than nothing please note. If you put a 3 inch screw thru less than 2 inches of wood the extra length means nothing. I would recommend working up the door frame with a product like the following:

http://www.djarmor.com/Home-Page

If you are dealing with new construction or you just want to beef up a barrier on either side of the door for protection against the BG firing indescriminantly into the room you can check out these various bullet resistant panels (cost less than a grand)..spectra shield or armorcore...

http://www.armorcore.com/index-press-chicken.html

Finally as you do research you will see that there are lots of solutions out there. One interesting one is a pepper spray OUTSIDE your safe room. Easily deployed and a different way to McGiver the problem....

https://www.stopthecrime.com/default.htm

If you get a chance look out for the tv show on Discovery channel called "It takes a thief". Two ex cons spend an hour going over a home breaking into it, then correcting all the weaknesses. Great show to watch.

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/ittakesathief/ittakesathief.html

The sum is that we will spend two grand on a gun safe and have 10 grand of guns inside it, but aren't willing to spend even a token of that to protect ourselves and family.

[Pepper]

Thanks Robin! Excellent points. "Fortifying" the saferoom is really an interesting option. But we always have to keep in mind, that a lot more people get killed every year by housefires than by homeinvaders. So the barricades should never block the fastest way to exit the house.

[runstowin]

I appreciate the good info.

I think an auto deadbolt might be useful.
http://www.securitech.com/automatic-deadbolt.html