This amazing full-coverage home security system will prevent your home from burglary even if someone manages to get inside!

Background:

Residential homes are often protected from burglary by locked doors and locked windows (Figure 1), and occasionally by more substantial measures such as barred windows (Figure 2).

The issue:

However, none of that helps once an intruder breaches the perimeter of the home: once they’re inside, they are free to loot at their leisure—an unoccupied home has no further internal defenses.

Fig. 1: A cross-section of two rooms from a normal home.

Fig. 2: The traditional approach to home security is to defend the perimeter—here, we see the addition of barred windows. These can be helpful to make a home burglary-resistant, but may be a liability to the home’s residents in case of fire.

Proposal:

In order to make the inside of a home burglary-resistant without resorting to illegal booby traps, we can just create a security system that makes the interior of the home extremely unappealing to traverse.

One approach might be to have sliding metal dividers that can be raised out of the floor when all residents leave (Figure 3). This would make it nearly impossible to navigate the home while the system was armed, yet would not pose any threat to the residents in case of accidental deployment.

Fig. 3: These raise-able metal objects can telescope out of the floor when required (up to a height of, say, 3 to 5 feet), and can collapse back into the floor while not needed. If the lifting mechanism is sufficiently low power, it would even be safe to place these all over the house: even if a table / chair / person / etc was on top of one of these plus-shaped home-defense objects, that specific one would just remain in the floor even while the system was armed.

The metal-slat security system described in Figure 3 would be expensive to install, since it would require an elaborate floor mechanism. For home remodeling on a budget, see the simplified (but equally effective) proposal in Figure 4.

Fig. 4: As a cheaper but more potentially injurious alternative, giant spools of razor wire could be concealed in the walls. When the owner is away and the security system is armed, the razor wire would unspool and fill the room with deadly blades. On the owner’s return, the razor wire would coil back up, like an exceptionally dangerous tape measure. The only downside here would be if the system accidentally activated itself while you were taking a nap, and you woke up to discover your room filled with deadly razor wire. That would be a bummer!

Conclusion:

Next time you consult your architect for constructing a new mansion, make sure to keep these home-defense tips in mind.

PROS: Prevents thieves from stealing hundreds of dollars worth of televisions and cell phone chargers from your residence!

CONS: Might be over-complicated compared to the lower-tech version of just putting medieval portcullises between each room.