Home defense and fire....

I was recently asked how to prevent someone from using a "Molotov Cocktail" against your doors and windows....
Simple answer is: You can't!
You could put up sheets of steel, or at the very least, tin or corrugated panels I suppose. So much for daylight and air circulation!
If you use wood as in shutters on the outside, there's just no way to stop a gasoline filled bottle from hitting or breaking, starting one very nasty fire...
Even the use of expanded metal as a guard, would allow the glass to break and a fire to ensue. Gas would spread all over and thru the mesh.
Unless you have a place made of concrete, rock, or adobe, and no openings to the outside, the fire would spread quickly and you'd have a very serious "situation".

I am only writing this post as I have a number of people ask me what to do about being "BURNED OUT", as there seems to have been a lot of that type of talk at times. Fire is frightening and it's not something you want to have to deal with.
Especially if you are in a "Defense Mode" of your property and life.
What to do then....?
Well the obvious answer is to have several large (commercial) size fire extinguishers handy! (30 ABC comes to mind)
But, they are worthless if the fire is outside and you are trapped inside!
Or, if you have the means, you could install a high pressure demand pump,connected to a system of pipes and sprinkler heads. They could be used inside as well as outside ( as long as they DON'T freeze!) ( a mixtue of antifreeze would have to be used as a first source of extinguishing material that would be stored in the pipes and system. Not a bad idea as this also prevents rust from forming inside your pipe system!) It would be expensive however.
(You could also run a single external system, along the outside under an eave or along the side of your building with shutoff valves, so you can control the flow from inside the building. When the pump senses a loss of pressure, it kicks in and the sprinkler heads would all open, UNLESS you have some way to control the individual heads to get the flow of extinguishing material/s to the right areas ,without losing all your pressure and "water").
They can put out fire that comes in, but it could be a lost cause at that point in time! If the fire has gotten under, over, or inside the structure, you need to leave immediately!
You could use metal panels over wooden shutters, that are on the outside....
You could put up barrier types of netting that would effectively "catch and contain" such devices, but they would be UGLY! They'd have to be quite large as they need to be some distance away from the building being protected!
But, they could stop a bottle from reaching areas you need to protect and they also would not let the glass break, if constructed properly.
You could also put in some roll down types of metal shutters that are insulated to prevent fire from penetrating.
There are a numer of foams and chenmicals that would be helpful....
( like the powder used in baby diapers that will absorb water and retard even a forest fire from burning down a log cabin!) But you'll have to mix and apply it just before the fire reaches you!
Tested and proven here during a couple nasty fires we've had the past couple years!
You could use wood shutters, if the exterior of the place you want to protect is NOT made of a combustible material...They could be pre-treated with a fire retardant chemical, such as Sodium Silicate (aka: waterglass) It is water soluable, but when applied to an absorbent material such as wood, paper,or cardboard, they then become fireproofed.
Years ago, some home insulation was primarily made of shredded newsprint/papers, that had been soaked in the solution. It would/could easily withstand the heat from a blowtorch, with as little as an inch and a half of the insulation material held in your bare hand. No heat was even felt!
Any material that can absorb that chemical will NOT burn, it may scorch and blacken a bit though. It cannot be made to burn after being properly treated.
So, that has to be about the BEST answer I can come up with...I am sure there are people out there that work in the industry and fire departments that are far more knowledgeable than I am, or ever will be, on the subject!
I hope that helps answer some queries I've had.<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

 

I dont see that being a viable attack method for my place. Someone running to within throwing distance will have to cover some open turf with a flaming rag perfectly illuminating themselves as a target. Even if someone could pull it off on me, I could use our local communications to notify reinforcements that will show up well armed and with a 2004 International pumper with a 1500gpm pump and a 800 gallon tank in the back. I have a pond nearby that could be used as a static water supply for the pumper also. One of the perks of being a volunteer firefighter in the middle of nowhere, good ole boys (and girls) with guns and a "dont mess with my brother or his family" attitude!!

 

yeah, right, like they could do jack about a guy shooting at them from the dark, and as if they are coming, anyway, if shtf. They will be busy covering their own butts, friend. And, uh, just exactly WHY do they have to RUN, as vs sneak/crawl, and why can't they have a bic lighter and ignite the Molotov at the last second, hmm? Your "thoughts" are pretty lame, I'd say.

 

John Melvin Davis would say to shoot the bottle of gasoline just as they light it up.

I'd use a silenced .22 to make sure that i didn't hurt my ears from the muzzle blast.

What are your thoughts?

 

Hey gunkid,love your new screen name...teeter as in "over the edge",you are as sharp as a sack of wet mice...

 

Leave it to "teeter"!
I like it!

 

I Just remembered something...( not so easy for some of us old guys anymore!) Years back we had some moron kids from the KOA behind us, always tossing and lobbing rocks over the back 6 foot high chainlink fence....As a matter of fact, I lost no less than 3 pickup truck windshields and 1 van windshield due to their rock throwing ( little pervs!)..Anyway I devised a small "trap" as it were, to catch the rocks before they hit and did damage.
I bought some fine mesh screen at the hardware store, made as a bird deterrent to eating the ripened fruits off the trees and bushes!
I used it with some of that much heavier and bright orange "webbing/fencing" used to mark off construction sites.
The fine mesh stopped the rocks and the backing of the heavy plastic fencing kept the rocks from tearing the bird screen up!
It almost was like a trampoline! Rocks would come flying over hit and bounce off harmlessly, as the weight and impact was absorbed and just gently dropped abput 3-4 feet away. The frame work was no more than a handful of 2 x 2's to hold the netting secured. It worked, and after just a few days, they gave up and went away! Cheap and effective! If that would stop a decent sized rock from coming in the yard, it would pretty much have the same effect on any other object being thrown in...?
I am now considering making up a few frames with this and using it again.
I just won't use the fluorescent orange fencing...something a bit more subtle and earth toned!

 

Gotta Love being on a VFD. Same here. Not only do I sit on the board, I am the back up OGR (Old Geeser Reserve) Engineer for the pumper.
Back to the OP..
I read some where the Avg. Max throwing distance for grenades was about 90 feet or 30 meters or so. Applying this rule to Home Made devices would probably be about right. So I am keeping at least a 50 meters clear cut area around my homestead. If things go bad, I have plenty of t-post and old rusted Barbed Wire to string up as Tangle foot. At least that is the plan. With my luck the zombies will have a home made tank that shoots Napalm for 100 meters. Not to mention an all out assault by a division of Armored Wheel Barrows.
Now this trick I have tried here at Casa de Alamo.
We had a live burn exercise about 4 months ago where we burned down an abandoned house for a land owner. I took this exercise to try out some of the things I have read over the years. The only one that I was allowed to try out (dang County Fire Chief) was to nail some Chicken wire over the windows and try throwing home made incendiaries through the widow. It worked really, really well. The wire would "Catch" the bottle and throw it back away from the house. Any where from 5 feet back to about 8 feet. YMMV. It seems to depend on how taunt the wire was stretched. The tighter the stretch, the farther the bottle was "Thrown" back from the house. Unfortunately, I did not have the resources or time to really get into the lbs./inch of pull, different tensile strengths of the wire, etc. (like I would do it any. I am more of a "Hey, this crap works" kinda guy.

From the "for what it is worth department.
Gafarmboy
If you can not protect what you own, you won't own it long.

 

Use chicken wire... the black type but don't pull it too tight.. it will keep rocks, bottles, and grenades out of your windows... some bottles may break but hey it's better than nothing and worked well in Saigon....

 

I wonder if a ''spud gun'' will launch a Molotov Cocktail....???

 

I wonder,( need to try this) how far I can throw a 3/4 or fully filled bottle of liquid, (water!) . Those old Coke bottles were pretty good for throwing, but seeing as they are now "antiques" I can't use them. ( roommate has a couple of cases of them, still full!) So I'll try it with some 1 and 2 liter plastic bottles just to see the range I can get. The only problem is that they would be much lighter than glass bottles, but I seriously doubt if I could ever get one to go as far as 90 feet! Now grenades being much smaller,heavier and far more aerodynamic would go much further! Maybe with one of those huge water balloon slingshots?
I wonder, should the "screens" be set at any particual angle? 180 degress would work, but to get the object to truly be tossed away further, it seems that there should be some angle to the screen/s..Your thoughts?

 

We used a combo of glass jars. Those glass bottles of Sobi are not easy to break, the small glass drink bottles like YooHoo and those bottled coffee drinks seemed to break easier. Just guessing here, but if you were to angle the wire at say 15 or 20 degree at an upward angle, it would deflect the object a greater distance from the house. Again, I am not an expert in the area of pyrotechnics or anything else. Just like to see what happens when X is combined with Y. Sort of a "Hey Ya'll, Watch this" approach to life.
Gafarmboy

 

I like it!
I'll try to set up a frame and see what I can come up with...I have a spare
2 x 4 and 3-4 2x2's lying around....all I need is to get some sunscreen ( nylon) and maybe some chicken wire!
This could be fun and educational!

 

Hell...I like it too...^^^...
My way of thinking is...If some Droid throws a Molotov Cocktail at you...Be prepard to launch a barrage in his direction...We expect a range report D-Fly...

 

Ain't that the truth! I figure about 18 inches away is enough to allow for indentation and rebound! Probably will work with only 6-8 inches, but better to be extra cautious! I like the idea of having a bit of extra room!

 

Has any of you thought of using the powder that makes the jell when a diaper gets wet?

 

I think you are all on the right track.

Practically: you could put steel siding on your house instead of wood or vinyl, if you do re-side your house put some of the new sheet insulation under the steel siding to give you more fireprotection, not to mention is helps keep your house warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, just and added bonus.

If you fear being pinned down and cant exit the home, goto your local lowes or home depot, what ever place you frequent. Buy a sprinkler control and some of the ratcheting sprinkler heads which sweep an area. Now some pipe and your set.. just aim the sprinklers at your points of entry and windows... you could do it with out the sprinkler control but you would have to have all the valves inside where you could get at them.. with the control you could place it in your mechanical room and if a fire starts by the front door just turn on that zone and the fire is extinguished.. Installation if actually very easy you only have to make sure if you are living where it freezes to take the proper steps in the fall to winterize it. You could also do the same thing around your eaves but there i would use the other type of heads and just use more of them, they would soak the side of of your house at the eave and wash its way down sweeping the fire away..

For interior you should already have an extinguisher of some sort but for after tshtf i would recommend having Wet Water type extinguishers on hand. The nice thing about them is you can recharge them yourself. Just take the top off, add some surfactant and water, put the top back on and add a little air from your compressor and your set. I usually pick these up when i see them at a rummage sale.. you can purchase what is known as 'wet water' but it is just a surfactant that makes water wetter.. how it works is by taking the surface tension of water away allowing it to penetrate into the fuel and extinguish the fire more effiently and much faster. I plan to also have a few buckets of water sitting around the house with dawn dish soap in them ready to go.. just step out and sling the bucket and watch the fire go out.. its crude and messy but you wont burn down..

Like i said you can purchase some special products or use Dawn dish soap. There are some surfactans used for farming too that you may be able to find at Tractor supply or other stores like that.
For a demonstration of this there are a couple things you can do. First: we have all put water in a glass or on a spoon where it is just slightly above the rim like a bubble almost. Well fill a glass so it is like that and then add a drop of dish soap and watch what happens.. Second: we have all been around the camp fire and thrown water or spit on the fire just to watch the water bounce off the wood or sit in little puddles on the hot wood until evaporates off.. well do that first to see what i mean then mix a little dish soap in and try again.. the water finds its way down into the wood cooling everything down..

some of the screening systems talked about in the previous posts is a great option and probably something a person might want to fabricate to see what it would take and have the stuff on hand, maybe prep as much as you can of the finished product but i could not leave it up all the time the wife would not allow it.. so it would be assembled and put of after the fact..

as for anyone who thinks they would shoot anybody b4 they had the chance really needs to rethink that... i assure you they could and will get close enough.. and it is most likely if they are trying to burn you out there is more than one of them so they could hit you on multiple fronts.. I myself dont feel they would try to burn you out unless you gave them a reason to do that.. i mean the purpose of them trying to get in is to get your stuff.. if they burn it all up they lose too..

Recap: if you got the money re-side with steel and extra insulation. if your broke, save your ice cream buckets and fill them with dawn and water..

hope this helped

 

There are a numer of foams and chenmicals that would be helpful....
( like the powder used in baby diapers that will absorb water and retard even a forest fire from burning down a log cabin!)

Read more: http://www.survivalmonkey.com/forum/general-survival/30506-home-defense-fire.html#ixzz1bfgCVSPg

I missed this in the OP​

 

And there's that slimy green or red colred stuff the aircraft drop on forest fires....Yukky stuff! And slippery as eel snot on a glass door knob!
( uh oh there I go, I'm showing ny age again,....glass door knobs! Whood a thunk it?)
Once upn a time when I was young ( yeah it was a long long long long time ago.....) I saw some glass tubes in an old farm house and in the barn, on an abandoned ranch we were considering buying, in Payson Arizona.....When I asked what the heck they were, the real estate guy said fire extinguishers...
You mounted them in startegic areas and when they got too hot ,they'd burst and the liquid would put out the flames. So naturally they were next to the doors and windows! The galss was really thin and the liquid was red...I have NO idea what was inside, but I remember them! If you could have some semi-permanent type of exinguishers, that were self actuating, I'd love it!
I wonder what the Pennsylvania Dutch and/or the Amish might use today...