Saxon's Survival Hour #173: Burglar-Proofing Your Home the Poor Man’s Way

6 months ago

Today's excerpt begins on page 25 of The Survivor Volume 1.

Burglar-Proofing Your Home the Poor Man’s Way

As conditions become worse, burglaries will increase.
Poorer people will become victims of burglaries as food and other necessities are burglarized, whereas luxuries for resale have been the usual goals of burglars.

The most common burglar alarm is a dog.
But the average dog is the smart burglar’s best friend.
This dog barks at cats, other dogs, passersby and anything else it can imagine.
Its yelping actually hides the noise of the burglar’s entry.
Furthermore, the owner gets so used to the dog’s crying Wolf that he pays no attention when the real Wolf appears.

Such a dog ought to be put to sleep.
It’s not worth its food and it could cost you your property and even your life.
Get rid of it unless it is such a loving pet you can’t.
In that case, take it to the vet and have its vocal cords cut.
To a dog, that’s no worse than a tonsillectomy and it soon adjusts to its quietude.

If you don’t already have a dog, get a Bisenji.
A little larger than a Beagle, the Bisenji can’t bark and is the most intelligent of the species.
It has been bred as a hunter and protector since its first recorded appearance in ancient Egypt.

When the home is being visited by a burglar, the Bisenji will simply, sit there quietly until the fool has made his entry and then will tear him to pieces.
Yet, this brainy dog is no problem to legitimate visitors.

For a mechanical burglar alarms, you should consider the cigarette pack sized alarms designed for women to carry in their purses against snatchers.
A loop is around the woman's wrist and when the purse is snatched, a ring at the end of the loop is pulled from the alarm and a very loud, battery operated horn screeches continuously.
Unless he knows no one is around, the snatcher will invariably drop the noisy purse without even opening it.

These little alarms can be placed strategically around the home as in the diagrams.
They are cheaper, costing under $5, and just as effective as the more expensive anti-burglar systems.
They are advertised all over and are generally carried by lock shops and auto supply stores.

My favorite anti burglar device is the hydrochloric acid goody, described in THE POOR MAN’S JAMES BOND.
I have adapted it to home protection and it is cheap and harmless.

First buy a gallon of hydrochloric acid, also called muriatic acid and swimming pool acid.
It is used to kill algae in pools and can be bought cheaply in supermarkets in areas having swimming pools.
You can also buy it in hardware stores where it is sold for cleaning excess grouting off tiled surfaces, cleaning cement, etc.

Hydrochloric acid reacts with aluminum to produce dark, noxious clouds of chlorine gas.
They would be poisonous except that a person smelling it suffers so much in his nose that he will flee before inhaling enough to cause injury.

From a laundromat get some 12 to 16 oz. thick plastic detergent bottles.
The reaction produces heat and the thinner plastic bottles melt before the reaction is complete.

Put about an inch of hydrochloric acid in the bottle.
Don't be afraid of getting a whiff of the acid’s fumes while you’re working with it.
When I talk before police rookie classes I demonstrate it by having the men walk through the gas reacting on the aluminum.
I believe this would be a lot cheaper and better than the crowd control gasses they use.
Anyway, as I said before, you couldn’t stick around to sniff enough to hurt you unless you were tied up.
So don’t panic if you catch a whiff or two while making the devices.

Any aluminum will do for the reaction.
It can be powder, grain, filings gotten by holding an aluminum pipe to a grinding wheel, shredded from foil or cut in pieces from a TV dinner tray.
It must, however, be fine enough not to bunch up in the mouth of the plastic bottle when the device is activated.

With the hydrochloric acid in the plastic bottle, put a couple of ounces of aluminum in two plastic bags, one nested inside the other.
Then tie the mouths of the plastic bags over the mouth of the plastic bottle.
Just make sure no aluminum falls into the bottle.
Then tie a string to the end of the bags.

The reason for two bags is that the bags are so thin singly that one bag permits the acid fumes to escape.
The best bags are those vegetable bags you find in rolls in the supermarket.

Put the bottle, with the bag hanging to one side, on some shelf in the room.
Fix the siring on the plastic bag to a nail directly above the bottle.
Put a piece of cardboard under the bottle with a piece of black string tied to it and strung across the room about thigh level where an intruder would be sure to walk into it.
Don't forget to put the plastic bucket under the place where the bottle will fall.

When the burglar walks into the string, the cardboard moves the bottle off the edge of the shelf and hangs from the plastic bag and dangles over the plastic bucket.
The aluminum then falls from the plastic bag into the bottle.
Most likely, the burglar wouldn't even know he had tripped the device.
In about a half minute the reaction begins and the gas fills the bag, accumulating quite a lot before the bag bursts.
The room is immediately filled with gas and the terrified and tormented burglar gets out of there faster than he got in.

If you are home at the time you can just walk through the gas, breathing no more than necessary, and open some doors and windows.
In a few minutes the place will he aired out.
The plastic bucket will have caught the bottle when the bag broke so there is no mess to clean up.

As simple as it is, you really should test this before you set it and leave it.
The most common thing that can go wrong with this device is that the aluminum is not fine enough and will bunch up in the mouth of the bottle instead of falling through into the hydrochloric acid.

One way of testing the principal is with large sized balloons.
Buy a package of giant balloons, sold in supermarkets for 95c for 45 big balloons or 10c for one bigger balloon in the dime store.
Put aluminum in the balloon and hydrochloric acid in the plastic bottle.
Tie the balloon over the mouth of the bottle, otherwise the balloon will come loose and fly off.

Balloons would be ideal in every circumstance except the acid fumes corrodes rubber and makes balloons ineffective after about two hours.
You could put a piece of plastic bag over the bottle's mouth, then put the balloon over that.
Then when you wanted to use it you could punch in your finger, breaking the plastic but not harming the rubber.
That way you could carry the device for hours before testing it.
Of course, if you make it at home and carry it directly to the noisy bar or wherever you mean to test it, the rubber will still be good for about an hour.

When you are in the target area, put the device under your table or chair and upend the balloon so that the aluminum pours down into the acid.
Then, get up and leave before the reaction starts.
You can just move to another seat if you want to see the fun close up.

When the reaction begins, the balloon will expand, accumulating a tremendous amount of the dark gas.
Then there will he a loud bang, the gas will fill the room and instant panic will be yours to watch and enjoy.
Unless your victims are passed out from strong drink and debauchery there should be no injuries or damage and you can feel justifiably proud.

If you are going away on vacation the hydrochloric acid aluminum device should serve, but possibly you want to teach the burglar a real lesson.

In this case, you would put sulphuric acid in the plastic bottle, a couple of ounces of potassium or sodium cyanide in the plastic bag.
The making of these cyanides is described in THE POOR MAN'S JAMES BOND.

After the bag bursts, sending the cyanide gas broadcast throughout the room, the intruder will drop dead as quickly and as surely as if he had tried to burglarize the San Quentin gas chamber.
For this reason, you would not use this method while you were staying in the house.

When you return home and find a corpse on your living room floor you will really appreciate this clever device.
Then remove all the parts of the device and lift the burglar's wallet and any other valuables and call the police.

I told all this to a police captain and he said there would be little likelihood of any charges against the householder.
After all, you come home and find a burglar's corpse.
Heart attack?
O.D.?
Even if they suspected; even if they knew you were capable of such a thing, what could they prove?
You were out of town and he didn't belong in your home.
If they somehow knew he was gassed, who gassed him and how, could never be proved.

kurt pic.png

Kurt Saxon thought civilization would have collapsed by now.
He spent the majority of his life collecting knowledge of home based business.
His goal was for all his readers to survive at a more comfortable level than those that were less provident.

He knew the importance of communicating at a level folks could understand.
Most of what he has compiled for our benefit can be easily understood by everybody.

He also includes a subtle sense of humor.

You can find the majority of his life's work here.

Hear him read his stories.