De·fense

1 a: the act or action of defending
2 a: capability of resisting attack b: defensive play or ability
3 a: means or method of defending or protecting oneself, one's team, or another ; also : a defensive structure  (taken from Merriam Webster’s website, link here)

  When it comes to defense, there’s many different types.  There’s the “He took a swing at me and I defended myself” kind of defense.  There’s the “He tried to break into my house and I had to shoot him to defend my family”, style of defense, and there the “The forest fire was coming closer, so I sprayed water on my house as much as possible to defend it” type of defense.

  All of these are valid types.  The first one is defending yourself, the second one is defending yourself and others, and the third one is defending property.  All of them take some preparation and planning to be successful.

  Learning to defend yourself requires learning some type of combative art, whether by personal instruction (best) to reading books (worst, but still acceptable if no other options).  This is primarily a physical skill that requires repetition and practice to develop.  Learning to defend others require instruction also. How to do the right thing and what not to do.  This still would benefit greatly from live instruction, but more likely this is going to come from books you read and videos you watch.  It’s based more off strategy and thought process than reflexes.

  Defending property/structures/locations is mostly going to be learned from reading and will usually require forethought as to how best to protect and defend a location.  If your area is subject to frequent robberies, then placing bars on the windows, keeping the shrubs trimmed low (or preferably away from doors/windows), having a good deadbolt (or better still, some type of method to bar the door, keeping a cell phone by the bed charging (in case the robber cuts power/phone lines), a method to bar your bedroom door from the inside, etc.  Maybe even organizing a neighborhood watch to lower the chance of a robbery even happening in the area, all are good examples of property defense against robbery, but you have to make decisions and plan out how you’re going to set up the defense, which order (is it better to bar the windows, or install a deadbolt), what’s good enough/not good enough (can I get by with just removing the shrubs from the windows, or do I need to bar them, or possibly have a light shine on that area), and whether you even need to protect against that type of threat (do I stock up on firewood when you live in Hawaii).  You wouldn’t store up on sandbags in the desert, just like you wouldn’t bar the windows if you live out in the middle of the woods with your nearest neighbor being miles away.  All this requires planning that you have to have already put into place well before the threat materializes, if it ever does.

  What follows are my thoughts and opinions on what I feel is important when it comes to these areas.