Don Shift Sends: Analysis of a Suburban Home and Neighborhood for SHTF – A Case Study, Part One

Introduction and disclaimer

This is an evaluation of a typical American suburban neighborhood for defensibility and vulnerabilities in the event of large-scale urban unrest or a social collapse. The evaluation is in line with the principals in my Suburban series of SHTF residential defense books.

Full disclosure: I picked this neighborhood more or less at random and this house certainly by random. I personally know this neighborhood and have patrolled this city/neighborhood but I didn’t cherry pick it. I do not know who lives in that house. This piece is a though experiment only. If this is your house/neighborhood, it is sheer coincidence.

962 Ravenwood Ave, Newbury Park, CA; the Hickory Park neighborhood. Please follow the link to the Google satellite and Streetview photos. Also familiarize yourself with the general area. This will be “your” house for the purpose of the study.

Area overview

Newbury Park is a community within the city of Thousand Oaks. Thousand Oaks is an affluent suburban community about 40 miles west of Downtown LA. The population is 126,000 and over 80% white.

The city sits at around 1000 feet or so on a plateau surrounded by mountains and valleys. To the north/northwest are low rural valleys with mixed high-dollar residential housing and agriculture. To the south/southwest are the Santa Monica mountains. The city is split by the US 101 freeway that brings traffic to/from Los Angeles and the central coast; SR-23 is an additional freeway that provides north/south access and ties into the SR-118 freeway that goes to LA.

The area is patrolled under contract by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office from the East County Station. The local constabulary is better trained, more dedicated, and more effective than most other law enforcement agencies (yes, I am biased). The horror stories you hear about police/prosecutors in California is not the case here. The sheriff has been doing shall-issue CCW for years now. Unfortunately, firearms ownership is not widespread and not tactically oriented in nature.

“Your” neighborhood is middle class; most residents have good incomes or have lived in the area for a decade or more. Demographics are almost entirely middle age or elderly white or Hispanic; there are no racial tensions. Politically, it is split roughly 50/50 between the parties and tends to be more conservative and is not a leftist hotbed.

Poor neighborhoods tend to attract more people who are criminally inclined, lack poor impulse control, or those who consider themselves a politically disadvantaged underclass. In past riots we have seen these areas as the epicenter of violence. Newbury Park has a very limited population that could fit into the above category.

The relative wealth of the area is a benefit more than a negative. More financial resources means further room to fall before becoming desperate and more innate resistance to base impulses like preying on neighbors. Yes, middle and upper class people have stuff that can be stolen but there will be less local criminal pressure as your neighbors can be more self-reliant for longer.

Lower class neighborhoods are miles away and there are very few truly impoverished areas in the city. Gangs are effectively non-existent as is random violent crime. Petty crime is minimal and limited to opportunistic theft. Criminals do drive up from LA to commit shoplifting and burglary but actual street crime is vanishingly rare.

There is nothing in the immediate area to attract large groups of people. Retail shops are about a mile away from your neighborhood and they aren’t that attractive to looters. The industrial area is a few miles away across the freeway. There are no government buildings or businesses of note that would attract a major protest or riot.

You are over five miles away from the large Oaks Mall, across town from a sleepy Lutheran university, and five miles up a narrow, meandering two-lane road from an equally dull state university. Any major attractions, so to speak, are miles away and there is nothing to draw crowds your way, though cockroaches may scatter in your direction.

Two churches are just to the northeast of the neighborhood, which may become refugee centers. The area elementary schools could also be used for the same purpose but they are setup for better containment. The recreation area to the south lacks campgrounds and amenities so it probably won’t be attractive to refugees. Dos Vientos Park is the nearest large park with bathrooms and facilities that may be used as a refugee center.

There are multiple gated communities in the area. These neighborhoods have greater security by being gated and may require less mutual support than open neighborhoods. Nevertheless, without alert residents and guards, ready to defend themselves, the extra security is just an illusion. Your neighborhood could easily become “gated” through the employment of ad hoc barricades.

The only major natural hazard is a brush fire spotting from the surrounding hills into the housing tracts. Sometimes there is nuisance flooding. Earthquakes are non-factor aside from utilities disruption.

Key terrain considerations

Outer perimeter: the natural boundaries of your neighborhood. Lynn, Reino, and Potrero Roads and the four road access points into the neighborhood (Fernhill, Greendale, Briar, Pinehill).

Inner perimeter: your street and the barricades at either end.

Final defensive perimeter: the yard of your home.

The tract is built in an effective self-contained ring. This is great because only four road entrances to the neighborhood as a whole need to be closed.

There are no bike paths or alternative lines of communication like railroad tracks that could be used to infiltrate the neighborhood. The Paseo Santa Monica development, the drainage pond, and the hills help secure the west side. This is technically passable but not easy to spot nor convenient. It could be closed easily at both ends. On the southeastern exposure, the Arroyo Conejo storm drain forms a sort of moat along and taking the road is superior to skulking in the runoff.

On the southern side, the small number of houses on the west end of Potrero Rd. outside the neighborhood will be outside the safety of the neighborhood ring but still have relative safety and mutual support. Their houses yards provide a segmented containment section where the “moat” ends for the rest of the tract.

The proximity to an arterial street with no buffer space is problematic. The northern edge (Blackwood St. and Lynn Rd.) is susceptible to wall jumpers but this is the only such weak point and the threat there is primarily to single householders.

Any mass infiltration attempt over the walls would break the intruders into groups across various yards, making it easier for defenders to contain them.

Observation (high points)

High ground surrounds the area but it is not high enough, nor close enough, to dominate the area. Nuisance shooting into the tract is possible but this would leave any harassing snipers vulnerable to counter-sniper fire. Any fire from the high points wouldn’t leave much of mystery as to the source.

A sniper or enemy force with significant firepower could cause problems and isolate the neighborhood by targeting the entry streets. Only the Greendale entry would be relatively immune from fire from the nearest high point unless the enemy had some sort of long-range fires capability like a mortar.

Solution to the high point problem: good guys occupy the high points. This provides elevated observation posts that support all but one access point to the neighborhood (Greendale). Just two guys with a long range scoped rifle in an OP can do a lot of good.

On the south side is where the elevated terrain can exert the most control. Hill 780 covers the Potrero/Reino checkpoint. Hills 802A/B cover Briar and can mutually support 780 and 856, which covers Pinehill. On the north side, Hill 956 can cover the Fernhill access—and can permit sniper fire into the neighborhood (including your house). However, the trees along Lynn Rd. do obscure some of the view, especially from points lower on the hillside. The center of the neighborhood is most immune to accurate long-range rifle fire from the hills.

Hill 956 overlooks most of the neighborhood but go north a few hundred yards and Hill 1086 gives a view into Dos Vientos and the city beyond. This would be an ideal location for a radio repeater. The northern ridge have some additional security because the homes that are at the foot will have an investment in securing the ridge, although this may be a challenge because of the hiking trails that run along the ridgeline.

Long range observation is somewhat mixed because houses and the large number of trees obscure clear views of many streets. A drone is well suited to the suburban environment because it can move laterally and look straight down in addition to maneuvering around visual obstructions.

If you want to control the big intersection of Lynn and Reino, you’ll do so from the backyards and second floors of the bordering houses. That is way better than trying to create fortified positions in the open on concrete and asphalt.

Obstacles

The neighborhood backs up against National Park lands and the Santa Monica Mountains. A southern attack vector is unlikely as extensive overland travel is required. The most likely threats are coming through the city on the roads. The relative remoteness at the “back” of the city can be considered as an obstacle in and of itself.

While Los Angeles proper is about 20 miles east down the 101 freeway, a plethora of wealthy and upper-middle class neighborhoods and cities sit between you and the lower class areas of the San Fernando Valley that may be victimized first. Calabasas and Hidden hills have better loot.

 

This area and neighborhood can get confusing without a map; even growing up in the area I got lost when I was new to patrolling that beat. Someone who is lost or fleeing could end up circling the streets. The two southern exits turn out onto a dead-end street (Potrero Rd). It is easy to take a wrong turn and head down the cul-de-sac instead of out to Reino Rd. especially if you think Potrero goes through, which it hasn’t in 30 years.

Fortunately, the tract was laid out in such a way that the streets meander for aesthetic reasons. This also prevents cars from going straight through it like a shortcut or, to a lesser degree, speeding through the neighborhood. Not being on a grid pattern limits intuitive navigation also.

The arterial roads would be a difficult to close because of its width and many different parties that need to use it would clear any blockages or challenge any roadblocks. However, if arterials did need to be temporarily closed there are plenty of trees that could be cut down and strewn in the roadway.

Avenues of approach

Freeways and arterial streets are like expressways for bad guys to come in and leave. They will want to hit targets that are close to their entry and egress routs. The less complicated the routes, the better. You aren’t dealing with TV villains that have route maps and memorized the surrounding streets. Most of the time they will head for the nearest freeway and hope to blend in with traffic as they run for familiar territory, far away.

The nearest freeway on-ramp is three away, although a high-speed arterial street (Lynn Rd.) does lead from the freeway to your neighborhood eventually. While Lynn is a major thoroughfare through the city, you are at the far end of it. Few people will be traveling that deep into the city by accident or casually. Traffic going through the area is generally local traffic, commuters into/from the city, or people using the recreation area to the south. Traffic is generally light and trips purposeful.

One catch is that Lynn Rd. turns into Potrero Rd. that dumps down into the Oxnard Plain. This is a route to lower-class Oxnard or Hwy 101 and points north. In a collapse, Oxnard maybe a potential host city for criminal/cartel raid gangs or at least where mobile criminal predators live. I would expect that if things are really bad, Pacific Coast Highway/Hwy 1 through Malibu will be blocked to prevent criminals from LA from entering the wealthy seaside community or using the highway.

Potrero Rd. does also go east through Hidden Valley, where many extremely wealthy people live. You will recognize this area from countless commercials. Potrero, when not blocked by filming, makes an easy shortcut from east Thousand Oaks/Westlake to Newbury Park. However, if the world has gone to crap Hidden Valley residents and their hired security forces will probably close the roadway, which is easy to do.

Your neighborhood is in a great position because it is far away from the freeway and “buried” deep within the city. The hilly terrain, the segmented tracts, and meandering roadways can get confusing to an outsider. All of this would probably do fairly well to contain or slow the advance of large scale outside mobs and looter gangs.

On the western edge, there is a small landscaped slope separating the homes on Blackwood St. from the Paseo Santa Monica development with a small drainage gutter. This is technically passable but not easy to spot nor convenient. A concealed approach could be made along this area; alternatively it could be used as an escape route. The northern opening to this no man’s land off of Lynn Rd. needs to be fenced.

The parkland on the south side has to be patrolled and guarded. OPs on the hilltops both occupy the high ground to deny it to an enemy, provide observation and elevated fire, and serve as a trip line/defensive line for any infiltrators coming up from the parkland.

The house

962 Ravenwood Ave, Newbury Park, CA

Your house sits on a corner which places you at a disadvantage. That’s two sides open to the street and a portion of your back wall abuts the neighbor’s open driveway. Had you known better at the time, you wouldn’t have bought on a corner. At night, headlights sweep the front windows from northbound cars turning east on to Gladhill, which wakes your guests. Cars could also drive up the lawn and crash into the side of the house.

You are fortunate not to have a storm drain, greenbelt, or bike/pedestrian path behind your house. One of the unintentional benefits of the location of the house is that it is in the rough center of the tract. It is surrounded by other homes that would potentially be targeted before yours. Hopefully thieves would try the homes on the outer rings first so they could slip away more quickly with less eyes seeing them. The homes behind you are all in a cul-de-sac neighborhood making it even less likely bad guys would go back there.

Your south wall is mostly topped with an impenetrable privacy hedge; no one is jumping that. You can add plastic anti-jump or bird spikes along the unhedged portion and the side gate. If things get really bad, you’ll string up barbed wire. The small slope on the south face of your yard also makes jumping less likely but you could put in some defensive landscaping to keep people further away from the wall. A small cactus garden right under the wall would make a ladder necessary for any would-be jumpers.

The neighbor’s driveway at 4107 Gladhill is a problem for your rear/east wall. There is no privacy hedge along that part of the wall. Anyone could cross the driveway and hop the wall. There’s even a trash can often left out that may provide a boost. In an emergency, you’ve decided to top the wall with barbed wire and/or install a 2-3 foot privacy fence whether your neighbor approves or not.

There’s nothing you can do about the south side of your house outside the wall. It’s exposed, plain and simple. You do only have two windows and those have the highest level of 3M security film to make any shattering attempts very problematic. You could add bars if you needed to or board them up entirely.

Your front yard is wide open to anyone on foot. You’re lucky there is hardly any foot traffic here because people might cut the corner across your lawn. You had an idea to put up a white picket fence but your wife vetoed it because the house would look too closed off. She suggested a split-rail fence. Adding a few “decorative” boulders would stop any cars that might fail to negotiate the corner and come up on the lawn.

While neither fence would actually stop any intrusion attempt, it would be a psychological barrier. Any group marching through your neighborhood would unconsciously avoid the fence, naturally funneling away from your house as they took the path of least resistance. The driveway could be closed off with a chain hooked from post-to-post to continue the barrier. Anyone crossing the perimeter would be doing so willfully. If you have to, you’ll get some metal fence posts or stakes from Home Depot and hammer those in to the grass to rig up a four-strand barbed wire fence.

Your other side gate on the left is behind a large hedge that hides it from view from most angles. Both gates are kept locked at all times. That hedge does create a major blind spot up the street to the north so that needs to be factored in to your situational awareness.

The front windows (also security filmed) are not easy to access because of the bushes underneath them. Anyone trying to get in that way has to somehow climb over or step into the bushes. You would more strongly consider bars if things get really bad because these would be the children’s bedrooms if you had kids. If you didn’t have a crippling mortgage, you would consider putting in bulletproof glass at least for the front bedroom windows.

Since Google drove by your house, you’ve replaced your as-pictured windowed door with a decorative steel door with no window. It doesn’t let light in to that part of the house, so it’s a little darker than it was before, but that door with its reinforced frame is quite robust. There is no oval window that can be broken out and the security frame now built into the house is better than the longer deadbolt, reinforced strike plates, and 3” screws into the studs you had before.

The living room window is a vulnerable point even with security film. Without bars, the ease of stepping inside would reward concentration of effort to break and rake the glass. You’ve been considering getting a metal security screen for the front door in addition to window bars. For the courtyard, you could put up a faux wrought iron steel security gate across the walk and over the knee wall, completely enclosing the courtyard. Intruders won’t even make it to the front door.

In the rear, a set of sliding glass doors lead to the backyard. No one can just break the glass and step through due to security film but it is a weak spot regardless. You do have an expedient plan to push your wheeled grill in front of the door and lay the picnic table on its side so that the obstacles have to be cleared before anyone can just walk through.

What you can do is create a frame of 2×4 and board up the sliding glass doors if you have to, or, you can get creative and make the covers slide back and forth like closet doors. A cable lock can secure them quickly through two holes. Your doors would remain functional, yet protected, if you have the carpentry skills for this.

Your roof is Spanish tile, so it has some flame resistance if an incendiary gets tossed on it. The stucco walls are remarkably durable so bashing or cutting in by brute force is unlikely. Bullets will easily penetrate the stucco, but will lose a lot of energy and probably be deflected. Stucco walled homes offer the second highest bullet resistance after brick, but bullets that penetrate can still be lethal.

That your home is a single story means you have no elevated observation or firing position. Other neighbors will have to take the high ground in their two story homes.

You have a camera doorbell and security cameras that cover each entrance and exit to the home. Additionally, you have cameras that cover the garage, the driveway, the side gates, and all four approaches up and down the two streets. You can get pretty much full situational awareness without having to go outside or peer through the blinds.

Security lighting is missing. You don’t put much stock in motion lights over the driveway but it couldn’t hurt. Rigging up some spotlights to illuminate the courtyard and front and backyard at the flip of switch would be a good idea. You are glad you installed that generator transfer switch, those solar panels, and that battery bank now, earthquakes and brownouts aside.

LOOK FOR PART TWO TOMORROW

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About the Author: Patriotman

Patriotman currently ekes out a survivalist lifestyle in a suburban northeastern state as best as he can. He has varied experience in political science, public policy, biological sciences, and higher education. Proudly Catholic and an Eagle Scout, he has no military experience and thus offers a relatable perspective for the average suburban prepper who is preparing for troubled times on the horizon with less than ideal teams and in less than ideal locations. Brushbeater Store Page: http://bit.ly/BrushbeaterStore

9 Comments

  1. For Victory August 11, 2022 at 15:39

    Park large trucks as roadblock neighborhood entrance, snipers on nearest rooftops.
    Armed foot patrols in shifts, tripwires in any wild or forest areas.
    Mound up some propane tanks by the back gate with targets painted on them just in case.
    In the 1973 Weather Underground manifesto Prairie Fire comrade commissar Billy Ayers (CPUSA) suggests that soft bourgeoisie capitalists won’t be able to handle deprivation or attrition warfare in their backyard.

  2. Shinmen Takezo August 11, 2022 at 16:51

    I am very familiar with this area–you left out one access road built to the west which goes down into the Oxnard plain past the old state mental hospital. Newberry Park is indefensible in any serious SHTF situation as it will be ravaged by savages of all flavors swarming out of the Los Angeles basin and illegal, poor hispanic types swarming out of the Oxnard plain. I doubt if you will get any of your neighbors in this particular area to lift a finger to help you defend anything–let alone secure the tract.

    • Don Shift August 11, 2022 at 17:40

      That’s Potrero Rd. It was discussed. Absent a nuclear war or EMP to turn off the water, the golden horde isn’t going to happen. There will be criminals coming out to prey, sure, but the area can be defended if people choose to do so. People will take action when they are in danger or afraid. Others who have the will and the means will take the lead over the objections of others the same way predators target weak victims. A strong defensive group, even if small, can make a difference and force security on a neighborhood. Don’t be defeatist.

      • Shinmen Takezo August 12, 2022 at 11:43

        When I am referring to the savages swarming into this area–I am primarily referring to the 101 Freeway that lays about 2 hundred yards of so directly to the east of this location. This freeway is one of the primary feeder arteries into the Los Angeles basin–and a primary bug funnel out when SHTF for the savage golden hordes. They will use this artery to swarm into the Oxnard plan below–down the steep Conejo (spanish for rabbit) Grade.The Oxnard plain is highly productive farm lands which are productive year round. No snow in California here.

        The other bug funnels to Newberry Park are the Coast Highway (Highway 1) which also empties out into the Oxnard plain. Another primary bug funnel out Los Angeles is the freeway through the Santa Susana pass–and this one if particularly troublesome as the San Fernando Valley is dense in illegal hispanic types of all flavors. Another primary exit point is the 5 Freeway which lead North East–but there too there is a branch off road that leads to the Oxnard plain through Fillmore and Santa Paula–which are also situated on highly productive farm lands.

        Any real SHTF scenario will have these ‘golden horde’ types using these arteries to seek food from the farm lands and Newberry Park lies directly adjacent to the trouble lanes which assuredly will be swarmed with people in vehicles (as it is less than a 1/4 tank of gas from Los Angeles) and on foot.

        The one ‘bug-out’ advantage someone in Newberry Park is their little known access to the central valley without using the freeway systems. And this is gained by going through north east through Moorpark where there is a little known, narrow pass that leads directly into Fillmore California. There you can take the backroads up into Ojai and then go up over the mountains to Maricopa California–from there you have wide open country to all points, including the Serra Nevada range.

  3. Leroy August 12, 2022 at 11:01

    Delivery drivers for UPS, Fedex, Amazon, USPS, etc. may be eyes and ears for the bad guys.

    • wwes August 12, 2022 at 11:25

      And they can also be eyes and ears for the good guys. They’re just like everyone else- get to know them, build ties with the folks in your community. That’s the only way to gain allies and to ID the bad guys.

    • Shinmen Takezo August 12, 2022 at 11:45

      In a real SHTF situation, there won’t be any UPS, Fedex, Amazon or postal employees on the roads, employed to be eyes and ears for anyone.

      • wwes August 12, 2022 at 12:01

        Depends on your definition of SHTF and your location. “SHTF” won’t necessarily be a civilization killing event, and even if it is, the degree to which it happens won’t be the same everywhere.

        Besides, even if there aren’t any delivery folks, the people who worked those jobs are still going to be around, and will be a wealth of knowledge. My mail lady is local, has been here for years, and can tell you almost anything that is going on locally. Better to build networks and figure out who is a friend now rather than later.

  4. Chumlee August 12, 2022 at 12:16

    Don’t for a second believe the gate on your fenced community is any deterrent to even casual looters.
    Worst form of false security available.

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