Everything you need to know about safe rooms

I lived 14 years overseas (federal agency), in various countries, and my living quarters usually had a safe room, typically just a bedroom steel door with ballistic and forced-entry protection . Additionally, my quarters usually had a guard, or guards - sometimes all day, but certainly at night. In one country, an armored personel carrier with a .50 cal on top was just outside my door.

I never thought much about it, although I did feel rather safe. I dismissed the feeling, just a price of doing business.

Fast forward to retirement in the US. Of course, no guards, no safe room, and glass doors with zero ballistic or forced-entry features. I confess to being so greatly unsettled at the, what seemed to me, the extremely insecure nature of my retirement residence that it drove me to a therapist who described my insecurity as a form of PTSD.

I sleep easy now, no longer panicking at the normal groans of a house, nor need to take anti-depressants - but it was a long haul to get there.

I'm making no point, just relating a personal experience.

This is a bad look for wealthy people. It looks like a modern version of the high towers built by wealthy medeivals described in another current HN article [1]: "Signs of wealth and prestige, these all-stone buildings were also fireproof, leading to a terrible but effective tactic: take your family, treasures & goods up into your tower then set fire to enemies’ homes and let the city burn around you while you sit safe above. "

It seems to me like a dramatically better thing to do is to make one's city, state, and the world in general a more stable and safe place to live, such that such weird rooms are not necessary.

BTW, the original article is also at [2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452588

[2] https://archive.ph/Qr374