I live in a rural area. My ranch is not something I would plan on trying to get out run around and fight for, but the house is another story.

Ive got some contingency plans that involve limited excursions for mission specific contact and return to base, but other than that, I would have little intensions of going outside most of the time.

I figure I have the advantage if I am inside and can see threats coming towards the house across open ground.

So if I am defending a dwelling, pretty much, a bug IN plan, should I look to whole body armor like the Turtle from Bulletproofme, or is even that too cumbersome? I don't want to limit my ability to fight, but I am assuming that the likelihood of taking rounds outside of a typical 10x12 plate is huge.

Could you fight while wearing a Turtle or is that pretty much a flak suit for a turret gunner that wouldn't ever need to take a step?

If I were intending on defending a dwelling, I would look more towards hardening the dwelling and more specifically, the points where I would be engaging the threat.  Being that it is a house, you would need multiple fortified positions in order to cover all possible points of contact.

Once THAT was addressed, I would think a simple carrier and plate combo would be sufficient.

I wouldn't try to bunker in against any threat.
Worse case is they would burn you out.

Better to back out and let them bunker in your home, you know more about it then an foe would.

Best to keep threats back from your property line completely but if your alone or just a couple of people with you then I think any defense is going to be hard to accomplish.

Steel doors and frames to start. If you have certain windows or areas you think are going to be gun positions try to build up around those with maybe steel plates and look into replacing window with some more resilient

For all of you Preppers- Think about it- not one single group of people in history has ever withstood a siege. History is littered with the millions of bodies of those who thought they could. From the siege of Masada through the Sieges of Paris and Stalingrad, the well-positioned, well-provisioned and well-armed defenders all lost. A more current example, closer to your own situation, would be the White farmers in Rhodesia. Ultimately overrun by larger numbers of poorly equipped, ridiculously poor, ignorant vagabonds. They were tortured and killed, women raped, bodies mutilated. The fact that they had relatively sophisticated defense arrangements, including land mines and radio systems, ultimately meant nothing. It’s not like they were up against Navy SEAL’s or Marines. They were brutally eliminated by bands of ignorant, savage criminals. The same thing is happening right now to the White farmers in South Africa. Do you think they were ignorant of what happened in Rhodesia? Of course not! They actually thought they had better defenses! But they’ve lost, again, badly! Women raped, men tortured, bodies mutilated.

From the author of Doomsday Marauders. Not sure how I feel about his book but it's something to think about. The link will take you to his site. His credentials look pretty "legit" so he's probably a pretty good data point. Definitely some outside the box thinking.

*E4: spelling

You can Bug In. For how long is the question ?
Prep Dwelling...
Raise dwelling 12 feet on  concrete or rock base. Angle exterior walls 15 degrees outward...20 would be better. Exterior walls to be 2' thick.
Few windows. Firing ports. Mote around entire property, 8' deep, 40' wide, fill with creatures people do not like. no land next to dwelling base only water. Draw bridge made of steal. Surrounding land devoid of cover 500 yards. Couple hundred thousand rounds for each caliber. Power, food, water...2 years. Single most important feature..... Bug Out Tunnel.

He's wrong.  Plenty of groups of people have withstood a siege.  Also the op's concern seems to be more disorganized groups of raiders / scavengers than an army.  

I think you're right. Anybody who used absolutes is usually wrong but I can think of more people who haven't than those who have. Again, I think his perspective is different and something worth thinking about.

OP, I think you should stay light and fast. Firefights are fluid and you need to be able to change with them.

Not go off topic, but there's a very simple reason for that that has little to do with whether or not a defensive posture does or does not work.  

I have no idea how that author is defining a "siege," but the passage you quoted essentially reads like "defenders always die," which is absolutely untrue.  In fact modern doctrine and studies of warfare have generally tended to favor defenders at a ratio of 3::1.  However, I'm assuming that he probably qualifies what he is referring to a little bit more clearly somewhere in his text, but that's neither here nor there.

The reason you can think of more people who have failed in the defense that succeeded is simply the fact that you hear about the spectacular failures more often, and they tend to be more highly publicized.  

Think of it this way - on the victor/attacker's side, of course you're going to publicize your huge victory - exactly because it flies in the face of the conventional wisdom, which is that the defender has the advantage.  It's a spectacular victory that required perseverance and bravery, yadda yadda.  

On the other hand - if you attacked a fixed fortification and failed - why would you want to publicize that fact or draw attention to it?  It's rather embarrassing, depending on how you look at it - you knew the enemy was in the defense, you knew you needed at least 3::1 superiority to defeat them and seize the objective, and you either failed to properly develop intelligence on the enemy's true numbers, failed to use appropriate force ratios, or just plain failed to properly execute the siege and fell flat on your face and were forced to withdraw.  

From the defender or the defeated's point of view - sure, you might publicize a successful defense - but we typically prefer underdog stories - a successful defense is not really an underdog story under most circumstances - because the defender inherently has the advantage.

Sure, you might talk it up if the defenders were heavily outnumbered, and still repelled the siege - but they'd have to have outnumbered you at least three to one for it to have even been a well thought out attack.  

On the other hand - if your position is overrun, the "habit" almost always tends to be to glorify and martyr the dead defenders, "for fighting valiantly to the last man" before being overrun, the idea being to whip up public support and sentiment, to "inspire the troops," hence slogans like "remember the Alamo!" etc.  

Essentially, by human nature - we always gravitate towards the surprising and novel - thus, we hear very loudly about the times that the defenders lost exactly because it's unusual, and thus, when called to task to name "famous" instances of defense and attack - the first things that come to mind are the defeats, the novel, not the victories, the "business as usual."  

More to the point and to give you an example -

Once again, it may depend on the author's definition of "siege" per se, but think about the many FOBs, COPs, LSAs, Safe Houses, etc. etc. that the U.S. military has maintained in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

Many of them have arguably been continually "under siege," located in the middle of hostile territory, frequently rocketed, mortared, subjected to small arms attacks, vehicle borne improvised explosive devices, etc. - many of these installations even have/had "scheduled" enemy sieges, like "the Taliban Spring Offensives" that happened pretty much yearly when the enemy would once again try to overrun - or "lay siege" to them.  

Of those many locations - how many were "successfully" overrun?  A handful?  Yet - if I asked to you name specific examples of instances in which American bases were "laid siege to" by the enemy during GWOT - the first ones to pop into your mind would likely be places like Wanat or Kamdesh - instances where the defenders were defeated.  What you would probably struggle with, unless you had actually been there personally would be to name many other instances where the enemy attacked a base, the defenders defended, and the attackers were repelled.  Which do you think happens more often, though?  

Think further out, say a hundred years from now when the historians study the "War on Terror" and when schoolchildren read about in history books - which ones do you think will make it in, if any?  And then, which ones will "stick" in their brains when they go to think about it?

~Augee

Good points, especially the one about Iraq and Afghanistan.

Apples to oranges. I am not familiar with these specific raids mentioned in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I assume there were air assets providing continuous air support.  Air power changes the game, and I think that is different than the discussion in the original post about isolated defenders.

To give a specific example, the quote refers to Stalingrad.
However, the Russians were defenders there, and they won. Granted, they won by launching a counter-offensive and cutting off the Germans, then squeezing them, but they also held in the initial defense, halting the German advance long enough (and bleeding them enough) to assemble the reinforcements and support that eventually succeeded in the counteroffensive.

The germans were also micro managed to hell and back.

Errr I think Leningrad should be a contradictory success to this statement.

Very true. Still not a good example of "the defenders always lose!!!!1!!one" even if you apply it to the Germans--between Goering and Hitler, they were screwed from their own side as well as the enemy.

Good point Augee.  I would also reference the Battle of Somme in France in 1916.  The Germans were well fortified when the Brits bashed their heads against the wall for months at a loss rate nearly 10 times higher than the Germans.  There are also hundreds of fortified locations that were destroyed over the course of the same war, so in general fortified location were not safe havens.

It all comes down to the attackers ability to overcome the defenses.  And that comes down to big guns, which hopefully even those poor ranchers in Texas (aka the new American front lines) won't have to face.

As long as you can remain safe from small arms and also remain mobile within the house, ie: not hunkered down in a cast iron bathtub, you should be able to convince even fairly large groups that you aren't worth it.

I would avoid a turtle or bomb type suit, no way you can function in that. But a static position is good for wearing a bit more protection, something a armor carrier with BALCS and side plates would be good, to heavy to do a 10 mile hike in but still mobile enough to move around when you need too.

I've already pointed out that my comment was somewhat off topic, and I was addressing the quote, not the OP's specific question, but once again, it's dependent on the definition of a "siege" used by that particular author, however, the author does mention things like Paris and Stalingrad which encompassed the full spectrum of military operations, including aviation assets on both sides, as well as well prepared, deliberate defenses, in which case, if you have them, aviation assets can be a part of.

The author's assertion in the quote is not qualified by circumstance, level of support, the nature or status of the defenders, or their level of preparation, it says unequivocally "not one single group in history has ever withstood a siege."  

Where it's relevant to the OP's question is the fact that if it is demonstrably incorrect, whether due to lack of context of the quote or simply by a flawed conclusion by the author, it's not a relevant data point for consideration in the OP's situation without at least further clarification.  

As to the case of an individual defender - I would refer back to the 3::1 Attacker to Defender ratio for a successful attack.  Meaning that unless the OP plans to be attacked by no more than three people (or, if he has an "average" sized family of say five - fifteen attackers) for the entire duration of "SHTF," pinning his hopes and dreams of surviving SHTF by defending a fixed fortification may not be the best idea, but then again, I don't know the specifics the OP's plan, defenses, or preparation.  

~Augee