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5 Survival Booby Traps to Defend Against Attackers? OK, some of these aren’t used for defense, but for survival as you use them to actually feed yourself in an emergency type of situation.
Yes, there will be times you need survival booby traps set around your home or bug-out area to make sure that you are safe from those who wish to do you harm.
5 Survival Booby Traps to Defend Against Attackers
Snares
Snares, or small game traps, come in various kinds in various sizes and can be used to catch animals and intruders from things the size of rabbits up to boars.
I could go on and on for a long time here, but let me keep a few things simple as there are entire books written on just this topic.
In a bug-out situation lasting more than a few weeks, you’re going to have to come up with a source of food quickly. Unless you know what fruits and berries are safe to eat around your area, getting your nutrition from meat is probably your safest bet.
However, not everyone has the patience or skill to sit around waiting for an animal to come into sight and hunt them with a gun or bow. Sometimes, trapping is the safest bet for catching food.
Trapping has been used to great extent for centuries all across the world because it has a few advantages over hunting – primarily that you can set up multiple traps and have them all set at once, while you can only hunt one animal at a time.
The first kind of trap is very simple and easy to use, though it’s not always guaranteed results. The Havahart One-Door animal traps work well for catching small game such as squirrels, rats, and chipmunks.
They’re very simple: it’s a cage with one side open, and when a pressure plate on the inside gets triggered, the door closes and the animal is trapped. You can place bait on the other side of the pressure plate to entice animals to enter, and when they try to walk over to the food, they’ll trigger the trap.
You can also place sticks and leaves around the outside of the trap so that it doesn’t stand out as much. The second kind of trap is harder to use, but works on a much wider range of animals and is more compact.
DakotaLine Snare Traps can trap anything as small as squirrels, up to something as big as a hog. The snare design of traps is one of the oldest and can be made from rope or wire.
These premade snares will snatch any prey that wanders through them. They’re almost undetectable to the animals until they’ve set off the trap. Finally, it might be easier for you to trap fish than land creatures.
Eagle Claw Minnow Traps can catch the smallest fish, crawfish, crabs, and even water snakes. Once fish enter, they can’t find their way out. Attach the trap to a rope, and attach the rope to a tree or something solid so that the trap doesn’t float away.
After a few days, the trap should have at least something in it. You can catch crawfish by placing smaller, dead fish in the traps, which will attract scavengers like crabs and crawfish.
If you really want to learn more about snares and traps, I found an excellent book to add to your library: The Trapper’s Bible
It contains lots of useful information on making traps that you can use to catch any possible predators before they reach you, also allowing you to catch food for survival. It is worth the investment!
Stake Pit
Steak pits, or spike pits, are nasty but very effective. It takes a bit of time to build one, and you may need more than one if you are looking at these for either defense to to catch a large animal.
These were used in Vietnam War, and are essentially a pit with sharpened bamboo sticks or wooden stakes sticking up from the bottom of the pit. The top of the pit covered in a thin layer of leaves, so anything that walks over it falls into a little spike pit.
Just. Ouch.
But it will stop a bad guy in his tracks.
Here is a video that gives you a better idea, even if it is animated.
Alarms
Occasionally, running away is a smart tactic for your situation. It pays to know when someone or something is coming though and that is where alarms come in handy.
Using tripwires and noise-making devices, you can be alerted to the presence of any intruders while potentially scaring them off. If you are eating canned goods – save those cans for your alarm or have other, smaller things at your location for future use like small bells that come in a package at your local dollar store or even flatware that you grab at your local thrift shop for pennies.
Bullet Trap
This is a fun one to google – because a bullet trap is also what a lot of shooting ranges use. That is NOT what I am talking about here and the instructions are almost impossible to come by.
Basically, it is like a landmine: an intruder steps on a metal tube mostly buried in the ground. Inside that tube with the rim sticking out is a shotgun shell, with the primer set against a nail. Stepping on it will cause the shell to go off, shooting the invader from below.
Just make sure YOU know where you have them all located as they are much smaller than a spike trap and it would be a bad thing to catch yourself or your family members in.
Bait-Related Traps
This is pretty straightforward as far as survival booby traps go. Setting out something desirable like a gun for a human in a survival situation or food for animals and rigging it up to hurt the person or animal that gets ahold of it is a great last-resort if you have tried your other options.
It has to be something that is attractive to the character that you are trying to trap – and something you must be OK with possibly losing.
Other articles you may find interesting:
- Best Survival Tools for Outdoor Adventures
- Bushcraft Knives Essentials: Choosing the Right Blade for Survival Skills
- Nutrient-Survival Food: The Ultimate Guide to Long-Term Food Storage
- Five Ways to Survive a Harrowing Attack: How to Win the Fight
- Off-Grid Wind Power Systems: Harnessing Sustainable Energy in Remote Locations
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