What is a Panic Room?
A Panic or Safety Room is any room in your house that you can use in case of an emergency, that you feel safe in. It can be your kitchen, living room, bedroom or even your child's room. Any of these rooms can be your safe haven.
Imagine you have a room in your house with reinforced walls, beautiful high-security doors and bullet resistant windows that look like normal fittings in the house. That’s exactly how a Safe Room should look and feel in 2018. We are not in 1986 where things are dark, rough and look like a cold prison cell.
There is a stereotype that a Safe Room or Panic Room should be a dedicated room in your house. This is not so. How do you plan on gathering your entire family and getting them all into that room, when someone with bad intension is running up your stairs at that very moment? It’s impossible.
First of all, you need barriers to stop them. Secondly, you must have a plan of action. With some simple time delaying security measures, such as high-security doors, you will have enough time to gather your family and place them in safety.
So where should you have your Safety Room?
Normally, it would be your main bedroom, as that is where you keep your most valuable belongings. However, this is not the case for families with small children. In that case, a panic room should be your youngest child’s bedroom. The logic is quite simple, your youngest is the most vulnerable therefore it would make the most sense to have that room as the point of safety. All you then have to do is run into their room and close the door behind you, instead of trying to wake the child up and rushing them into your bedroom or any other room in the house.
It sounds quite frightening, and hopefully it won’t happen to you, this is simply a precautionary action that one can take to prevent the unthinkable – like a seatbelt in the car.
