Kaze Uta Budo Kai Forum Archive

If the bad guys choose to disable your telephone service before inviting themselves inside, it's a pretty easy prospect. I'm a telephone guy, I know.

The traditional phone companies (AT&T, formerly Southwestern Bell; BellSouth, now AT&T; Windstream, etc) all deliver services outside your house. This makes it easy for the repair guy. You don't have to necessarily be home in order for them to activate or troubleshoot your service. Unfortunately, this also makes it pretty easy to disable your service.

The cable TV companies (like Cox) deliver phone service over the outside coax plant, then run it through a converter to split off the frequency range for dialtone. Guess what? This cable is also outside your house. Now, they typically run a small section of cable from their box to the traditional phone service box, then splice it to provide your service.

Apartment living is a bit different, in that the lines for all the apartments within a unit are typically ran to the same place. This is often, but not always locked.

What I'm telling you is anybody with an IQ above room temperature and a set of six inch diagonal cutter pliers can disable your phone service. Which means you won't be able to call 911.


Your cell phone has no land-line ties to the phone network. It's all wireless, so there's no easy way for the bad guys to disable it.

An easy way to adopt this habit is to move your cell charger into your bedroom. Leave your phone on the nightstand or other convenient place & allow it to charge.

In a similar fashion. Our home alarm system has a wireless keychain that can be used to arm and disarm the system. It also has a panic button that can be used to trigger the alarm. It's pretty handy because, as we've learned through a few false alarms whne we first got the system, the audible tone it very distracting and it will draw the attention of the neighbors.

My wife likes to sleep with the keychain on her night stand, especially when I'm traveling.

Another option to having this stuff by your bed is to have a hidy hole where you keep stuff. Pur master closet is probably the best hiding place in teh house, and it has lots of convienient shelving to keep stuff, like an extrea phone, flashlight, spare car keys (hitting the panic alarm on the keychain can add more noise to draw attention), a first aid kit, some knives... well, you get the idea.

AS I understand it, any cell phone, even one that isn't activated for regular service, will still call 911, so those spares give you an extra line out in case of emergency.