Not every person gets to find out exactly how they’d perform in a home invasion – but my fill-in podcast host, Buck Greene, found out without warning.
(It wasn’t all good news, either.)
Worse, Buck didn’t have a gun with him at the time – so he was limited to what he had available.
Here’s the story he passed on to me:
“It was a couple of years ago,” he explained, “right when that Chernobyl miniseries came out. I know, because I spent a whole day sharpening my Gen 1 Guardian Machete that we were offering at the time, and I watched the miniseries on my phone while I was sitting at the kitchen table.”
Buck is a big fan of our Guardian machetes and has one of every version we’ve ever put out… and he was housesitting for his girlfriend to take care of her dog while his girlfriend and her mother were at a wedding in New Jersey.
“The house is set up like a duplex,” he explained to me (and that’s going to be important in a minute.) “My girlfriend’s mom has her own apartment on one side of the house, and she lives on the other. This was back before I moved in with her, so I didn’t have my stuff with me – just what was in the trunk of my car at the time, including the machete I was sharpening.“
As it turns out, though, it was what Buck DIDN’T have with him that would turn out to be the issue.
“When my girlfriend and her mom got back from the wedding, they were exhausted,” Buck told me. “So we all went to bed early. At some point, her mom started hollering from the other side of the house that she heard breaking glass, and that somebody was trying to force their way in through the porch on her side of the house.”
That’s when Buck sprang into action… by promptly falling out of bed.
“I wasn’t awake yet,” he explained. “I rolled out of bed and hit the floor, hard, and felt that for a few days after. But I grabbed a pair of pants and that Guardian machete, and I ran right out the front door ready to hack my way through whoever was trying to smash their way into the house.”
And that’s what Buck came to regret: because when he got out there and discovered there WAS no home invader, he actually had to go back into the house for a flashlight in order to search the darkened side yard to make doubly sure.
The whole thing turned out to be a false alarm — a kind of “dry run for home invasion,” as Buck put it, and really got him thinking about his preparations.
“We think she dreamed the home invasion,” Buck explained of his girlfriend’s mom, “and as tired as she was, that made a lot of sense. I didn’t mind the home protection ‘drill,’ so to speak… but not having a flashlight ready really bothered me.”
Buck told me he has since bought several inexpensive Viper Weapon Lights, one of which he keeps in a MOLLE pouch right on his Guardian sheath, one he put on a shotgun (which he made sure to add to the household when he moved in with his lady), and one that he keeps right by his bedside.
(You can get your own Viper weapon lights here – I would recommend getting more than one to take advantage of the quantity pricing.)
Buck told me he thinks about how he faced what he thought was a home invasion, basically unarmed (except, I keep reminding him, you’re not “unarmed” at all when you have a razor-sharp machete)… and how it made him something of a legend to his girlfriend and her mom.
“She still tells the story of how I charged out there to defend them both,” he told me. “But… I did ask her to leave out the part where I fell out of bed and hurt myself.”
What Are YOUR Go-To Home Invasion Tools & Tactics?
Lave Your Tips And Toolsday Recommendations In The Comments Now!
