I’m sure you’ve all seen commercials for some bullshit home alarm system or another. Well, there’s one in particular that is so fucking ridiculous I can’t stand it. The scene is this guy in his car, getting ready to leave for work, waving to his petite wife. Then he happens to look over at this jogger and actually makes eye contact with him.

Something is obviously wrong, because unless your work schedule changes and you leave your house at different times, you would see this guy jogging every day. Joggers are like that, once they find a nice route for a morning run, they tend to stick with it. This guy sees this “jogger” and thinks nothing of it and leaves for work any way.

Well ,the “jogger” bends down to tie his shoe just as Joe Suburbanite takes off, and while he’s down there he pulls a hood over his head. At this point a bell of some kind should have gone off, but Suzy Homemaker just goes back into the house and locks the door. Lo and behold, the “jogger” is a psychopath! He jumps up, runs up to the front door and proceeds to kick it in, all BATF style. Well, the home alarm system sounds a warning, the psycho gets scared and runs off. Immediately the phone rings, Suzy Homemaker picks it up and her concerned alarm-monitor-guy asks if everything is OK, then tells her he’s already sent the police. Now Suzy is all calmed down by this obviously in-charge professional dude, and the cops show up in less than a minute. Saved!

Now, here are the problems I have with the plausibility of this scenario, besides the obviously sexist bullshit about a woman relying on a man to handle a tense situation:

First, neither Joe Suburbanite nor his petite wife noticed anything was off about the “jogger,” even though Joe made eye contact with this guy.

Second, Joe Suburbanite didn’t look in any of his mirrors to watch what an obvious stranger did as he left. If he would have seen the “jogger” pull his hood up, he could’ve gone back to the house like he’d forgotten something, and the “jogger” would have been forced to move along. If you can make eye contact with someone, you can ID them in a lineup.

Those two things by themselves I can accept, because it was a nice neighborhood and there were actually other people around. Nobody expects a home invasion in broad daylight, right? This is where credibility starts to unravel…

Next, the guy runs up on the porch and kicks the front door in, in broad fucking daylight!!! This guy is obviously psychotic, because no plain-ass fucking burglar is going to do something this blatant, it’s just asking to get caught. Then, when the alarm goes off, he runs the fuck out of there. I’ve got news for you, anyone that brazen isn’t kicking in the door so he can run off with Grandma’s Good Silver. He’s either going to rape or kill this woman, plain and simple. She would never get to a phone in time to answer it. And if you think the cops are going to be there in no time to save the day, think again. Think about your own home right now. How long do you think it would take a cop car to get there? We lived four fucking blocks from the police station when we lived in Florida, and I called the cops a couple of times and they never got there in less than ten minutes. I could walk to the station in seven. Granted, I never called them for an emergency (thankfully!), but the town wasn’t all that big, either.

Then, the ever-vigilant system monitor calls the house. What if no one answered the phone? How many times is it supposed to ring before they notify someone? Try this, start at your front door and run to the farthest point in your house and see how long it takes you. Then, call your own phone and see how long it takes the phone to ring four times. Add a couple of seconds for a really good reaction time from the monitoring company. I can run to any point of my house from the front door in three rings and a couple seconds, and I’m old and pudgy. You should now be shit-scared.

Another thing to consider is whether there are kids in the house. Try the exercise above, but go to two different rooms to grab two “kids” to carry them to safety, preferably next to a phone. What now? Are you in the safety of the Master bedroom? Door locked? The front door to the house was locked, too, remember? Give the psycho about 30-40 seconds to do a quick scan downstairs before he starts up the stairs to where you’re hiding. Even with a stellar response time, the cops are still likely to be five minutes away, which means they’ll get there soon enough to try CPR on at least one of you.

Pretty fucking grim, eh? Now, picture the same people, same situation, but with a different scenario. Everything is the same up to the point the psycho kicks the door in. The difference is, the nice people have a dog to supplement their alarm system. Now a dog will know right away that something is wrong with this “jogger” guy, and they will let you know. Chances are, even if he’s psycho, the guy will move on, just to avoid the dog. Over 80% of career burglars would, even if they knew no one was home. Even if he decided it was worth the trouble to deal with the dog, that buys valuable time for the intended victim. Sorry, Fido.

Next, (and this is where I’m at) suppose Joe and Suzy own a gun and both have had at least some training with it and go target shooting just a couple times a year. That makes them more than a match for any psycho. So now we have Suzy grabbing up the kids, running to the house’s “Safe Place” to protect herself & her kids. Make no mistake, humans are still animals, and even a shitty mother will protect her kids. Now the cops can take their time, because now they’re just batting cleanup.

So, is a thousand-dollar alarm system a match for a combination of good situational awareness, a dog or dogs, and a gun (as long as one is reasonably competent with it) ? Hell no. Not even close.