If you are ever worried about somebody coming into your room at night to do you harm, there are some easy things you can do to prevent that possibility. Following the first two steps will give you at least a 75% chance of survival, and the remaining steps will get you pretty close to 100%.

1. Arrange your room for good defense. The idea here is to give yourself all the advantages while putting all the risks upon the intruder. To do that most effectively you must put your bed close to the
   wall away from your door, and place it sideways. (See picture below). Leave enough space between the bed and the wall to allow you to roll onto the floor beside the wall. This will keep the bed between you and the door. No, you will not be doing this to hide; you will be doing this as step one in your self-defense strategy. While you are here it will be harder for the intruder to see you, but he will be extremely easy for you to locate. From here the door becomes your target area.

2. Get a shotgun. Technically, any weapon will do – pistol, rifle, crossbow – but a shotgun is the simplest and most effective. It is safer for your neighbors than a rifle or pistol (bullets can go through walls), and it is easier to reload than a crossbow. DO NOT REFUSE TO USE IT JUST BECAUSE YOU FEEL IT MIGHT BE TOO DEADLY. If you truly are worried about the life and well-being of some murderous scumbag, there is ammunition available called "Less Lethal". These are shotgun shells filled with rubber projectiles, and they are quite effective (Examples below). They work in any normal shotgun without any modification being required. Keep your shotgun under the bed close to the wall, and make sure it’s easy to reach. Also, make sure you keep your cell phone charger plugged into this same wall.

3. Weapon first, 911 next. In the event you hear an intruder in your dwelling, roll to
   the floor, grab your shotgun, point it at the door, make sure to have a shell
   jacked into the chamber with the safety off, and keep one hand over the trigger
   as you use your other hand to call 911. As soon as you get a connection set the
   speaker mode on and put the phone down. It is much better to have both hands on
   your weapon. You can then tell the 911 operator what the situation is and
   answer all the questions while keeping your weapon trained upon the door.

4. Use the bed to steady your aim and point your weapon at an area roughly where you’d
   expect the knees to be. Under most circumstances the intruder would be
   upright when coming in through the door, but, if he suspects you may be armed
   and ready, he may try crouching as he comes in. Aiming this low pretty much
   guarantees you will hit him no matter how small he tries to make himself.
   Better still, if he does come in standing up, and you do hit him in the knees,
   he will go down screaming anyway. He’s going to be incapacitated, no matter what, and that’s the key to your survival.

5. Get over your current fears to avoid worse fears later.
   If you are afraid of guns, have a friend or relative take you out shooting. You
   can even find places in town where you can pay to learn how to shoot. The
   important thing to know is the fear of guns is merely an unnecessary dread of
   the unknown. Familiarization is the best way to get over pointless anxieties,
   and this is one fear you can quickly and easily overcome. You’d be surprised
   how many people discover shooting targets is fun after just one day. Until you
   do this you will always be a mouse living in a cat’s world. (Ask any mouse how
   well it works to depend upon the kindness of cats. The mice would much prefer
   to have guns). Just remember, the fear you have of guns now is as nothing
   compared to the fear you will experience if you ever find yourself at the mercy
   of an evil-doer later, and getting over the fear of guns is a heluva lot easier
   than living the rest of your life in constant fear of being attacked.

6. Place a lamp on a desk or a chest of drawers, and leave it pointed towards the
   doorway. The picture above shows two good locations for the lamp.
   Using a lamp in this manner gives you the edge because it not only clearly
   outlines the intruder for you, it makes it much harder for him to see where you
   are. Use the brightest lamp you can find because the brighter it is the harder
   it will be for him to see. You can run the power cord from the lamp to the
   outlet beside your bed and plug it into a surge protector device with an on/off
   switch. This way you can turn it on only when you need to, and you won’t need
   to leave the lamp on all night. Also, keep a couple powerful flashlights under
   the bed close to the shotgun. In the event the power is out for any reason you
   will need to put the flashlights on the bed away from you. Do NOT put them in front of you. The intruder will focus upon them first, and if he decides to shoot he will aim towards the light. Don’t put
   yourself into his line of fire.

7. Some final things to consider. 1) Do not hesitate to shoot if the
   intruder does come into your room! Nobody who sees light coming under
   your door and still decides to come in is going to try selling you a vaccuum
   cleaner. It is 99% percent guaranteed the intruder is only there to do you
   harm. Most burglars are looking for easy things they can quickly sell, and they
   almost never go into places where they have reason to believe somebody could be
   waiting. They don’t want to be seen and are prone to running away. If you have
   a boyfriend who tends to suddenly show up unannounced at night, get rid of that boyfriend, or at least make sure he doesn’t have a key. (He’s only using you and isn’t a real
   boyfriend at all. Come on, you can do better). 2) Stay where you are.
   Don’t leave your room to look around until the police show up. The intruder may
   be only waiting for you to come out, so don’t throw away your advantage. 3) Verify
   with the 911 dispatcher when the police arrive. Just because
   somebody outside your door decides to claim he is a cop doesn’t mean he really
   is. If the cop is a female that still needs to be proven. Nothing says an
   intruder can’t have a female accomplice. Verify his or her arrival and get full
   names from the dispatcher. Make sure the cop and the dispatcher are saying the
   same things. 4) Put a simple alarm device on your front door that will go off when
   the door is opened. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It just has
   to be loud enough to wake you up. Put alarm devices on other doors and windows
   an intruder might use. 5) Get a door device to block your bedroom
   door. It may not stop him from coming in, but it will slow him
   down. Anything you can do to hold him up will give you more time to get your
   shotgun pointed and ready. 6) If you choose to use the "Less Lethal" type
   ammunition, don’t use it exclusively. Put some "Double Ought"
   (00) buckshot in the chamber too. A normal shotgun has a plug in the chamber to
   limit the shells you can load into the shotgun to 3. If you leave the plug in,
   make sure you have one or two rounds of 00 buckshot to be fired after you shoot
   the "Less Lethal" round. If you take the plug out, make sure all rounds are 00
   except the first one or two to be fired. Anybody who is still able to come at
   you after being hit with the "Less Lethal" ammo needs to be hit with
   something harder. Keep shooting till he stops.

If people across the country started following these steps on a regular basis, home-invasions
would become far more dangerous for the intruders than for the residents.

PS. Life to America!