As much as I completely understand the desire to kill anyone who breaks into your property/steals your things, legally it's just not worth doing over just a bike. Not unless you're the home owner, and you can convince a jury that it was done in self-defense, which still can carry legal risks.
You're basically risking ruining *your* life over 200$.
That includes setting up booby-traps and other potentially dangerous/deadly deterrants on a property. They're just not legal under normal circumstances.
Killing another human being (even a dirty bike-thief) also comes with an emotional cost that again probably isn't really worth paying over "just" a bike.
That doesn't mean that someone who will steal a bike won't set your house on fire, etc. so protecting/securing your home is always a priority--and as far as I'm concerned, I *am* a home-owner, with a wife to protect. At that point, it's no longer "just" anything.
Getting a dog (or two) is a good means of property defense, in my opinion. Even if it's not a very imposing dog, as long as you can train it enough, and trust it enough, to give it the run of your home when you're not there, a small dog is still a LOUD dog, with keen senses, a strong sense of territory, and a lot of time on it's hands.
Anything that makes it more difficult to break into the room itself (I assume a garage) where the bike is kept is a good thing. If you can make it more noticeable (more lights, more noise), that's even better.
Motion-detecting lights, locks that can't be cut, and window alarms can all be had nowadays for reasonable prices. For the bike itself, more than one chain would be a good idea. With enough chains, there's little point in cutting up a frame, because putting it back together will be more trouble than stealing it in the first place.
If it were me, I'd also attach bells to the chains, put bells inside of the spokes (cat toys should work great, and are really cheap), and maybe get some of those cheap Bell and Howell alarms, and attach several of those to the bike in such a way that they'd have to be set off in order to move the bike. Make moving the bike difficult, even after the chain has been cut.
Wire can be good too, if you wrap enough of it around enough "problem" areas, because it'll all need to be cut in order to take the bike.
Putting your name, address, and phone number onto the frame itself, several times, is another way of making the bike more trouble than it's worth. That can be done simply and effectively, by just etching it into the metal of the frame, or it can be done in various other ways that don't actually damage the frame.
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Topic: I just got my bike stolen... (Read 8005 times)