What's the one thing which concerns robbers the most? Your money, your valuables and any secrets which might be hidden inside your room. In their attempts to break into people's homes, robbers end up finding innovative ways to enter inside without causing a sound or tripping alarms. Sometimes it can be as easy as sliding through your window and as hard as reverse engineering your door knob.
Robbers have started making use of a stretched elastic band to enter inside people's homes. When stretched, rubber bands have tremendous amounts of potential energy. So robbers stretch the elastic band around door knobs to tap into this potential energy and break in.
As the thief waits for an indeterminate amount of time for the resident to answer their call, the energy of the rubber inconspicuously holds the handle down. The owner is none the wiser and the thief can easily break in.
For Kim, it was the perfect little weekend which she was determined to spend by lazily reclining to her couch watching Netflix and playing video games. Her parents and brother were not at home, making her the only person in the house.
Just as she began to doze off, a loud thud shook her into wakefulness. Someone was frantically knocking on the door. It felt as if the person wanted to ask for help. But they made no sound at all, which meant it was a probably a burglar.
Kim is under the habit of not answering the door when she's all alone. Especially when the person on the door is violently banging on her door. She silently retreated into her room to wait it out.
Whoever was banging on the door eventually gave up in frustration and left. Kim peeked out of the window and after making sure that the coast was clear, she opened the door to investigate the source of the conundrum.
As Kim turned around to reenter her house and start watching TV again, she saw something which frightened her. There was a rubber band tightly wrapped around her door knob. Whoever was knocking on the door was intended to break inside!
Of course the first thing Kim decided to do was notify the sheriff about the burglary attempt. It could have been more than just a regular burglary and may have proven to be fatal for Kim. But she rightly exercised caution.
Although Kim barely escaped the break in attempt by the skin of her teeth, others were not so fortunate. As soon as burglars picked up on this secret elastic band technique, many robberies started taking place all over the US.
Once Kim's Facebook post became viral overnight with more than 100,000 shares, the police started issuing warnings to home owners about the perils of an elastic band and how it could be used to break in their house.
The method can work on select models of door knobs only. And investigators on the internet have claimed that it makes much more sense to just barge in the door instead of waiting for the fragile rubber band to do its trick.
A much more efficient way of breaking in is to simply push open the door once the resident answers the call. The rubber band might be an intuitive way of keeping the door unlocked, but it doesn't exactly mask your presence.
Some investigators are a little divided over the authenticity of Kim's post and argue that the rubber band method is extremely inefficient for breaking in, if it works at all. And although Kim reported that many incidents took place, no news outlet reported it.
Maybe the novelty of the new break in method wore off after thieves decided it was extremely inefficient. It as better to just knock the door down than to patiently wait for owners to open it. After all, they're not really sneaking around are they?
Whether the rubber band method works or not, we would advise the reader to take all the precautionary steps to secure their home. Make sure that all your doors are locked, the windows latches closed tightly and garage doors bolted shut before going to sleep.
