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E HOPE THAT THIS is a strictly theoretical question – or that you have plans to move to a better neighbourhood shortly. Assuming the former (and, admittedly, there is a morbid entertainment value in fantasising about extreme selfdefence scenarios), the first thing we need to establish is what sort of bullet we are talking about here.

If an ISIS terrorist, say, were to drag an AK-47 or any rifle suitable for hunting man or beast through your unsecured doggie door, you’d be pretty much out of luck. Rifle rounds travel with sufficient velocity to penetrate virtually anything you might put between you and them – including many ‘ bullet-proof’ vests. The good news is that rifles of any sort are seldom used in crimes, and hard to fit through your doggie door. So let’s say Mr Bad Guy is packing a more realistic 9 mm pistol, an extremely common weapon the world over, and he seems determined to ‘pop a cap’ if not in your ass, at least in your general direction.

Your first instinct might be to duck around a corner, run into another room, or maybe crouch behind your sofa . Not ideal. ‘Bullets will go through your wall very easily, especially if it’s just a piece of drywall,’ says Dr Karl Chang, an applications development engineer at the Dupont Kevlar Ballistic Group. ‘They will also go through most of the furniture in your house since there is not much substance there.’

Don Sherman, the ballistic lab manager at Wayne State University, helped us figure out some good (and not-so-good) things to hide behind: A refrigerator probably won’t hold up, but a paper-filled filing cabinet or a packed bookshelf might. A solid wood door is obviously a safer bet than, say, your closet’s sliding doors. If you can make your way to the bathroom, it could help you to hop in the bathtub , assuming it’s a steel or cast-iron model, or is built in and surrounded by a solid brick-and-mortar base.

If you can’t slip away, what can you grab in a pinch? For that, we enlisted the help of Dr Cynthia Bir, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. Bir runs the Biomechanics Injury Research Lab, and was kind enough to oversee some live-fire testing for us. The ballistics-savvy among you will want to know that the items were shot with 124-grain 9 mm full-metal-jacket ammunition from a distance of six feet. The rest of you will want to know that very few of them survived.

If you’re confronted in your kitchen, don’t reach for the cast-iron skillet . Surprisingly, that didn’t stand up to the gunshot. However, if you can make your way to the laundry room, that 7 kg box of kitty litter could save your life, as long as you hold it so the bullet has to travel the long way through. A 1 000-plus-page textbook succumbed. We’re pleased to note, that 23 issues of this very magazine, positioned correctly, could work . That’s more than 2 700 pages (about 7,6 cm thick). Remember that next time you consider throwing out your back issues.