I’m researching interest in a next generation tent designed to enhance peace of mind and personal security while camping. This short, anonymous survey will help me to understand how campers think about camping safety and premium gear. Please if you have a spare moment take part :)
How will any tent stand up to a knife? A slit in the matrial and it is all over. Or just pull the tent out of the ground with all the belogings inside. Hardly likely people who are camping in a tent will leave valuable sin a rent whe nout and about. Dead in the water before you even begin!
A "secure" tent would be an enormous weight and would be difficult to escape from in the case of fire. Anyone that worried about security would not be camping in a tent, they would have a caravan.
The topic has been raised on this forum several times over the years, usually by inexperienced campers who do not realise the implications.
I’ve always found that other campers look out for each other & challenge people they don’t recognise doing anything dodgy around other people’s gear.
The only thefts that I’ve witnessed were on a site where the owner’s 2 dogs wriggled under the flysheets of several tents whose owners were away, and they stole food. Not high value, no way to secure flysheets that you can get a hand or dog body under, or (as others have said) just lift some pegs.
Sorry but your premise is dead in the water & your survey is far more about me & my finances & funding your concept than about how to make a tent’s contents more secure.
Answer: lock the special stuff away in the car…
I once worked in a secure building, it was built like a fortress, it got robbed.
Big French campsites are fenced and have 24 hour security at both the main entrance and at the beach gate.
Many French campsites have cardkey or code sytems to get cars in and out.
I've only had one item stolen on a campsite, a battery bank with built in solar panel that I left outside the tent to recharge. The people in the next tent looked a bit dodgy and had loads of kids runing around.
These battery banks with tiny solar panels never had a hope of recharging, don't buy one.
I'm going to join in the chorus, of lack of need and making an impracticable/compromised product.
Discussion on security against intruders crops up from time to time, with various suggestions of securing zip tags on the inside etc., BUT are always shot down by the need to escape a tent unhindered in an emergency, AND for others to gain access should assistance be required such as in a medical episode! Theft from tents, rare as it is, often seems to involve slashing a side open with a blade, which is both quick and quiet, unlike undoing a zip, to gain access direct to sleeping areas where many keep some minor valuables out of normal sight! Most campers seem to secure high value items in a vehicle or keep them about their person.
Even on the most dubious unsecured pop-up sites at motor racing events that I regularly attend, theft is a very minor risk, on regular camp sites probable statistically totally insignificant! In a long lifetime of camping, don't recall any reports on regular sites. Attempting to solve a near non-existent problem IMHO.
There is a camping community spirit on most sites, and folks look out for each other. Unsupervised kids up to non-malicious mischief seems to be the greatest risk!
A 'secure tent' sounds like an extreme minority product with little commercial viability!
I have done the questionnaire, in as unenthusiastic manor as the questions allow. I'm not trying to dash the enterprise of an upcoming designer, but part of the design process is recognising if a project has 'legs' - I've spent a very long working life as a design engineer, most as head of design in multidisciplined industries and as a consultant, and any designer worth their salt accepts that some concepts have no where to go and are not worth pursuing, it's not failure, it's just part of the process of looking for new areas and ideas to develop. A tiny fraction of suggested ideas ever reach the market place! - that's normal.
I was a tenter for 10 years or so, and the only item that was nicked was some butter that I left out in the camp kitchen while I was camping in Glencoe C&CC club site in the summer of 2012 to escape the Olympic down south.
My pitch was right next to the site's hiker's hut. To this day, I am certain some cheeky hiker was bold enough to come up to my tent early morning while I was still sleeping and snoring, and took a chunk out of a fresh tub of butter for his/her toasts/crumpets/whatever.
As others have mentioned, all one needs is a knife to get into a tent.
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Back in the sixties we were travelling around southern Africa with a tent and camped over night at the Victoria Falls. Nothing of value was left in the tent.
We went out for the day sight seeing and on our return, all our food was strewn all over the place. Then noticed finger prints in the butter and realised that monkeys had got into the tent. We had to replace most of the food that was not in sealed tins.
Even if you made a tent from Kevlar, it could still be cut open. The paramedics made it through my Kevlar motorcycle gear in no time.
As it is, we have never had anything nicked from a tent. The only thing we had taken was a charger and powerbank that the wife left in the toilets. It was a bit of a dodgy site.
Never had anything nicked in 20 years of camping, unless you count a two year old I found sitting in my tent eating my biscuits when I got back to the tent one day. She had snuck in under the zip while her Dad was distracted putting up the tent. Now there is a ‘problem’ that needs solving!
I camp where people use campfires to cook over, and always sleep with my open pen knife next to me in case I need to get out quickly and the zip is inaccessible for some reason. I don’t want to be in an escape-proof tent.
No one leaves valuables in a tent and my camping plates and food aren’t worth the price of protecting.
I don’t know what people who take TVs etc do because that isn’t my style of camping but maybe they would find some kind of item-specific security device useful? Like a small motion sensor alarm that can be fitted to expensive gadgets? (To cause even more din!)
Quote: Originally posted by DeborahTurner on 10/5/2025
I don’t know what people who take TVs etc do because that isn’t my style of camping but maybe they would find some kind of item-specific security device useful? Like a small motion sensor alarm that can be fitted to expensive gadgets? (To cause even more din!)
A dog is a normally a good motion sensor and also creates din!
Security would require creating a compound around your tent with windbreaks, putting up camera watch towers, barbed wire and machine gun posts.
This is not the freedom most people seek when camping.
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Topic: Exploring Interest in ‘Security’ Tents
via mobile 03/5/2025 at 10:54pm
