Where in hell do you all love you feel the need to keep a d maglite next to the bed.

What does it matter where you live? Someone could scale the fence of your rural mansion and break in so they can steal the keys of your 3.0 TDI Audi Allroad, wife’s jewellery, bitcoin wallet etc etc etc. Anyway the compulsion to have a weapon to hand if the worst does happen isn’t a rational assessment of the potential risk, it’s a way to mitigate a bad scenario turning into a horrible one.

That being said, I don’t keep any “weapon” to hand for such occasions as I prefer my chances unarmed.

I remember walking back to the campsite from the pub in Conniston and using my new Mini-Maglite to light the way. I remember us being astonished by its size to brightness ratio. That was back in 1990. My current torch, a Fenix E15 is in a different league. Its Cree Xp‑g2 R5 is ridiculously bright, running on a CR123 cell.

Someone could but where you live changes the odds. The odds would have to be so what stacked in their favour before I decided to arm my self. But then again unless you know how to use it I guess it’s mostly just bringing along a weapon for the other guy to pound your head in with after you swing and he dodges.

I prefer to attack the intruder naked with a full boner

They usually get so embarrassed it gives me the opportunity to club them to death with it.

😱

Now that’s a safe plan el shamino

I used to keep my 4xD-cell Maglite by my bed, but only so I knew where it was, and to prevent my step-dad appropriating it and messing it up. It’s got an LED in it, but it pales by comparison with the little £7 R5 flashlight I linked to on the other page, which throws out far more light than seems reasonable for a small torch.

Maglites are crap generally. They don’t stand up to any kind of rough use and design is pretty poor too. The LEDlensers I have/used are/were miles better by every metric. Maglite are one of those brands who really don’t deserve their reputation or market share.

They probably did 30 years ago.

Someone could but where you live changes the odds. The odds would have to be so what stacked in their favour before I decided to arm my self. 

Yeah but we do loads of things that don’t make sense statistically. You put on your seat belt despite odds of a car crash being relatively small, you might smoke or drink in spite of the odds of getting some kind of associated illness.

But then again unless you know how to use it I guess it’s mostly just bringing along a weapon for the other guy to pound your head in with after you swing and he dodges.

That’s my attitude too. Also, it’s not scaleable, you’re either bashing someone with it or your not.

Back in 1992 I woke in a student house that was being ransacked with just a bathroom snib lock on the bedroom door. I grabbed a lump of welding coursework and prepared to defend me and my girlfriend. They tried the door, I shouted, they laughed and left us to carry on nicking portable TVs and Walkmans. On reflection I realised that me in my pants half asleep with a pound of iron probably wasn’t going to scare them.

Far better to get a small blindingly bright torch to dazzle them.

Far better to get a small blindingly bright torch to dazzle them.

Even better if it’s got a blindingly bright strobe function as well – a few seconds of that, then peg it while the perp is still struggling to see anything other than big purple splotches in front of his eyes.

They probably did 30 years ago.

Yeah, that’s about right.
Difficult to justify spending twenty-thirty quid, and a small fortune on batteries for a torch that’s far too big to carry comfortably when one costing £7, that’ll run on AA or Li-ion 14500 3.7v rechargeable batteries, buts out around 230 lumens and can be pretty much carried on a keyring.