ALL LIGHTS ON
I have an inexpensive set-up in my house (have installed this in every house I've owned in fact), that gives us the ability to instantly light up every room in the house with the push of one button bedside. Various systems exist to do this, and cost could range from just about $200 to several thousand if you want to get crazy with it, and depending on the size of your house.
The first system I used was called X-10. Been around since 1978. You have several small (deck of cards sized) modules that you plug lamps into in each room. Each has its own unique ID. A controller/clock at bedside has buttons to turn on/dim various lamps by ID. Also has an ALL LIGHTS ON button, and an ALL UNITS OFF button. This bedside controller sends a short burst of data over your power line, instructing the modules to turn on the lights. We keep the master bedroom lights off the system so that we remain in darkness and not light-blinded. You only need one light in each room to really push back the darkness.
We currently use a system called Z-wave, which uses a 900MHz wireless signal instead of power-line signalling since we now live in an antique house with "interesting" power wiring that will not pass the X-10 signals reliably.
There are various other systems, some wireless, some powerline based, some a combination. All have modules you can just plug in, many additionally have modules that can be installed in the wall to replace existing light switches. Most bedside controllers contain also a clock, and you can program the lights to come on and go off at useful times all the time, to give the place a lived-in look all the time, whether you're home or away.
If you're concerned about intruders first cutting your power, that's easily solved too. Just place a small, inexpensive battery backup system (uninterruptible power supply or UPS) at each lamp, and one for the controller. X-10 might have trouble punching a signal through a UPS but the Z-wave and other wireless systems will work just fine this way.
You can find many/most of these systems at
www.smarthome.com, but there are other vendors. You can find cheap X-10 stuff at Fry's and even Radio Shack used to carry it, not sure if they still do.
So here's how it goes down. If we hear a suspicious bump in the night, we press the ALL LIGHTS ON button, and the house is instantly flooded with light. We grab the homeland security hardware, duck behind the bed, and wait for the intruder to appear in our bedroom doorway, conveniently framed by the door frame.
We don't clear our own house room to room. That's for the cops, which are dispatched as soon as we are in defensive position, from a cellphone (in case the intruder has cut the phone line). That way, if the SHTF, we are heard on the recording at the 911 dispatcher's as being in a "fear for our life" defensive situation, helpful to our case if the intruder's family later decides to sue.
If the intruder has any sense of self preservation, when the lights come up all around him, he'll beat it for the door. If he doesn't, he'll later be scraped and sponged up off the floor.
Most bumps, it's just the cats getting into trouble. Cats, like intruders, are most active at night.
