By Pat Henry on June 30, 2014
When it comes to planning for the end of the world as we know it, thoughts generally turn to
Bug Out Vehicles
sooner or later. For most of us, our BOV of necessity will be whatever
we can get our hands on in the moment. For those of you who have a
little extra time or money, I wanted to discuss the concept of using an
Recreational Vehicle (RV) as your dedicated mode of getting the hell out
of dodge. The idea for this came to me from a reader named Alexander
who asked the following:
I’d like to hear what you have to say about using an RV
for a bugout vehicle. What would you stay away from and what would you
do to get it ready?
Great question and I am happy to give my thoughts and opinions, this
is a blog after all. For the record, I do not have an RV, so my thoughts
will be centered on an analysis of aspects of both the RV and the
practical needs for bugging out. I welcome anyone who does have
experience to comment below and give you own side of things.
In thinking about the question of whether an RV is
the best Bug Out Vehicle
or not, I think it makes sense to start with a shared understanding of
what exactly I mean by RV. For the purposes of this article, let’s say
an RV is any vehicle you can drive or pull behind another vehicle that
has living quarters built into it and was designed for one or more
people to live in temporarily. Don’t get hung up on the temporarily part
of that description. Essentially everything from Motley Crue’s tour bus
to a
truck camper fits into this category of RV. I’ll even add some photos below.
So now we know what an RV is lets discuss what Bugging Out is. From my perspective,
Bugging Out
is when you need to leave your home quickly to avoid a natural or
man-made disaster. This can be a flood, hurricane, Tsunami or Wildfire.
It can also be rioting, war, chemical gas leak, nuclear plant melt-down,
zombies, ethnic cleansing, slow moving lava or any one of hundreds of
other possible scenarios. You are bugging out hopefully with supplies
you need to live for three days at a minimum and you may or may not
expect to ever go home again.
Unless you have a fully stocked mountain retreat tucked into the
woods within walking distance away from your home, you are going to need
to get there somehow, so we developed this term of Bug Out Vehicle to
describe our conveyance that could help us avoid the calamity we were
leaving and be tough enough to navigate the terrain in a
post-apocalyptic world. It is my contention that most of us do not have
even a partially stocked retreat anywhere so if we are forced to bug out
of our homes, we won’t have any place to stay or we will be lucky to
shack up with friends far enough away from the catastrophe that we won’t
be affected.
The RV seems at first to be a logical vehicle to consider when you
are looking into what can take you down the road in style and offer some
of the comforts of home at the same time. Some of these comforts can
work against you and I’ll describe some thoughts I had when I considered
if an RV was the best Bug Out Vehicle for my family.
How are you planning to use this RV in a bug out situation?
The first thing I think of when I consider RV’s as a bug out vehicle
is their obvious ability to take a pretty big chunk of the conveniences
of home with us on the road. Even pop-up campers can comfortably sleep 5
or 6 people and isn’t that better than sleeping in the woods? Larger 5
th
wheel campers have 2 bedrooms a full kitchen (for a camper) and even a
living room! Worried about going to the bathroom in the woods or taking a
shower? Have no fear because most RV’s have this covered too. In terms
of roughing it, RV’s do their best to make that a non-issue.
 |
| Campers have their own sets of problems. |
So, we would buy one to live in if the grid went down, right? Or else
you have one already or were considering the purchase because you
genuinely want an RV to tour around the country. Nothing wrong with that
at all. In fact, if you were away from home and the grid went down for
whatever reason, having a stable place you could stay would be a huge
advantage. However, if you were planning to fire up the old RV after a
disaster was announced, or people were already fleeing from (insert your
reason here) an RV could have a lot of liabilities.
Maybe the question shouldn’t be is an RV a good bug out vehicle, but
rather, is an RV a good replacement for a survival retreat? If you have
an RV parked in the middle of the woods away from society and we have
some type of grid down disaster I think that you would consider yourself
one of the luckiest people in the world. However, I think if you were
trying to navigate the roads with one of these vehicles right in the
middle of mass panic, you would not feel the same way.
For one thing, RV’s stick out like a sore thumb. Anyone who sees one
knows that you most likely have room in there and you are driving around
shelter. An RV would make a tempting target to anyone looking to better
their position in life during a disaster, but that’s assuming you are
actually moving. If you are one of the lucky ones who made it out of
your town before the rest of the crowd, you might not be stuck on the
highways but any plan involving bugging out in a vehicle faces the risk
of traffic jams.
 |
| RV’s this size offer a ton of luxury, but not a lot of feasibility off road. |
If you find one route blocked, quickly detouring to an alternate
route could give you a better way to reach your destination. Most RV’s
aren’t going to be able to quickly do anything. If you are pulling a
trailer, turning around may be impossible if turning means leaving the
road even slightly.
Another aspect of RV’s that my friend Captain Bill
covered in a post he wrote for another site
is the ruggedness of your RV. I think it’s fair to say that RV’s aren’t
meant to haul tons of equipment and go jostling down country roads and
over boulders. They are really just nice mobile homes and as such,
loading them down with all the supplies you might need for an extended
time away from home could cause mechanical issues. Captain Bill had
purchased a 5
th wheel and almost immediately saw the need to
enhance the suspension to carry his extra weight and provide stability. I
know there are extreme campers out there that can go off road like the
Ford EarthRoamer, but starting at over $300,000 that is a little out of the scope of this
article.If you have that much money you aren’t listening to me anyway…
 |
| Ford EarthRoamer – Closer to what I think would be necessary to handle SHTF. |
So what’s the bottom line? I think if you want to purchase an RV to have
fun, they are great. For bugging out, unless you are the first ones out
the door you will run into problems. Even if you do leave before
everyone else, RV’s aren’t designed to be highly maneuverable and
off-road capable. For the cost, I would personally sink a lot less money
into a Quad Cab – 4 wheel drive truck, add a cap to cover the bed,
cargo rack on top, beef up the suspension, add winches and call that my
Bug Out Vehicle. If I had to bug out, I would leave the RV at home and
hit the trail in my truck first. I know there are a million different
scenarios that each of us have that could make an RV a better choice,
but for me they aren’t the most versatile vehicle I can think of to get
me and my family out of dodge. What is yours?
