The Ultimate Vehicles For Your Retreat?
If you found yourself suddenly gifted with several million dollars, and assuming you had some left over after spending money on all the usual things, maybe you might choose to treat yourself to a really neat vehicle to stick in your retreat’s garage.
The issue of successfully defending your retreat against armed attackers post-WTSHTF is one of considerable debate. Some people choose to ignore the issue entirely, and claim they have no need for serious preparations and defenses, either because their retreat is well hidden, or because they are in a region with plenty of like-minded folks, or because they don’t believe that people would actually come after them and attempt to steal from them by force (and – we fear – do much worse than that too).
We’re not going to re-debate those points. We’ve discussed them before, and might again in the future, and suffice it to say for now that we feel it an essential component of the prepping mindset to consider not just best case but also worst case scenarios, and to prepare (within reason) for both. What sort of prepper allows themselves to be caught out by something that they say weakly in excuse about ‘Oh, gosh, we didn’t think that was likely to happen’? Isn’t prepping all about preparing for less likely things which, if they do happen, will seriously destroy our lives and our lifestyles?
This article is simply looking at some unusual types of defensive vehicles. And, yes, clearly these ‘defensive’ vehicles could be used just as well by someone else as an offensive vehicle – to bring the battle directly to your front door.
That thought of course begs the difficult question – what would you do if a bad guy turned up on your doorstep in a tank?
Unfortunately, that’s a far from impossible scenario (depending on how close your retreat is to a base with armored vehicles on it at present). When the rule of law crumbles, there will be many thousands of tanks and other armored vehicles on bases around the country that will be liable to being ‘repurposed’ by people with evil intent. We can only hope they run out of fuel (or ammo and/or spare parts) for their armored vehicles before they reach your retreat.
But what about the lawful availability of armored vehicles, today? Did you know there’s a reasonably extensive market that trades in older armored military vehicles. Of course, the main guns have usually been ‘de-milled’ and made inoperable and close to impossible to repair back to working order, but as a secure platform that would resist small arms fire up to and probably including the .50 BMG round, they are very interesting.
Some of the older vehicles also have fully analog type engines that are probably about as sure to survive an EMP attack as anything out there.
Of course, a heavy armored vehicle is going to give very bad gas mileage, and so you don’t want to use it as a daily driver. Tracked vehicles can also be very maintenance intensive. But as the ultimate all-weather and all-terrain vehicle that you can use hopefully in almost any type of weather and ground condition, and with a secure protected compartment that you can either escape within or fight from, an armored vehicle gives you a new level of tactical options that hopefully the bad guys ranged against you can’t match.
Remember that not all tracked vehicles are armored, and of course, general purpose ‘military’ trucks and other vehicles are probably not armored either. And not everything with impressive looking tracks or really big wheels will manage to proceed in deep soft snow or bottomless mud.
There are a number of different national sources of military vehicles. Ebay Motors has a section for military vehicles. Here’s another website that features online classified ads (and interesting magazines too).
Let’s not forget our own government – they sell off just about everything imaginable, including through this site.
Perhaps the best site for armored vehicles is this one.
In addition, who knows what you mightn’t find locally as well. Ask around, do some Googling, and the chances are, if you want to indulge yourself in such a vehicle, there’ll be exactly what you’re looking for, somewhere in the country, and priced from the low tens of thousands up to the middling hundreds of thousands, depending of course on all the usual things such as market appeal, practicality, and condition.
Interesting idea, if one is just sitting around debating “if I were to win the lottery” type scenarios.
The down side of this kind of idea, though, is that it is precisely the sort of thing which makes many people just give up and decide there is no point in doing ANY prepping, because they are under the impression that, with the average person’s limited means, no matter how much they manage to set aside or store up, there will always be someone with bigger, meaner, more expensive and more efficient means to take it from them. Here I might be thinking I am doing okay by obtaining a sturdy 4WD, preferably an older one less subject to being knocked out by an EMP, and keeping it maintained with a decent store of extra fuel…and then all that is blown out of the water by the thought that some criminal elements will simply steal a few tanks from the local armory, and blast their way right through whatever defenses I may have on my retreat, while my family and I are all shot while trying to escape in our non-armored vehicle.
The thought is so depressing, I can see why many people subscribe to the “oh well, if TEOTWAWKI ever happens, I may as well just commit suicide because we will all be dead within a few weeks anyway” theory. At that point, they give up on making any plans whatsoever to provide for future events, figuring they may as well pin all their hopes on the existing civilization lasting indefinitely, because there is no way they could ever store up enough supplies to even remotely see themselves through an extended period of societal collapse…and anything they did try to save, would quickly be confiscated by outlaws, the government, community action groups, or all of the above.
To me, the only ray of hope is the idea that a) there will hopefully be a whole lot of other people or households to steal from, between my retreat and wherever the armored raiders are coming from; and b) there won’t be THAT many tanks in working condition available for them to choose from, and as you say many of those will soon become disabled for lack of parts, fuel, or whatever.
I think most preppers would generally agree, the whole thing comes down to essentially a waiting game: unless you are a millionaire with unlimited resources, you are not likely going to be able to save up enough supplies, nor have such an impenetrable isolated fortress, that you and your loved ones can sit out ten years or more in comfort while the rest of the world implodes on itself. But, what we CAN do is try to at least survive the initial period of mass chaos – maybe a year or two at most – until things have settled down; the general population is greatly depleted (so fewer hungry mouths to feed), communities of survivors have started to pull together for mutual protection, and everyone with half a brain and the least of resources has gotten down to the serious work of trying to grow their own food and make it through the winter. While I realize there will be some portion of the population that is ruthless, well-armed, and intent on surviving by stealing the fruits of everyone else’s labor, I refuse to just lay down and give up!
No way I could possibly afford to buy a tank for myself; but who knows, maybe if we get enough like-minded people to organize together for community protection, we could raise enough money to chip in on one for “community defense”. If not, lets just hope those guys that DO get the tanks will find better pickings elsewhere…at least until they finally realize they are better off leaving people alive to make and grow new things, than to continue to killing everyone off until there is nothing left.