As I sit in the front seat of my motorhome looking out at the beautiful hanging Spanish moss, feel the warm breezes and know that all I have to do for breakfast is walk five feet and pluck a fresh grapefruit from the tree beside my campsite, I once again know how blessed I am. However, as idyllic and normal as the situation appears, I know full well that it can all come crashing down at a moments notice.
I have always been a preparedness freak to some extent and even finished up my career as an emergency management specialist for a large defense contractor. The majority of my friends and family snickered as I prepped up for Y2K. In spite of the jokes, labels and general disdain of the sheep, over the years I managed to keep a good supply of food and equipment and tried to update my skills on a regular basis. As retirement approached, my wife and I decided we wanted to join the ranks of what are know as “full-timers”. These are people who live in their recreational vehicles full time and travel the country. Many like us have no permanent home or base. The regular logistical problems associated with life on the road are fairly easily solved by solutions such as mail forwarding services and electronic banking and bill paying. What keeps me up at night is how to maintain a suitable level of preparedness in less than three hundred square feet of rolling, living space. What I am presenting are solutions or at least partial solutions that I have adopted to meet my needs, obviously all situations are different and I advise readers to explore many options. Although far from complete, here are some of the preps I have made.
The Plan:
First and foremost, you must have a plan, and I don’t mean just an idea in your head of how you will react in certain situations I mean a written plan. Write it down, print it out, you don’t want to be trying to boot up the computer during an emergency. Next, practice the plan. Nothing wrecks great theories faster than actual application. Revise your plan and keep on revising it till it is workable. The evacuation phase of my particular plan envisions three different scenarios for leaving a location. In the motorhome, in the small vehicle we tow, and on foot. With each scenario, I list which equipment will be taken with us, this eliminates the need to try and decide once the emergency commences. As Mr. Rawles so aptly puts it “two is one, and one is none” so we do keep some redundant gear. In the tow car are two, ready-to-go backpacks, and any time we are in the car there are a minimum of two weapons. This way in case we return from a day trip and find our motor home non operable, we are able to egress with at least a minimum amount of supplies.
Supplies:
Living in a Recreational Vehicle (RV) you are constrained not only by space but also weight, each unit has a designated cargo capacity and it is not wise to exceed it. Therefore, storing large quantities of food and water is out of the question. In order to get the best bang for our capacity buck, we keep a good supply of staples such as rice and beans, dried soup mixes, and of course a few MREs. As for water, my particular RV has a 70-gallon tank which can last a very long time if you adhere to wise water use. Of particular concern is the fact that many manufacturers are now producing RVs with no way to gravity fill the tank (with that kind of intelligent thinking they should run for Congress). Additionally, I have found that many water spigots in national parks and other areas do not have any threads on the pipe making it impossible to hook up a hose and fill your unit. One way around this is a device call a water thief which hooks on to the spigot and provides the threaded surface necessary for a hose connection. This device can be found at most RV suppliers and should be considered mandatory equipment. In the event that we run out of supplies, we keep a fair amount of cash on hand because credit cards become useless when trying to bargain with the local farmer or you need repairs in a small town.
Defense:
A couple of the rather large vulnerabilities of a motorhome are fuel consumption and maneuverability. Rolling houses are not the best option for circumventing roadblocks or out running cars filled with those people intent on relieving you of your possessions and/or your life. One lesson we learned the hard way. Once, after refusing to fill up at a gas station in Texas because it was obvious they were running a “bait and switch” on the posted price, I drove off defiantly only to find out it was the last station for 126 miles. When we arrived in the next small town running on fumes, we were forced to buy gas at $4.35 a gallon. Lesson learned: never drive with less than a half a tank and we make it a point to fill up before we stop to camp for a while. A full tank will hopefully be enough to get us out of the immediate danger zone if evacuation is required. As for armament, I pared down my choices to a shot gun and a battle rifle chambered for .223 Remington]. This, with a couple of hand guns round out our supply. When choosing your weapons for the road, be sure to consider where you will be going as you may be illegal in some states depending on what you are carrying. Again, with space and weight limits, a large amount of ammunition is out of the question, so the “spray and pray” philosophy is not an option nor should it ever be. To our benefit, my wife and I both have extensive weapons training and the mindset that we will protect ourselves.
As I said before, these are only a few of the problems we are working on. The bottom line is we love our lifestyle and enjoy seeing different parts of the country. The reality is we know what is coming and will probably have to give up our mobile lifestyle in the near future in order to find a relatively secure retreat location. We will not be starting from scratch as we already have most of our equipment and food in storage and will simply move it to our new location. Of course, the most important question is, “When do you head for the fort?” I don’t think anyone can answer that so we will continue to monitor the news, pray for guidance, and trust the Lord to get us there in time.