Transportation. What Do You Plan To Use?

I look at transportation much as I do any other part of my survival plans. One is none, Two is a few and three MIGHT get you there. I have trucks but know that their use might be a problem either by failure due to EMP, no fuel available or the roads just too packed for it to be practical.

Backup for me is hopefully going to be an older motorcycle in the 250cc size or smaller. That will make any available fuel last longer and can go in the ditches and side of the road if the roads are blocked.

Backup for the back up is bicycles. We have several of them already along with tubes, repair kits and tools to keep them going.

Several years ago I had need for a way to haul stuff over a fairly long distance for fishing. I made what is basically like a rickshaw out of a light weight wheel chair. With it I can carry several hundred pounds of stuff fairly easily. I also have several wagons around for gardening and even a Radio Flyer.

Being in Texas we will have the option of horses. We have lots and lots of them here and I've owned horses off and on most of my life. We also have a lot of cattle and especially long horns make decent draft animals. I used to have an old friend that even had a big longhorn steer that he rode in parades and such. Their back is a lot like a mules so a mule saddle worked on it. You don't want to ride a mule bare back very far!

If I lived in town I would probably want a long board. When I was a kid I loved riding the hills in Dallas on home made long skate boards. If I was younger I might even want roller blades.

The ability to get from point A to point B in a short period of time is important and going to be something that is going to be greatly compromised.

 

I have a long distance coach converted to a motorhome, it has a 500l fuel tank and a bull-bar on the front.
With 250hp and 14 ton I can push most things out of the way, not that I am planning to.

My basic plan is to bug out early to a temporary location then with enough intel relocate to some where more permanent depending on what actually happens!

 

Awhile back I looked into building a steam powered truck for a SHTF situation . After pondering over this concluded in such a situation someone might kill you to obtain your transportation . There really was no where I needed to go that would warrant taking such a risk as I am already bugged in , with adequate resources and no businesses open to go to . Certainly not planning to survive by taking someone else's resources .

 

Depends on the situation!
Stop/start traffic and it is just over 1km per litre, highway cruising and it is about 4km per litre.
That was with the old worn out engine, the new engine should be better.
Aus is mostly flat open country so mpg is good outside towns/cities

I will update the mpg / kmpl stuff in a few months after I have run the new motor in and been a few places in it.

 

As for as mobility I do have a plan I have already discussed with my grandson . We have another tract of land with good deer hunting on it about 15 miles from our retreat . If the need should arise we could do as the native American's did , in this area they made yearly trips to find , kill , smoke cure and bring the meat home . We could use pull carts and go as a group to our tract of land to camp hunt and cure meat to bring back to our retreat . I already have an old pickup camper shell on the property that would serve as a roof on a smoke house the walls could be made of stone and logs . Already have a camper on property . I figure it would take most of a day to walk there one way .

 

Gas and diesel will be available in the USA, however you'll pay way too much for it. Refineries have enormous back-up generators. I've seen railroad engines complete with diesel fuel towers at factories as backup generators. A factory where I worked had such and the local land-line telephone hub had one. Industrial automation equipment is tested with lightning bolts generated by a device that looks like a bullpup military rifle. I've been in test engineering and witnessed these tests.

Our military is not stupid. We know that the enemy has EMP weapons in all manner of configurations.

Old beater pick-up trucks will be popular post SHTF. I've seen welders cut the back off of cars to turn them into a make-do pickup. I'm from Southern Appalachia, people here will get by, hell or high water.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=car+conve...&atb=v140-1__&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/vehicles/grease-car-conversion.htm

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5284419/Pensioner-fits-steam-engine-Landrover.html

Can-do people are survivors. The weak and stupid will die.

People who are prepared will shoot and kill looters and rogue police. My father and his buddies paid-off state congressmen. I had vigilante relatives who rode with the police when the police needed veterans to threaten or kill bad guys they themselves needed help in dealing with.

When push comes to shove, a whole lot of shoving will be going on. However, there will be order enforced by reasonably civilized people. Road warrior / biker gang / psycho-sheriff movies are just that, fiction. I know of a mean cop in S/W Virginia who was a turbo bully. One of the local folk, never identified, shot that sheriff dead.

Here in the USA, post SHTF, many small church congregations in agrarian, small-town, and some suburbs will pull together into survival units. Seen this stuff happen during floods. In major cities, this sort of behavior will be rare. Society in major urban areas is coming apart even before any SHTF event. Post SHTF, I see urban areas as being toast, chaos and death factories.

 

As my "BOB" IS 12m long I will be getting an electric bike to go the little places I need to, fast, silent and fully rechargeable from my BOB
When I am out walking I am increasingly being snuck up on by electric pushbikes delivering pizza, they really are silent

 

My BOB would not be suitable for those old country lanes in the UK but most of Australia is rather open country.

 

(how far you can go and return on single charge).
Depends on the model but most are 30kmph with a 45km range or better on a single battery.
And improving every year.

 

I "HAVE" an Alison Allstar bus converted to a motorhome, made in Brisbane in 1991 and converted early 2017 in Brisbane
I "HAVE" an early model electric pushbike but will be upgrading it in the near future as it is just a modified std pushbike.
Motorhome is in the final stage of getting a fully recon motor installed and if not for a broken bolt would be in it now!

 

Have an older truck .a Ford Ranger..decked out with an HF/UHF/VHF ham radio and four antennas. Engine has about 20 k miles on it since I rebuilt it years ago. Been riding mostly scooters and mopeds and thus saving gasoline and wear and tear on my four wheeled vehicles.

Have manual bicycles to which I maintain...as a fall back position.

Have three four cycle 50 cc scooters I ride and also one two cycle.

This is a peninsula and mostly limited ways out of here. If I must I plan to take the scooter with a limited load out as I figure the traffic will be moving slowly on the main roads. If scooters than I want to stay off the interstates. I figure the interstates will be pure chaos in a bug out situation. Back roads will be the order of the day.

Have been thinking about a full sized scooter or one of those on/off road four cycle motorcycles. I think they are called Enduro bikes. What got me interested in the on/off road type bikes is when I found you can get oversized gas tanks for them and not be stuck with a standard smaller gas tank.

Thanks,
Watcherchris

 

I'm getting crippled to where I'll have to call a cab were I to see a balloon go up. I wonder if an Uber driver would show up? Maybe for silver coins ... hey, I'm not asking him to narc on Jesus.



Taxi! TAXI !!!! TAXI !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

How about one of those off-road ATV thingies.


I see the metal bars and roll bars having plates attached for armor. Could find run-flat tires. Post SHTF, run-flat tires would be a blessing.

Armor plates should be layers like: metal || fiberglass || plywood || ceramic tile held together with fiberglass || plywood. Layers yaw the bullet and make it dump its energy.





The plates above will only stop handgun and shotgun lead slugs. To stop .308 FMJ, you'd be adding steel plate with layered armor on either side.

Back to the ATV or off-road motorcycle, think of these for suburb use, not just wilderness. Post earthquake, the bridges will be gone (told a brother-in-law who lives near the New Madrid this and he just looked at me funny; idiot). Societal breakdown will see all roads utterly jammed with abandoned vehicles. You'll be off-road, like it or not. The military will bulldoze roads, however that likely will be after you need said road. This is why I perpetually scout country roads and logging roads. My SUV, though large-ish, will travel some uber-washed-out forestry roads/paths. I took a major risk, but was able to travel a road that most assuredly was not a road. The thing has pretty darned good ground clearance.

Post SHTF, load your vehicle with winch and chain, bolt cutters, shovel, long wrecking bar, axe, pruning saw, and if it will fit, your chainsaw. Where I live, storms lay down trees as if they were wheat before the scythe. And did I mention heavy rope, hooks, .....

 

I don't think those ATV's are very fuel efficient....but the idea is interesting. Even less fuel efficient when you armor plate them....and or carry heavy loads. Referring here to bugging out.

Problem for my thinking is keeping others from stealing/commandeering them from you.
Probably need to install a disable electrical switch as I have on one of my older vehicles. When you exit the vehicle ...throw the switch to off.

Also I have black tip 30.06 ammo about 50 rounds in Garand clips......wondering how many others have this stuff??


We have them at work...Kawasaki Mules....

They are aggravating to me at work because people use them and never check the gas tanks...nor fill up. People have been known to break down on the road at work due to an empty tank. These people are the slam bam/thank you Ma'am types....high maintenance.!! I always check the level in the gas tank with my Mag Lite when I check out the Mule.
So many people at work are too stupid to carry a mag lite and spare batteries....and or obviously to stupid to check the gas tank too.

My friend on out in Tennessee has two of them for running up and down the hills on his property. One for himself and one for his bride.

You see them often out front of Bass Pro. They do have good ground clearance.

My non Ishmaelite .02,
Watcherchris

 

A friend of mine has one of those with seating for 4 adults. It will do about 30mph/48kps which is plenty fast going across a pasture or most dirt roads. It is diesel powered and has a lot of pulling power even though it isn't real fast.

 

I am just a little hesitant to place too much trust in electric vehicles or much of anything electric at this time. I don't know what their survival rate will be when hit by an EMP and am afraid that the use of electric lights might be making a target out of me. I like the concept but don't know enough about the tech involved to feel trusting.

I made my living for the last 30 years or so fixing people's electric appliances/ACs, Heaters and most anything. Over the last ten years all things electric have been made less and less durable to the point that most are now throwaway devices with a very limited life expectancy.

 

It is important to know the peculiarities of each vehicle you are planning to use. Check out AutoExpertGuides for the relevant info!

 

Even if solar panels survive I wonder how many of the things you will want to use will still be working. About the only electric things that I would be interested in would be lighting and refrigeration. Radios won't count if all the stations are fried. Computers and entertainment devices will be useless pretty fast, cell phones won't work if the towers and satellites are gone.

I would rather put my effort into things that I have more faith in having long term usefulness. Things like a good wood burning stove or heater will save you power no matter what and be a life saver if things go down. Some Aladdin lamps and a bunch of kerosene might be nice. I have kerosene heaters for the short term.

I'm afraid that people that try to hold on to tight to the past will fail to survive the future without those things. I will dump the eclectically powered world and never look back. I'm not saying that I won't miss parts of it but I already know that I can live and be happy without it.

All of this is equally true when it comes to transportation. People walked for centuries and the native Americans and the South American native didn't have domestic draft animals or even the wheel but thrived. I have bicycles and hand pulled wagons. I would like to have a small motorcycle from the 60s. I had one when I was a kid and it got 114 miles to the gallon. It wasn't real fast but it was tough as nails and dependable as son rise and sun set.

 

Our primary transportation (Plan A) is our cars, at least one of which is a 4-Wheel Drive SUV. On my wish list is a good luggage rack for my car to be able to carry more gear if need be.

Plan B will be bicycles. We all have one. I have looked into bicycle trailers, but everything I have seen is more money than I care to spend. Another problem I have had with bicycles is keeping air in the tires. When I was a kid it seemed like we never had to put air in our bicycle tires. It lasted forever. Today I have to re-inflate bike tires every day. I have taken the bikes to a good bike store, but nothing seems to work. Any clues on how to keep air in the tires?

 

I am not optimistic about any motorized vehicle running and if it did would only last until your fuel tank run out . But just in case something does run I have a heavy duty manual air foot pump in my stash .

 

I agree completely. We have a couple of different types of manual pumps. I just wasn't planning on having to use them so often.

 

Rangers are great trucks. We're on our second one, our '91 gave us great service and never stranded us. Gave it to our Niece (who didn't take very good care of it) when it had about 180k and she drove it til over 260k. The wife's daily driver now is a '04 Ranger (4x4) and she loves it. Her comms are limited to a dualband HT with a cigarette lighter battery eliminator. She refuses to even let me put a mag mount antenna on the roof, but at least she does plug the radio in and turn it on consistently. Ford discontinued the Rangers for awhile, hear they're coming back which is great since she's in need of a new truck soon and she's not comfortable driving larger trucks. Hope the new model is as reliable as the old. As usual she'll get to pick whatever options/styles/color she wants, but I get to pick the engine and the drive train.

We're a Ford family, two F-150s and the wife's Ranger. All 4x4 and with the tow/hauling packages. The F-150's with the off-road package, which is really just heavy duty shocks, all terrain tires (but factory ones are still crap offroad, can't wait to upgrade to Bridgestone Duelers on our newest one - they're great tires in both dirt and snow) and skid plates for a little extra underbody protection.

"Dual sport" is the new'ish term for the enduros, but I'm old school and still prefer "enduro". Here's my DRZ 400, with a lot of upgrades. Mostly for fun but a very capable backup bug-out vehicle for bumper-to-bumper traffic jams or to get us into the middle of nowhere quickly if needed.



Not to brag, but if you want to turn east or west at any point while traveling on a north/south road - that's the bike you want We have a trailer hitch carrier for it so we can mount it on back of any of the trucks, nice since it doesn't limit the truck's mobility by having to pull a trailer. Given enough time that's our bugout plan, newest F-150 with the DRZ mounted on the back. If we get trapped in traffic, truck breaks down, or just stuck, use the motorcycle to finish the trip.

For winter/snowy bugouts our plan is a little different, will post details once I can get a few pics.

 

I will be walking - not ideal, but also not reliant on any outside requirements other than a good pair of boots.

the downside is, of course, a severe limitation on what you can take with you, but future plans are to bug-in so I have that covered.