If you’ve ever watched The Walking Dead and thought to yourself, “in a zombie apocalypse, I would just find the nearest armored diesel-powered vehicle and pack it full of survival gear,” here’s an array of potential choices to stoke your fantasies. Some are available to the deep-pocketed public and some are technically for military use only, some fully-equipped RVs and others basically just for roaring through utter chaos and making it out alive.

Hudson Armored Personnel Carrier – With a Turret

You’d be extremely lucky to come across one of these, post-apocalypse, if it happened to be abandoned or not in use. The Hudson Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) by INKAS was designed specifically for SWAT transport and it has a freaking turret. Other notable features include two escape hatches, gunports all around the perimeter and the platform of a ’79 Land Cruiser to make replacement parts and maintenance easy. It’s a lot more fun to imagine roaring around in this thing to escape zombie swarms than it is to envision the sort of real-world situations in which it’s actually used (and that goes for most of the rest of these, too.)

Applied Minds KiraVan

A lifelong adventurer built one of the world’s most insane vehicles in honor of his four-year-old daughter, envisioning an off-road expedition truck that could take her anywhere on earth without limitation while maintaining the highest levels of luxury. The result is the ‘KiraVan,’ which can travel up to 2,000 miles without resupply, climb 45-degree slopes and push through small bodies of water, not to mention its kevlar-reinforced tires, diesel-powered motorcycle ‘dinghy’ and a massive trailer housing the kid’s own ‘penthouse’ loft.

Mercedes-Benz Zetros 2733 6×6

Built as a luxury RV for rich hunters, the Mercedes-Benz Zetros 6×6 is not your grandfather’s vacation vehicle. It can go off-road, a virtual mobile fortress with ATV storage and extra-tough tires. Inside, there’s a bathroom with marble flooring and underfloor heating, a bedroom, a fully-equipped kitchen, a built-in SAT receiver powered by a diesel generator and a gun safe.

INKAS Huron APC

An earlier, larger version of the INKAS Hudson, the Huron APC looks like a Hummer on steroids and features “revolutionary lightweight armor” that makes it faster and easier to maneuver than similarly-sized armored vehicles. It can carry up to 16 passengers, and its engine bay is protected by the same armor that’s capable of shielding its crew from AK-47 fire. With a price tag of over half a million dollars, not even the richest civilians can buy it – it’s intended for police and military missions only.

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Racing For Survival 13 Extreme Vehicles For The End Of The World

Aesthetics may not be the first consideration when it comes to emergency items like survival kits, post-disaster housing and relief supplies, but good design can make the difference between clunky, inefficient objects that hamper adequate response and the items that save as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible. Often created after designers witnessed disasters close to home, many of these solutions attempt to build preparedness into our daily lives, making it easy to grab a minimalist kit by the door or pack up a panicked pet at the last minute.

Pet Earthquake Emergency Bag

Have you thought about what you’d do with your cat or small dog if a disaster hit and you had to flee on foot? Transporting them in a standard pet carrier would be cumbersome and maybe even impossible. Enter the Pet Earthquake Bag Kit, created in response to the last major earthquake in Japan. Special pockets and straps make it possible to carry up to two household pets. It come sin two sizes and includes a human/pet emergency kit with water, treats, bandages and calming oils.

Minim-Aid Emergency Kit

This slim and minimalist stainless steel tube kit by Nendo takes up very little space hanging in a closet or on a hook by the door, but contains a raincoat, radio with gadget charger, lantern, drinking water and whistle. Waterproof and capable of floating, it would be easy to grab and carry at the last minute.

Reaction Housing System Flat-Pack Emergency Shelters

Stackable and easy to ship, the Reaction Housing System is made up of two easy-to-assemble pieces that can be used alone for a single unit or connected to multiple units. Each one can be configured as a living space or office and contain single beds that fold down from the wall and portable power generators. Twenty of them can be stacked on one semi-truck or C-130 Hercules plane, and 1,940 could be moved across the country on a freight train to house 7,760 survivors as quickly as possible. At $5K each, they’re far cheaper than most other solutions, like the ones FEMA currently uses.

Life Desk

The Life Desk was developed after a number of students were seriously injured or killed by the tables they were hiding under during earthquakes in China. The heavy duty high-strength-steel and nylon desk provides a long-lasting work surface for students and can be quickly folded for shelter in an emergency.

PATCH Urban Survival Kit

Looking like a small thermos on a key fob, PATCH is an urban survival kit designed specifically for city dwellers in the 21st century, containing all the core elements of a first-aid kit and adding a phone charger, multi-tool, zip ties, emergency blanket and other items you’d be likely to need if some kind of disaster made your surroundings unsafe.

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Designing For Disaster 15 Ideas For Preparedness Response

Providing secure enclosures and other critical safety features in the face of tsunamis, floods and accidents at sea, this system of survival pods adds another critical dimension as well: connectivity. The award-winning Duckweed Survival House units come with variable-length tethers and are individually designed to stay upright and keep their occupants sheltered in the harshest conditions.

Much like the series of independent-but-connectable space habitats proposed in Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, each individual unit is self-supporting but also benefits by networking with the rest. The rounded-square shape helps allow the different units to be organized in grids, lines or otherwise without sharp corners that could damage adjacent units.

Together, they provide increased stability, visibility, wave and wind resistance, but the units can be separated as well to avoid obstacles or for situations-specific emergency needs, like jettisoning a defective pod. As in the aforementioned work of science fiction, the idea is to maximize the odds for all survivors by creating options for configuration and collaboration.

A stem projecting beneath each unit stabilizes the crafts while a built-in, reverse osmosis filter turns salty water potable. Pressurized carbon dioxide gas provides quick inflatability while an operable overhead vent allows in fresh air. Bright markers aid in night rescue while also helping people in disparate pods spot one another more easily on the ocean waves.

Preparing for doomsday means going solo for some, but most see survival needs including some sort of micro-society, be it for mutual defense and cooperation or, in the most extreme cases, perhaps even repopulating a devastated planet.

Instead of individual bomb shelters, Terra Vivos is working to create a series of autonomous communities around the world in underground complexes made to withstand anything from a 20-megaton nuclear blast or 1,250-degree fire to 450-mph winds or a magnitude-10 earthquake.

The locations of these individual bunkers are kept secret for obvious reasons, and each is being outfitted with enough food, water, clothing, fuel and medicine to survive a year in their subterranean spaces, as well as frozen seed banks, animal and human DNA, all to grow food, recreate lost species and/or provide genetic diversification as needed. And, of course, there is a wine vault.

Their ultimate goal is to provide thousands of units ranging from Economy to Luxury class, all to a limited set of pre-screened individuals (vetted for psychological attributes as well as practical skills) at prices as low as $25,000 – arguably a lot of money, but perhaps not so much if you really believe the world as we know it is about to end. Of course, even with space for thousands, less than one in a million people would be saved should the worst come to pass.

For those looking to learn more, a quick glance at their sitemap provides a lot of fascinating material for further reading, with pages about various kinds of natural disaster and prevalent conspiracies, on the one hand, to nuts-and-bolts issues like security, secrecy, air supplies and pet policies on the other.

For many of the world’s citizens (and travelers), the threat of bodily harm from war or terror attacks is a daily fact of life. Constructed of bulletproof material, this backpack is designed to reduce the risk of personal injury in unstable regions.

Dubbed Rhino Skin (part of Second-Chance Gear) and designed by Hadassah College graduate Hila Raam, the pack’s back and side straps pull forward and wrap around the wearer to form bulletproof vest.

On top, a likewise projectile-and-debris-resistant hood can be deployed when one hits the proverbial deck upon hearing an air raid siren, helping shield the wearer, if warned, from additional shrapnel injuries.

While it will not do much in some  extreme, close-proximity situations (where nothing short of full body armor would help), it does cover the head and torso, protecting vital organs and reducing damage potential from rocket, mortar or bomb strikes.

From the designer: the Rhino Skin is “a modular backpack combining kevlar used as a civilian personal protection system in
countries or areas that are under daily attacks, protecting against debris and impact created from missile and rocket attacks.This unique bag pack protects the essential life or death body areas … the head, neck, back and the sides of the body. Most important the brain, heart, liver and kidneys are fully protected.”