I Toured America’s Wildest New Camper And This RV That Sprays Bears, Shoots Fireworks, And Deflects Bullets Is Somehow Even Crazier In Person

Overlanding-themed campers tend to go over-the-top in honestly nauseating ways. It’s common to see these RVs covered in truck bedliner, sporting camouflage, and trading windows for bank-vault-like walls. These campers are always so serious with themselves, too. But there’s one camper out there that’s even more extreme, and it does it all in the name of fun. The Mammoth Overland XLE ‘Xtinction-Level Escape’ has a features list that includes available bear spray, weapons storage, bullet-resistant windows, blast shields, flare launchers, an amateur radio, a train horn, cameras, a sealed cabin with an air-filtration system, and more. I just toured the XLE, and I’m convinced it’s perhaps the craziest camper on the market right now, in a good way.

Last week, I walked 42 miles among 734,000 people at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, having a total blast along the way. Amusingly, one of the trends I’ve noticed over the past few years is an increasing number of exhibits with new RVs. While RVs technically have nothing to do with aviation, these companies are actually sort of genius. Every year, some 40,000 people camp at AirVenture, either under the wings of their planes or in an RV in Camp Scholler. There’s a huge camping audience that comes naturally with every AirVenture event, and there’s a lot of “airplane money” walking around every single day.

Marketing campers at an air show makes even more sense for Mammoth Overland. Many RV companies have claimed to build their campers like planes are constructed, but few companies can say that they actually make planes, too. Mammoth Overland is a spin-off of Vashon Aircraft, the makers of the Ranger, an affordable – for a plane – aircraft for pilots of all skill levels. Mammoth Overland builds its campers exactly like a Ranger is built – aircraft aluminum, rivets, and all.

Being able to see Mammoth Overland campers and Ranger aircraft in the same display was mind-blowing. I could look at a part on the plane, walk over to the camper, and yep, they really are using the same metal and rivets! Apparently, Mammoth Overland has been going to Oshkosh for several years, but I never noticed their presence until now. Oops, better late than never! This year, Vashon brought a new flavor of Ranger while Mammoth brought its latest zombie apocalypse rig, and I got to tour them all.

All-In On Weird

Building campers like airplanes has been proven to result in construction that lasts. Legends like Airstream use aircraft-inspired construction, and even abused Airstreams seem to last far longer than most stick-built campers. Campers that are riveted together out of aluminum have no wood to rot, no steel to rust, no rubberized roofs to reseal, no fiberglass walls to delaminate, and no tropical plywood harvested from a poor rainforest. Aluminum is right up there with molded fiberglass for my favorite material to make a camper out of.

Until recently, Mammoth Overland’s flagship camper was the Extinction-Level Event, or ELE. This camper started life as a pretty simple “squaredrop.” If you’re not in the know, a squaredrop is basically a teardrop camper that’s blocky, rather than aerodynamic. Anyway, Mammoth Overland’s original off-road camper featured riveted aluminum construction, a Timbren 3500HD axle-less suspension, and a tent for an outdoor bathroom.

I tested ELE in 2024, and it remains one of my favorite RVs. As Scott told me, all of the weird features aren’t meant to be taken seriously. He knows that if that Geiger counter goes off the charts, that camper isn’t going to do much. He knows that in an actual end-of-the-world scenario, you’ll have to leave the camper eventually, defeating the functions of its features. Most of this stuff is just for fun, and it’s silly that I can get behind.

Something I wasn’t a huge fan of was that, to shower while camping in an ELE, you had to use a tent outside of the camper. The cassette toilet was also outside. Forget about the whole end-of-the-world thing; it’s just inconvenient to have to go outside of your pricey camper to use the bathroom. It also wasn’t possible to stand in ELE without popping the roof hatch and standing through that.

The ‘Xtinction-Level Escape’

This year, Mammoth Overland has rectified that with the XLE ‘Xtinction-Level Escape.’

The XLE is interesting because it technically isn’t a new model. It starts life as a Mammoth Overland TL ‘Tall Boy,’ which is a family-oriented camper that Mammoth Overland launched a couple of years ago. The TL features the same riveted build as ELE, but with a body big enough to stand in and with an interior bathroom. When the TL launched, it didn’t have any of ELE’s wacky quirks.

To create the XLE, the Mammoth Overland team just dragged over the gear from ELE, while adding a few new bits to keep things weird. Here’s what I wrote when the XLE made its debut:

The Xtinction-Level Escape trailer, or XLE, starts with the basic design of the Tall Boy. That means it has a body made out of riveted aluminum with R5 insulation and a ceiling so high that a 6 foot, 3 inch tall person will have no problem fitting inside. It rides on a chassis featuring a dual Timbren 5200HD independent suspension, 33-inch BFGoodrich tires, and 22 inches of ground clearance. But the XLE departs from its Tall Boy bones quickly. The Mammoth Overland team started by bringing over the ELE’s air filtration system. The XLE features a reinforced vault-style door with multiple locking pins. This seals the XLE from the outside world. To keep the outside from leaking in, the XLE is given a slight positive pressure. Dual medical-grade HEPA does its best to keep the air in the camper clean against whatever’s going on outside.

That filtration system is perhaps the mildest part of this camper. The XLE is equipped with thick bulletproof windows, and if things get really grim, you can cover them with the camper’s included blast shields. Apparently, the idea is that if you need to lock the XLE down to protect its occupants from whatever’s in the air in Washington, or that really annoying in-law, the camper can turn itself into a mini bunker. Oh, it gets even wilder from here. Attached to the camper’s exterior is a laundry list of toys. Several night vision cameras dot the camper’s exterior, making for a sort of camper version of Tesla’s Sentry Mode. If you’re all hunkered down in your mobile bunker and see a bear, an insurgent, or just your neighbor trying to steal your lawnmower again, you can hit them with a sonic defense system, which appears to be a pair of horns meant for a semi-tractor.

If the threat keeps on encroaching on the perimeter of the camper, you can then remotely fire one or all of the four bear spray cannons, which douse the perimeter of the camper in the stuff. Bear spray – largely something like Capsaicin – is highly effective against bears. But don’t use it against humans. The stuff is about three times as potent as typical self-protection sprays and can cause horrifying effects like blood clots and strokes. If whatever is bothering you gets past the bear spray and you now want to notify people nearby of potential trouble, a new feature of the XLE is a 37-millimeter flare launcher that can be reloaded from inside the camper. You can also hit the camper’s strobe lights to make more of a show. The amusingly overkill features don’t end there. The XLE also sports storage for dual long rifles, a separate gun safe, a medical kit, another safe under the bed, an amateur radio, a weather station, and a Geiger counter. Some wilderness experts recommend being armed to stop a bear when spray doesn’t work. Finally, the camper has a rooftop observation deck with two standing platforms plus an escape hatch.

Oh my gosh, that’s quite a lot! So, what’s it like in person?

Well, it’s sort of a feast for your eyes. Upon initial inspection, XLE looks like something from Cyberpunk 2077 or just about any post-apocalyptic film. You can sort of imagine some futuristic police force busting out of this thing, or the camper being the home of some nomad that gives your game character a quest. It has the same giant tires, bold colors, camo, and all sorts of racks all over the place as other off-road campers. But in this case, all of the extra bits take the camper over the top.

When you get close, the finer details reveal themselves. I’ve long been a fan of how Mammoth Overland proudly displays its campers’ rivets, and the XLE is no exception. The windows have movable grates over them, and the glazing itself is so reflective that the trailer might as well be one-way windows. Then there are the bear-spray cannon ports, which present themselves with big red labels warning of “Jet Blast.”

There’s even more going on up top, where the camper has enough lights to turn night into day and, just for good measure, a gosh-darned train horn.

Then you get to the rear, and the crazy actually amps up. To access the camper, you have to swing both spare tires to the side, then twist the handle to disengage the plug door.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mammoth Overland redesigned its plug door. In the past, you’d spin a handle like you were on a ship, and it would deploy a handful of pins to hold the door shut against the body. This time around, the handle and mechanism are made out of large blocks of aluminum, and you get to watch what happens when you twist the handle.

Closing and opening this handle feels deeply satisfying. Everything here feels meaty, and the door closes with a thud reminiscent of an old Mercedes-Benz. Certainly, this is nothing like the door of any traditional camper I have ever touched.

The interior of the trailer is pretty straightforward. Its layout is sort of similar to a truck camper, where the bathroom is right there at the entrance. On the other side sits storage and bunk beds. Forward of all of this is the king-size primary bed and operations center.

That operations center has all kinds of toys. One monitor is a TV, while the other monitor is a constant feed of all of the security cameras. Then there’s a panel with a bunch of switches that are protected with covers, like you’re about to launch a nuke or something. It’s from here where you can fire your bear spray cannons, shoot some flares, monitor radiation, hit your strobe lights, or blow your horns.

Scott showed me how to operate the control panel, and honestly, it was a ton of fun. To activate the flares, you’d flip up a red cover, flick the switch, and then watch the flare barrels open up. Then you’re just a button push away from launch. Apparently, you can also use it to launch fireworks for your Independence Day party, too.

Of course, no Mammoth Overland apocalypse camper is complete without a gun rack and a roof hatch that you can climb out of.

As silly as all of this gear is, Scott told me that one part of the camper did have a serious practical use. In the week before AirVenture, air quality in Oshkosh was horrible because of the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. At times, the smoke was so thick that locals said it was like nighttime in the middle of the day. The Air Quality Index was basically off the charts, and the airport wasn’t even open to VFR traffic.

Scott told me that he climbed into the XLE, closed all of the hatches, turned on the positive-pressure air filtration system, and the camper did its job. The smoke stayed out, and the environment in the camper was cleaner than the outside. Of course, the limitation of the filtration system is that the medical-grade HEPA filters aren’t going to last forever. Again, you aren’t riding out a real apocalypse in this. But they seem to work for short-term air quality problems.

To me, the greatest part about the XLE was that it was a full-sized camper that I could easily stand in. I also fit into the shower pretty well, too. A bathroom is one of the most important features of a camper to me, and now, there’s finally a Mammoth Overland extinction camper that doesn’t force you to do your business in a tent.

I will deduct some points because the kitchen unit is still an outdoor affair. Cooking outside is annoying when it’s cold, snowy, wet, or there are zombies outside.

Apparently, the outdoor kitchen was a decision intended to get the camper’s occupants to enjoy the outside rather than staying holed up inside. So, I suppose that having an outdoor kitchen is actually fine. It all depends on your own preferences.

I’m not even sure where I’d put a kitchen inside of the XLE. The interior is designed around giving occupants ample room to sleep and shower in. Meanwhile, the outside places a priority on gear storage. The trailer measures 18’4.2” long, 9’5.5” tall, and 7’4.1” wide with a dry weight of 4,500 pounds and a loaded weight of 5,200 pounds. That’s not a lot of room to fit a king bed, bunk beds, a fully-featured bathroom, and huge storage, plus an indoor kitchen. I could picture a reconfiguring of the interior layout that would allow for an indoor kitchen, but like many of the cheap small campers I’ve written about, it would dramatically cut down on gear storage.

But again, Scott is very quick to point out that this isn’t really a bunker on wheels. Nobody at Mammoth Overland is expecting that you’d be able to ride out the beginning of a Fallout game in this bad boy. While features like the water filter, air filter, bear spray, and cameras might have practical uses, the rest of it is just for the laughs.

In terms of non-bizarre features, there’s a 1,200 Ah lithium battery, 400 watts of solar, two propane tanks, a generator, a water filtration system, and integrated Starlink. Comfort appliances include a 12V air-conditioner, a 45L refrigerator, a shielded Truma VarioHeat system for hot water and cabin heat, a propane cooktop, and a 50-gallon water tank. There is no gray tank or black tank. The sink dumps right onto the ground while the toilet is a cassette affair. If you’re not fond of dumping dishwater onto the ground, the sink can be connected to a tank.

Mammoth Overland says that the camper can carry enough stores for a week out in the wilderness. The roof rack holds 1,000 pounds of static weight or 500 pounds of dynamic weight. Another neat feature is that the top bunk can fold down to create a sofa, and the bottom bunk gets its own independent lighting controls.

Expensive, But Fun

You get all of this for $123,994. The only options are $8,000 for the smoke and flare launcher and $7,500 for a custom wrap. The XLE is a whopping $54,494 more expensive than a base TL before you add options. Do you get a whole Chevy Silverado 1500 Duramax worth of content for that price hike? Eh, I’m not sure. It’s even substantially more expensive than the $69,500 ELE. That said, the overland camper space is a place where some companies beg for a quarter million to over a million dollars for a rig with a totally straight face, so this price is somehow not as offensive as too many other RVs. Scott tells me that Mammoth Overland is selling them, too, so they don’t seem to be having issues finding people with cash to spend.

I do like how, if you did strip away all of the madness, the underlying trailer is still well-built. This isn’t a camper that’s going to get ruined by water damage in a handful of years, and you aren’t going to be spending thousands of dollars to rebuild it every few years. In theory, body damage could even be handled by anyone who knows their way around a rivet gun.

I can’t say I blame those buyers. The overland space gets so nauseating with macho marketing, gimmicks, and sometimes designs seemingly penned by people who don’t actually camp in RVs. This camper intentionally takes it so over the top that it comes back down to being fun again. The XLE lets you pretend to be a kid again. I know I felt like one when I played with the ELE a couple of years ago. Dare I say, the world needs more camper companies that aren’t afraid to get silly.

All photos by author