When: SHTF Nuts and Bolts?

[Dusty44]

First:  Be it clearly understood that at the moment I am bored to tears.

Then:  I was just reading 'Twitter' and some tweets from another gun forum.

Question:  Given that the S did HTF,  maybe a few hours ago or yesterday;  what are you really going to do now and what guns will you have or use?

There are a lot of guests that read this forum.  Presumably you own some guns or are thinking seriously about buying one or several.  Please join in and tell what you think or what you want to do in this situation?

On Twitter it was noted that there are a large number of folk who own guns but only a little ammo.  For example,  that high-dollar pure custom hunting rifle chambered in (Mythical!!!!) .282x73R and the 20-round box of ammo with 17 shells left in it.  Only gun in the house.  Ammo comes mail-order from that little vendor in North Montana.  Or even 300 Savage.  Tried to pick up a few boxes of that ammo lately?

The three hydrogen bombs that were detonated high over the US have taken out almost all of the electric power lines.  No need to worry about any electric power,  running water or sewage (no working pumps).  Gasoline is a joke.  No pumps,  no working pipelines, no tanker trucks transporting fuel.  You live/reside in a big city and there are three to nine million desperate people milling around.  Or you are in central west Texas or Arizona 150 miles from a major city.  The highways are either empty or full of broke-down cars (out of gas!) from folks trying to escape the citys.  Those folks are not combat teams raiding your area,  of course.  They are families with Mom and Dad aged from 19 to 57 with the kids from newborns to teenagers;  maybe the dog and the cat?  So the roads are severely obstructed,  there are desperate,  lost,  ordinary people scattering everywhere.

The food supply everywhere is 3 days.  Maximum.  The grocery stores have that already on the shelves.  Baked goods and refrigerated foods are good for a couple of days maximum.

In the Cold War Era,  a suggestion was made that it would be good to have a remote home that was 2 gas tanks from a sizeable city.  Off the grid,  capable of self-support survival.  Great!!  My car will go 400 miles or just a little better on a tank of gas.  Maybe I have gas cans and enough gasoline to fill that tank one time;  for this discussion,  I filled my gas tank --  by luck --  a few hours before the bombs exploded.  The next question is:  Where is my hideaway?  It has to be at least 800 miles from any city of any size?  Has to have durable stored food until the crops harvest.  Has to have land where crops can be grown and land where wild game can be taken.  Defensible or hidden  against a couple of million desperate armed refugees and against the local police who have been told you cannot remain in that place and any stored food you have is now public property.

Ideal guns?  How many?  What about food?  What about those desperate people?  And what about the roadblocks set up by desperate people,  angry mobs,  police agencies,  military units mobilized in some areas,  just road jams of abandoned vehicles?

Maybe the ideal gun is a Mosin-Nagant and a couple of those spam cans of 400+ rounds of ammo for it.  Bring the M-15 and the .22 rifle,  maybe a shotgun and the couple of boxes of ammo you have for each.  If you have a lot of ammo,  maybe you can use some of it for barter.  If your car is full of guns and ammo and camping gear and dog food and Mom and your 3 kids,  space will be at a premium and fuel consumption will suffer,  too.  If you are driving a 1983 2-door Chevy Coupe,  space and load capacity will be a major problem.  You might find that your new 2013 4-wheel drive Ultra-SUV really isn't much better?  We may not actually know if the EMP from the bombs would take out the electronics in all the cars.  For this discussion let's consider that the computer chips inside the cars that are needed to make the cars function were sufficiently protected by the metal shells of the cars.  ??????

You are going to stay home in that suburb or close-to-the-city rural retreat?  Great!!  Now how about all the desperate refugees from the city and the para-military police patrols who have been ordered to ransack every building and house and ration out the food and other goods needed by all the wandering people?  You are now required/forced to move to a central refugee center.  Staying in your house is not allowed!

What are you really going to do?  Remember that the SHTF already,  with no real warning.  There is no agency or national support that will ever be available.  Not at least until the events of the war and the 2-million-man invading army (both coasts?  All 3 coasts?  Beachheads in  New England and the Carolinas;  Southern California and Oregon;  Texas;  Mississippi) have done whatever might be done.

Please keep responses rational and civil.  Also,  I personally intend to maybe look up this thread in a week or two to see what might be here.  Otherwise,  all of you are on your own!  I do think that the situation I outlined is more probable than improbable if there ever really is a SHTF and I hope that all continues forever much like it is now.  For all our sakes.

[Longitude Zero]

A very good book to read on this subject is titled "One Second After" by William Forstchen.  Honestly if you are not easily mobile you are dead IMHO.  All these bunker mentality folks I can wait out or I can render your bunker unusable and force you out.  And don't make the mistake of thinking I cannot find your hidey hole.  It is really a lot easier thatn you think.

As to guns stick to mass market calibers.  22LR, 9mm, 45ACP, 223/5.56, 30-06, 30-30 etc.  All the goober/orphan calibers are really for fools IMHO.