There’s a thread in GQ about converting a civilian MAC-10 to automatic in the event of a socio-economic breakdown. I and others pointed out that automatic operation would not be a good thing because, for one reason, they’re not making any more ammunition.
So here’s the scene: Society collapses. You have warlords and fiefdoms, and you’re not getting any more ammunition to use to protect yourself or to hunt. It wouldn’t be that difficult to arm yourself with swords, knives, machetes, spears, pointed sticks, and the like. People have been using bows for thousands of years, and a crossbow could be made fairly easily. But what about firearms?
With some experimentation it should be fairly simple to come up with a usable black powder. Potassium nitrate can be made with a little knowledge. How to ignite it? The best way would be with a percussion cap, and they’ve been around for a couple of centuries. A craftsman could make a percussion firearm, or there are lots of new-production ones that scavengers might overlook. Or a reloader might make fixed ammunition with percussion caps and black powder using spent cases. (Of course it wouldn’t be reliable in many firearms.) But there’s a problem: Like fixed ammunition, percussion caps are a limited resource.
OK, so you make them. A little brass or copper, a couple of punches, and… mercury(II) fulminate. That last might be a problem. Where do you get it? Well, you can make it. Dissolve mercury in nitric acid and add ethanol. You can get mercury from light switches, fluorescent tubes, or maybe even processing ocean fish (:p). Ethanol is easy enough to make. Nitric acid? 3 NO[sub]2[/sub] + H[sub]2[/sub]O ⇌ 2 HNO[sub]3[/sub] + NO. Or there are other ways to make it to increase the yield. But where do you get the nitrogen dioxide to make the nitric acid? Or the nitric oxide to make the nitrogen dioxide? And so on. (And if you could make nitric acid, you could probably make smokeless powder.) Back to the flintlocks, I guess.
So society collapses and you can’t run down to the sporting goods store to buy your ammunition. How would you go about making ammunition? Where would you get the necessary chemicals?
You don’t need fulminate of mercury. There are other compounds that work in percussion caps. Read some of the 163X shared world books by Eric Flint for the specifics.
As for ammo…I think I have enough for a while. After that, it’s over to the black powder weapons, then to the flintlock. Or just grab a decent bow from the sporting goods store down the street. I’m actually a moderately competent archer with a little practice.
I have heard that some people that live very near me might possess reloading equipment and ample supplies to make enough ammo to last a long time. Of course, I don’t know exactly who they are or where they live, and they probably lost those supplies in a tragic boating accident in the Fall of 2008. Coincidentally, that’s the same time I lost all my firearms. Dang the luck.
No need to make your own ammo. First, befriend a prepper. Second, when his back is turned, hit prepper on head with a large club. Repeat as necessary. Third, take prepper’s ammo (he’ll probably have about 10 million rounds of assorted calibers).
Anybody who ever says “__________ would be fairly easy to make/do” should go ahead and try it now in times of peace and plenty. Extra points if you use no power tools and materials no better than you might scavenge. Get back to us on how well you did a makin/doing whatever it was.
That pre-supposes I like you in this one. More importantly though, are you really bragging about being exactly the kind of shitbag many preppers arm themselves against?
While this is all an interesting exercise in hypotheticals, the reality will be quite different.
In the present peaceful state of affairs, you occupy one of two niches:
A) You are king of the world, or at least of a fairly extensive domain, or
B) You occupy a somewhat docile and cooperative place in the social order that prevails, beholden to higher powers.
In all likelihood, you have reached your actual potential to be either A or B, and can realistically look forward to having a similar station after the Apocalypse. That being the case, it would seem that the best way to ready oneself for the future is to have a realistic expectation of what you can expect to achieve in such a world, where the kings and the subjects will be based on pretty much the same attributes as what you see around you today.
In other words, if you don’t have what it takes to be top dog in this world, you’re not going to be in the next one, either.
Cormac Mc has an overlong chapter in Blood Meridian with the characters getting saltpetre from guano, burning hardwood for charcoal, and finding sulfur nodules in a dormant caldera, grinding it, then mixing it all with urine and drying it in the sun then loading it into their Walker Colts in the nick of time to slaughter some pesky Apaches. It’s easy to make black powder, you can melt your toy soldiers for lead, so I’m going to face the pocalips with twin Walker Colts just like Josey Wales, cept I don’t know how to keep my pants up with 16 pounds of pistol in my belt…
Arming yourself (or better still, your group) should really be done BEFOREHAND, arming after the event is a failure, better to be prepared beforehand
And arming is only a small factor, what about clean water, food, medical supplies, a source of heat for winter months…
A group prepping together stands a better chance of survival
At home, I’m tasked with arming, weapons/reloading training, firewood gathering, hunting for food
Gardening, medical, water gathering, livestock husbandry are shared by the group
Letting group members (in our case, family members) play to their strengths makes the group stronger
The OP is about a break down of social order. Kind of going on today in St Louis suburb.
If the total country goes that way, gonna be mass confusion & lots of killing, the crazy’s will go crazy & when the stores are out of food, the normals will go crazy too.
I won’t go crazy with them. I won’t take on dug in prepper’s who actually show a willingness to kill. Lots of easy supplies to get while waiting for the takeover from China or Russia. If Mexico takes us, well, I can fit right in to that kind of corruption if it means my survival.
Taking on dug in people will not be necessary until quite a ways down the road. Things will be changing rapidly etc…
But the thread is about making ammo. You need ammo if you are fighting to protect stuff or steal stuff if you are kind of crude in your thinking. Be smart and scavenge. Don’t attract attention. Do not leave witnesses. Don’t take what you can’t run with.
If you are silly nuff to stand & most likely die for principal, good for you. In the above case, I would not be going against any principal that would override my desire to survive.
Reread my post and pay attention to the last sentence.
Can’t have this with an armed government, national guard, police forces, and without any smuggling of goods from the non collapsed other societies around the world.
So no laws or courts etc…
So you are going to mess around trying to make enough ammo to hunt & protect yourselves??? To do that you must be very remote to avoid the riots, the idiots, the gangs that will be on you right now???
You now start to make your own ammo from one of theses methods noted above.
I chose to steal what is still around.
I am a good thief.
I am stupid enough to think I will not need to kill others during all this? ??? (not) Johnny said hunt & defend…
I kind of look at it like this:
“I may chose to die for you, but I’ll be dammed if I’ll die because of you.”
So I give an alternate to making ammo which I think is not going to work out unless you have a lot of folks and a fort and some ammo for defense already, by just going out & stealing it.
IMO, if you are still not going to kill or steal, when things have reached this point, all the ammo making one person could do would be useless.
I don’t live on that planet or in that society yet… he he he… But I plan to survive if I ever do.
So stealing is going to be my way of gaining ammo for myself as I’ll just let others do the construction & production.
.22LR of which there is so much that one could shoot every day for the remainder of their life and still never run out. Not a long range weapon; but low recoil + head shots make it a dangerous one.
For distance, I would locate a .308 and start practicing. I’m satisfied with 300-500 yards shots. There should be plenty of ammo for this and during TEOTWAWKI scenario, people will be looting firearms first and ammo second.
