That’s why God invented Soviet surplus ammo.
That shit will corrode your barrel out in no time. The Egyptian crap is even worse. That’s why the Sovs chrome plated most of their bores. Personally, I don’t shoot any mil-surplus ammo that doesn’t have a Lake City headstamp on it.
Stranger
The Bulgarian stuff is just as bad. But occasionally you can find a deal. I got 1000 rounds of mil-spec .30-06 at a show last year that shoots like a dream. Keeps my Garand quite happy.
If all else goes to shit, I switch to the black powder weapons and keep on keeping on, only hidden behind a large cloud of smoke.
Looks interesting; but having an introduction by Newt Gingrich makes me suspect it’s right-wing porn about fighting off the UN’s occupying army. Any chance it’s a little more balanced than that?
I myself used to be in love with the idea that someone who could gunsmith their own muzzle-loader and make their own black powder would be in an advantageous position in a post-apocalyptic world. But realistically wouldn’t it make more sense that a serious survivalist would have reloading equipment and bullet molds, and either stockpile lots of propellant and primers or else master enough basement chemistry to produce their own? What I’ve read suggests that producing black powder of nineteenth century quality was a sophisticated undertaking on an industrial scale (ball mills, etc.) For the level of expertise necessary, couldn’t you just go straight to modern propellant?
(I remember researching and asking this question in re. to an RPG I was considering settting up. I put forth the idea that maybe you couldn’t produce ammo acceptable for semiautomatics but good enough for revolvers and bolt-action weapons.)
I figure to subdue most of Southern California with what I have in surplus ammo. The reloading materials are fine and all, but it requires a lot of skills to make reliable primers. Black powder is something a basement chemist like myself can fashion out of basic materials. I know how to knap flint, so I can keep a flintlock going for quite a while.
Of course, my harem of teenaged females desperate to survive will probably kill me before it gets to that, one way or another. 
“plausible”? What is plausible about all of industrial society suddenly shutting down with no explanation?
I was thinking the same thing about liquor and tobacco.
EMP, readily explained and plausible.
Poorly written, and telegraphed all to hell IMHO. That said, a quick read with some interesting bits and pieces.
Liquor won’t go away. Brewing beer, while difficult to do really well, is the sort of thing that can be done with very little technology or equipment. Distilling is a bit harder, but not that much.
Tobacco is a difficult crop to grow, but again, not a lot of technology here either.
There’ll be a period when things will be so unsettled that no one will have the supplies or the inclination to waste good grain brewing beer or liquor. During that period of disruption, liquor will be scarce.
Tobacco is highly addictive. Believe me, I know. Starving Japanese troops trapped in the Phillipines after MacArthur’s invasion, troops who were resorting to cannibalism just to stay alive, still traded food for tobacco. In the Nazi death camps, tobacco was still a highly valuable trade item. If you’ve got tobacco, you’ll be able to trade it for almost anything.
I’m talking about laying in a supply of liquor and tobacco to get through the period before agriculture can be re-established, and eighty to ninety per cent of the population is dying off.
Never happen. For one thing, brewing beer actually is a good way to preserve the crop…one of the (many) reasons beer was invented was because it allowed primitive peoples the ability to extend the shelf life, so to speak, of their grain crops like barley. And of course there is just something about the alcohol that draws people…
-XT
Did I misread the OP? Wasn’t it about the first 72 hours after a huge disaster? Yes, governments might still exist in the long term, but you’d still have to survive the first days of the disaster alone.
All this talk about governments and agricultural co-ops seem to have missed that.
In the first 72 hours I’d get as much food, water (including running baths and sinks and then stoppering the plugs) and as much medicine as I could, and get myself to somewhere that no person or no gas could get in; after that is a whole other story. But I live in Central London, so have always assumed we’d just go booooom.
FWIW, the best, most realistic, and most horrifying, post-apocalyptic dramatisation I’ve ever seen is Threads. It’s available at a few places online and I seriously recommend it. I’d be happy for my eleven year old to watch many apocalyptic movies, but not Threads, not yet.
Yes, you read the OP correctly. Of course if I started a post about George Washington and the first reply was a tangentially related comment about Thomas Jefferson, the rest of the thread would be about Thomas Jefferson.
:rolleyes: 
:dubious: :smack:
I find it interesting that the first thoughts all seem to be grab weapons, and food and prepare for war. Does the collapse of civilization mean the collapse of humanity as well? Are people raping, looting, and murdering each other in the first 72 hours just because they can? Or is there some sort of re-organization going on, even if only by small areas? I don’t see instant savagery and lawlessness as the natural choice only 72 hours in.
I am also amused by the notion that heading to a “rural area” is the thing to do.
What rural area are you running to? A National Park? Some place magically untouched by the human race like Death Valley perhaps, or some mountain top? Good luck! And if you have your Fort Doom already in place, then what? A bomb shelter built for two is no way to live. And if large enough to hold your entire family of four then what? At what point do you eat your children because the food runs out? Hiding in a spider hole is the wrong approach.
And also, those that run will end up in competition with each other. They have already decided flight is the best option, and therefore will be taking more rash actions. The eagerness to start shooting one another is more than a little alarming.
I’d rather take my chances in Chicago, where I know the area, rather than try to make it somewhere else on a crowded highway of refugees. I may have to defend my flat, but that’s better than trying to out guess every single stranger I encounter.
Money still has value, as long as other people believe in it. Yeah, it will become meaningless as food supplies dwindle, but I don’t think in the first 72 hours setting fire to your wallet is a good move. There may even some places very early in the collapse where you can use your credit card to stock up. By the time full blown looting has grabbed an area, it will be too late to do much of anything unless you happen to be well protected as well as well armed. For all the talk of grabbing guns, body armor might be a good idea too. In Chicago, the best place to loot for such goodies would be a police station. Certainly not something I would be trying in the first 72 hours. But maybe in the first 96.
Having lived in Florida, and been through a fair share of hurricanes, losing power and running out of food doesn’t instantly result in people turning savage to one another. Actually, charity and kindness are seen more often. The panicking sorts, usually well-armed to begin with, can go ahead and and try to set up their Fort Doom if they like, but they are most likely going to be die out faster than those who agree to work together for mutual benefit.
And finally, consider the other things that have value in a human society. In a land where finding the common comforts are gone, being able to sing, tell jokes and stories, and the ability to amuse other people remains desired. Civilization as we know it may be gone, our basic humanity has not.
The difference between an organized evacuation and “raping, looting, and murdering” is two-fold. One is that basic needs (food, shelter, security) are met. The other is that there is the perception that civil order is being maintained. In the case of foreseen national disasters, the first action taken by local and state governments is to deploy law enforcement and National Guard units to maintain order and show that the government. Without these, raping, looting, and murdering is all too frequently the case. We (Americans and Western Europeans) have the advantage of living in a society where such needs are thought out and taken care of. Go to a Third World nation, on the other hand, where such services are not available, or where they are undersupported and overwhelmed (such as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina) and the breakdown of civil order was nearly complete until outside aid and support was provided.
People are panicky, skittish animals who will revert to chimpanzee behavior faster than you can blink. The best thing to do in such a case isn’t to stand outside your keep with a FN-FAL in hand or join in the looting yourself, and just randomly running out into the country without preparation or skills is barely better. The wisest move is to find a bolt hole, defend it as necessary, whether the storm (whether metaphorical or real), and once the crazies are done feeding on each other, locate and join with the people who have useful skills and understand the self-interest forming a community.
What you think of as “basic humanity” is civilization. The basic needs listed above need to be satisfied before people will pool their assets or enjoy and support luxuries like entertainment.
Stranger
Become Amish? Hell, I’m shootin’ myself.
It’s not like the idea of civilization collapsing is a fictional construct in which all discussion is speculative. If you want to learn about a functioning, stable society collapsing into a barbaric hellhole, just read, read, read your history. Start with Rhodesia in 1979.
I’ve read a few (fiction) stories about this kind of thing. One was (I believe) a book called “The Girl Who Owned a City”. Not a great book, I’ll grant you that, but I thought it was interesting when I read it as a teen. Another was a short story called, I believe, “Emergence” in Analog magazine. Both take the premise that a plague wipes out most of humanity.
Assuming that’s what happens, and that I’m somehow immune and am one of the survivors, I’ve only got a limited amount of time before food, water and electricity completely disappear. With everyone dead like that, it’d be fairly simple to loot a vehicle that still works.
First stop: find a grocery store that hasn’t been looted (since most people are dead, this should be fairly easy) and grab everything that’s perishable, as well as all the sugar, salt, lard/oil and flour I can. Might want to find a few knives, too. Meat can be (crudely) preserved with the sugar, salt and oil; also by drying. Fruits and veggies can also be dried. Some can be replanted (like onions and potatoes), if one plans ahead.
Next stop: library. Books can be an invaluable resource. Not just for the immediate survival needs, but if anyone wants to try to rebuild civilization, having a few how-to manuals would be nice. Especially for my next stop.
Electronics store. A laptop can easily run off of a solar panel (if given enough time to charge), and I’m sure that there are wealths of information there. Gardening programs come to mind. A solar panel or two might even be enough to run a food dehydrator and those are relatively low-maintenance. I’d probably also snag as many “raw materials” here as I could, as well. Wires, capacitors, etc.
Now I’d probably go grab a few guns and plenty of ammo. Crossbows. Fishing poles and bait. Plus, as much non-perishable food as I could. And spices, as someone else mentioned.
With all this stuff, I’d pile it all into a U-Haul truck and trailer and start seriously thinking about getting out of town. If things start to burn down, I’d like to not get caught in it. Probably stop by a nursery on the way out and snag as many seeds as possible.
Minor stops would also include drug stores for pain relievers and the like as well as a sporting goods store for water filtration thingies and the like.
It’d be a very busy 3 days! I think the first year would be the hardest; if I could live that long, I think I’d be fine.
Assuming that it was something like an EMP and people were still around… I’d probably pack up as much as I could and head for the hills. I’m sure the chances out there wouldn’t be that great, but they’re bound to be better than in a crowded rural area. I’m not too worried about being found; advanced search & rescue teams have a hard enough time finding people that WANT to be found in the forest. I wouldn’t want to be found, and I doubt anyone would be carrying out that intensive a search of areas.