‘Tis an eye-opening experience to actually go through the ammo in the bunker and see whats what. Theres an old saying in this …hobby…that the first looter you have to watch out for is yourself. That is to say, your supplies are most likely to be pilfered and stolen by yourself. You need batteries for the TV remote and dont feel like going to the hardware store so you figure its no big deal to pull some out of your emergency stash, figuring you’ll replace them later…and, naturally, you never do replace them. Apparently Ive been looting my ammo stash. I have two different hordes of ammo…the Stockpiled Ammo which is what sits in the bunker awaiting Der Tag, and the Everyday Ammo which is the lets-grab-a-box-and-head-to-the-range stuff. In a crisis, I can always transfer the Everyday Ammo into the Stockpile to supplement things. As it turns out I have absolutely no 9mm Stockpiled. None. Nada. Zip. In the immortal words of Burt Gummer…..”I am completely out of ammo! [perplexed pause] Thats never happened to me before.” So, I’m pulling 1m out of the Everyday pile and shuttling it into the bunker until I get a dedicated amount of 9mm loaded up. Other inventory was okay…some good, some not so good. Not exactly ideal. My spreadsheets call for at least 5,000 of each of those except for .22 which calls for at least 10,000.
So, I’m bumping some of the Everyday stuff into the bunker to fill some gaps and build the numbers up a bit.
As ive mentioned before, reloading 9mm doesnt realize any spectacular cost savings…however, reloading for .45 ACP, .38/.357 and .308 will net me at least a 40-60% savings…and that means more bang for your buck.
Is 5,000 rounds of AK ammo alot? Not really. Divide it amongst 4 guns and thats 1,250 rounds per gun. If you’re using 30 round mags thats 40 loaded mags per gun….period. Now imagine yourself in Katrinaville with 40 loaded magazines….a couple in your pack, a few on your belt, one in the gun, the rest stashed away safely….it doesnt add up to much. Esp. if you lose your vehicle or house where you had at least half of them stored. So, no, 5k is not alot of ammo….esp. if thats all the ammo your going to have for the next six months or longer.
Depends on what you’re trying to do. 5,000 rounds isn’t that much if you’re talking a Postman scenario where civilization is finished and what you stockpile is what you get to fight organized barbarians for the rest of your life. Although used wisely, it’s not bad either.
But Katrinaville? You notice you didn’t hear any reports of massive firefights coming out of Katrina? Your threat is small groups of 6-12 individuals, brandishing guns and popping off shots at relief helicopters. Better off avoided or engaged from long range. Definitely not something you want or need to take on with full-on suppression requiring hundreds of rounds of ammo. The more I see from that situation, the more I like the scout rifle idea: light enough to carry, accurate enough to keep your SKS-wielding goblins out of effective range, and powerful enough to do the job with 1 shot, which means the 20 in the gun is a significant amount of ammo.
For a Katrina style disaster, I think the best bargain is 200 rounds of .243 + a lightweight synthetic and stainless hunting rifle with a fixed 4x scope. Impervious to the elements, just the right size for two-legged predators, and totally packable. .243’s not as common as .308, but it’s not exactly rare, it’s lighter, and who cares if you can’t buy it surplus if you’re only stocking 10 boxes? If you really want to spend more money, repeat that formula 4-5 times in a Pelican case so you can just hand a package to each LMI as they walk in the door.
For a Katrina style disaster, I think the best bargain is 200 rounds of .243 + a lightweight synthetic and stainless hunting rifle with a fixed 4x scope.
So you would trade the Scout M1A in on the bolt action .243, eh? Interesting.
You notice you didn’t hear any reports of massive firefights coming out of Katrina?
You notice that because something isnt reported doesnt mean it didnt happen?
I heard “bargain”, not “overall best”. If it’s available and I was capable of carrying it, I have no qualms about choosing the .308 semi over the .243 bolt. However, if I had little purchasing power or wanted “go kits” for storage, the .243 idea has merit.
Hence the ‘desirement’ to pickup 10 or so clean Yugo SKS’s, some twenty round fixed mags (the detachables appear to lack combat required reliability), slap a mount from Scoutscopes.com on ’em and a BSA red dot to match and presto, for perhaps 10% over the price of one full house SOCOM16, I have enough to equip all the riflemen for two heavy squads.
Add perhaps 15K rounds to the other calibers already stocked, and you are set for any reasonable year long period, unless you are planning on Fort Apache.
A simplistic treatment, true, but I am leaving out the water/power/rations/med/transportation+ elements to address the notion that 5K rounds is light. I think 5K rounds is a reasonable number since the ability to endure and even prosper during times of other than the usual peace INCONUS depends on so much more than just bullet throwers and lead. I think CZ made a commment to the effect that, “You know that you are taking this seriously when you get as interested in a genset (or medkit, or food storage or…) as you do in a rifle.”
Running IADs for just one day means burning 2K rounds every 12 hours per non AW shooter, but each IAD simulates a major drama against an equivalent opponent, which would be unlikely, at least on a repetitive basis, in the PAW (where PAW >= Katrina type interim disruption of basic services).
All things being equal, I would probably get the Scout M1A vice the SOCOM bc of muzzle blast issues vice the incrementally improved handling. However, that raise my infantry weapons platform cost by 10x.
The M1A is a great all-around gun, and certainly my first choice. But it’s expensive and not light. Depending on the situation I would be tempted to grab a bolt gun instead.
I’m sure some of those floating corpses had bullet holes, and there have been self-defense stories coming out, but there was enough interest in what was going on that if it had happened on that kind of scale, we’d know. I think it’s probably a combination of very few organized bad guys, and very few serious “5,000 round” survivalists in that area. Even if they existed, they’d all have incentives to avoid each other, and plenty of other things to do than fight pitched battles for no clear gain.
Honestly, I think that the cause of post-disaster civil society is better served by 50% of the population having a shotgun, levergun, or hunting rifle and a handful of shells than 5% of the population having multiple AKs and thousands of rounds of ammo. That many guns in the right hands has a serious calming effect on malcontents.
Yugo SKSs can be had for about $100-$150 each, but I think price is essentially their only advantage. They do not have removeable magazines (that work) and even the fixed 20-round aftermarket replacements hardly ever seem to work (I have never seen an SKS feed reliably from any other magazine that the 10rd one it came with from the factory). Another issue is the fact that SKSs must be reloaded from stripper clips (or very slowly one by one by hand)… whens the last time you saw a decent supply of those? Are you going to pre-strip a bunch of 7.62×39? There used to be a decent supply of brass Yugo milsurp 7.62×39 on strippers, but that stuff is corrosive and very scarce these days. Tula/Barnaul/Ulyanovsk/Klimovsk commercial US Russian steel cased 7.62×39 isnt going to come on strippers.
You can get decent Century-imported Romanian WASR/SAR AKM clones for only about $325 each and they come with a full set of accessories and two mags. Additional mags can easily be had for $10 or less. The Kalashnikov platform is highly reliable and a tried and true mostly idiot proof weapon. Arming your “city mouse” compatriots with these would probably have a smaller learning curve and would serve them better in the long run, assuming you can handle the capital investment up front. If initial price is a concern, youd probably be better off arming them with $75 M38/M44 mosin-nagants but there again you have a problem with needing stripper clips and the majority of the ammo available not coming already stripped.
If youre handy with metalworking, you can get $99 Romanian AK kits from many places online and build them into AKMs from receiver flats for very cheap. I would never advocate violating federal law, but lets just say if the SHTF scenario does go down, there wornt be any BATF agents around to inspect your rifle for NFA or 922r compliance.
missing stuff?
who else got access to your lockers. or maybe change your locks? still no ammo means no fresh killed zombies, an awfull condition to endure. at 5k? what if 6k in zombies show up? Wildflower 06
You nailed my interest in Yugo’s in one. J&G in Prescott is selling them at $90ea for small lots. I have limited experience with these – although considerable experience with the alternative that you reference.
My notional squad is manned principally by family and immediate neighbors. I have a few ‘gee whiz’ black guns, but the SKS could/would provide the initial impetus for looters to seek other prey.
A quick look at:
http://www.gunsnet.net/Linx310/model.htm
suggests that what I want is either a SAR1 or a GP WASR-10. Those are 4x the cost of the SKS. Depending upon what volume of fire is required, the two AK clones could have an advantage.
In a longer term PAW, you could always use SKS for trading material. (PAW is used generically here – I am not a ZS cool-aid gulper, but there are great ideas on that forum, and not a little humor, either).
Dunno – much depends upon weapons employment and training.
Katrinaville
A buddy of mine works for a local power company and was assigned to go over to Nawlins to help get the power back on. He was there for three weeks in the aftermath and said that the media failed to report tons of crimes that happened, resuce workers being robbed and shot, boat owners who were flagged down then assaulted by looters pretending to be victims to draw their victims in close, people carrying plasma screen televisions in shopping carts down residential streets figuring the power would be back on someday.
Oddly enough, my pal who never really was into guns now has an S&W Model 66 .357 snub, a Remington 870 and an Arsenal AK. And yes, I took him to the gunshow.
Crom