pc arsenal

PC ARSENAL
Post Collapse Arsenal
Survivalism has always had an element of fear and loathing about it. We were in essence attempting to mitigate that fear. Oh, there was plenty of self preservation and other positive old fashion practices. Saving up for a rainy day. Putting back for an emergency. Getting ready just in case. Real life insurance. Taking care of your family. Getting ready for the seven lean years. Putting aside for emergencies is simple common sense and a trait that was practiced in an idyllic yesteryear to the extent that it was considered strange if you didn’t do it. Living by the seasons rather than by the pay period. I think the basic problem was that instead of simply putting the basics aside for emergencies we started trying to preserve a whole way of life. As our lives both became more precarious and also more leisurely and luxurious we not only panicked about staying alive but also about keeping ourselves comfortable.

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And this is an important distinction. Staying alive and staying comfortable are not the same things. You can stay alive with a lot less than if you are trying to stay comfortable. Staying alive is a tarp over a hole in the ground, stuffed with insulating dead plants. You step outside to cook a meal of corm and beans over a rocket stove. You haul water from a mile away. You arm yourself with an old break open shotgun. You wear a wool poncho over layers of cloths to stay warm while out. Staying comfortable is building a cabin, installing solar panels for lights, digging a well and a septic system. You heat with a woodstove. You have a pantry full of freeze dried foods, MRE’s, canned meat. You arm yourself with various semi-automatic weapons so you can defend your cabin, your PV panels, your chain saws for cutting wood, your gasoline tank to run your chain saws and power the generator for the well, your pantry full of expensive groceries and of course your various semi-automatic weapons with your tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition.

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It seems like anyone in financial straights would be able to easily tell the differences between these two conditions of preparedness. After all, they have already learned to turn down the thermostat, eat more basic, less processed foods. They perhaps biked or walked instead of used a vehicle. In short, you would think they didn’t confuse what was needed and what was desired. Yet, I think most people do have a hard time separating those two. There seems to be so much pressure from so many different groups to conform and adjust to consumerism. You want a mate, perhaps a family? Most women equate money with security. They don’t grasp that a lack of debt and the need for less money is more secure. So right away there is a huge disincentive. Most American cities are built around the automobile. There are huge pressures from zoning agencies. It is more expensive in the short term to be off grid. Overall, it is tough to live a minimalist lifestyle. Most don’t even try. So as you live a normal modern American life you naturally don’t try to minimalize your preparedness. Which really is a shame, because that is exactly what you should be doing. By only storing basic food, you can have more of it, which comes in mighty handy if the unraveling of civilization lasts a little longer than planned. By paring back on your shelter you have less to steal, less to lose in a disaster, less to heat and cool, less to protect. With less to protect you need less of an arsenal and can content yourself with a few basic arms. By spending less on the arms or their once needed magazines you leave more of your budget for ammunition.

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If you can’t divorce yourself from consumerism, if you can’t accept the need to live with less comfort, you are not going to be satisfied with the recommendations here. You are going to feel cheated and under-provisioned. Exposed to a brutal world while being under-equipped. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you can’t let go of your comforts now, what makes you think you will survive when all those luxuries disappear after some tomorrow? If you want a fallout shelter stocked with military rations and cooked over stockpiled petroleum, protected by an arsenal, go read a book such as No Such Thing As Doomsday. They tell you how to spend a fortune to continue your middle class lifestyle. You will be a Yuppie Survivalist. This booklet is for the Redneck Survivalist. Just as being a Yuppie Survivalist is not about income but the attitude that money solves all problems, being a Redneck Survivalist is not about where you live but about how you live. How you can survive with less money because its about skill and attitude and making do and doing without. Its trading away a bit of comfort so that you need a lot less money. In our rapidly approaching collapse, the Redneck stands a much better chance of survival than the Yuppie. Did the Redneck have to worry about his 401(k) or his stock portfolio, or even his suburban house losing half its value? Hell no. A used trailer on a lot doesn’t lose any value because it isn’t an investment, it is simply shelter. He might not be able to shade tree mechanic anymore since the computer chips need a diagnostic machine, but he doesn’t lose mechanical aptitude or the ability to gum and glue a repair. And since he doesn’t have a mortgage or a child in private school or a car payment or credit cards, he can scrape by with a lower paying job as the economy tanks.

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You need to accept that the Great American Dream has turned into a psychedelic bad trip of a nightmare. We don’t have a globally coveted currency anymore. We have no gold but slips of paper only backed by debt. We are not the worlds leading oil exporter anymore. We are not the leading manufacturer. We won’t even be a leading food exporter much longer as our aquifers dry up, the California drought goes from the worst ever to a permanent condition, our depleted soils fail as oil imports dry up and our credit system contraction kills off some farms and farm suppliers. In short, there is nothing to pull us out of a decline in oil as our economy implodes. We are all going to get a lot less comfortable soon. Act as if it is going to get a worse now, so at least you can take the remaining time to prepare for catastrophe. Accepting less in the way of preparations allows you to spend a lot less money and gather far more materials at the same time. And the best way to save most of that money is in the realm of protection. Yes, you can be adequately protected with a lot less money. Isn’t that nice to know?

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Survivalists are not in the military. Survivalists should not adopt military strategy and tactics. The basic role of the infantryman in modern warfare is to protect the equipment that is responsible for the most casualties of the enemy. Thus, infantry protects the tanks and artillery and command and communications areas. Yes, this simplifies to a large degree and I don’t mean to insult or demean the role of the ground pounder. I’m simply pointing out the larger realities of industrialized war. In the future when manufacturing and petroleum have been reduced in importance then the ground soldier will once again gain in importance, but right now you need to recognize the role of the infantry and his tools and realize insurgents and guerillas and irregular militia should not try to emulate the infantryman.

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The assault rifle was developed in WWII out of the realization that rifle fire from the infantry was almost worthless for causing enemy casualties. Aimed slow fire was replaced by massed fire. To a degree the British had already practiced this many wars ago and had stuck with it. And the American forces had been directing new arrivals to the field to disregard their stateside training of aimed marksmanship and practice mass fire tactics. The real breakthrough was in reducing the power of the ammunition being used traditionally and increasing the power of the new automatic weapons. Thirty caliber battle rifles were too powerful and the new automatic submachinegun pistol ammunition was too anemic. A perfect combination of the two resulted in the assault rifle. Ground troops could fire at medium distances with mass firepower.

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The survivalist does not need medium distance wounding power and mass fire capabilities. He needs a weapon that will discourage others from attacking while he escapes. To assume a survivor wants to risk his life playing soldier is stupid. Even in a post collapse future where he might assume military duties, the mass firepower of the industrial age is no longer an option. Huge industrial output is a byproduct of the Oil Age. A wonderful time when petroleum assumed all our labor and fulfilled all our luxurious fantasies. A time when men’s minds were free to dream and create by freeing him from the need of manual labor. A time when we could substitute ammunition for soldiers lives. That time is already in the process of ending. Four years ago the global production of oil hit its plateau. It won’t resume its upward trend as all of the worlds large oil fields have been drained and no new super fields have been discovered in forty years ( and not for lack of trying ). We now have the answer to when we start running out of cheap and abundant oil and you ignore that answer at your peril. The future is industry and economics and life from three centuries ago when coal and oil and mass production had yet to transform our lives. All aspects of abundance will end, to include military mass production.

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Semi-automatic weapons are a wonderful tool for the soldier. They may save his life on more than one occasion. And the same weapon can be a wonderful tool for the survivalist. The preferred way to battle is of course from a long enough distance to assure a better change of survival. But we all know about Murphy’s Law and how things always go wrong. When confronted with an enemy at close quarters it is great to have the ability to fire dozens of times rapidly. Multiple enemies, enemies closing in rapidly with motorized transport, even rabid dog pack attacks. Semi automatics are wonderful for these threats. Yet, the only arguments you hear are for either medium distance ammunition or long range ammunition. No one questions the need for semi’s. It is assumed. We are living in the forest of the Oil Age and can’t see the trees. If mass manufacturing is only available in a Oil Age and that epoch is already starting to end, how can you assume we will still be able to practice wasteful use of resources? A partial answer is to stockpile tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition and/or reloading supplies. But that is not possible for a frugal survivalist. Especially now that ammunition and its components have doubled in price.

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Even stockpiling does not fully counteract the problems of semi-automatic weapons. A semi wastes ammunition. And, no, I don’t buy the argument that it is the shooter and not the gun that wastes ammunition. In and of itself this is true. But 99% of today’s shooters do not have the practice to discipline themselves to conserve ammunition in the stress of a firefight. Under stress you revert to training, yet most military and police do not receive enough training, let alone a civilian readying himself for the Apocalypse. To those few that have, good for you. Congratulations. You can conserve ammunition and still have the capability to use mass fire. The rest of us, the majority, will spray and pray under the extreme stress of combat. I don’t say this to demean. I say this as a simple fact of life. Without constant and expensive training, you will waste ammunition. You are suddenly faced with a life threatening situation, of course you are going to do your best to quickly neutralize the threat. Spray and pray will save your life and you don’t stop and think how this will reduce your precious hoard of ammunition that can’t be replaced. Nor should you, not in a combat situation. You will get yourself and/or your teammates killed. So that is where you use the weapon to reduce your natural inclination to waste ammunition.

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People point out that using a bolt action will get you killed since you can’t fire fast enough. Yet, my counterargument is that if you do fire fast enough then you have killed yourself anyway. In the very near future you have no ammunition at all. If semi auto’s use ammunition at least ten times faster, by not using them you will run out of ammunition a lot slower. The end of industry is bad news as far as modern arms are concerned. You have no choice but to realize your limitations and try to put off the return to more primitive arms as long as possible. By using bolt actions rather than semi-automatics you postpone the day of reckoning. By insisting on semi-automatics to hasten that day’s arrival. And by using a slower firing weapon, you automatically make yourself safer. A semi is like a four wheel drive vehicle. You think it will get you out of difficult situations. So you get into those situations with nary a care. Manual loading arms are like two wheel drive vehicles. You exercise more caution to start with because you recognize the limitations of your tools. Yes, clearly you will encounter difficult situations at times and wish you had a proper tool. But, big picture, I believe that more often than not you will gain more than you lose by disregarding today’s higher tech tools to prepare for tomorrow’s commodity scarcities.

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I started writing this as a booklet in 2009, but it isn’t going anywhere so I present it as an article. If it seems like this was winding up to something and never got there, that is why. To encapsulate most of what would have followed, you can perform 80% of needed defense with a thirty caliber bolt action and a revolver. Rimfire is nice as a secondary arsenal to stretch out the time before you must give up modern arms due to lack of ammunition, but you can do without them if you can’t afford the 25% increase in the weapon and the 50% in ammunition that the last few years have brought. A shotgun is much better for improvised ammunition and for wooded terrain but has severe range issues ( slugs might double that but increase the needed skill level ) once you get out in the open. If you can only afford either a long gun or a shotgun, make sure your location supports your choice. I recommend the rifle, but you must choose based on your own location.

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