Surviving on my own is not the problem but what do I do with the wife and kids? By myself I could grab a weapon/weapons and a loaded backback and solo it out with basic survival gear I already know how to use. It would be great if I all I needed was some rice and beans, fishing line, snare wire, mag stick and a bic, bag of weed, bivi bag, carton of smokes. wtf
It ALL boils down to the type of disaster. Is it nuclear, Viral, Bacterial, or natural disaster? Is it an economic meltdown, crop failure, hyperinflation. Makes a huge difference in what you can/should do.
I AM GONNA BE HUNKERING DOWN with very little on hand and with few preparations made. Even poorly prepared however I am better prepared than 99% of the population. The kids have their guns and the wife has hers. The two lowly mini 14's are both sighted in with UMC ammo. Cheap enough to stock pile and the girls would be deadly at 100 yards and under which is just about where a mini 14 wants to be anyway. One of the 14's carries a nice Nikon 1x4 and the other a Bushnell Holosight. Can't stand the 5 moa on the Holosight myself but the daughter can break skeets on the berm all day long. Question with the holosight is where do I find batteries NOW never mind after the shit flys. LOL
Best thing I ever did with the 14's was to add after market integral weaver style bases by replacing the hand guard with a mini-scout mount. I like them!
I would toss the boy the Browning A-Bolt in 308. Sighted in for 150 gr. soft pointed core-locs but shoots a poor but effective group with UMC ammo or just about anything else. A decent Leopold VXll 2x7 rides that gun and the after market muzzle break seems to suppress flash pretty well. He understands that one shot is better than a 30 round clip.
I would probably grab the Rock River Predator. She is a beauty that really likes hornady ammo and I don't have much of that lying around
. She is a heavy Varmint gun but a tack driver. I am only a fair shot and accept that but I can still hit a woodchuck sized object (rested) @ 250yards but I am sorry to admit that every weapon I own shoots better than I and they always will. (sigh). I figure with the Predator I will have the option of one shot or thirty. It's just such a heavy gun for lugging around.
Tell me this though.. If you were going to hit the road or retreat to the backwoods and you could only take two weapons what would they be. I know one of them would be a 10/22 and a brick of ammo. Thats a lot of shots. I figure it would be a squirell/small game gun but by the same token even though it's only a .22 an "enemy" would have to give it some serious thought before attacking or be certain that I had stores worthy of their trying to take. A frontal assault LOL on a 10/22 for a can of beens might not be worth it. It's the same idea as yotes and other predators NOT looking for a fight in which they might injure themselves.
Since this fine topic came up I know a .22 would go with me. I HAD a Henry .22 survival gun but it really shot like crap so it moved on. Anyone make any other self storing .22 recomendations???
After a lot of soul searching I think I might even make the Excalibur X-Bow one of my two. Have a least three dozen fresh arrows and piles of used with about half that many broadheads and a bunch of blunts and extra strings which I can change without a bow press. Deadly weapon out to 100 yards in some hands and quiet. The deer drop like flys when hit with a 125gr Spitfire or 100gr G5 Montec and I could get multiple shots out of the same arrow on game if I found the arrow. Just can't believe how quickly the deer pile up after being hit right. I would hate to let loose with a fire arm and lead people to me when the thump of a crossbow is "relatively" quiet. I'm just guess that the 3 bladed 2.5 inch cutting diameter would just as quickly stop a soft target like a human.
Fun topic with 100's of opinions.