Survivalism 101: Guns

[Captain Maltese]

"It is easier to get into trouble with a gun than to get out of it with a gun." - Johnny Cash

"Happiness is a warm gun" - the Beatles

These two quotes, if whimsical, represent the two opposing views of carrying a gun in a Very Bad Situation. Neither are entirely wrong.

In most common disaster scenarios - wildfires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, epidemics , riots - a gun is going to be of very little use. Evacuation crews, evac centers, police and military and medical personnel in most parts of the world will get very cross if you meet them with a gun on your shoulder. Yes, you will probably be able to smuggle a less than giant gun in in your pack but the moment it is discovered you will be in big trouble - never mind if you actually use it or threaten to use it. In the worse places of the world, refugees from wars and turmoil do not show up at the refugee camps with guns unless they actually want to engage the guards in combat. If safety of your family and yourself means seeking protection, you'll probably not be allowed to go freelance within that shelter.

Heading into the apocalypse with a gun is such a common idea that it is something of a cliche. A cliche reinforced in a million books and movies and games, because it is easier to imagine a moment where a gun can deal with a problem than it is to imagine a future society where everyone has guns but very few uses them for anything unlawful because there will be serious consequences. Just like now. Much more boring.

So if we keep Mad Max and Fallout and fighting each other to the death for a can of tuna at arms length, where can we justify guns in survivalism? Well. There is a place where guns have always been a tool for survival - the wilderness. Hunters, farmers, cowboys, fishers - the vast majority of them carried guns without considering it a hobby. A gun meant food, and protection primarily against animals. This has not changed; what has changed is that hunting is now just a hobby for most. But hundreds of thousands of people venture into our remaining wildernesses none the less and some threats have not gone away.

Hunting, by the way, is one of the cliches of survivalism. Ask any prepper or survivalist or even average rural joe and he will tell you that yeah, if things go really bad he'll just fill the family's need by hunting. And he will. Trouble is, there's a lot more people with hunting or at least shooting skills than back in the frontier period. It is not hard to predict what will happen. Back in the bad pre-war years of the Dustbowl period some American big game species were hunted to near extinction; there must be a thousand times as many hunters now and they all have powerful scopes on their rifles. This is the kind of math that only makes sense if most people are dead. Is it good to be able to hunt? Yes. Should you plan to rely on it? No.

On a much smaller and rather more personal scale, there is such a thing as simply heading into the wilderness and bringing a gun for safety's sake. Bear is a big problem some places; they have gotten used to people and know the food they bring. There are other dangerous animals too that can close in on you in the darkness of night, depending on where you live. Some of them might even walk on two feet.

And for this there are a number of options. If you aren't bringing a hunting rifle because it's not the season or not the point of your hike, the two most popular guns tend to be either a sidearm for close defense, or what is actually known as a survival rifle. I'll look at that in the next post.

[Captain Maltese]

The concept of a 'survival rifle' originates from the US Airforce, whom also coined the 'survival knife'. A natural consequence of having plane crews fly over vast seas and wildernesses on a regular basis, and some times landing rather awkwardly. Especially in war. A single plane crew, never mind a single pilot, are not an infantry unit and can't really hope to successfully engage an enemy on the ground. So the best survival strategy is to lie low and avoid contact entirely until they can be rescued or reach friendly forces.

The local hostile animals won't be so easily avoided though. So there is a need for some means of defense. There is also a need for food, as a pilot landing in a parachute only carry very small amount of rations.

The logical answer for an emergency weapon was a rifle. Some will argue that a shotgun would have been equally logical but shotguns are not light weight weapons unless you make them very short barreled, resulting in short range and limited accuracy. Even if you reduce it to the smallest caliber, which is of limited hunting value. To be fair, even a weak shotgun has better chances of hitting a moving bird of small animal than a rifle. A rifle on the other hand can have a surprisingly short barrel and still be accurate at a considerable distance.

The M4 Survival Rifle (actual name) was introduced during WW2 and was basically a standard civilian small caliber bolt rifle, stripped down and given a collapsible skeleton stock. If fired the .22 Hornet which is not to be confused with the common .22LR which is less than half as powerful.

Evidently the USAF disagreed with me on the shotgun usefulness at the time, as their next survival gun was the M6 Survival Weapon, a two barrel weapon combining the previous bolt rifle with a shotgun in the smallest caliber. This weapon could be folded together; as a result there was no longer a bolt and magazine; you had to break open the weapon and put in one cartridge then close it and fire it, then start over.

The M6 was later followed by the AR-5, which returned to the bolt action M4 but allowed for putting the rifle and mechanism into the hollow stock, which was later superseded by the AR-7 which is semiautomatic and fires just a .22LR cartridge. The AR-7 (shown above) is still in production and military use and is for sale on the civilian market, I believe by several manufacturers.

Most of these US military weapons are old and collectibles now and fires an uncommon round, but they present two interesting approaches that other nations and civilian gun makers have since copied with varying success. The first one is basically about reducing weight and volume; the other tries to be as compact as possible - but also to be as sturdy as possible.

The AR-7 is hard to beat in compactness and is popular among kayakers and other boat people; it actually floats. The stock can also protect it from the odd drop or hit against a rock that can ruin most guns.

Alternatives in the compact rifle category are legion, but it seems you can find three main categories. 1) takedown rifles in the AR-5/7 stile, folding or collapsible stock which are rarer, and then there are the pistol grip rifles which has no butt stock at all. Depending on where on the planet you live, some of these are not legally for sale.

Ruger 10/22 has to be one of the most sold small caliber rifles of all time, which has to say something for their design and quality. It is basically a semiautomatic rifle in .22LR with a magazine, and is available in many configurations. There are also many custom options from third party manufacturers. Here it is in one takedown configuration, which is less smooth than the AR-7 but still helps for tucking the gun away in your boat or backpack.

I should mention that many shotguns offer options for shortening. Single and double barrel shotguns of the classic types can be dismantled for transport, and modern pump action shotguns can be bought without butt stocks or with collapsible stocks - where local laws permit. But being modern does not change the fact that range and precision is an issue. There is a reason why these weapons are not normally issued with much in the way of sights.

Next post, a look at some relevant hand guns.

[Captain Maltese]

This is unfortunately a post with some relevance to recent news. Only two days ago yet another story reached us from Canada about people in the wilderness being killed by a grizzly. These brown bears, and the black bears and the cougars and the ice bears and other large animals - feral or not - represent Nature as its strongest and fiercest and most natural, and some of us take the chance of living in their territories or pass through them be in for adventure or for a living. The occasional clash is sadly unavoidable, as both we and our homes and our garbage means food to many of them. When we are not perceived as a direct threat to them or their cubs and calfs.

But why handguns? Surely the big caliber rifles such people regularly carry should be enough. And it is, from a sufficient distance. But the often lethal cases happen at close up, without warning. Bears will smell the human food, and the human, and approach a tent or cabin on silent paws indeed before they start ripping the door or the window or the walls apart for entrance. There may not be time to get the rifle ready, or panic strikes, or the bear cub ambles past as the human sits on a call of nature.

The discussion of what gun is more reliable is as old as the first functioning pistol but by and large, there is not really any edge to a modern revolver vs a modern pistol any more. What matter as relevant to wilderness survival is the caliber of the gun. Yes, a small caliber gun can in theory kill every animal on the planet if the animal obligingly stands still and every bullet hits its mark. If claws are shredding your tent or door you will, to be blunt, be pissing your pants and you must hope to get a killing blow with a single shot as that might be the only one even hitting. Most pistols are made to kill people, but a grizzly or a gorilla or an enraged moose has far more body mass and muscle and if they can keep going for another ten seconds before succumbing to their wounds it might be time enough for you to succumb as well. The 'default' military pistol caliber of the last few decades worldwide has been 9mm. USA have been hanging on to the .45 caliber of their Colt 1911 derivatives which trades considerable bulkiness and size for more stopping power. Other popular - or at least tried - pistol calibers have been 10mm and cal 40; the Israeli-made Desert Eagle is the champion of the big pistol concept.

But revolvers are generally more popular in the wilderness setting. Yes, they are perceived fairly or not as more reliable but they are also available in bigger calibers. .357 Magnum was the most powerful commercial caliber in the world for a while. .357 revolvers have the advantage of also being able to shoot .38 as well, which is the old classic revolver caliber. It is marginally weaker than 9mm and rather cheaper to practice shooting with than .357.

You also have .44 Magnum; not to be confused with the .44 of the old western days. There are even some revolvers that can fire rifle ammunition.

It should also be noted that a revolver has an advantage pistols don't have - you do not need force to pull the slide back, making it a viable weapon also for people with limited hand strength.

Norway does not have a bear problem; maybe one person have been killed in the last three decades. On the mainland. We have however also the large island Svalbard, and here the ice bears are so prolific that it is illegal to wander out of the city or go anywhere else on the island without being adequately armed.

Elk and moose will normally leg it away if they see humans nearby. They can however be dangerous while they have calfs or if they are cornered, and then their horns are almost as dangerous as their hooves. Default procedure for the human would be to move away or up a tree. But they run faster than they look. Best prodecure, if you see a calf apparently alone, is to get the hell out.