One and Only Survival Gun

[Manny]

9mm high cap handgun would likely be my choice, Sig P226 Legion SAO as I shoot it better than any other. I honestly wouldn't expect to get many caleries from hunting, but would expect to deal with feral critters of all types. 18+1 capacity is comforting, the size & weight make it emminantly shootable without making it hard to carry and it's been proven tough & durable through extensive military trials. The 9mm isn't a powerhouse but it's a reasonable compromise between performance & weight.

 

[Ed Ames]

...society doesn't really collapse. It's replaced...

Seems like society generally recovers from collapses. Society is like a yo-yo...sure, sometimes the string gets tangled and the dangling bit is left spinning in the wind until someone winds it up again, but for the most part it just bobs up and down.

For me, dealing with economic or social collapse means having a plan to ride out the dips and avoid getting crushed during a rewind.

 

[Llama Bob]

For the future (if there's any life left in the thread), let's just keep to a particular firearm as the chosen weapon.

Fair enough.

One aspect of this is that once you choose a reasonable type of weapon (and in the scenario given that mean anti-personnel weapons, not hunting weapons) then there just isn't that much difference. OK, you need an anti-personnel rifle. Great. What kind of rifle? Well, it just doesn't matter THAT much. Anything you could shoot a qualifying score on the Army qual (or a similar course of fire) would be fine. That could be a M1903A3, a Garand, an AR(10 or 15), an M1A, a FAL, or a Ruger American. Scopes are nice, otherwise peep sights. Being in a standard caliber is nice. Good choices probably don't include an SKS, an AK, a Mosin or a 10/22 although some of those centerfires could potentially get the job done with upgraded sights/scope and a particularly good example of the type. And overall you'll find shooter skill matters more than rifle details - someone who knows how to shoot in the field from improvised positions under stress armed with a Ruger American and hunting scope is more capable than someone with a tricked out AR who can't shoot or who's tied to the bench. So the real "weapon" is field marksmanship.

 

[Mr_Flintstone]

More food for thought. Only 22% of the US population owns a gun of any type; and 3% of the population owns more than 50% of the total firearms in the US, and consumes the bulk of commercial ammunition. In addition, half of the gun owners only has a box or two of ammunition on hand at any one given time, and a good portion of gun owners aren't well trained or practiced in shooting. If society does collapse, guns and ammunition will be limited to what each person has on hand plus a fairly small quantity available at Walmart, outdoor stores, and local gun stores. Those that do acquire a weapon post-collapse won't have much ammunition to use, much less practice with.

 

[X-Rap]

Just make sure it's big enough for bear, gonna be lots of hungry bears after the SHTF.

 

[Mr_Flintstone]

At least, 30 million dead bodies in the US, in one month, would be such a mess, dogs eating the dead, it would be a complete horror show.

The world has never seen such a dependent, unable to function without electricity bunch of what passes today for "men".

Remember dogs=food. Also, for a lot of desperate people, people=food. That's not going to be a pretty sight either. But I do agree that most of our society doesn't have a clue about struggling with what used to be normal daily activities, much less what would arise as a result of societal collapse.

 

[Robert]

This was not really on topic to begin with and has gone down hill from there.