How much ammo is enough ?

Militia training taught me about battle loads and what I could carry. I started with 30-06 and found that #1 the remington 7400 was not equal to an m1 garrand or a BAR. ETC. #2 MAGAZINES WERE LARGE AND BULKY. Weight per round was high. I was able to carry 100 rounds plus a 20 round box in my back pack. After a week of training I saw the advantage of the 30 round magazines and the weight of the 5.56 AND the reliability of the AR-15 . My last last and current patrol load battle load is 210 rounds in 7 30 round Magpul p-mags and three 20 round boxes in reserve. SR-22 Ruger Pistol with 300 rounds, knife. It all fits nice in my molle vest and belt packs. If I grab the extra 30 round mags for my wife's AR I can have over 300 rounds for the AR. I can patrol, walk an easy 5 miles in this load out. I could do a hard 10 or an even harder 15. My feet still serve me pretty well however my wife cant walk our 10 acres much less bug out on foot.

Resupply is always the main focus after a fight. How does one get resupplied bugged out? during a forage mission? running from bandits? searching the wasteland? in a war ? I have searched the scenarios and it keeps coming back to stay home at all costs. Only run if staying is certain and I mean certain death. Then to me? If I have to run I am only delaying my demise.

 

I think a lot of us fall into that category,
However , Post apocalyptic event,
should the situation arise that I have to evacuate, and the house was being burned down I'd want all the ammo I could possibly carry, or have a/or several locations, relatively close that some gear is cashed away, I'm fairly certain I can rely on .
Not a one of us can guarantee the condition we are going to be in, during that event; illness or injury can slow the best of us down I don't care who you are .
We play a lot of scenarios here and that's a good thing , it makes one think and consider the environment they live in a bit more.
The guy that keeps his wits about himself during an event, has a better chance of survival, than the one that only deals with stuff habitually day to day ,no thought for, the what if?
On of the many jobs I had, was dealing with the unusual, antiques mostly , because every one else was lost and freaks out at things they were unfamiliar. I considered the challenge ,even if it was something new to me , as a learning experience.
Like others here some jobs require a tool that hasn't yet been manufactured, so we improvise .
The versatility of Black powder weapons is good for times, not so life threatening.
Being that more and more people are buying guns , having a more rapid response weapon is imperative.
Case in point an woman defending her self from a home invasion, and shooting the perp while going up a ladder to her attic .
He left with bullets in him and eventually lost it driving away . fact of the mater is, she spent all that her hand gun held, and he was still coming.
Self defense situations don't guarantee any thing but to be sure running out of ammo at the moment is the worst.

 

Defending my home is much much easier than defending terrain I am not used to . I cant even begin to understand how anyone could think running with what they can carry would be better than defending something you built, prepared and maintain.

Areigh hits it out of the park. The guy who keeps his wits about him. we have played every scenario , built the stuff, its all ready to put into play. If the game comes? we are ready.

 

My number one priority is to avoid all contact with other armed individuals . This is the main reason we have established an outer perimeter away from our homes. Keep any fighting away from our resupply, our shelter and our loved ones. Every person here agreed that a gun fight in and around the houses would be disaster. My nephew was army then 10th mountain division then military intelligence. Now he runs his own mercenary group. He helped me set up our main defenses and he specified choke points, funnels, killing zones etc. You must control the good ground or die. And we wont be allowing intruders to leave either. They attack us? they all die. No one runs home for a bigger crew.

 

This is where electronics come in handy.
If with in that perimeter defense line there are electronic listening posts motion sensor or pressure switches ,one could get intel on incoming raiders or just people scrounging to survive.
Perimeter troops can have a heads up and if your listening post has audio and your security can relay any conversation . also your troops can use those posts to communicate if their own radios are down.

 

And soon to be Drones flying recon. For now we have sentries out even further than the perimeter line. Watching the road in from over a mile out. These guys are the real heros as they let the rest of us know a person, group or force is approaching and what type,strength etc. Having eyes on approaching groups is the key to knowing what to employ to defeat them. Our people wont be seen until we want them seen. If we get to that point we are then pulling them into the first ambush. BT Post helped me build a real nice encrypted set of coms and we have frs for false information as well. Let them hear the frs and mislead them. This has all been completely thought out and tested. The coms work great. Drones however have brought a new threat to our plan. Mobile units using drones for air intel recon is a new threat which we are working to fix. The longer we go the better as batteries die and charging systems fail there will be less and less of these types of threats. But the first year or two a silent drone running tree top level looking could cause us a big hurt.

I am waiting to hear back from my nephew as to how we counter recon drones. Besides seeing them and shooting them down.

 

Probably radio jamming .

 

The problem with taking out recon drones is that they still find out you are there. Once you get drones life is going to get MUCH harder. You still need to take them out to keep them from getting the intelligence.

Me likey this:

 

I would think that the best way would be to take them over with better controls. Say a more powerful control panel. Sort of like jamming but more. But the age of drones is here and we have to learn how to defeat them.

 

As much as you can afford.

I said it in another thread but I remember 9mm being unavailable at Walmart and I remember standing in line to get .40 S&W and being told there were 2 boxes left and having the guy behind me throw a fit because he thought I was going to buy both of them (I'm not that heartless).

At some point in the middle of all that I decided that I was NEVER going to get caught with my pants down like that again.

I'm not going to list a number but my wife watches the sales and when she sees a good one she lays in another thousand rounds. Ammunition is durable. Every round I own will still be good long after I'm dead and it will never again be cheaper than it is right now. As for magazines my minimum number is 12 factory (or MecGar) magazines per gun.

I know it's not directly related to this thread but I wanted to respond to the bug out concept.

I don't want to completely dismiss the concept but I don't think it's a viable Plan A. In order to (IMO) successfully bug out you'd almost have to go before you needed to. If you wait until you have to go you will be part of the crowd and very likely to come under government control before you get out of town.

I think moving to a smaller community now if you are able would be a much more viable option.

Based on the current political climate I think you're far more likely to have to prepare to survive a terrorist attack or localized civil unrest than some total societal collapse scenario.

In a situation like that you're far better served (IMO) by hunkering down and preparing to defend yourself but doing everything you can to draw the least amount of attention to yourself possible.

To bring this back on topic, given that I'm not planning to run to the hills I don't have to figure out how to transport large amounts of ammunition. (One government check point and you will find yourself unarmed and ammo-less). So again I go back to my last post.

I'm far more likely to have to survive an ammo panic or an economic downturn that makes ammunition prohibitively expensive. Again, ammunition will never be cheaper than it is right now.

Buy cheap and stack deep

 

Im stacked as deep as we can afford and the current shit hitting the fan in England has us all on edge. Im thinking more right now in terms of more propane, more food and medicines. The groups main ammo cache is impressive. I think we have enough for a long time . Never enough to go forever.

 

I think that in some cases there are things we need to learn how to make our selves.
Not just gardening , but making steel and forging other metals as well as machine work and manufacturing clothing and shoes .
All this and more will likely be lost in a world wide event .
It had happened in the past ,and we all know history repeats it's self.
I think it is advisable that if one has the resources to support professionals, the professionals need to know how to manufacture the medicines and materials even the electronics they need in order to perform .