How much ammo?

I'm not talking about at your house. That answer should always be "There is no such thing as too much ammo!" No, I'm asking about how much do you carry. To set some parameters for this discussion, I'll make some basic scenarios.

#1) Concealed carry. No limit on number or type of weapons, but it is concealed, so please submit pictures if you are going to be outlandish.

#2) Patrolling your place after the S hittith T fanith. Again, no limits, but you are going to have to keep your weapons & gear on for at least 8 hours a day. Again pictures are helpful for validating your claims.

#3) Bugging out. No limits, but you have to carry not only weapons & gear, but also hump food, water, shelter, and anything else you need. Figure that you would have all this on as you moved over various terrain for the better portion of a day. Now figure on doing it again the next day, and the one after that, until you reached your destination. No cheating by saying that you would be there in X number of days. Figure that you might be doing this for a month before you could resupply. And while I'm making this impossible, lets introduce to the scenario zombies....... and don't forget some pics if your going to say you can hump it all, plus the kitchen sink! I wanna see you do it!

Seriously, I'm curious how much ammo is too much for these three scenarios.

phishi

 

#1 Phishi I carry concealed quite a bit, my 1911 .45 with one mag in the pistol and two in a mag carrier on my belt. That is normal carry. In a SHTF scenario at minimum I would carry two more mags in another mag carrier, all which can easily be concealed under a vest, jacket, or big shirt.

As for the rest I will have to think about it, and try it out of course.

 

That would depend a lot on the threat leavel and on what cal. ammo we are talking about. For bugging out especialy with MZBs around then the more ammo you have the better but you are limited by weight and space so I would say maybe 4k or so of .22 so you at least have something better than a pointy stick both for defense if it comes to that and for getting meat, the say 500 rounds for the main rifles and 100 for the side arm. This is assumeing everything has fully collapsed to a point militarry and LEO presence is nill and we are in road warrior times or whatever.
As far as for daily carry I personaly figure anything more than 2 reloads is pointless since you are not likely to have back up and so if you have time to empty your gun 3 times the folks shooting at you have as well and if none of you can stop the other side with that much lead then you are all safe as long as the other side is shooting at you cause none of you are hitting anything but bystanders.

 

Phishi, I seperate movement into combat and recon. If you are out and about, then you have two reasons for such while at a fixed base. Recon or combat and I mean heavy combat. Movement to contact combat. Therefore, my basic load mirrors the military, 210 of 5.56 and 90 on the side arm. For Recon, 90 5.56 and 45 sidearm. Reasoning, combat is movement TO contact, recon is break contact. At the fixed base, I use ammo cans for my sandbags! When BO, priority is water, then food, then ammo in that order and I carry twice as much as I think I will need.

 

Oh and as far as patrolling, I would have to say it would depend somewhat on the size of the area to be patroled since if you are patroleing around your yard and never getting more than 25 yards from the house then it would take far less ammo to fight your way back to more supplies than if you had a huge ranch and were rideing the fences and might have to go a couple of miles or more to get to resupply. In the first instance I would say maybe 100 rounds for the primairy long arm and 50 for the side arm, if its the later then maybe as much as 500 for the priamiry gun with 150 for the side arm and have catches around the property to fight your way to if needed.
I would have to say that the order of prioritys on food, water, ammo, first aid, and so on would be heavily dependent on the area to be crossed, gear and knowledge/skills. I say this just because in my own area you wont go more than a few miles even by road without comeing to water so if you have filtration gear and so on you shouldnt need more than a 1 day supply of drinking/cooking water and can do hygene at the water source and as far as food especialy here and in most areas if you know whats around you (animals and plants) well enouph and know how to get and use it then food may only have to be carried for emergencies or luxury since you can set traps quickly and easily when setting camp for the day and have food waiting in the morning and gather plants along the way, I know cat tails for instance are every where around here so between that, the berries and all the other eadible plants along with whatever fur wrapped meat you can come across or fish and such then food can be peared way down. If things are reasonably civil at least out side of the imediate area then massive amounts of ammo could be traded off for the weight saveings.

 

BTW: just to qualify I would have to say that there could be such a thing as to much ammo at home....when you can no longer find the bed under the pile of ammo and the path between the cases of ammo stacked throughout the house gets narrow to the point of haveing to walk sideways...yeah you got to damn much ammo! lol

 

No. you have too little house at that point.

 

Sniper: The military really carries six 15 round mags for its side arms?

EL: Good point about the house.

Mman: Good points in general.

What I'm looking for is balance. I want to define my ammo load so that it can shape how I carry it. I don't want separate rigs for separate scenarios. I want one general set of 1st & 2nd line gear that can be used in all three scenarios if needed. (Note: For concealed carry, it would only be 1st line.) Any other gear would be in a pack or bag format that could be added or subtracted as needed.

In order for all this to happen, I need to define how much is too much. Six AR mags is roughly six pounds when fully loaded with 30 rounds. Is that enough, or not enough? Excellent point by Sniper concerning combat vs. recon. The problem is that I may be doing one when it turns into another. I would hate to be under prepared.........

My current load out is such:

#1) G19 with extra mag, maybe another in a pocket (2-3 total).

#2) AR with extra mag on rifle, 4 more on vest (6 total).

#3) Same as above with extra ammo on stripper clips (enough rounds to reload six 30 round mags).

Give me some feedback.
phishi

 

Well, basicly if its more than you can carry along with your other gear that is escential then its to much, but if you are unable to carry the amount of ammo you could be likely to need then you would need to find a different way to carry gear or catch ammo along the way. If we are going for one pack to grab for both patroling and BO the you would need it to be packed for BO since this is where you need the most of everything includeing ammo. So then from there its a matter of considering your particular situation. What are the likely reasons you would have to bug out? How far would you be going? What kind of areas would you be going through? What are you likely to encounter along the way? Do you have means of resupplying along the way?
I bring up these questions because there is no one size fits all anwser to how much ammo you would need. If you lived in an extreemely rural area several hundred miles from any major metropolitan areas off in the mountians somewhere and were bugging out say 50-100 miles through the mountians to an even more remote place then the odds of you faceing large hoards of MZBs and needing tons of ammo for anything more than hunting are unlikely. On the other hand if you live on the outskirts of a big metro area and your planned BO route takes you right through 75-100 miles of urban sprawl and the through lots of mid size towns and small cities to an agrocultural area thats still moderately populated and you wil be traveling by main roads, well then the odds of you needing to find a way to take along a case or more of ammo per gun and have some restock points along the way is a lot more likely since you will be in the midst of the worst of situations.
That said I would figure that to make sure you dont run out of ammo while still standing in a single skirmish it would be best to have at least 300 rounds for the rifle and 100 or so for the sidearm for each person in the party. This should be considerably more than you would use in any single encounter but would rather have to much ammo than hear that dreaded 'CLICK' echoing when your butts on the line. So I would most likely set up the 30 round clips as jungle clips so you have 30, flip it and have 30 more. So with 6 sets (12 clips) theres 360 rounds, then have at least 100 rounds for the sidearm cliped and you have enouph for a short run in an urban area or most likely enouph for a lot longer run in an area that has few people for you to run into. It would also make a considerable difference on how many are in your party IMO. If you are going to be bugging out alone then you have to hold off any attacks solely with what you are carrying but if you have say 5 people in your group then each person in the group should have some firepower and so its very reasonable to assume that no one person should have to fire as many shots in a single confrontation. The above examples were assumeing you were solo, if you have say 4 more people with you then I could see being able to cut that in half.
If you give more defined situations it may be easier to give a more solid anwser but as outlined thats about the best I could tell you.

 

Phishi,
The military considers the pistol a sidearm for defense, so it is not considered a combat weapon. Therefore, two mags is what is issued. However as a aviator, that is all I am issued and I'll be damned if two mags is it, so I carry four on my vest and two in my holster, so six is what I carry and that is a general consensus among my peers as a good starting point. Many carry a small buttpack with as much as they can cram into it.
As for recon vs. combat, you mentioned one can turn into the other. Yes, that is true, but when I talk combat, I am talking helmet and armor. You aren't moving very far very fast. Your action to contact is deliberate. Recon on the other hand is done without a helmet, if armor is worn, it is light, mobility and stealth are paramount, so you only need enough ammo to break contact. If on a recon, you encounter something that needs shot, with 210 founds of 5.56 versus 90, you are more likely to engage and stay engaged than to break and run. On a recon, you don't want to be found, so any rounds shot and you are already on the bad side of a bad situation.
Now, with that said, the way I do business with my recon gear, if I know there is going to be a long recon and things could get hairy, I carry a MOLLE ruck and on it, I have extra ammo. When I move to my recon point, I will develop a hide and drop anything I don't necessarily need. Then I will move forward and recon. When the recon is complete, I will return to the hide and recover the dropped gear, reconstitute, and then continue on. This is much like the Rangers tactic of an ambush.
I know you said that you want a one gear fits all, but that is really tough to do. I have two sets of gear, recon and combat. The reason, the combat web gear has to be set large to fit over armor. If you take it off the armor, then it is to big. I just made the decision that two sets were going to have to work. For the recon gear, I prefer the new MOLLE as it is rapidly adaptable. For the Combat gear, I chose the military LBV because of the solid structure. Put to much weight on MOLLE and it will begin to sag quickly. The nice thing about the MOLLE, if you think you need more ammo for a recon, take the MOLLE mag pouch off the pack and attach it to the vest. Hope that helps,

 

Sniper, how about posting some pics of your combat and recon set ups.

 

OK, I can't get pictures of the combat gear as it is still packed up from the move and I don't think the spousal unit will allow me to play that long as I have a kid to feed here real soon.
You monkeys should feel priviledged as not many get to see the inside of my vault, but you folks will! This is my recon gear using the MOLLE vest and Medic pouches. The Buttpack is a Blackhawk pack, works really well. The recon pack is a medium ALICE pack. If someone can tell me how to attach an excel file, I can give you a component listing. of both.

 

Sweet!

 

I was just looking at that jumbled mess and it is hard to pick out what is what with all that camoflage! Guess the cammo effect works!

 

Thanks Brokor, there you go EL, hope that helps.

 

Wow, that is really an extensive list. Thanks for the info! Talk about the ultimate bug out kit. I think I would probably have a heart attack carrying around all of that stuff if I had to go very far.

 

That is pretty much the entire load, remove what isn't necessary for the mission and lighten the load. That is why the MOLLE system works well, modularity is the key.