Your "Kit" for Battle - Part One

This blog envisions a world of conflict. All sorts of conflicts: gaming conflict, personal conflict, military conflict.

Since this is the "preparation" blog, we're now going to prepare for armed conflict. There have been periodic references to armed conflict here before, but now, along with your blogger's new realization that such conflict is measureably more probable, we are actually going to prepare in detail for such conflict.

All conflict has some similarities, and the most obvious of these is that preparation for it involves getting materials together that help you during conflict. The gamers have their “kit”, and it involves; (for the video gamers anyway) a good input controller and a collection of intel (“cheats”; as they are sometimes known as). In personal conflict, say divorce, you have the apparatus of the legal system as your “kit”, you have a field general (lawyer), you have your intel (info on your ex that you feed to the lawyer).

In military conflict, your “kit” should start with your basis for projecting military power. For us, that is our weapons and their systems. Most of our kit has to be able to go with us, and since we are mobile on foot, it all has to be able to be packed around (“humped”, as my generation says).

It stands to reason that weight is a factor, and within the capability requirements of your weapons, weight of the weapons and their ammo is important. It may not seem important now, but when the S.H.T.F., and you take the field, or as in my case, equip and lead others into the field, it will become VERY important, trust me.

If you are lucky enough to be part of my team, I will have advised you on weapons before the conflict gets deadly, but as team leader, I also have the responsibility to see that you are armed even if you can't get or bring weapons with you to the field.

The weapons of my team are built around the team's requirement to project weapons fire in layers.

The inner layer is from your body out to five meters. The best weapon for that is whatever you have in your hands that will shoot, because such encounters are sudden, short and nasty, but you will carry a handgun, and this is where it does it's job.

The next layer is five meters out to one hundred meters (310 feet). All members of the team will be equipped for combat out to this range. The weapon of choice here will be your primary long gun. That might be a pistol-caliber carbine, a shotgun (firing slugs at the longest ranges out to 100 meters) or your rifle, using the close-in sight if so equipped.

The last layer is 100 meters out to the limit of range for your rifle, if you are equipped with one. For the military battle rifles, that will be 700 meters or so, and for the hunting weapons, that will be about 400 meters. I don't envision engaging OpFor at ranges greater than these. If I have to, I will close the range before engaging the enemy.

So, we begin at close range and move outward in our consideration.

The basic kit will be a revolver or pistol, and a short-range carbine that takes the same ammo and/or magazines as the pistol. I can recommend several such combinations.

The first is a .357 caliber revolver and the Marlin (or Winchester or Rossi) lever or slide-action carbine in the same caliber. This weapons combo obeys an important rule, that of ammo obtainability. After the initial warload of ammo is expended, continuing conflict will mean obtaining additional ammo to what we took the field with. By the second week of S.H.T.F., most commerce will have ended, and that includes retail commerce, where the opportunity to purchase ammo might still be available in Red states (Blue states will probably ban ammo sales at the first sign of any organized civil conflict, and the Federal government might do that as well, depends on who is in the White House to issue that Executive Order).

This business of ammo availability involves some thought. In the post-apocalyptic world, might will mean right locally, until the mightiest force prevails and establishes order again. Ammunition will be obtainable, and the Opposing Forces (OpFor) will have it or control it's distribution. The armed forces of the OpFor will be the police and the military. Successful combat with them (or on their side, for that matter), will mean getting a supply of their ammo, which will be (each or severally) .38/.357, 9mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP and for long guns, 12 ga and 5.56 NATO, and 7.62 NATO.

There is the possibility of taking reloading equipment and supplies into the field to make new ammo, but I don't consider that possibility to be realistic. A team might luck out and find a friendly non-combatant household that can make ammo, but for every time that happens, I'll wager that the same team will find the proper ammo to “liberate” at least 10 times.

It's been a civilian world in the armed population recently, not a military one, so the .38 Special and it's mostly-interchangeable .357 big brother are going to be the most available cartridges. After that, 9mm, .40 S&W and then .45 ACP are less available, then .44 Magnum and more exotic wildcat handgun calibers. The most available will be the .22 Long Rifle rimfire, but I don't consider it a combat caliber, nor do I consider any handgun caliber smaller than 9mm. That leaves out .380 ACP, which others might consider useful, or .32 ACP or it's revolver cousin, .32 S&W, as well as some sub-caliber Euro and Russ rounds like the 9X18 Makarov, or .30 pistol (7.62X25) or such. They may be deadly enough as pistols, but they are strictly pistol calibers, no carbines being available for them. They are also recent entries in the US gun market, and there isn't much ammo around just yet. I also don’t consider the .30 US Carbine, simply because ammo availability has faded out in the general population recently, and even though the carbine and such handguns as the Ruger single-action revolvers chambered for .30 Carbine are superb firearms, they have fallen into the class of exotics. Their place has been somewhat taken up by the importation of the Russian 7.62 X39 cartridge, with associated weaponry like the SKS and AK-47, and the better US carbines made for it such as the Ruger Mini-30, but ammo availability is still not what I would like to see for battlefield-supply use.

Given the above conditions, here are my recommendations for a handgun/carbine set:

1. A .357 Magnum revolver and .357/.38 chambered carbine. I like the Marlin Model 1894 for it’s price, around $400 new (the “non-cowboy” model, add $200 to get the cowboy-style octagon barrel), and it’s wide availability. It holds 10 rounds of magnum ammo, 11 of .38. You can train yourself to fire it very rapidly, and it is a simple weapon to maintain. The revolver can be any 5 or 6 shot model of good strength, such as Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Colt, or Taurus. It should be double-action, barreled in 2” to 6”, but if you are well-trained in single action, carry what you have trained with. Remember Kim DuToit’s maxim: the purpose of a handgun is to delay the outcome of a gunfight at close range until you can get to your rifle, and conclude it successfully at longer range. The handgun is a “get them off your back” weapon. This combination offers the very most in ammo availability (and least cost in practice ammo as well). You should be able to outfit yourself with both weapons and at least 1,000 rounds of ammo for $1,000 or so.

2. A .40 S&W semi-auto combination. Probably the best is the Beretta Model 92 pistol (the current military pistol, but the military has theirs in the weaker 9mm Luger), and Beretta Storm carbine. It’s a very modern design, uses the pistol’s magazines, and the .40 S&W is a very respectable carbine round, giving good ballistics out to 200 meters. Another .40 combo would be based on the Kel-Tec Sub-2000 carbine (no, despite the name, this isn’t a machine-pistol). The Kel-Tec can be ordered to have magazine interoperability with several different pistols: the Kel-Tec, a nice compact .40, the Glock 22 and 23, also excellent pistols, and several others. Ruger also makes a carbine/pistol combo in .40 S&W. That would be the Ruger 90-series pistol, and the Model 94 Carbine, which also share magazines. The Beretta and Ruger combos will set you back almost $1,500, but the Kel-Tec combos are much less, because the carbine sells for around $300 new, and it’s companion pistols can be obtained used for around $350-450. .40 S&W ammo (“Green Box” Remington) sells for around $9.00/50 rds in sporting goods stores if you look for sales. It has become a very popular law enforcement caliber, as it has excellent stopping power, almost 95% of what you get with .45 ACP, but with much more moderate felt recoil.

3. A 9mm semi-auto combination. I listed 9mm below .40 S&W because of it’s considerably weaker stopping power. It is the smallest acceptable battlefield cartridge, and I don’t recommend it. I consider it too light-duty, but the Army bought off on it, abandoning the far superior .45 ACP, primarily because NATO forces had gone to it as their standard pistol and machine-pistol round. The Nazi army used it in WW2, and chambered their excellent MP-43 for it. If you carry a 9mm pistol, you aren’t sure of a stopping hit with one round, or even two. You pretty much have to triple-tap every time you fire. Such a tactic can be trained up, but the average Joe isn’t going to be trained properly with less than two or three thousand rounds of range practice. Anyway, if you are going the 9mm route, you have several choices. The above Ruger, Beretta and Kel-Tec combos are available in 9mm, and there is one other worth note: the Smith and Wesson Model 59, an early hi-capacity, double action pistol that is still made, and the Marlin Camp 9, which is a handy little carbine that uses the S&W M59 magazines. A used Camp Nine and Model 59 can be had for as little as $600, and 9mm ammo is dirt-cheap, at 10 cents a round, maybe less in some mil-surp lots. This is definitely the budget combo if you can’t afford the better equipment above.

4. A .45 ACP combination. Some of my friends (sorry, Kim) will not like the placement of this fine combination way down here, but once again, I give ammo availability as the reason, see below. THE JOHN MOSES BROWNING DESIGN OF MILITARY SIDEARM IS THE MOST SUPERIOR PISTOL EVER MADE. Sorry for yelling, but such a truth deserves highlighting. There is an available combination that includes this fine design, and it is the .45 ACP (any Browning-design pistol such as Colt, Kimber, Astra, Star, Llama and others) and the Marlin Camp 45 for the carbine. Camp 45 carbines are hard to find, and they have their faults, the too-thin wood stock being the worst offender, and the weak bolt-buffer being another. Buying and installing a plastic replacement can remedy the thin stock problem, but then you get a “bull-pup” style carbine, and some don’t like those. Another possibility is a custom wooden stock, but expect that to jack up the cost of the carbine to around $1,000, unless you are the stock-maker. As to the buffer, you just have to snap up several of them when you can get them. All these manageable problems aside, it’s hard to beat this combination for pure lethality. The .45 ACP was designed in the cavalry days, when the Army required a sidearm to be able to knock down an opposing cavalryman’s horse with one shot. Given that horses are 4 or five times the body mass of a human, the round is thereby over-engineered for battle with people as targets. Put it into a carbine and you get almost double it’s pistol lethality as to range, and the rifle-stocked Camp 45 will give you battlefield utility to over 200 meters, if you can master it’s considerable trajectory with your sights. The downside is magazine capacity. The Browning-design pistols use single-stack magazines, and the thickness of the cartridge limits these magazines to 7 or 8 rounds. Ten-rounders are available, and Marlin actually made a 15 round maggy for this weapon, but the quality isn’t the best and they are not reliable enough for military use.

If it wasn’t for police use of the .45 ACP, there wouldn’t be enough field availability of the ammo to recommend it’s use on the S.H.T.F. battlefield, but a lot of cops carry either the Browning-design pistols, or pistols of other design in the caliber, just because it’s the most lethal with a one-round hit in a semi-auto pistol. I have heard some unverified stories of our troops in Iraq becoming so dis-satisfied with the field performance of their 9mm sidearms that they have actually started carrying the old USGI .45’s, which have been broken out of armory storage as fast as they can be made available. Not surprising, since the same thing happened with their rifles, the 5.56 NATO round being marginal to inadequate for the urban fighting that they are doing over there (and which battle style the S.H.T.F. Team Leader has to train up to), and the fine M-14 in 7.62 NATO still available for them in limited quantities.

The final combination isn’t a combination at all. It is any handgun with a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun. Pick the handgun for ammo availability, best in the .357 revolver caliber, and buy yourself a Remington Model 870 shotgun. There are several reasons that I have this as my last choice. First is range. Most of the pistol-caliber carbines can reach out and touch someone at 200 meters if you have to, but a shotgun never will, even with advanced sights such as a Red-Dot. The best grouping you could expect to get with deer slugs at that range would be well over 8 MOA, which is close to 2 feet. Shotguns really are a 50-meter and inward weapon, and at those ranges, are more lethal than a carbine, but you have to remember that you shouldn’t engage at any range over 100 meters. Another issue is weight of ammo. A battle-load of 200 rounds of pistol ammo might weigh several pounds, but the same amount of 12 ga ammo will weigh close to 20 pounds, and take up a large volume of space as well. It’s probably impractical to take the field with more than 50 rounds of shotgun ammo on bandoliers. The shotgun is not very expensive though, and an 870 with a deer-slug barrel and rifle sights is only about $300 new. The shotgun has one other advantage that recommends it to the team leader – it is a very versatile weapon. With birdshot in it, it becomes a food-gathering weapon if birds are available to eat, and with specialty ammo such as explosive-penetrating rounds, you even have a decent anti-vehicle weapon for ambushes. There are even incendiary rounds available. A shotgun in the team functions almost as a heavy-weapons section in the infantry, albeit at a reduced lethality, but with enough mission overlap to make it a good thing to have.

There you have it. The basic short to medium range weapons kit for the S.H.T.F. fire team. In following articles, I’ll go over more weapons kit, including battle rifles, so that by the end of the series, a prospective team leader will have his T.O. & E. (table of organization and equipment) down on paper.

Comments

[CharlesH]

I'm enjoying your articles, but I have a quibble - it's when you mention range of battle rifles as 700 meters and hunting rifles as 400. I think you have these backward, unless perhaps you're thinking of iron-sight .30-30 lever actions. The hunting rifles I'm most used to seeing, even in Pennsylvania woods, have high-magnification scopes, long range chamberings, and frequently folding bipods. Maybe it makes no sense, but people like these sorts of rifles. I ran into a guy at my range whose hunting rifle was a heavy-barrel .300 RUM with scope & bipod. The rifles are also manufactured with more emphasis on accuracy, especially in the area of better triggers. They are more equivalent to military sniper rifles except for their fragility. They are typically used at shorter ranges because of the extreme accuracy demands of hunting: in hunting any wound short of immediately lethal is a failure, as opposed to war where it's a partial success.

Battle rifles have shorter-range chamberings (even with both in .30-06, bolt-action loads beat semi-auto loads), coarser sights, and inferior triggers. Battle rifle calibers may be effective to 700 meters, but very few people could hit anything with a battle rifle at that range. Their chances would be a lot better with a boltie with a nice scope on top.

Hunting rifles are inferior to battle rifles for most military purposes, but one thing they do have (until the scope is knocked out of alignment) is range.

[Nom de Guerre: Rivrdog]

Charles, you are entirely correct, and I apologize for the confusion. Hunting tends to fall into two categories: brush hunting and open-range hunting.

I considered only brush hunting, where 400 meters is very a long shot, because that's the hunting I do. The open range hunters can kill game at ranges similar to what a military sniper fires at, and their equipment can be remarkably similar to a sniper rifle.

The heavily-scoped, bipod-mounted magnum rifles can indeed take a man-sized target out to 700 meters and more.

Most of these weapons will not have ammo commonality with the enemy, who will be the FreeFor's main source of ammo as the war carries on.

.300 RUM is a great round, as is any of the .338 magnums, and the huge straight-cased magnums like .450 Marlin or even .50 Alaskan can also be fired at huge ranges. Their larger bullets arc much more, but the trajectory is predictable, and this type of cartridge has been used to bring down large game at extreme range for 150 years.

[muldune]

I just stumbled onto your site and I agree with most of your weapons choices. I personally have two .40SW Glocks (22/27) and a mag matching Kel-Tec sub-2000. I am suprised you didn't mention the folding storage feature of the Kel-Tec; I think it definately gives it a notch up on the other carbines.

As for shotguns, I love the venerable 870, but I chose the Mossberg M590A1 instead and I don't understand why you wouldn't have added that as an alternative. It was designed to handle the rigors of war and you can even mount a standard US issue bayonet on it. Plus the placement of the safety is very smart. Please consider added it to your list next to "old faithful".

[Dr Strangelove]

Or you could forget all of that written above, buy a GLOCK 17/19 in 9mm, with a thousand rounds of good hollow point ammunition (eradicates any perception of 'ineffectiveness').

And an SKS, AK-47, or AR-15, with a few thousand rounds of good ammunition... (cheap and effective at practical combat ranges)

Throw in a nice Winchester .308 bolt action rifle, like a Savage or Rem 700, a 12 gauge, or a .357 revolver, and a few .22s, and you're set...

But all this is armchair conjecture, as evidenced above.

[ArfinGreebly (THR)]

If I remember rightly, there is some kind of prohibition on the use of "civilian" ammo (hollowpoints) in military contexts.

Soldier boys are confined to the use of ball ammo only.

Those of us who are a) not soldiers and b) in "stayin' alive" mode will not be bound by such a convention.

I'm inclined to agree that decent JHP ammo for 9mm will improve its performance.

Nonetheless, my own choice was originally .40 -- unhappily my CX4 is 9mm (damn).

Starting today, though, I'm asssembling a .357 companion set.

[Larry]

I think that availability of ammunition is absolutely key. Either make certain you stock sufficient quantities of your own, or that you choose firearms of the more common calibers (.45 acp, 9mm in centerfire pistol; 7.62x39mm or 5.56mm in centerfire rifle; 12 gauge; .22 lr).

Companion sets are a great idea.

If I was limited to only 2 calibers, though, I'd choose 12-gauge and .22 lr.

[R.Ramirez]

Im prepared with a 223 m4,svd dragunov,3006 mod70,glock40,colt45 millenium40,3 22s rifles,12g browning,plus tons of ammo add 2 chem suits with gas masks and 3sets of bow n arrows the rest of theguns n equip.is secure you never know what to expect,anything can happen with this damn terrorsts im here to stand for my country and my flag ,ill die defending our precious US god bless America whoooaa SEMPER FIDELIS

[R.Ramirez]

Im prepared with a 223 m4,svd dragunov,3006 mod70,glock40,colt45 millenium40,3 22s rifles,12g browning,plus tons of ammo add 2 chem suits with gas masks and 3sets of bow n arrows the rest of theguns n equip.is secure you never know what to expect,anything can happen with this damn terrorsts im here to stand for my country and my flag ,ill die defending our precious US god bless America whoooaa SEMPER FIDELIS

[Battlehound]

I agree with the .357 and .45 ACP as handgun choices, as they are mine also. But I have recently acquired a Beretta 92 in 9mm in a trade, and I am somewhat chagrined to find that it may be useful. The thing is deadly accurate, never jams, and spits out lead like a little hand-held machine gun. Fifteen round magazines are plentiful, and, although it was not my first choice as a sidearm, I have a growing appreciation and affection for its utility, functionality, reliability, and potential as a weapon of last resort. It is just the thing to have if you find yourself surrounded by a pack of feral dogs, and in hard times following social emergencies, this type of possibility may be more common than you think. Just my two cents worth.

[Rivrdog]

There's nothing wrong with the 9mm NATO, IF YOU GET THE NATO AMMUNITION.

Buying NATO ammo gets you mil-spec rounds with a decent wounding force of over 300 #/ft. The FMJ rounds have decent penetration, and are satisfactory against auto windshields (stopping the car-jihadi is an important battle tactic).

The Beretta 92 series is a very good weapon, and it can be made totally ambidextrous with little effort, a HUGE plus when you are considering the FreeFor, when weapons-swapping might become routine.

Kel-Tec makes their fine Sub-Rifle in that chambering to accept the Model 92 magazines, and for about $300, it is THE companion kit to have for the medium and short-range battle. If you want one of these Kel-Tecs, scramble to get one NOW, because they are on the specific list for banning under the renewed AWB proposal, HB 1022.

Ammo will always be easy to obtain, it is in use in the military (guaranteed sourcing) and it is the most common police service chambering now, also.

[Battlehound]

I, too, have long heard that getting ammo from those sources would be a snap. But how to go about it? Has anyone ever really tried to get ammo from those sources? Neither the police nor the military sell ammo, except maybe the old outdated surplus ammo (through the CMP)to the public that I have heard, although I may be wrong. Surplus military ammo sold in other outlets is usually first "de-milled", with the military powder removed (it's the law,)and then replaced with commercial powders.If they won't sell ammo in times of peace, does anyone realistically expect them to sell military ammo to the public in time of war or social emergencies? Try to acquire ammo from the police or military sometime, and see how far you get! Civilians will be on their own in hard times-we must supply ourselves. Not only that, but neither the police nor the military will regard the citizen-especially a heavily armed citizen- as an asset, or an ally. They will regard us as threats-unstable, unpredictable loose cannons not under their control, the same as they do now. Their duty will probably be to disarm the populace. I am not as trustful of the federal government as some are.

[Battlehound]

As far as the goal of wounding an enemy goes, one would think that the military had given this subject much careful thought. The fact is that "wounding" an enemy is an imprecise and unpredictable enterprise. A paper cut is a wound! Obviously, a disabling wound is what the military had in mind. But a wounded man can kill you, and so can a dying man. A .223 round through FBI agent Ed Mireles' hand left it shattered and useless in the 1986 Miami gunfight, but he found a way to reload a twelve gauge pump shotgun and get back into the fight, finally killing both adversaries with his revolver. Remember that there are many kinds of "wounded", but only one kind of dead! I have read World War Two accounts of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines, despite being grievously wounded, some with their arms blown off, fighting and killing the enemy. This is why my primary choice is the .30 caliber rifle. Nobody survives being center punched in the chest with a 30-06 or .308 bullet. Use a twenty-two if you want! My other favorite is the weapon preferred by soldiers and Marines to clear Germans from trenches and farmhouses, the twelve gauge shotgun with double 00 buckshot. Use birdshot if you want, but just remember that Dick Cheney shot an 80 year old lawyer in the face with birdshot and the lawyer survived. I know of one instance where a 16 year old girl survived a contact wound from a 12 gauge load of birdshot. There was a gruesome hole in her stomach, but the birdshot did not penetrate deep enough to reach vital organs. I think the weapons of WW II were, and still are, superior to modern military arms, advances in technology notwithstanding. They may be crude by today's standards, but they were reliable, effective, and lethal.

[james crum]

no mater the caliber or weapon you and your family still need to be able to hit the target.