Are you serious? How many SKS malfunctions do you hear of? I've had at least 6 of them and probably shot over 5,000 rnds and never had a single problem. They are easy as crap to work on, have a swell bayonette for those crawling zombies and go bang every time you pull the trigger. Plus ammo is cheap cheap cheap!!
And you can buy what... three or four for the price of one AR, and equip every member of your survivalist commune. Is "Bring all your friends with guns" rule number two or number three? I can't remember.
Well if the ice storm of 98 was any preparation, I'd say grab the SKS, the .22's, and the 870 as well as any ammo I have at hand, along with whatever food water, clothing and other gear I can fit in my car then get the hell outta dodge (as in as far away from any town of more than 1000 people I can drive to with whatever gas is in the tank). That goes for anything from a natural disaster, to a massive epidemic, to a terrorist WMD attack to an invasion by some foreign country coming after (name your natural ressource). The point is that there is a very narrow window where you have to decide to either hunker down or flee, wait too long and flight will simply no longer be an option (clogged up roads, roadbloacks, whatever).
There's an argument to be made that bugging out without a viable BOL in mind is just going to turn you into a refugee.
IMHO the best strategy is to find yourself a place out in the sticks and make that your permanent residence.
Having lived through the aftermath of a hurricane (as I mentioned earlier in the thread) it did not drive the city to complete destruction, to the point of losing all community services.
A social breakdown to the point where ALL community services are lost would be something that would be more extreme than just a hurricane.
A Pandemic Flu, or worse comes to mind.
In the worst hurricane that's hit the East coast in 70 years-ish, (it was a high Cat 4) Hurricane Juan demolished trees, houses, put people out of power for days, and weeks for remote locations (took over 2 weeks to get some back onto the grid)
THIS WAS STILL NOT ENOUGH TO DRIVE THE CITY TO A SHTF SCENARIO.
Look at Montreal in the '98 ice storm. Same deal; people started pulling together. I think that it'd take quite a lot to turn most Canadian cities into a post-Katrina-NOLA type breakdown in social order.
OTOH, if the power had stayed out in Montreal for another two weeks, things could have been uglier...
It should be manditory as a CGN'er to have emerg. supplies and a plan for at home and away senarios.
My city buds make fun of my emerg. kit all the time. The mention this is their destination should there be a 'situation'.
I deal with that problem by telling my friends that they're more than welcome to, if they wanna preposition their food, bottled water, and ammo in my basement.
So far, nobody has taken me up on this. But I think it's not a bad strategy; TSHTF, you stay put, and as your reinforcements start to arrive they've got their kit and supplies already in place and just add to your numbers...
But how much fun can one actually have in Toronto
Sorry, had to be said.
You can't hunt in Toronto. Out here, I wanna hunt, I grap a gun and step out the back door...
I volunteer to steal the gasoline truck and start the cross Canada convoy of gasoline trucks to burn down Toronto!
I'll bring the marshmallows. I knew that spike bayonet on my SKS was gonna come in handy for something!
