SHTF Rifle - Ideas

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Agreed almost 100%. Though, if my preps ran out, I doubt I could watch my babies starve knowing that I could take food from someone to feed them... Not too sure what kind of a man that makes me.

a survivor
survivor-330767.jpg
 
so in the event something does go wrong and as the entire northern hemisphere becomes irradiated to the point it can no longer sustain life what will you be doing? (hypothetically speaking of course)

I don't know. It's like my wife suddenly not wanting to ride in my fast car because of what happened to Paul Walker. I wouldn't want to run my life by the most unlikely things that could ever happen. However, we can learn from patterns of history - and it's probably quote prudent to be prepared from an educated point of view, not a hysterical one.
 
I don't know. It's like my wife suddenly not wanting to ride in my fast car because of what happened to Paul Walker. I wouldn't want to run my life by the most unlikely things that could ever happen. However, we can learn from patterns of history - and it's probably quote prudent to be prepared from an educated point of view, not a hysterical one.
how is it unlikely? you clearly haven't looked a Tepco's accident and cover up history
 
Heres a little something about Katrina

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5063796

Anastasia is a petite, 25-year-old hairdresser who asked that her last name be omitted. She contacted the New Orleans police in October and filed a report that she was beaten with a bat and raped on Sept. 6th in broad daylight next to a flooded McDonald's at Gentilly Boulevard and Elysian Fields, near her father's house.

Anastasia says thugs were still wandering the streets of her neighborhood more than a week after the flood. "I didn't see any police officers — I could have gotten away with murder," she says. "It was that terrible. So I can assume what the criminals were thinking, and that's exactly what happened."

Yes, but if you read carefully: "more than a week after the flood". The advice most people give when surviving disaster is to move. You move you live, you stay you die. I don't doubt that crap like this happens, but if you're serious about protecting your family, you move with the herd, not stick around more than a week later. Anastasia wasn't being wise.

I don't doubt a firearm can be useful in self-defence, but I think it should be in context of moving with a group, not sticking around building a circle of wagons. People keep bringing up the outlying cases of Hurricane Katrina (of people who stuck around), but for the vast majority of people who just moved with the group and got out, they were unharmed. If you're serious about self preservation of yourself and your family, then it's just wise to go with the plan with the highest probability of success.
 
how is it unlikely? you clearly haven't looked a Tepco's accident and cover up history

Where are the roving bands of bandits in the Tepco incident? Again, it supports what I said: people who moved, lived. People who stayed died. It had nothing to do with firearms, especially since there are none in Japan.
 
Yes, but if you read carefully: "more than a week after the flood". The advice most people give when surviving disaster is to move. You move you live, you stay you die. I don't doubt that crap like this happens, but if you're serious about protecting your family, you move with the herd, not stick around more than a week later. Anastasia wasn't being wise.

I don't doubt a firearm can be useful in self-defence, but I think it should be in context of moving with a group, not sticking around building a circle of wagons. People keep bringing up the outlying cases of Hurricane Katrina (of people who stuck around), but for the vast majority of people who just moved with the group and got out, they were unharmed. If you're serious about self preservation of yourself and your family, then it's just wise to go with the plan with the highest probability of success.

And if the reason for the SHTF is a widespread infection are you going to be moving with the, possibly infected, herd?
 
Some more scenarios:

1. Massive economic failure: Look at Greece - no roving/starving bands of bandits
2. Gradual or Sudden Political Opporession: Look to Argentina, Syria, Egypt, Russia and China - sorry folks, but if this happens in Canada, you're losing your rifle. Quite opposite of your fantasy to use your firearms to bravely defend your family, instead what will happen is 20-30 SWAT officers in armoured vehicles will take you down and anyone standing next to you. There's only one option: flee peacefully
3. Anarchy (like in Sudan): there's no point considering this one. Sudan never had a functioning infrastructure with almost 100% literaracy and education rate. No modern country can be compared with a country like Sudan. Anyway the solution is the same as #2: flee peacefully. The guy with the gun is going to get shot first.

Anyway, for every SHTF fantasy, there's a real-life example. None of the real-life examples have normal families going around defending their homes like a circle of wagons. Normal, well-educated people will just band together to help each other. The guy with the gun will be an outcast.

Even in the American revolutionary war, it wasn't individual families creating wagon circles. It was young men joining an organized army.

People who are so martially inclined should consider volunteering for the police force or military, should a situation requiring arms actually happen. Not only will that help provide for the family, but you'd be in a situation to actually use arms in an effective way, as opposed to appearing to such a force as an unstable threat who needs to be removed permanently from the vulnerable community. Look to history to learn from it.

I would also strongly suggest, that as a firearms society, we should strictly advise against such fantasies. It doesn't help our cause to appear to others as well-adjusted law-abiding citizens, when we have paranoid delusions of killing our hungry friends and neighbours. If my neighbour breaks into my house screaming and wielding an axe because she needs food to feed her baby, I'm just going to give her the food, not shoot her in the head.

Superlative throws in lots of good points to a thread like this, which can become downright bizarre in very little time, leaving lots of figurative ammunition for the gun control types to use against us. When I combine my life observations and experiences with five semesters of study in the field of disaster and emergency management, it's cultivated both a sense of the need to become more prepared and resilient towards the shocks that disasters and other events can bring down upon us, but it has also provided lots of evidence against the more dramatic, doomsday scenarios that have become the subject of this thread. As a matter of fact, many of the commonly held myths about panic and the inevitability of looting in the wake of disaster have been proven false by researchers, but their common acceptance even among political bodies and responder agencies has done more to encourage the heavy handed reactions against gun owners that so many people here fear with considerable justification.

While I can think of some scenarios that might be used to challenge superlative's examples (i.e. the virtual breakdown of order in Albania during a period of the 1990s and perhaps the civil war/sectarian conflicts in places like the former Yugoslavia and present day Syria), even those examples had many other factors building up to them that we'd notice if they began to develop here. Though a native uprising or rogue Quebec government declaring independence in some bizarre future scenario are possible, they are sufficiently far enough out there that planning one's firearm acquisitions based upon them will suggest at least a smidgen of paranoia to say the least.

I am aware that there's a whole subculture made up of people across the political spectrum that point towards some inevitable economic crash due to failings in our fractional reserve banking system, growing government and private debts or the reckless adventures of the Federal Reserve, sometimes taking on very conspiratorial tones. But even if there's considerable truth to those concerns, it would hardly be in the interests of our potential adversaries (i.e. rising nations like China) or the so-called mysterious elites who might currently benefit from our economic system to let the whole thing fall apart. Yes, a perfect storm of mismanagement and unanticipated events could bring on another depression, but getting caught up in dystopian fantasies over something that would probably be just like previous recessions/depressions is problematic on several fronts.

I'm all for people preparing for disasters and planning for longer term resilience if that can fit into their life plans (i.e. homesteading, hobby-farming, etc), but I'd start off with a more reasonable focus. For instance, we can find experiences from the Mississauga train derailment in 1979 to the recent High River floods where people had to evacuate quickly, followed by gun confiscations in the latter example. In my mind, if someone for whom shooting and hunting means a great deal doesn't want to be left without firearms for an unspecified amount of time or feel completely helpless in the face of possible gun confiscation along the lines of High River, than by all means it could make sense to pre-plan to pack and take a few guns along with a bug out kit in the event of a sudden evacuation. And since Restricted guns cannot generally be taken along with us in such circumstances, I don't see anything wrong with a discussion about what kinds of non-restricted firearms might be worth acquiring on account of the advantages around where they can be used and how they are transported, but this is far from worrying about having the ability to take on some imaginary opponents in a future situation that mimics the Baltics. Being prepared for the worst is not a bad policy, but when it sounds like the belief in an inevitable collapse of everything around us, I think people are both missing the point of things and prone to cultivating a portrait of gun owners that could potentially do us great harm.
 
Where are the roving bands of bandits in the Tepco incident? Again, it supports what I said: people who moved, lived. People who stayed died. It had nothing to do with firearms, especially since there are none in Japan.
we are talking about the current potential for disaster as they are continuing to deal with leaking cooling ponds which require moving fuel rods, you obviously are not following current events, a minor mishap now will effect the whole world, not just japan.

here it is in a nutshell
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=040_1384817880
 
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Have you ever hear Selco's story? Check it out at his website (http://shtfschool.com/) or listen to this interview with him :http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/932-selco-survival-during-the-balkan-wars

Podcast notes with the TLDR version of his story:...
In the 1990s as Yugoslavia broke up a series of conflicts erupted that are often called the Third Balkan War. In fact what this was amounted to a series of regional conflicts that were in essence several different civil wars.

In the middle of this region lived a young man we shall call Selco who simply was happy to have friends and a job along with playing in a local rock band. Something that could have come right out of Americana. Then almost overnight the entire dream became a nightmare. The region was in the middle of a war, there was absolutely no support for over a year.

During this year Selco and his group lived without running water, no electricity, no food service or grocery stores, no distribution of any goods and absolutely no legitimate law enforcement. It was a time when simply walking down certain streets during daylight hours would be met with a hale of sniper fire. A time when a man who stood alone would meet with certain death. A time with very little medical care, abysmal sanitation and where most people buried dead comrades and family members in their back yards.

Today Selco still lives in this area and he runs a website called “#### Hit the Fan School” where he provides information on what happened, what worked, what didn’t and how order was eventually restored. There is no other source of education on survival of a complete breakdown better then from someone who didn’t just live it, but survived it.

It's a scenario worth analyzing. I'll have to think about it and read that website. I would definitely not stick around if there's gun fire on the streets.
 
why would you move if you are far enough away from the epicenter/already rural, have hunting and food sources close by along with clean water, generator to power everything, 100's of gallons of fuel, power storage ability, vehicles, supply sources close by, etc?

I wouldn't leave unless there was no other choice as it would be silly to relocate unless a tank is coming down on you and if my hand was somehow forced I would destroy or hide anything that wasn't coming with me, or make plans to take it back after a tactical retreat since you know your own place better than anyone else.

Stock up on liquor and cigarettes, they are good trading items for things you may need.
 
One more post about killing the neighbours to steal their supplies or chucking molotov cocktails at people and this will be locked.
 
yet...


avoiding death squads...


I believe its better to die on your feet than on your knees...


Hmm, not sure I agree -- Katrina, some areas during the LA riots.




I agree with folks joining the Army and the Police -- however at the basic level the skills are the bare minimum. I did 16 1/2 years in the CF, 4 years in Afghan and Iraq contracting, and am a reserve (fully sworn) Police Officer currently.
Someone breaking into my house with an axe is getting shot -- want something for your baby, knock and I will try to help, try to take, and I will defend my family.

IF the world does come to the end - I have a community of brothers than can band together, however in the event of a total catastrophic event, I will be looking out for my family - with a gun, the badge is smaller secondary.

If your honest with yourself - you may take a bullet or give your life for the betterment of society - but you will never sacrifice your family.

Well said Kevin. I just finished watching a documentary about Katrina. Police being interviewed claimed they could hear exchanges of automatic fire, and it stretched first responders to the point that many had to leave to take care of priority #1 - their families and themselves.
 
One more post about killing the neighbours to steal their supplies or chucking molotov cocktails at people and this will be locked.

Thank you C77, it is not something that I seen as helpfull to this post or realistic on any accounts. Prepping is not about being on the offensive, you prep so that you are not on the offensive. Please leave this thread however, as I feel that there is a lot of ground being covered in (for the most part) a cival manner.
 
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