common caliber

COMMON CALIBER

By now I hope you’ve come to the realization that I disagree with almost all the conventional survivalist advice out there.  If you’ll remember I was calling myself the “gadfly of the survivalist movement” many years ago, perhaps even ten years ago, a title I both admired as my wit and charm knows no bounds and for its excessive number of article possibilities.  Oh, I’m sorry!  Did I upset you because I’m not the same boring thoughtless, idealess, creativeless dingusless writer as everyone else?  Screw you, I’m better.  If that bothers you, and don’t pretend that you weren’t already bothered by my perfect hair, then just pick any one of the bland unoriginal same tired flogging on a dead horse blogs or YouTube channels and go there.  That should lift your spirits as my reader count declines.  Now, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, I can go on almost every day disputing and refuting conventional prepper pearls of offal that have been carelessly dropped behind every other dingus traveling down this path.  Today, the call for common calibers.

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I’ve never been a huge fan of modern military ammunition being the caliber the survivalist embraces.  Battlefield salvage might have been a possibility at one time, but given the M16 and its employment as a submachinegun since the Vietnam War on ( the magazines were designed to be disposable, and that was possible back then as ore was readily available as well as the oil needed to extract and process it.  Now, not so much.  My point being that the tactics disposable magazines encourage is sustained automatic fire ) the simple fact is that perpetual resupply is necessary and you can’t count on any individual to possess a bonanza of ammo.  In a conventional war, a rebellion or a guerrilla conflict, this isn’t as huge of a concern since there are convoys and warehouses and black market sources to fall back on.  But in a rural backwater without large forces about, your odds of ransacking or stealing from off more than the odd body decrease.  Couple this with the sad fact that on the first day of the collapse the fully automatic fire will pretty much use up all the ammunition on hand, or at least to a large degree.

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Then there is the M16’s unfortunate lineage.  Being a piece of crap from the beginning ( setting aside the cost cutting quality issue of the initial carbines by Colt making them prone to rusting as soon as the poor bastard even looked at a rice paddy ), the Army which as an institution has a collective IQ of under that of a syphilitic lobotomized special ed kid kept trying to dink around with the ammunition to “improve” the weapon.  Rather than get rid of the piece of crap, they kept trying to make it less of a piece of crap and never really succeeded  ( they had no problem getting rid of the few good weapons they had such as the M79 and the 45, replacing them with inglorious turds ).  So, having an AR using the M16 ammo, you can’t even be sure the RIGHT kind of 5.56 is going to be available.  It will all work, but whether you can hit anything past shorter ranges might be a problem.  Even if you don’t agree with me that the M16 sucks ( granted, I was using the A1, so I’m sorry if that left a very sour taste in my mouth.  What, you think your employer trying to kill you isn’t a bad thing? ), even if your super studly plastic poodle shooter fires all day long, it is still firing a piece of crap round that is nearly worthless against starving Third World peasants, taking two or three taps to down one Skinny, effectively reducing your mag down to a ten rounder.

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I’ve come around to not hating the 9mm like I used to.  I used to be a big fan of large caliber and had little reason to like anything other than big slabs of steel for a sidearm, preferably a 45 but a 357 did just nicely for the apocalypse, being a revolver rather than a semi.  I prefer the 1911A1 but have gone to revolvers out of necessity ( no semi’s allowed!! ).  But accepting that the 9mm is an improvement I can’t always ignore ( I was never comfortable with the single action cock 45.  Due to all the morons we had to put on the duty roster to fill out PC quotas, we had to carry chamber empty anyway, and in my own concealed carry days through the ghetto-yes, that is correct, I was a dumbass just like you, back in the day-I just couldn’t bring myself to carry cocked and locked.  So in that aspect, a double action 9 was a everyday carry improvement ) does not mean that the military ammo is worth two craps.  What MENSA member decided 9mm ball was good for anything other than getting you really close to the enemy and then letting him kill you as you wielded a nearly worthless sidearm?  Why would you WANT to use the militaries 9mm?  Why is a worthless round like the 5.56 a good thing to take ( of course, the always mentioned caveat, if you must use an AR, and you employ it as a mid range sniper, you mitigate most of the disadvantages )?

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So, military calibers blow.  The pistol round is not very effective, nor is the carbine round.  You can call the 308 a military round, and most do, and there are few thirty caliber semi’s that are terrible ( the M14, everyone’s favorite prom date, is far too expensive and problematic for my taste-I think I’d go with an AR in 308 before I went with the M14.  In sniper or marksmen roles, the M16 gas system is not problematic ), but how many M-60’s are you going to encounter, as far as battlefield ammunition acquisition?  All in all, I see no reason to even consider current military calibers as the pinnacle of survivalists arsenals.  Now, let’s move over to the sole consideration of costs.  You can buy better 9mm ammunition, and it is relatively cheap due to the caliber popularity.  And you can buy the correct 223/5.56 to fit your barrel twist.  But if you aren’t a Semi Simian, you don’t need cases and cases of pistol ammunition ( we are not talking of the Forever Gun right now but your basic survival arsenal ).  Without that kind of stockpiling you don’t really take much of a price penalty by choosing other calibers.  Most thirty caliber ammo is currently about the same price.  Granted, 308 is cheaper by around ten to twenty percent, but does the weapon cost difference justify the savings?  When I was asked about the Indian conversion of the Lee-Enfield to 308, many times over the years, I never was regretful over having not chosen it.  The rifles were twice the cost and I got 303 cheap enough that I’d never have paid for the rifle price difference ( plus, the sites suck ).

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You most likely won’t find plentiful military ammo on the battlefield.  You save a bit on civilian ammo costs now, but it doesn’t always justify picking a weapon you don’t care for.  If you do take a price penalty, if you aren’t shooting semi-auto it shouldn’t be much to write home about.  Since you are using bolts and revolvers, ideally, factory rounds should be less of your supply than reloading components ( with a Lee Loader, any cheese dingus can reload.  Cheaply ).  If you like the 22 calibers and have a bolt action 223, you do get to enjoy the perks of that caliber, granted.  I’m just saying that the insistence on military calibers should not be given the religious fervor the advice usually advocates.  By and large, military calibers don’t offer you the gun you should have and if you aren’t semi-auto and are reloading, that ammunition has limited advantages if any.  Now, how about moving past military calibers and thinking about the common civilian ones.

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I’m not even sure how this is survivalist advice.  By its very definition, you are going to encounter the most common calibers buying a new gun because the gun shops and the manufactures try to minimize inventory anyway.  You’ll probably have as your options common caliber only anyway.  But say you buy used.  I don’t recommend it unless you are seeing a huge price difference.  Otherwise you are paying too much for a weapon with potentially a severe life span decrease.  Like today when you see these ten year old cars, 150k miles on them and they still want an obscene price, so too do a lot of used firearm sellers believe their turd is special enough for high prices.  Be cautious!  But, buying used, it you aren’t buying a caliber that is really bizarre like a French or Japanese or Swiss round, why worry overly much about the caliber?  Common calibers are fine, just from the amount of guns out there, but must you limit yourself to only the most popular?  Reloading supplies are pretty much the same, except for something very impractical like the fifty cal, other than brass costs.  As long as you avoid overly expensive brass, your costs are generally going to be identical even if you don’t stick to the Common Five or however many calibers are the only ones you are allowed to pick from.

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Common calibers for the fire team.  In an ambush, about the only fight you should engage in, you fire a few rounds and disengage.  Why would you run out of ammo?  Why would you have to worry about a running retreat engaged in a continuous firefight?  You aren’t doing something right if this happens.  If you are fighting correctly, you aren’t spraying and praying.  You aren’t attacking under a barrage of lead.  You are only firing when you have a target.  Interchangeable ammo is a Industrial Age tactic and concern.  No, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to share a caliber in some circumstances.  Then you could do long term patrolling, fewer rounds carried individually with already cast bullets and a reloader with powder and primers carried, but that is also problematic.  One guy falls off a cliff or is captured, there go critical components.  Individual carry is preferred rather than centralizing supply.  So even that argument doesn’t hold water.  And if you want to resupply from your own dead guys, that also presupposes you are fighting too much on a “disposable cannon fodder paradigm”.  Not that this isn’t an advantage or possibility.  But realistically how many of us will ever actually join a group?  We won’t band until after the collapse, so unless everyone uses an AR, fire team common caliber may not be applicable anyway.  Learn to use less ammo, and carry a minimum load.  This is the apocalypse and any douchebag wasting ammunition endangers the groups long term survival. 

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As far as current logistics, I’d forget about firing range salvage.  Few folks leave brass anymore.  It is too valuable.  And what they leave, others salvage for commodity prices.  Just like you can’t count on a tire shop to have any lead wheel weights available, don’t count on the range salvage for brass.  So you don’t need to worry about using those common calibers.  As for future brass, consider battlefield salvage carefully.  I’d worry about a counter-ambush if I was busy looking for the enemies brass in the grass and dirt.  And I wouldn’t want to be dependent on needing a barter item to purchase brass others have salvaged.  And, besides, brass isn’t going to be your biggest concern, but rather powder and primers.  Cottage industry chemicals will be almost impossible to manufacture.  If they are easy, assuming a good chemical stock and nitrate surplus, THEN your brass supply is important.  But I feel that your brass will outlast your primers and powder.  Instead of concerning yourself with brass, focus on stockpiling those two.  Folks worry too much about owning too many guns, when they should be personally stockpiling ammunition and components primarily.  Do that right and salvage shouldn’t enter onto your worry list.

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If you buy the guns you prefer, and stockpile ammunition/components properly for each firearm before buying more guns, considering your logistics as a Lone Wolf operator rather than a community effort ( even if you belong to a group, plan as if you’ll be alone ), the common caliber issue shouldn’t even be on your radar.

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