Originally Posted by Kostya

There's a scene in a very famous film called Aguirre: Wrath of God, a tiny group of Spanish conquistadores are making their way down the Amazon in search of the lost golden city of El Dorado. On their way, an Indian canoe comes out to meet them, and through their interpreter the expeditions monk informs the Indian that the Bible, which he hands to him contains the words of God.
The Indian takes the book, puts it to his ear, then throws it into the water.
'I cannot hear it talk.' he says.
The Spaniards stab him through the heart for his blasphemy.

Herzog's brilliance in creating this scene is that he humanely and intelligently documents a fundamental division of understanding. Words, as far as the Indian can understand, are verbal speech, he has no concept of ideological representation, let alone phonetic alphabets. The monk handed the Indian a Bible, an object which is so central, so unassailably important and foundational to everything the Spanish thought and did, but the Indian did not take a Bible from him, the Indian took a strange, nonspeaking box. The object was so insignificant to him he tossed it away, something unthinkable to a Spaniard. Ammunition is not sir, the sum of its material parts. It is not simply a combination of elements, nor of tangible components, its creation, use, function, contrivance and continuance are dependent upon a number of other factors. Knowledge, demand, expediency, desire, Cartesian notions of progress, a basic understanding of the relationships between components and their function. All these things, completely non-tangible need to also be present. A caveman holding a bullet and a gun, will not use that gun to shoot anything. There is no way the caveman can understand the physical relationships between the bullet the gun, the gun and the target, mechanised contrivance, and non of these things can be discerned from deductive observations. To make ammo, a society doesn't simply need the components to make it, it needs all these other factors also, it needs to have the labour resources, material and economic demand for it, it needs to have a function which is justifiable and possible given any set of factors at any given time. These factors, as I have already pointed out to you are infinite, so categorically, I can state that you are incorrect in that assertion.

You supply the following premise
If all the ammo in the world was expended
and the following conclusion
then some people would make ammo.

If no other factors changed, then it would seem you are correct.
However one can devise conceivable scenarios in which your premise does not follow from your conclusion:
All the ammo in the world is expended, due to the creation of a device which forcibly detonates all explosives. The device leaves no gunpowder on the face of the earth, and is left running, such that any new explosive material synthesised, spontaneously detonates instantly. Therefore, given that explosives can no longer be created, projecting objects through constricted space with the use of rapid expansion through chemical reactions ceases to persist. Objects contrived for this purpose are dismantled, recycled or ignored, their functional use is entirely eliminated, and humanity is forced to return to projecting objects with the use of kinetic motion, compressed gas etc. Given this, after a hundred years, nobody would know or care about making ammo.

While your objections are ostensibly true if they are qualified with ceteris paribus this is emphatically not the nature of the discussion.

I have supplied you with no information about what the zombies are like, if indeed they are zombies that I am thinking of. Nevertheless, many of your objections are founded upon aspects of what you understand a zombie to be.

Zombies can't swim. Zombies get eaten by fish. Zombies are stupid and slow. All of these are definitely consistent with Dawn of the Dead. I am not going to use Dawn of the Dead as my basis I had already rejected it on a number of other levels, leaving aside all the legitimate objections you have suggested. You are quite correct in making many of the points you do, if and only if I am bound by the surrounding, attendent presuppositions they are founded upon.

You say to me: Why would mobility be reduced.
I say: Some reason which I made up.
Then all your objections, which were founded upon what you believe to be the fallability of my assertion that mobility is restricted, are void.

So my premise of: If people couldn't move about the surface of the earth freely, then they couldn't access any of the ammo which is scattered about on or near the earth's surface. Nor could they get to the sulphur contained in chemical supply depots. Will be true if I can come up with some reason why that might happen. Given that I can make up just about anything, including magical events, Divine intervention etc, I can do this.

You must understand, the kind of changes that would occur if a cataclysmic event occurred would be unimaginable. If you flipped only the tiniest details in history, the world would be unrecognisable, each event manifests over time exponential outcomes.
If a Serbian student names Gavrilo Princip had misfired, had his ammo been faulty (I don't know what causes that), and Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand had driven by unscathed? Some guy out there made that ammo, and some tiny insignificant things caused him to make it incorrectly, what caused these and these and so on. Think about how different the outcomes will be from any predictions based on the gigantic manifestations of tiny incalculable factors working in unison without measurement or testability, I contest that in fact no human being can imagine the future.

I am not reexamining my underlying premise, there is no premise underlying anything. I am developing a premise, all your objections help me eliminate premises which wouldn't work. The 'Dawn of the Dead' scenario, is obviously not going to result in the destruction of ammo, my scenario will be radically different.

I have no position to attack, you are creating one for me that you cannot attack.

Currently I am leaning towards alternate present in which some kind of Dawn of the Dead like event occurs some time in the previous century.

Originally Posted by Kostya

If you find this vexing or think it is a waste of time, do not reply. The input I have gathered from here has helped immensely, so thanks to all.

Originally Posted by Kostya

Yeah but,

The device (which for jokes is lets say created by jokester intergallactic aliens) simply creates space age nanomechanisms which have subatomic AI computers that proliferate and then target only the small number of chemical formulae which are used in gunpowder, totally leaving other chemical reactions alone, so it only actually effects gunpowder reactions by constantly igniting it at an atomic level.

Haven't you guys watched Dr. Who in your time?

Originally Posted by daswig

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Originally Posted by daswig

BTW, you do know that you can make "ersatz gunpowder" by grinding up OLD movie or camera film (AKA Nitrocellulose), right?

Originally Posted by Kostya

Yeah but,

Those sneaky aliens also live by the same axiom, and their nanotech mutates to retard options like this by slowing down combustion processes which are accelerated with massive surface area too.
Also, they're magic.
They also utilise a mite of time travel to make sure their nanotech actually cohabits all space at all time without actually being there and it only appears when their massive intelligent networks which are outsourced to another dimension, (India just wasn't cutting it) detect any possible arrangement of physical matter which could combust.

Why are you wasting time talking to me if you hold me in such contempt?
If you just don't reply now, you win the popular vote by making me look petty and puerile...

EDIT: I can state that its highly likely that daswig is in fact McGuyver. Seriously dude, aside from all the 'You'd probably willingly use one of your beltfeds on my face' and all, you are one goddamn well informed survivalist, while I'll be curling up into the feotal position come's doomsday, I'm pretty sure only God, and maybe Dick Cheney could defeat you. And even then you'd work out a way to escape from death using a toothpick and orange peel.

Originally Posted by Kostya

Why are you wasting time talking to me if you hold me in such contempt?
If you just don't reply now, you win the popular vote by making me look petty and puerile...

EDIT: I can state that its highly likely that daswig is in fact McGuyver. Seriously dude, aside from all the 'You'd probably willingly use one of your beltfeds on my face' and all, you are one goddamn well informed survivalist, while I'll be curling up into the feotal position come's doomsday, I'm pretty sure only God, and maybe Dick Cheney could defeat you. And even then you'd work out a way to escape from death using a toothpick and orange peel.