Kostya

Ok, here's an academic question for all you Weapon people.

Exactly how long do guns and ammo last?

I mean, hypothetically in some kind of end of the world situation, without any new ammo being manufactured, and without any proper maintenence on guns, how long would guns still be usable?

Also, what kind of volume are we talking about in the US in terms of ammo? I don't have a clue.

Suave

Some WWII weapons have been found to work even to this day; even when they haven't necessarily been kept up. As far as ammo goes, I'd wager at a LOT. How long it lasts would depend on how often people decided to use it though.

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nowthen

but surely if you started to run out of ammo you would work out a way to reload and or / manufacture the bullets? a lot of people now reload their own ammo right now.

and also why would you not maintain your gun? i assume you would look after the gun if you had to rely on it or use it for any useful function.

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the_marq

Well theoretically a simple bolt action rifle would last forever. That is if; it never rusted and/or never fell victim to other sorts of decay (wood rot for example). Althought rust would be the biggest threat as I have old rifles with wooden stocks that would still work, tho not conveniently, even without a stock. Therefore, if you stored that weapon in the perfect 'cool dry place' it would be useful forever.

I don't know for sure but I would assume that ammunition stored in a similar fashion would also have an eternal shelf life. Unless of course gun powder goes stale, and I don't think it does.

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ziadel

I dont believe gun powder gets stale, but if it gets moist.....

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Lebell

Add to that if it's never used.

A gun is a mechanical device and with use, the parts will wear.

As said, rust is the biggest enemy of a gun, but if it is taken care of, a gun should last 10-20 thousand rounds (I believe) without having to replace anything.

As to ammo, if it is sealed, it can go 50 years or more and still be fired (powder can degrade, so your chances of a missfire will increase with age).

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Kostya

Well, ok
Let me be a bit more clear.
If, hypothetically, Romero's Dawn of the Dead scenario happened.
So, zombie holocaust scenario.
Zombies spread across the globe (cause of the plague is unknown), and essentially urban areas are totally fucked within a week or so.
Now, ammo is going to get expended in enormous quantities in this early period, people blasting undead on all sides like no tomorrow. Now, obviously survivors are going to move out of highly populated areas so presumably there's going to be less ammo out in the countryside than in the cities. Let us presume that military bases and bunkers are pretty much overrun or locked down.
Now, at this point, I believe ammo is going to become pretty scarce, and basically people are going to have to scavenge for it.
Obviously anarchic, post zombie society is going to be rife with violence: murder, robbery, organised banditry, plus the continuing threat of roaming packs of zombies.
Now, you could maintain a gun for a while I presume, but don't you need gun oil, blah blah etc to do so?
Also, you also could reload your own ammo (does this mean reusing the casings?) but essentially people need gunpowder and whose going to be making that?
Now people would be out there who would know the recipe for gunpowder even, but getting the ingredients would be pretty low on the list of priorities. Food and shelter are going to be the number one concerns, but in a world of roaming zombie hordes, and heavily armed, highly mobile bandits, something tells me that just an abandoned house wouldn't do in the long term.
So ok, with people busting off a fair amount of rounds in Mad Max style banditry, plus zombie hunting etc, how long would the ammo last? I mean fuel wouldn't exactly go far something tells me, but after that I suppose people would still be shooting at each other on foot or horses.

soundmotor

I have several firearms from both WWII & the 1920's as well as modern ones. All function flawlessly and are maintained with normal cleaning. I've never had to replace any worn parts on them either but a modest spare parts kit could be put together quite easily. One of them I've shot regularly since I got it in 1974. I am planning on buying a centerfire revolver from the 1880's & custom handload ammo for it. Modern firearm mechanisms are well sorted out.

Military ammunition was expressly designed for long storage periods in between conflict. I've shot US WWII ammo in the past and had not misfires. Milspec ammo purchased today would be even more stable as it is made with modern formulations & processes.

Put another way, a stash of milspec ammo & a well greased firearm to shoot it then sealed into a waterproof container & buried would last longer than your lifespan. Your grandkids could unpack it and shoot it like they bought it that day.

soundmotor

Lebell

Oh, IC

A classic "Zombie" question.

Anywho, in a Dawn of the Dead scenario, I think your best bet is a walled city or fort, since zombies aren't especially intelligent in their attack. A simple system of troughs and bladed weapons (to behead the herded zombies) should function well enough.

I would personally keep the guns in reserve for other living humans who might want my stuff (sorta like the shopping mall biker gang scene).

A very viable alternative to guns would be something like the compound in Road Warrior, where you have the oil pump and refining protected behind the walls and you use the flammables to toast zombies.

I would think that the at first you would have a huge zombie bake, but after a few days, the countryside would be fairly zombie free as they would all have been attracted to your fort by the commotion and summarily cooked.

Oh, edit to add,

I would probably be gathering as many living humans as possible and then I would try for one of the larger islands, such as Hawaii or Ireland, where we could then clear it of zombies and reestablish some sort of civilization.

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MrTuffPaws

No, any oil, animal fat, or wax will do. Cleaning can be done with said oils.

Casings can be used around 10 times safely. If you know how to do it, you can make your own powder.

If someguy is making gun powder, I don't think he would need to find shelter. He would be absorbed into bandit groups or other tribes that pop up.

I don't think you know how much ammo is around. There is easily over a billion rounds of ammo in the US. We are still shooting stuff made in WWII

soundmotor

Part II:

It is estimated thate there are approximately 250 million legally owned firearms in private hands today in the USA and an unknown number of illegally owned ones. Without stretching your imagination, you could posit that some legal owners have no ammunition stored away at one end of the spectrum and on the other, 10's of 1000's of rounds per firearm owned.

soundmotor

Kostya

See, now you're all falling into my problem.

It seems simple, but the more you think about it, the crazier and more complex it becomes to predict.

I mean, once you start messing around with the scenario it gets pretty hard to call.

For instance, let us say that the zombie threat moves so rapidly, that all populated areas, that is to say, cities, towns, anywhere where people are congregated are overrun with zombies in three days. Human beings are tragically outnumbered by zombies, which roam the countryside is giant packs, utilising their phenomenal sense of smell to track and consume human beings.

If this were the case, people are just going to flee like crazy, picking up whatever they can find along the way. It seems to me that ad hoc living spaces would be hard to come by, obvious solutions: army bases, prisons would be crawling with zombies. Malls etc also.

In this situation, with only a tiny amount of humans surviving in small pockets, totally isolated, and unable to even get out into the countryside to scavenge, it seems that while tons upon tons of ammo and firearms would be out there, people wouldn't be able to access them readily. Of course, in this situation, there would also be no bandits, on account of the fact that the zombies are too strong to allow humans to move freely.

A well armed, hardcore bandit group could get around in say a column of tanks, but fuel would run out pretty damn quickly.

Questions: With reloading casings, what does that actually entail? Do you need anything other than an empty casing, gunpowder and a bullet or bullet sized object?

What is the availability of the ingredients needed for gunpowder? I mean is it hard to find? easy? household objects?

As you can see, I know nothing about guns, ammo, or guns and ammo in the US.

Tuffpaws, assuming that some dude is making powder, I'm not so sure it's a given that he will be absorbed into a bandit group automatically. In the initial post zombie era, I think that there would be a real 'free rider' issue in terms of bandits and survivalists. Some people might spend a year storing food, making gunpowder etc, only to have it stripped from them by bandits who essentially just leech the resources out of the people. I mean, the bandit mindset I think is more geared to quick, easy gain, a myopic view that allows them to essentially accumulate massive resources in a short time, with no regard for the longterm issues at hand. If the ammo is still around, and it keeps flowing, bandit groups, working independently, unaware of the extentof each other's impact, by engaging in quick gain activity cause in the longterm a major shortage of resources. This has happened in history often. Pirates, bandits and traveling armies totally bankrupting the systems they needed to survive for shortterm gain.

Anyway, isn't it interesting?

Suave

Do the zombies move slowly or quickly? If they're slow (average human and below) you can just use bolt actions to take 'em out, and you'd have ammo to last decades. I'd be all about making a fortified little city/town surrounded with razor wire and shit, and then just picking off zombies when it suited me.

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Cylvre

Gunpowder is composed of three basic ingredients. Sulfur, Saltpeter, and Carbon. Gunpowder is a combination of 15 (75%) parts saltpeter to 3 (15%) parts carbon to 2 (10%) parts sulfur. Carbon is the easiest to find/make as it's a natural byproduct of burning (think natural charcoal). Sulfur can be found naturally in ground deposites and around buildup around volcanic vents, although undoubtedly impure to some extent. Saltpeter, known formally as potassium nitrate, can be easily prouced by any group with the knowledge. As for the method of combination... ::shug:: I'm sure if I googled it I'd be able to find that too.

Kostya

Ok, a few more considerations I have been ruminating upon concerning all this.

Sorry by the way to all the non-zombie movie nerds out there. There's actually a reason behind this you know, beyond just run of the mill curiosity, but I digress.

Anyhow.

I can think of a few ways the amount of ammo in the US could be significantly reduced in the months following a zombie apocalypse:

Obviously massive amounts of ammo would be present in cities, but I think it's safe to say that it is unlikely that people got their shit together in under three days and managed to escape the zombie hordes with significant amounts of ammo. I mean, straight off the bat, the advice would be stay inside your home. So, a hell of a lot of well armed suburban fortresses would spring up right there. These people would be working on the presumption that any second the military is going to subdue the zombie hordes, and they just need to hold out for a few more days. Days go by, these people begin to get a bit hungry, thirsty, overwhelmed by zombies. Gun store owners, or squatters would be impregnable to zombies, assuming that they had security bars and the like, which your average gun shop has (right!?). But over time, starvation, desperation, or thirst is going to kill these people. They die, their ammo stores are inaccessible as a result, oases of ammunition in a sea of zombies that nobody can penetrate.

So straight off the bat, there's a lot of ammo that's basically going to be locked down in zombie infested cities.

Same goes for the country, with the exception of bomb shelters, I can't really see the country being too much different, apart from the fact that some people might have time to construct rudimentary defenses. The same essential problems arise: food and water, and I can't see them being solved easily. Now, as opposed to the cities however, a farmhouse is pretty accessible for a thoughtful scavenger, BUT, they also need the means to move the ammo to a more suitable place with food and water, something which would again be difficult in a bandit infested, zombie ruled dystopia. I think the most likely places to flourish would be isolated structures that act as natural citadels: prisons, factories, industrial buildings.
The only other place I can see lasting longterm is a bomb shelter, which can be eliminated in terms of ammo, since the people stuck in them aren't going to open up, they're not going anywhere, and their resources aren't circulating in whatever economic structures that might exist afterwards.

The other major issue would be that all this ammo would be destroyed fairly quickly in the years following the outbreak. Sure, it will last for a long time if undisturbed, and undoubtedly some ammo would still be preserved indefinitely in bunkers etc. However, I think fairly quickly a lot of material destruction would occur that people don't factor in:
Fire, no fire brigades to prevent them or contain them. Zombies are clumsy and essentially I think the outbreak of a fire in or near major cities in the weeks following would be pretty high. Not to mention fires inadvertently started by survivors who are camping in the forests, a forest fire with nothing in its way would rip through a hell of a lot of farmhouse. Kaboom, say goodbye to a fair few ammo caches in the countryside. Say goodbye to a lot of vehicles, fuel and food too!
In fact, as months stretched into years, with nothing maintaining them, the cities would crumble pretty badly, wind, storms, fire, flood, rain, zombies, early looting, earthquakes, all this damage would compound, as opposed to being cleaned up. Think about how much ammo would get hosed down after the first hurricane hit Miami or Jacksonville. Think about all the ammo that would get rained on after an earthquake in LA, think about how snow build up, and presumably break down houses up in the Rockies without maintenance. Think about how vegetation would break up houses as they grew into them over the years. All this is going to expose ammo to rain, snow, fire and the rest of the elements, and wreck a hell of a lot of it. Other problems would be finding ammo hidden in bunkers, it would seem like a giant gamble to spend days trying to get inside a reinforced bunker, or hoping you'll stumble across a well stocked bomb shelter. I think that pretty quickly, a lot of manufactured good would be gutted by the material destruction of the elements left unchecked and untended.


Reloading your ammunition:
The problem I see here is essentially twofold:
Number one, collecting the materials you need. Frankly I don't think it's likely that people are going to have the vision or the capacity to consider this move for quite some time. It would be difficult, though not impossible to access sulphur and nitrate, but even so, I think it would be rare for someone to have immediate, ongoing access to all three ingredients. In addition, you obviously need a bullet, lead I presume, I'm not sure where these come from or how hard they would be to come by, but they might be difficult to find.
Number two: It's not worth the effort. This seems a little stupid, but I really think that's the conclusion most people would come to. The ability of one person to produce gunpower would be rather small I presume, and the process would take some time if Clyvre's info is correct. Now, this guy has to eat and drink. Now, he might be able to procure food and water AND still make gunpowder, but certainly some of his labour has to go into gunpowder production. Now, if its true that they would have to go mine sulphur out of the earth, presuming they could find it, and then synthesise nitrates as well, it would probably not be worth one man's time, since the amount of gunpowder he could produce wouldn't really be enough (I don't think, maybe I'm wrong), given he also then has to procure bullets, or bullet like objects, and construct each cartridge, individually. Sounds like an awful lot of work. Now, a bandit group might roll up, having pillaged the hell out of a few other small groups and just take said gunpowder thanks to their massive numerical and military superiority. I mean, how many shells could one guy make? Surely not that many. I think people would be more interested in food production, basically they're living in a subsitence situation, and there wouldn't really be much excess labour for extraneous activities like that.
However, maybe after they established themselves, a community of say 100 people could afford to produce gunpowder, with manual production, I don't think they'd be able to manufacture enough to make it worth their while, whereas other weapons could be used multiple times: arrows, chopping weapons, spears etc.
This is not to say that it's not a possibility, but I think that there are some objections to it being a widespread practice.
Let me break it down another way: You've got a tiny minority of humans, starving, fighting amongst themselves and hugely outnumbered by zombies. Frankly I don't see it being very likely that this tiny amount of labour could manually produce enough ammo to repel vastly superior numbers of undead, the economics of it simply don't seem right to me. However, I might be wrong, is it possible for to produce huge amounts of ammo using simplistice, non industrial methods?

Sorry if I'm getting a little involved for you all, maybe we should move it so the boffins and Knowedge can argue about it. Then again, you Weaponry people sure know a lot about guns.

soundmotor

Many cities in the US have restrictive gun ownership laws making the purchase difficult if you reside there. The concentration of ammo would likely be only at police departments. The major concentration is outside the cities, in retail environments and private homes, not to mention buried stashes.

soundmotor

soundmotor

Will you credit us on the flyleaf of your book?



soundmotor

Cylvre

Well as far as water goes there woulden't be as much of a problem for those in the 'country'. At least in my area if you're not on the city water system, which is to say that you're outside the city limits, your source of water is a well that has been sunk when your house was first built. These homes have their own purifiers and in many cases water softeners, though in this scenario once their salt on hand runs out due to isloation from cities the softeners would be useless, but thats really a luxury anyway.

Also depending on how country a particular house/area is they very well may have self-canned goods (if they have a garden, hobby farm, or full-sized farm) stored away enough to last for quite some time if rationed down until a more stable source of food is present

I agree with the fact that sulfur (outside of labratories) would be difficult to find, but potassium nitrate is also found naturally in vegtable matter and is released during decay. Compost piles, anyone who already composts has a headstart on a nitrate production. If they think of it.

A a small point, but still something to be pointed out, is that there is a large and growing number of hunters and shooters (the very same people who would likely have the majority of guns and ammunition outside of the Military and LE) who already reload their on ammunition. There are constantly new and easier ways to reload, so speed and outputwould, I'd suspect, to be higher than you think, and they would already have the tools and consumables needed for some amount of reloading on hand, including gunpowder. As for amount, really that would only be limited by the brass on hand, consumables (gunpowder, bullets, primer caps), and effort a person would put into it.

I'm not arguing that, in comparison to the total amount of people left the few who would have the skills for reloading would be few indeed. Though it could also be said that the fact that they are fewer would simply mean they the would have less competition for the supplies that they would need.

Well, theres always the possibilty of reverting to muzzleloading type firearms. Then all you need is an appropriatly sized bullet (lead can be heated in the coals of a fire and poured into a very simple spherical mold), gunpower, and some cloth for wadding


Most everything, besides the wells, that I say woulden't nessarily work in the long term, but it would work for a period of time during the inital chaos. Plus, I figure any knowledge may be useful.

Heh, that was a long post... Please, someone correct me if I'm wrong on anything.

Kostya

Well if someone actually publishes a book set in the insane neo-western/samurai, zombie infested dystopian world I'm trying to think up, yes.

Coolness, only objection here is obviously the necessity of electricity to pump the water from the well to the house? Is it dependent on electricity, if so, problems could arise.

GREAT post Cylvre! This is really helpful.

My figuring is the major reason people wouldn't be able to reload their ammo is the aforementioned labour cost issues, and in addition the assumption that given a massive zombie invasion, people would most likely be forced to move some distance and therefore be limited in what they could carry, ammo would be pretty heavy in significant amounts.

My issue with muzzle loading arms is that while they'd be an obvious choice, I don't think that a post apocalyptic society would develop them any time soon, the reason again being gunpowder production and labour costs being too problematic compared to the advantages, which are fairly small considering it takes some time to reload a muzzle weapon.

Cylvre

Hey, Thanks! Just doing what I can to help (sometimes it helps to be a well of useless knowledge ).

So anything else you're wondering about for those of us in Tilted Weaponry, or are you going to bounce a few more questions about other topics around the site? If you are planning on moving the research around the site be sure to keep us posted. I know I for one am interested in peering more into this world you're cooking up.

Kostya

Cool!

Well, there's a tentative prologue up already on Literature:El Cazador
but I'm already re-editing it to take out some incoherent elements thanks to your imput.

I guess I'll be doing some more research around the traps, so I'll keep you posted.

Cylvre

Awesome start on the story! Only one thing that bothers me about it: You don't say anything about him cleaning off his blade before resheathing it. A trained/experianced swordsman would never sheath a dirtied blade if given the chance to clean it first. It'd be bad for the blade and bad for the sheath, especially since the sword would probably get 'glued' in the sheath when the blood dried. Few things worse that a sword that won't come out of the scabbard.

daswig

Dude, I've got a 1873 Trapdoor Springfield that still is operational, and that I still have original ammo for, tho I normally use more recent loads because the original stuff is scarce.

WWII stuff is still pretty modern.

daswig

It depends on the original supplies that people have. Your average "I buy 3 boxes of 50 rounds every time I go to the range!" folks are SOL. On the other hand, guys like me, who shoot in excess of 50K rounds a year, and buy ammo by the palletload (it's a LOT cheaper that way) are NOT going to run out any time in the near future. I figure I've got 5-10 years worth of recreational ammo on hand. In a "dawn of the dead" situation, that'll last a hell of a long time. Plus, I have plenty of components around the house and curtelage, and the ability to make everything necessary including gunpowder from local sources. (we've prolly got a couple of tons of saltpeter in the attic from the bats, can make charcoal, and there are local sulfur sources, which is why our spring tastes so bad, so we've got a distillation unit in the basement that's "handy". Yeah, that's the word, "handy".) If you know what you're doing, you can even "re-activate" spent primers.

Also, I think you'd find that there's a hell of a lot more ammo out in the countryside than there is in the cities. Why? Because fire marshalls tend to freak out when a freight company drops off 10 pallets of ammo at an apartment building. Out here, nobody notices.

As for the roving zombie hoards and heavily armed bandits, fuck'em. I've got them outgunned.

daswig

IIRC, there are many billions of rounds of ammo manufactured in the US every year, and most of it gets burned through. Hell, just look at the production figures for cheap .22LR ammo, and you'll see that there's a lot out there.

BTW, guns will last forever unless you're a stupid shit that abuses it. And anybody who is getting less than 20,000 rounds through a gun before it is useless is either a varmint shooter (standard is to replace the barrel every thousand or so rounds) or a moron. Shooting an SKS or AK with a chrome-lined barrel and NC ammo? It should last a very, very, VERY long time. I've got an old chinese AK with over 100K rounds through it, without a single broken part. yeah, it's "a bit loose", but it still functions.

daswig

Faulty presumption there. If zombies can be killed by gunshots to the head, there's no reason why one guy can't take out hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of them if he's in a secure location.

"construct rudimentary defenses"??? BWAHAHAAAA!!! I'm worried about the local crackhead population right here, right now, and have planned accordingly. There's no way zombies would stand a chance.

Why move? I've got everything here to sustain life for at least a year, even if there's no ability to hunt.


Do zombies have access to fire?

So you're saying that your average household would crumble in a few years without maintenance? I don't see it. My house was originally started in the 1880's. It's survived fires, storms, et cetera (we don't generally have big earthquakes here). And most bulk ammo is stored appropriately...in at least water resistant packaging on the case level.


Personally, I'd head to one of the NG armories that are all over the country.


You forget that there are millions of reloaders ALREADY in the US. Lead can be obtained from car junkyards (batteries, tire weights). Bullet molds last forever. And most reloaders already have plenty of powder on hand, since it's a pain in the ass to find it in small lots.

Hmmm....spend time reloading ammo and survive, or don't and get eaten by zombies. Hard choice there...

That doesn't stop reloaders from doing it now, when they might save $.05 per produced round of ammo over store-bought... And you don't have to mine sulfur out of the ground or synthesize nitrates...it ain't like this stuff is edible, and they have lots of industrial purposes.

With my mid-line press, (a Dillon 550B) I can make 500-600 finished rounds of ammo in an hour. Of course, I'm pretty good at it, and a "noob" might only be able to produce 100/hour. BTW, my entire setup cost less than $500 dollars new, and I have a bunch of spares for it.

yeah, I'd rather use a bow and arrow over one of my beltfeds any day. RIIIIIGHT.

It's done in the US right now. BTW, where are all these zombie bodies going to come from? There are something like 300 million people in the US. I suppose that there are another 100 million in the ground, as a SWAG, provided they could get OUT of the ground (think about it....if you're in a coffin that's covered by a one ton hermetically sealed concrete box (which almost all coffins nowadays are), how are they going to get infected, much less get out of the box? So anyway, say 250 million of the live people become zombies, and 100 million more get out of the ground, and the US consumes billions of rounds of ammo a year NOW. Where's the problem?

Kostya

Sorry, I didn't know it was 'pick on the non-militant guy' day today...

Well my presumption isn't so much that a such a thing can't happen, it's that few people would be in a secure position to do this. If the people in the secure positions die, other people can't simply stroll across to their hideouts, they'd have to fight through the zombies to access the ammo stores. Mobility is what I mean will be restricted, hence their ammo will be inaccessible.



So one year passes... and then?
My questions aren't so much about a 'Dawn of the Dead' scenario, (1978 version is superior) I'm thinking, what about 30 years down the track, what about 100 years, what about two, three generations later?



Well no, but I'm presuming either a zombie accidently knocks over a flaming object, or alternatively, looters, rioters etc could start them.



You maintenance your house I presume? As I said, without someone continually ensuring that the house doesn't fall into disrepair, it will start to get messed up. I don't know what your house is made of, and I'm not saying EVERY house will be destroyed, but over time, things get broken down. I guess I'm thinking over periods much longer than a few years, when I said months turn into years, should have been a bit more clear.




I don't know what these are, but presumably so would everyone else, and the real restriction in my opinion, again, is going to be mobility, it's going to be hard to move around.




Well, it's hard to forget what you don't know. Again, you got to go to the junkyard and get the lead, and then go home, without dying.
Nothing, not even bullet moulds, last for ever.




Well, in the words of Gary Coleman, that's a very glib interpretation. Survival is not simply a matter of manufacturing ammo, food and water and shelter are also essentials.



Then my question is: where do you get sulphur from?



How does this machine work? Is it powered by electricity? Does it require complex moving parts? Is it easy to move?
I have no friggin idea if that's a bargain.



Um, what's a beltfed?


Ok, if it's done in the US right now, my question is, can it continue to be done if the events (or similar events) I am describing occurred?

Well, zombies don't necessarily have to be corpses from the grave. What about dead bodies in morgues etc all the rest of it. I mean, what if the zombies were simply an alien manufactured virus that they infected humans and placed all over the planet at strategic positions? I don't know, as I said the causes are unknown, they appear.
In fact, it's just the closest thing to what I'm thinking of.
If someone summed up Napoleon's Russian campaign in terms of the ratio of musket balls to Russians, would it mean a thing? No.
I think there are a number of problems. In any case, don't get me wrong, I'm not hardcore serious about all this, I'm just talking theoretically.

BTW, just as a disclaimer, I'm an Australian, so I'm not exactly very knowledgable about guns and ammo in general, sorry if I seem a bit clueless. America is one crazy place. I have seen one gun in my life, and it was a bolt action 22, pretty unimpressive.

soundmotor

It isn't, but you seem to be going out of your way to ignore or minimize rock solid information about the state of firearms, pre-made ammunition, quantities available, ease of reloading, etc. to support the premise you've developed for your story. The USA has a deeply rooted gun culture with an overwhelming number of involved that know what to do with them. That is not going to disappear overnight.

I am also having trouble getting past your conclusion that there are 3 groups: zombies, bandits, & everyone else. More likely is 2 groups: zombies & everyone else. While there would certainly be some preying up on the weak at first by other humans before the situation is completely understood, there would certainly be a collective realization at some point that the best chance for long term survival is cooperation amongst the non-infected vs. the zombies.

Back to guns, reloading does not require much in the way of tech to get it done. Here is an example:

.44 Magnum Manual Reloading Set

Nothing other than 2 hands required to operate it. You should also search what Afghan gunsmiths have been doing with hammers, files & little else for 100's of years when it comes to firearms & ammo manufacture. But let's assume for a moment that for some inconceivable reason that, there are no guns, ammo, brains lacking to find it, etc. there are still plenty of alternatives.

The obvious is a crossbow which I could make in an afternoon, again with the most basic of materials all sourced from scrap. It might not be pretty but it would be effective out to 30-40 feet & that might be all you'd need. I'd need some tools, but not much & nothing that requires power. If I had 2-3 people to help, we could crank them out assembly line style.

How about flame? I am going to assume that pine trees are still around. Boiled pitch is pretty nasty & nastier still if mixed with motor oil to thin it. There will be plenty of cars with crankcases full of oil in them not too mention some type of flammable household chemicals in every home. Quite a cocktail could be made & delivered via Molotov, flaming arrow, or even a bucket of flaming liquid thrown over the shuffling zombies at the fringes of their horde. "Fire, bad!"

Even saplings cut down, sharpened & barbed, hardened in a campire & then stuck into a zombie would be effective. It might not kill them but it would definitely hamper their maneuverabilty if they have 2-3, 8 foot tree limbs hanging off them. Louisville slugger time to the melon comes next.

How about a net? Make it from cheap-ass rope, line, whatever, toss over the stragglers & again, take out the Eatons for a beat down. Tiring certainly, effective absolutely!

You seem to be hanging on the point that the uninfected humans would have no initiative to operate on the most basic level. That is ,to survive & find means/tech that would make that easier. That includes naturally banding together to collectively protect one another. When survival is on the line, people drop to the lowest common denominator quickly if drooling, hungry zombies were after them.

soundmotor

Kostya

Let's not get carried away here guys...

Firstly I wouldn't say I've developed any premise for my story as yet, I'm testing hypotheses with you guys right at the minute. All the things I have suggested here are merely possibilities, hypotheticals and for the sake of argument scenarios. Good, solid criticism and input here has already made me reexamine a great many issues, so thanks all for that.
Also while it may seem that I am ignoring or minimising rock solid information about firearms and all the rest of it, this is simply not the case, I'm not just thinking about weapons and zombies, this is a small, albeit significant factor in what I am trying to do.
As soon as you delve deeply into the subject, it becomes quite clear that it is entirely possible, as we have already done so in this thread, to argue entirely without appreciating the other persons point of view. The sheer immensity of factors which need to be considered means that the possibilities are practically endless.
I'm thinking about who's making the clothes?
Out of what?
Where are they living?
Do they trade?
What do they trade?
How do they trade?
Who has the power?
What kind of proto-states would arise?
Will literacy continue?
What kind of zombies?
What is the ecological effects of a zombie apocalypse?
Do the zombies procreate?
What do they eat?
What eats them?
Where's the power sources?
What kind of power would people harness?
Where would you situate your town?
What would the defenses look like?
Made of what?
Where would these materials come from?
Who would get them?
How would they move them?
What kind of cultural cohesion, if any, would arise?
Communication over long distances?
Would post-Enlightenment experimental scientific enquiry paradigms continue?
If so, how would this influence material growth?
What's the availability of manufactured goods?

And so on. The list could be extended indefinitely to take more and more accuracy into account. Then there's manifold layers of interrelationships between each of these factors, and moreover a whole bunch of entirely impossible factors to accurately calculate. Karl Popper, and I agree wholeheartedly with him, would say that it is not only pragmatically, but logically impossible. So, I can't be accurate, and I can't even begin to approach the knowledge required to synthesise a coherent theory. My premise is necessarily flawed, as is any that has been posited on this entire thread, nobody can accurately predict what would happen, we can only hypothesise, and any hypothesis will necessarily ignore gigantic interelated issues. It's just too complex to be accurate, and anything that is suggested can eventually be argued against on premises which are predicated on different arrangements or emphases on different, or slightly altered factors.

Change one single factor and repercussions ripple outward and create exponential complexities.

1. Zombies die.
2. Zombies die but rise again a short time later.

What I am doing in this thread is piecemeal social engineering, I'm trying to establish the material, temporal and systemic prerequisites for guns and ammo to continue to be used widely. Simple changes to basic factors like that above will entirely alter the significance of these factors. If I can think up a scenario in which these necessities are eliminated, or irrelevent, or lost over time, which, given the massive leeway afforded to me by the essential ambiguities of future worlds, then this is the scenario I will use. None of us will come to the same conclusion and fashion identical apocalyptic worlds, they would all be hugely different, and could be argued for with equal vehemence and passion. I'm not trying to create the most realistic world, it's really just a matter of making the history of my world coherent with its current state.

daswig

Die from what, old age?

Standard subsistence hunting, possible farming, certainly animal husbandry. We've got a rabbit colony in our back yard that we keep the predators away from. It's not necessarily because we love rabbits, we simply consider them to be a natural hasenpheffer storage system.

And why would somebody be so stupid as to leave something burning where a Zombie could knock it over? Wouldn't the looters/rioters be SHOT by the people inside the house/facility, so that they couldn't loot/riot there?

Every 30 years or so, we put a new roof on it. Periodically we paint it. We mow the lawn, cut back the bushes, et cetera. That's about it...

National Guard armories. They're where the National Guard stores their guns, vehicles, ammo, et cetera in case of emergencies. Why would it be hard to move around? If you've got people with guns, they can extend a protection "bubble" around themselves and go wherever they please, unless they meet fortified resistance.

I've got bullet molds dating back to the 1700's that are still functional. And they're pretty simple to make out of scrap steel. Why is it hard to go to the junkyard? If you're moving there with more than two or three people, no problem.

Survival isn't that hard, either. People have been doing it for millenia.

Ummm...let's see....any chemical supply house. Got a yellow pages? Take a look. They even have their addresses listed.

It's entirely hand-operated. No electricity required, although some of the gizmos use batteries, but the gizmos aren't required for it to work. It's very durable, to the point that the manufacturer offers an unconditional money-back guarantee for the life of the product. If it breaks, they'll fix it for free. Now in the case of zombies attacking, I doubt that their guarantee would hold good, but the fact taht they can offer such a guarantee and it doesn't put them out of business should tell you something about the durability and reliability of the product.

A beltfed is a type of fully automatic weapon which is fed from a belt instead of a magazine. <img src="http://onfinite.com/libraries/90018/010.jpg" /> The gun on the left side is an example of one of my beltfeds, the WWII German MG-34. The middle one is an MP-40, and the one on the right is a H&R Reising Model 50. They're all "machineguns".

Of course.

Do australians keep a huge supply of bodies lying around? We don't in the US. As a rule, most bodies are interred within 5 days of becoming bodies.

That's OK, we're trying to inform you.

daswig

Here's something to consider. Gunpowder has been around for a very long time, long before guns came into being. Guns predate the Industrial revolution. There's a TON of information out there on how to make guns. For example, I can make a slam-fire shotgun with two pieces of pipe, an endcap, and a nail. It wouldn't be pretty, but it would work. I've got a picture of a fully functional submachinegun made by the IRA out of the leg of a lawn chair. No shit, a friend took the pic while at the Pattern Room in England before it was shut down. The design work has been done, and that's the HARD part. As long as mankind remembers how to work metal, we can make guns. Even if we forget how to make and work metal, guns have been made of other materials such as wood. Ever see the "Mythbusters" episode where they mad a cannon out of a log? How about the Junkyard Wars where they made a gun using a truck axle as a barrel? Where there's a will, there's a way, and as long as we haven't devolved back past BASIC feudalism, there will be guns. And ammo.

The_Dunedan

Daswig's pretty much got this one wrapped up. Guns will last pretty much forever, and ammunition already exists in Godawfulhuge amounts, esp. for the military-calibre weapons. Even if cased ammunition ceased to exist or was exausted, and no more could be manufactured ( for some odd reason ), muzzle-loaders would work against not-terribly-intelligent things like zombies.

BTW, Daswig, nice sign; do you taste good with ketchup, or should I get some relish instead? ;-)

daswig

I'm very flattered by your comments, but must point out that I am a) heterosexual, and b) married to a VERY jealously possessive woman who has the safe combinations and is a better shot than I am.

Kostya

I hardly see why it's necessary to make fun of me. It's quite easy to simply interpret everything in the most simplistic terms:

I say what if the people bunkered down in secure positions die.
You say: 'Die from what? Old age?' Like I'm a freakin idiot.
I can just work out a scenario where they do die. For instance:
ALONG with the zombies, suddenly, there also happens to appear a mysterious airborne disease which suddenly kills eveyone, except a tiny tiny community of South American indians on an island off the coast of Venezuela.
As I already said, there's no scenario worked out yet, so please give the straw man a break and stop making fun of me. Other people have managed to give advice and criticism without resorting to ouright ridicule.

Trust me, you can single out any example and destroy it, but like I already said, this is a very very complex thing to try and gapple with. It is quite impossible to simply state, categorically anything about what will and won't happen. I'm not going to get all post-modern philosophy on you or anything, but if you think that history is as simple as you seem to believe, then I will assert that you are mistaken in this belief.

The_Dunedan

Daswig,
I'm straight as well ( hopefully married soon; keep your fingers crossed for me! ), just funnin' with ya about the sign.

The_Dunedan

BTW, Daswig, we just got a 1919-A6 in at the shop...semi-auto only, sadly, but we're sticking a crank on 'er just for fun...the seller threw in about 20 of the 250-round cloth belts, so it looks like I've got some loading to do. Know anyplace we can order some links for it? These cloth things are a PITA!

daswig

You need a belt loading machine for it. The crank-type work well. And yeah, I'm just funnin' with you back.

daswig

Well, if the virus kills everybody except that tribe, they're going to have very little trouble finding plenty of ammo, aren't they? And since zombies can't fly aircraft or steer boats, and I'd imagine that they'd get eaten up pretty bad by the fishes if they tried to walk to the island. Problem solved.

I don't think you're a "freakin idiot". I just think you need to re-examine your underlying premise if you expect people to take your story seriously, even the people who believe in zombies.

You came here asking people for advice. We're giving it to you. Ammo isn't that hard to make, it doesn't take electricity to make it, and there are millions of reloading presses in civilian hands in the US already, with many of their owners already used to scrounging for materials to save money. And berdan-primed military surplus ammo, which generally comes either sealed in zinc "spam cans" or in other waterproof containers, isn't going to "expire" any time soon. I've shot Faulkland war NATO spec surplus .308 ammo that had been left exposed to salt water and the other elements for over 10 years. After I cleaned it off to get rid of the remnants of the 20 round cardboard boxes that it came in, it fired just fine. I've shot 1950's vintage 7.62x54R ammo that had been stored underwater for long enough for the wooden shipping crates to rot away, leaving only the "spam can". It all worked. It was messy to clean, but it worked.

Reference material for you: "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks. It's both intentionally and unintentionally funny. I'm sure you can find it on Amazon.com, and at under $20, it's a good read...

daswig

I CAN categorically state that if all ammo on the planet was expended, at least some people WOULD make more. I've prolly got enough stuff on-hand to make, I dunno, 250,000 rounds of loaded ammo before I had to do anything other than pick up my brass. I've got a backlog of 25,000+ "once-shot" .45 brass, and I don't even have a CLUE how much "once shot" 9mm brass I've got floating around. I'd be very, very surprised if it was less than 50,000 casings, ready to go, already tumbled, and if I had to bet, I'd say it's over 100K rounds worth. (we're talking THREE 55 gallon oil drums full of 9mm brass plus almost half of a fourth, plus other stuff scattered around elsewhere that I haven't gotten around to unpacking from the last move.) I've got a bunch (more than 100) of boxes of primers, @ 5,000 primers a box. I've got a bunch of lead/antimony/tin alloy ingots ready to be cast, at 10+ pounds per. So provided you don't kill me and everybody like me right off the bat (which in real life ain't gonna happen), ammo would indeed be made.

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.