If you could only have one gun

[Liberty]

There would be several factors to consider, as previously posted. Location, type of food source, the population density, which would raise the need for defense, etc..

Location, location, Locoation: Around here there is an unlimited supply of seagull. I don't know how much meat is on them or what they taste like. I do know the world would be a better place with a lot fewer of them. A shotgun can be a pretty effective fishing tool with a little bit of floating bait. I'm not sure if I would stay here, or evacuate under the given conditions. I suspect it might be better to stay where you know.. And An EMP would limit ones travel

[Abraham]

Seagulls: "they are meat eaters, and may have trichinella, a parasitic roundworm, as well of other poisons accumulating in the bird." (I saw this info tidbit doing a little internet looking.)

Plus, can you be certain they aren't garbage eating seagulls? They are to be avoided.

Too, they are a Federally protected species. Right, in a life of death situation whose going to care? Well, if the world righted itself relatively soon, lawbreakers just might be in trouble, ...or not, but I'd avoid eating seagulls anyway. They are beautiful creatures, but then to me, so are vultures and Id rather starve than eat one...

I get a kick out people imagining they can live off the land because they see rabbits and squirrels in their yard.

Even if you live waaaaaaaaay out in the country, with a wood full of game, everyone will be hunting and game will quickly play out.

To play the game: I'd want a suppressed .22 LR rifle.

[Middle Age Russ]

I like your thinking, Abraham.

Again, playing the game, I will assume that the limit of one firearm in no way prohibits the use of other projectile dispensing tools. Coupled with a slingshot and bow/crossbow, either a 12 ga. pump or break action shotgun, a suppressed 9MM carbine or a suppressed .22LR rifle would be a great choice.

[Nuts]

There would be several factors to consider, as previously posted. Location, type of food source, the population density, which would raise the need for defense, etc..

I agree with cmgee, a pump 12 gauge shotgun would be difficult to beat for a wide variety of situations. But if I lived where Grizzly bears were a problem, that may not be the best choice. Given, my current situation, the area where I live, population density, type of game in my area, I would definitely opt for my shotgun. For food gathering, I would most likely use traps and snares, rather than shooting at everything, but it would give me the widest range of choices, if I needed it for food gathering, or self defense. JMHO

A lot of fishing guides in Alaska carry a 12ga for bears. Not many things can standup to an ounce+ of lead traveling at 1600fps.

[Soccerdad1995]

I have an air gun for small game (not a firearm). Given the need to gather food and possibly also water, I'll pick my DP12 bullpup shotgun.

If I was living in my actual house, where I have a stockpile of food, I would choose a Gatling gun. Board up everything but the front door, and set it up facing that direction.

[bblhd672]

There was an EMP everything is down and you and your family are going to have to survive for the next several months at least. No you don't have any food stored up but you have 1 weeks supply of water. You are only allowed to choose one gun for self defense/food/anything else you need a gun for. Which gun would you choose and why???

If you are unprepared you will most likely end up in the statistic below regardless of the one gun you choose.

The EMP Commission:

If such an attack were to cause a nationwide blackout lasting as long as a year, up to 90 percent of the American people could die due to starvation, disease and societal collapse.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/bar ... emp-attack

I pray that none of us nor our generations to come ever have to experience an event like this.

[puma guy]

For those favoring a shotgun.

[Abraham]

Given this thread is something of a prepper question and if we we're facing an EMP event, how many have thought about stocking up on bicycles and a variety of spare parts, tubes, tires, chain lube etc.

You can go for a looooooong way on a bicycle. Sure the roads would be clogged with conked out vehicles, but with a bike you can go around them, even if you have to get off and push your way to a clear right of way.

Many of us though are getting long in the tooth (me, for one) but if one regularly exercises and I'm not talking about playing golf using a golf cart, but actual exercise, you can still do hard labor even into very old age. Being able to perform hard labor will be required if survival is a priority...

Along with years and years of weight training, distance running, kayaking, cycling, long distance in-line skating, long distance swimming, I've managed to stay in condition. To keep busy and do something I need to do, but don't want to have a contractor take care of, I'm felling monstrously large cottonwood trees that have become a giant nuisance with massive roots showing above ground that're like rolling over logs when I mow. Doing such activities is grueling, but help keep me in shape, well, I do eat like Paul Bunyan, so in the last few years, I've finally developed more and more of a round shape...

I've dropped two Cottonwoods so far. The first one, roughly 16"/18" in diameter and 45'/55' tall and the latest one, roughly 30"/35" in diameter, very tall and really massive. Along with the effort of using a come-a-long winch, chains, screw in bolts to make certain I drop them where I want it, plus a chain saw, the sheer effort of cutting them up and hauling their parts to the burn pile keeps me huffing and puffing and in sound physical condition. Ah, as long as I don't kill myself with a tree falling on me or the chain saw killing me, I'm way ahead of the game.

Why am I bragging? (it aint bragging if you can do it or so I read somewhere) Well, by some standards I'm quite old, (septuagenarian old) but since I never sat in a rocking chair since I retired 20+ years ago, I've avoided getting lazy and out of shape, if something like an EMP hits, I can cope better.

So preppers, buy cycling stuff and stay in shape if the big one hits...and you care to survive.

[The Annoyed Man]

Seagulls: "they are meat eaters, and may have trichinella, a parasitic roundworm, as well of other poisons accumulating in the bird." (I saw this info tidbit doing a little internet looking.)

Plus, can you be certain they aren't garbage eating seagulls? They are to be avoided.

Too, they are a Federally protected species. Right, in a life of death situation whose going to care? Well, if the world righted itself relatively soon, lawbreakers just might be in trouble, ...or not, but I'd avoid eating seagulls anyway. They are beautiful creatures, but then to me, so are vultures and Id rather starve than eat one...

I get a kick out people imagining they can live off the land because they see rabbits and squirrels in their yard.

Even if you live waaaaaaaaay out in the country, with a wood full of game, everyone will be hunting and game will quickly play out.

To play the game: I'd want a suppressed .22 LR rifle.

Abraham is absolutely right about game playing out. Consider that the existing huntable wildlife populations are hunted by a relatively small portion of the country's population. Hunters are only a fraction of gun owners. Careful management is what keeps the wildlife populations healthy. In any complete social collapse, you can expect game populations to dwindle to next to nothing in the first months. Then what?

I read an interesting blog post the other day. I wish I could find it to post a link here. The individual who wrote it lives in NoCal in the SF Bay Area (I don't remember the exact town), and he admits that he's probably more politically liberal (as opposed to libertarian) than your average prepper. He's an avid hiker and outdoorsman, but not a hunter. He said he got interested in prepping a few years ago, and he eventually began accumulating a stockpile of about 90 days of stored food for himself and his family (wife, and a couple of young kids). As I was when I lived in California, he was motivated more by earthquake preparedness — a very real thing, in California — than by some kind of total-grid-down thing like an EMP or socio/political collapse. You don't really need a 90 day food supply for earthquake survival. There have been several very large earthquakes in California in my lifetime, while I was still living there, with extensive damage to infrastructure and casualties, including people killed. But the truth is that, even in a monster earthquake, with massive devastation, you're not going to be without food and shelter for more than a few days. There's just too much support available in terms of the Red Cross, FEMA, whatever. And since the event is fairly localized, it doesn't take down the rest of the country......just the areas of the state that are actually hit by the shockwaves. I didn't even feel the Loma Prieta earthquake that hit the Bay Area so hard in 1989. I was 350 miles away in SoCal.

But once this blogger got into prepping for the reason of earthquake preparedness, he realized that it would be prudent to extend his ability to feed his family for longer than a few days, and so 90 days of food is what he decided on. He said a bunch of other things - some of which I agree with, and some I do not - but he made some points I had never thought of..... For instance, did you know that the NY Stock Exchange continued to operate throughout the Civil War - arguably the single biggest catastrophe to ever hit this country.......and they didn't have electricity either? I had never considered that. In some places, people actually prospered because of the war. Yes there was massive devastation - particularly after Sherman's march to the sea. But Sherman excluded, and except for certain cities that were invested by attacking armies (Vicksburg comes to mind), starvation was probably a bigger problem for the actual combatants due to logistical problems than it was for their families back home - regardless of whether one was a Confederate or a Yankee. The more common hardship than starvation for many of those families so affected was to have their men of working age sent off to war while their farms and small businesses still needed to be worked.

In the end, this blogger organized his 90 day food and water supply, and he bought ONE firearm - a double barreled "coach gun" type shotgun. He had decided a long time before that he was not a hunter, AND he made the same point about game animal populations being hunted down fairly quickly. He bought the shotgun to defend his family and their food stores. He decided he would bug in, and try to ride out whatever happened.......and that is where I disagree with him, because that was his END game.

That's not MY end game. For any city dweller, bugging in should be a temporary situation until the emergency is either over, or you have developed a plan and a place to bug out to. MY endgame is to bug in until I have a place to bug out to, and then take everything but the kitchen sink with me when I leave. That includes about 15 or 20 different firearms and thousands of rounds of ammo.....not to mention food stores, medical supplies, etc. Additionally, my plan is to eventually have most of my prepping stuff pre-positioned after I'm able to guy some land, where I can grow my own food. Because that's what hunters are going to be reduced to as the game disappears - growing their own food or starving. If you're a hunter, and you live in the city, and you don't have a retreat of your own land to bug out to, then basically the only difference between you and the other hordes of people fleeing the cities as food runs out will be that your loadout will be heavier than everyone else's, with your guns and ammo, and you'll move more slowing and be less agile.....and more vulnerable (you have to sleep sometime).

THEN what kind of person are you going to become? The kind who steals from others? Who will kill to take what he needs? The kind who gets shot at (and maybe killed) by people who are just trying to protect what they had the foresight to put together for their families before everything went to crap?

That's why I won't buy into the "one gun" scenario. I will use ALL of my guns, if necessary, to fight a gov't that says I can only have one (or none). So that's a non issue for me. I have been blessed, and I am not in the position of having to decide for financial reasons that I can have only one gun, and then try to choose what it would be. And if I were in that situation, I would make it a very high priority to get to where I could afford more as soon as possible. Whenever you play the "one gun" game, you're agreeing to submit yourself to the "Kobayashi Maru" scenario, because NO gun is perfect in all roles. Sooner or later, you'll run into the one situation in which your choice of gun is the worst possible choice. Then what?

I'll tell you what. Just like James Tiberius Kirk, you cheat the game, and you refuse to have just one gun.

[karder]

Put me in the 12 gauge camp. Winchester 1300 for me, because that's what I have in my truck right now, but any quality 12 or even 20 gauge would do the trick.
Aside from the variety of loads from birdshot to buckshot to slugs, some nice pepper ball loads are good to keep in your tool box. When all the crazy activists were blocking traffic and looting a couple of months ago, I got some 12 gauge pepperball rounds. I have 5 in my toolbox just as an option. If I think I am in serious danger, I am not going to worry about pepper balls, but I like having the choice of a less lethal option followed up by a highly lethal option depending on how the warning is received.
You simply can't beat the versatility of the 12 gauge. No one gun can truly fill the role of several more narrowly focused firearms, but if I could only take one, the trusty 12 would be my choice.

[WTR]

I don't think my dove supply will run dry. From the amount of wounded dove I find from being shot from experienced hunters, I may not even have to go hunting. As for the thousand of miles of dessert out here, I may be tripping over dead bodies from city folk that don't know the desert. Oh, as far a seagulls and parasites.... Just cook them hot enough and long enough, or boil the meat for 15 minutes.

[zmcgooga]

I'd go with the Chiappa M6, not the prettiest thing in the world but it looks like it has a lot of versatility.

* Side note, I've never held, much less shot one of these I've just read and watched video's on them and think the inserts would be handy in the scenario.

Other than that it would be a 10/22

[WTR]

I'd go the the Chiappa M6, not the prettiest thing in the world but it looks like it has a lot of versatility.

* Side note, I've never held, much less shot one of these I've just read and watched video's on them and think the inserts would be handy in the scenario.

Other than that it would be a 10/22

Savage 42 might be a good choice.

[patterson]

Colt Python

[bblhd672]

THEN what kind of person are you going to become? The kind who steals from others? Who will kill to take what he needs? The kind who gets shot at (and maybe killed) by people who are just trying to protect what they had the foresight to put together for their families before everything went to crap?

Currently the wife and I are watching all of the episodes of the old show "Twilight Zone" on Netflix. The other night there was an episode titled "The Shelter" which goes along nicely with TAM's post. What will you do to survive AND what will your neighbors do to survive?