I enjoy working on engines when it’s not urgent, and it’s fairly low stakes if things take 5x as long as I plan, or I need more parts than I thought. OTOH, it’s incredibly stressful when my motorcycle throws an engine code that tells me there’s an electrical fault, and I know that I’m going go end up needing to tear it down, go through the wiring loom, and not be able to ride for a few weeks when the weather is finally getting really nice.
Pity that you can’t teach cats to use crew-served weapons…
The obvious choice is to buy a multi-piece rifle, full size or pcc is up to you, that breaks into 2+ pieces.
That’s pretty much al AR-15s; you can entirely separate the upper and lower receivers. But you’re probably thinking more of take-down rifles. I don’t think that most take-down rifles would be ideal in a SHTF kind of situation. And, to be very, very clear, I think that a very sudden SHTF situation where you need a rifle is very, very unlikely. I think that suddenly needing to evacuate due to weather or fires is more likely, and the kind of civil unrest that might require a rifle, well, we’re already the frog in that pot, and the water keeps getting hotter… Someone is going to throw the first rock at a protest, then it’s going to get very, very ugly, very, very fast.
Warning: I’m autistic–yes, really–and guns are one of my life-long special interests. So, wall of text incoming.
PCCs (pistol caliber carbines) are handy, but I don’t know if I’d want to rely on one as a do-all bug out rifle. In my opinion, for most able-bodied people, PCCs have the worst features of both rifles and pistols; they’re bulky enough that they can’t be concealed easily, and the bullets are less powerful and have significantly shorter ranges than rifles. Some PCCs also have reliability issues, but I don’t know which ones specifically. (That said, the Kriss Vector is cool as hell, doubly so if you can get it as an SBR and silenced. Not always super reliable, but still very neat. And expensive. So, maybe not that.) On the other hand, recoil is very minimal. If you really like PCCs, then I’ve heard good things about the KP-9, which also happens to be produced by a very decent person (e.g., non-chud). PCCs are particularly good for people with some level of disability that prevents them from using a typical pistol effectively.
If you’re a normal person with normal person funds, where buying a rifle is a large purchase, I’d get a 14" AR-15 ‘pistol’ with a solid ‘wrist brace’. As long as you’re buying something nicer than Bear Creek Arsenal or Palmetto State Armory, the brand isn’t going to matter a lot. Don’t waste your money on Daniel Defense or KAC. A reliable red dot optic that’s zeroed at 50y completes the minimalist bug-out ‘pistol’. In this case, I would suggest an enclosed red dot, like the Lead & Steel Promethean; enclosed dots are less likely to get gunked up. Get a bunch of magazines, Magpul 30 rounders if your state allows them, and 10 rounders if your state doesn’t. A “combat load”, IIRC, is 210 rounds, or seven 30-round magazines; if you need that many rounds in a bug-out situation, you are well and truly fucked.
If you’ve got money to burn, I’d suggest getting a piston rifle like the Sig MCX-Spear LT in 11.5" or an FN-SCAR in 11.5" (both will be SBRs, so you’ll need a tax stamp), and then a B&T Print-X VERS36 SS silencer (.30 cal, titanium, modular, full-auto rated–which is unusual for titanium silencers–and yes, you need a tax stamp for it). Both rifles are 5.56x45mm, which means ammo is both cheap and readily available at almost any gun store anywhere. Both rifles are also piston-operated, rather than being direct impingement (DI), so the stock can fold to make it more compact. Yes, piston rifles are slightly less accurate than DI, but at the ranges that a bug-out rifle would be used, that’s probably not an issue. I’d probably get a Dead Air KeyMo adapter and mount for the silencer so you could take it off and put it on quickly, since a silencer is going to add 6-8". If you can afford it, holographic sights are slightly nicer than red dots (albeit with shorter battery life; EOTech and the Vortex AMG UH-1 are the only holographic options), and a 4x flip-up magnifier extends your range. (I use an LPVO and an offset red dot on my primary competition rifle, but that’s a bit much for a bug-out rifle.) You might want a weapon light; Surefire is the standard choice, but I use a relatively inexpensive Steamlight, and it works well enough for night matches out to about 150y or so. At the ranges that you’d ever be likely to need to use a bug-out rifle, that’s likely not a significant issue.
Personally, I don’t worry about a bug-out rifle. That’s low on my priority list. I have enough cats that bugging out means driving with eight pet carriers, not walking, so a full-sized rifle is fine for me. I’m more worried about having a good carry gun. :)
Just put the gin in a cloth bag as you shoot. At that range, it’s hard to miss.
most of the gun nuts all agree that the best bugout bag gun is an FN-FAL.
Who, exactly? FALs that make it to the US are notoriously finicky and unreliable. The ones made by Century Arms take a lot of fiddling to make them work at all, and when they do, they’re 2MOA at best, and more likely 3MOA. Also, even in carbine configuration, it’s big and heavy.
.300BO is based off of the 5.56x45mm cartridge; it’s intended as a subsonic round–e.g., extra-quiet when you’re shooting with a silencer–and has ballistics on par with a bus. It’s big, heavy, slow, and has an incredibly short effective range.
Neither .308 (7.62x51mm NATO) nor .300BO will go through a level IV plate, which is pretty standard at this point for US soldiers.
If you want highly accurate in an AR-15 package, go for 6mm ARC. If you want highly accurate in an AR-10 package, go for 6.5CM or 6.5PRC.
Most countries have moved away from battle rifles. The biggest reason is that ammo is heavier, and heavier ammo means you can carry less. All other things being equal, the side with the most ammunition tends to win. The second reason is that engagements rarely happen at ranges that require a full-powered cartridge; a mid-sized cartridge is quite sufficient for infantry use.
Unless you know how to remap a car and have a car with plenty of power reserve.
Right, that’s my point though. With my '84 Chevy Monte Carlo SS, I could drop a new engine in (started with a 305, ended with a 400 short block), do a high-flow dual carb intake, get a couple Edelbrock carbs, buy some headers, straight pipes and a glasspack muffler, and get a ton more power. (And also much, much worse fuel economy.) Now you not only need to understand wrenching, you also have to have the software and knowledge to entirely re-map the fuel, since it’s all computerized.
And while you are technically correct that you can get tons more power out of a lot of mostly stock engines, that does sharply reduce your engine lifespan. Of course, that’s always been the case, but it used to be that you could fairly easily get your block bored and sleeved to have larger pistons (“there’s no replacement for displacement”), but generally engines are running with much less material now. Oh, and they’re aluminum rather than iron, so often you’re going to have to send your block off to a specialist to get the cylinder bores coated for longevity. (I think my Honda CBR600RR had alusil or nikasil plating in the cylinders? I’m not sure now.)
I’m really, really not nostalgic for those days; yeah, hot rods are kind of neat, and it’s fun being able to do your own mechanical work, but cars now are so much more efficient, more powerful, and last 3-4x as long as cars from the 60s through early 80s.
…Which, you must admit, is a singularly effective way of dealing with Nazis moving into your neighborhood.
Encapsulation, yeah. That’s usually what they do now, since encapsulation is usually cheaper, and generally less disruptive.
I did in Chicago. And I absolutely would again, because it makes my house much less likely to burn down from e.g. an electrical fire.
I quit smoking a decade ago; my risk of lung cancer was–is–far, far higher from smoking than it ever would have been from living in a house with asbestos insulation in the walls and around pipes.
I understand it as a hobby/passion, even though the old cars are far less efficient, die sooner, and are less safe than now. The only way they were better, IMO, was that they were less complicated, and thus easier to wrench on. It’s significantly harder to build hot rods or street racing cars now than the way you could in the 80s and earlier.
I’m still in favor of asbestos. It’s an amazing material for preventing fires AS LONG AS you never disturb it. The people that were most at risk of cancers were the people involved in the mining, manufacturing, and installation of asbestos products, but once the asbestos-containing products were installed, they were almost entirely safe for the occupants of the building. You could, in theory, largely mitigate the risks to the miners, manufacturers, and installers, but that is… Well, expensive. And people have a really bad tendency to ignore health and safety warnings when they’re inconvenient. You see the same issue with quartz countertops; they’re known to cause silicosis in people that are doing the cutting unless they do wet cutting for everything, and wear PPE, but a lot of people don’t, because wet-cutting is messy and slow, and PPE is hot and uncomfortable.
There was a big movement in the late 90s to remove asbestos from old buildings; the current advice is to encapsulate it, and leave it in place.
The lead was a lubricant, and old engines ran better, and longer, on leaded gas.
There were two issues. First, tetraethyl lead increased the effective octane level. That, in turn, reduced the probability of pre-ignition, e.g., the fuel-air mixture igniting before the compression cycle was completed. Higher octane allows for higher compression, which is more efficient. The other issue was the valves specifically; the lead provided a ‘cushion’ between the valves and the valve seats, which minimized valve wear.
The octane issue is easily solved by both better refining or by adding alcohol. It was known that you could add alcohol to gas to improve octane rating even when TEL was first added, but TEL could be patented, and alcohol couldn’t. The valve issue has largely been solved by better metallurgy and manufacturing.
The one are where it hasn’t been solved is small aircraft. Some small planes still use leaded gas, and it’s mostly for the octane boost. TEL can give them a better octane rating than alcohol or better refinement can, which allows them to operate at much high compression. Take that away, and the engines are too underpowered to keep the plane in the air. Over 150,000 small airplanes still use leaded AvGas; thankfully, newer turboprop planes and all jet planes mostly use Jet A or Jet B fuel, which is closer to kerosene.
In theory, I think that you could convert older cars to run on unleaded fuels, but you would need new parts rather than OEM.
Possibly. They’re not supposed to by their own claims, but possibly. I suppose that if I lived in the EU, I could sue them over it.
They seemed to be upset that I was advocating for an effective and permanent solution. :)
I regret nothing.
I suggested that the most appropriate way to deal with Nazis moving into your neighborhood was the traditional Scandinavian practice of hús-brenna. Apparently the admins dislike effective solutions.
It took me a few days to overwrite all of my comments from the prior 15 years or so, but I did it. Because fuck 'em, they don’t get to train their AI on my data.
Facial structure is very different between Devon and Cornish; Devons have very round faces. Cornish tend to have much sharper, more delicate features. I think that the term for Devon Rexes is ‘cobby’.
To me it tastes more like dry-rotting lawn clippings.
But in a good way.
1 point. I’ve never personally owned a physical encyclopedia. I’ve def. used them though.
I tried to get a job at a gun store. I am a little too… Unusual in my appearance. It would not have pleased the majority of the customers there. Oh well. (Not that it matters much; margins are low enough that discounts wouldn’t have been any better than what I can get on gun.deals or ammoseek.)
Very cool. FWIW, as long as they’re legal residents, they should be able to get firearms legally.
I would sincerely hope that any gun owner that saw someone being grabbed off the street by people in street clothes would act to stop the abduction. But I’m afraid that too many people have the bystander virus.
There’s still some of that at some matches. But yes, it’s getting a lot more grim. The tone is shifting, because everyone is starting to see where we’re heading, and wondering what they really would have done in Germany in 1935.