Tactical Considerations

[SamT]

The following is an email I sent to the members of my local group. I offer it here to help people see one way to look at their situation with tactics in mind.

Tactical Considerations

The following is all predicated on a medium, (three months,) to long term, (=>three years,) breakdown of civilization. After three years, we will be either rebuilding or headed for barbarism. That is for another discussion.

Practice: 2000 .22 rounds per year, or 200 rounds per month total fired through both hand gun and long gun. Enough main handgun and long gun ammo to put a clip through each main weapon each week.

The more rounds you put down range, the better you will shoot. The .22cal is the cheapest convenient round to shoot. The only cheaper round is the air pellet, but the weapon is not convenient as it must be pumped for each shot or one must keep CO2 charges for it. Using a CO2 powered air gun limits its post TEOTWAWKI life.

The best .22 small arm(s) to practice with is the one that most closely mimics the ergonomics of your other weapon(s.) Ideally, you will use a .22 conversion kit. Kits are available for many pistols and rifles, especially for the AR15 and 1911.

Carry: 200 rounds stored should last a lifetime for your carry weapon. It is only for use in an emergency. Even assuming 10 attacks, that should account for less than 70 to 140, (10 full magazines,) rounds expended.

"The best self defense handgun caliber starts with point four." Our local LEOs use the .40cal, which is a good argument to stock that caliber, if only for barter and police goodwill. I was biased to the 1911 .45 when I started researching which caliber to carry, but the research showed that the .45 is still considered the best at stopping power for any caliber considered reasonable to shoot. The .40 has a smaller grip with hi-cap magazines, but I doubt the utility of hi-caps in most foreseeable situations.

Many small framed people just can't handle the kick of the .45, my DGF must use a .380 due to her weak wrists. The .380 is not a bad size for personal self defense as its use will almost always be at very close range and will probably involve very few assailants. This is also an argument against the utility of hi-cap magazines in .4X caliber.

The additional purpose of a carry piece in base defense is to raise the alarm and keep any attacker's heads down until you reach your long gun and or backup arrives. In this case any caliber will suffice. A hi-cap would be useful, but it is easy to carry two or four spare magazines. One round will raise the alarm and seven should be enough to allow you to reach your main gun, at which time you should reload the hand gun to keep its utility as a backup to the main gun.

Small Game: .22LR caliber is cheap enough and such good barter material that I purchase 500 rounds each month. IMO, you can't have too much .22LR hollow point.

IMO, a single shot bolt action .22 rifle is the ideal small game rifle because the single shot limitation forces the shooter the take the time for accuracy and the weapons useful lifetime is limited by the availability of ammunition. Such availability is expected to be only what is already stockpiled when TSHTF. There just ain't gonna be no more.

It is for this reason that I consider a good pump air rifle in .177 caliber to be a good investment. 1000 pellets cost less than $10. $1,000.00 buys a million pellets, shots do not spook nearby game, most repair parts can be hand fabricated with common materials, and an adequate air rifle only costs around $150.00.

Large Game: 100 rounds per gun per family per lifetime.
The same arguments for small game apply here, which, IMO, make the Nagent in 7.62 x 54R the ideal large game rifle simply because of its ruggedness and the cost of its ammunition.

Missouri is naturally forested. In any scenario where we will have to hunt for survival, mot of the cleared parcel will return to scrub, brush and forest. A hunter will probably not be making any shots at more than 100 yards, so extreme accuracy is not an issue.

The 7.62 x 39, (and .22 in the right hands,) is also an acceptable medium game, (up to deer,) weapon under these conditions, although Missouri is reintroducing Elk to the area, so we may see some large game.

Base Defense: Worst case assumptions; 10 attacks by 10 assailants defended by 10 carbines and three rifles. Start the defense with sound and fury at 300 rounds, add 100 rounds per assailant to stop the attack. The total ammunition count is 13,000 rounds of 7.62x39. Further assuming the three rifles each fire 100 rounds gives 3,000 rounds of .308 or 7.62x54R.

Our base is starting at 8 acres with 1000' of frontage to be patrolled and roughly 3000' additional quasi-secure perimeter. (this area is larger than the land we own.) It can be expected that within days, an additional property and household will be added to the base and within 4 weeks at least one more parcel. This will extend our perimeter, including roadside frontage to 12,000', and include 3 or 4 residences and an additional ~15 acres of cleared land. After three months, we should be a group of 15 to 25 parcels and families working towards self sufficiency.

The first property that will be added to the base is a sentry point that has effective control of the northern approach to the base. It has a one bedroom structure and and a bunkhouse. It should be manned by at least one defender at all times. It should be stocked with MBRs and sufficient ammunition for three defenders. It is ~two minutes jog by trail from the base headquarters.

The southern sentry point is a tripwire station and should be manned by a carbine. This sentry can fade into the brush for safety. When necessary, this point should be backed up with MBRs. A flanking movement is possible with carbines.

Within a month and with the concurrence and assistance of five other households, we will have a manned checkpoint 1/2 mile further up the road from the northern strong point. This gives us effective control of all northern and eastern approaches. Extending control to the south is more problematic.

The only effective control of the west and southwest fields and woods for a small group is extensive use of trip alarms. Just controlling the perimeter of HQ and the northern parcel will require 5 sentries. If we can recruit from the neighbors, we may be able to effectively patrol this perimeter. Fortunately, there is no easy access from the Northwest, West, or Southwest, and I have plans to make entry into the HQ parcel through these routes more difficult.

We should have:
Four MBRs, one for the northern sentry and three backups.
Three large caliber rifle for penetration concealment and brush.
A 7.62x39 carbine for all members.
A carry gun in caliber of choice for all members. Only 200 rounds are required to be stocked for a lifetime.
Shotguns as below.

Checkpoints And Barricades:

Check points will require the assistance of neighbors, and their choice of weapons should already have been made. We may have to provide them. I recommend 1 MBR, 2 carbines and 2 shotguns on each barricade. We will probably have to use Nagents for MBRs due to cost. Worst case, Nagents will be all that is available and we will have to think about FAST teams to reinforce the checkpoints.

Shotguns:

Shotguns only have two purposes, crowd control and sports; either sporting events or sport hunting. In survival hunting, there is no sport, only harvesting.

At a barricade, a shotgun is very intimidating and very effective at taking down people at close range. They should be 12ga loaded with alternating buckshot and slugs. Using the 10 attack assumption, with 4 shotguns, this means 140 rounds.

Recruit arms: See also Barter

If they don't already own their own weapons, they are not trained and will be most effective at sound and fury. We should only buy the cheapest arms available in .22, 7.62, (x54R?) and 12ga. Single shot and\or bolt action is sufficient. I think the Nagent in 7.62x54R is the ideal recruit gun due to its availability, cost, simplicity, and ruggedness.

Barter:

Political "gifts" should be of very rare value; $3,000.00 rifle scope combo with 20-100 precision rounds. $50-$150 whiskey. $200 wine. $2000.00 pistol with 20 rounds extreme ammunition. Cuban cigars. all out of my budget range :(

Ammo; We will wish to have the most common ammunition in the largest amount, but any caliber is good barter. I think that handgun ammo will be most valuable in the first three months, thereafter rifle ammo will be in more demand for the lifetime of the event.

Hand guns will always be of great value, but again the demand for any rifle will always be higher. In these cases, I think that quantity is more valuable than quality as long as the quality is not shoddy. This just means, do not sell or trade any weapons you now own except to move to our standard calibers, or to improve the quantity of weapons or ammunition.

We should always consider our standard calibers when deciding which weapons to buy for barter purposes.

[Matt In Oklahoma]

I respectfully disagree on your ammo amounts as they are way low at 200 rds a lifetime?!. I have been in fights and that is way to low for alot of them @ one fight. I also disagree on the shotgun usage as a lifetime hunter and one who has hunted for food for the table as a means and grew up in a culture where that was how they ate. A shotgun is MORE likely to put food down of any kind as you cannot be picky when hungry. In survival hunting sparrows to bears can be taken with ease compared to a handgun or rifle.
I'm gonna quit there

[610Alpha]

I am with Matt on this, ammo amounts seem low, so do your assumptions on # of assailants. I also disagree with the pellet rifle. It has its uses, like you said cheap ammo, practice, shooting small game while keeping opsec for the most part. I only have to pump my air rifle once since it is spring powered. I would need to have spare parts but I would have to for any other firearm as well.

[Urban Survivalist]

The Shotgun has far more than 2 uses. I can use a rifled slug and take down a deer at 100 yards. I can use bird shot for birds and small game. I can use buck shot for medium sized game. You can use all of the above on humans in a SHTF situation. Also there are specialty rounds that can turn your shotgun into a flame thrower and explosive rounds as well. The When it comes to reloading the shotgun shell is one of the easiest to reload and you can make your one load out of various materials. Shotgun is IMO the most versatile weapon system.

[Grand58742]

OKay, I'll poke a hole in your .22 conversion idea. While it is good to know the ergonomics of selected firearms, having a .22 in a .45 style system is not the greatest idea. Reasoning? Sure you get used to handling the firearm and plugging off rounds, but you do not get the real world training of recoil. And this factor alone probably accounts for more misses than anything else on the planet. Anticipating recoil accounts for nose diving the pistol and straight up fear of the weapon The proper training? Use full sized rounds until you are comfortable with the recoil and can manage it properly. If one cannot ever get used to the full recoil, possibly they should be thinking of an alternate lower caliber until you find something you can manage. But training is the key. You are right in saying it's all about hits rather than misses. But for someone accustomed to firing .22 out of a full sized handgun (and not remembering the recoil) and firing off round #1 of a actual situation...they will not be used to shooting that full sized round. Maybe it hits, maybe it misses. But they will also pause prior to firing the next shot and remember "holy crap this thing kicks and I didn't remember it!" And in a gun battle, the second or two they pause to reorient themselves to the threat is a second an adversary has to take the initiative. And in a gun battle, seconds count.

And the best defensive handgun doesn't have to start with the number 4. It could start with 9 or 3 or even 7 so on and so forth. I doubt very many of us would question the power of a .357 Magnum load for defensive purposes. A 4 inch revolver in .357 is okay in most books as a secondary arm. Is it my first choice? No, I prefer autoloaders, but would I complain if that's all I had AND could shoot it effectively? I doubt most would.

And the poor 9x19mm that gets no respect. Sure in military hands it might not be the best choice, but that's because we are limited by using FMJ rounds. A double tap of hollowpoint rounds from a 9mm in the X ring will make you just as dead as a double tap of .45. It's all about shot placement, practice and carrying the right tools for the job. I think the 9mm is a round that has great potential, however, gets a bad rep because FMJ rounds tend to zing right through targets. But a properly placed hollowpoint round will stop an attacker just as well as its larger cousins.

But handguns overall are only limited by the shooters experience, shot placement and effective use. Would I prefer a 1911 over say a CZ in .32 ACP? Sure, but it doesn't mean a proper shooter cannot place rounds effectively on target. And again, one hit from a .32 ACP is far more effective than seven misses from a .45 ACP. Is it a death to all killing machine that stops with one hit? Absolutely not, but NO handgun caliber ever has been. There are no such things as "one shot stops" in the world of handguns and there probably never will be until they invent the plasma handgun in the 40 watt range (to go along with the rifle as well).

Now the 200 round theory...if 200 rounds of EFFECTIVE expanding bullet type ammunition might be a key number, but you need more than that to practice. The whole OPSEC thing tends to go out the window in TEOTWAWKI. You will post signs you never even thought you would be posting up even on a secluded location. Smoke from warming fires (both seen and smelled), trampled paths, recently cut trees, crops growing, smells from cooking, noise other than firearms. I could go on, but the "look" of civilization is far harder to conceal than most of us give it credit for. Maybe your shoting range is well away from your property. Maybe you live in an area where gunfire is common. But the biggest factor is the training aspect of it. Do you need to dump a magazine out of a weapon weekly to stay proficient? Maybe not weekly, but monthly or even every two weeks. Three months is a stretch, but it's still enough to be relatively proficient. And not just one magazine. One should be looking at rapid reloads, immediate action drills, transitions from primary to secondary arms, reloading primary and secondary arms (when both go empty), tactical reloads, muscle memory to remember where to put that half empty mag in your dump pouch without looking...the list is never ending. Some can be done without firing, others unfortunately have to be done while firing.

[Grand58742]

Missouri is naturally forested. In any scenario where we will have to hunt for survival, mot of the cleared parcel will return to scrub, brush and forest. A hunter will probably not be making any shots at more than 100 yards, so extreme accuracy is not an issue.

I beg to differ, but accuracy is an issue. If you are attempting at hiding and concealing yourself, multiple shots are not good. While the Nagant has plenty of knockdown power, it is also limited by effective ammunition. For a long rifle designed to be used by conscripts with little or no training and accuracy is not a big deal, sure it was a fine rifle. For a modern hunter that should be looking at the effective killing of game with one shot and proper shot placement? Maybe not so much. However, I will give you the fact it works well for a cheap arm that (in the 1944 version) could be a decent brush gun. But they ARE limited by accuracy and a miss to the vital organs of a deer means you have to chase same off your secured areas until it bleeds out or you just get lucky.

So a hunting rifle is almost a must for any preparedness arsenal. And I might say 200 rounds as opposed to 100. That's just me being prudent. A .308 is universal enough for game in your locale as would be a .30-06 or most .30 caliber rifles. Even a .270, 7mm-08, etc would be perfectly fine. I don't fear the man with the tacticool M4 with sixteen pounds of crap on the six pound carbine and 50K rounds that fires once a year blasting away at minute of car at one hundred yards. I fear the hunter with an old Winchester 1894 in .30-30 that puts two deer on the table every fall and can make a box of ammo last five years.

But back to the main point. Your hunting rifles should be accurate enough to make efficient kills on game with one shot to the vital organs. Unfortunately, the Mosin-Nagants are not that accurate. Sure you will get some laser rifles out of the box, but most were built under wartime considerations and as long as they went "bang" and the bullet went out the right end of the rifle the factory workers didn't care.

And on to your defensive postures. This is entirely dependent on location. I don't know exactly where you are located, but it seems to be somewhat rural. And given that, I can make the following assumptions...

You are basing the fact you already have X amount of parcels at your disposal and the remainder will grow. What exactly are you basing this theory on? Will the neighbors join in at your request? Will they go along or stand alone because they might not like the idea of the group mentality? A lot of your plans are hanging on the fact in three months you will have X number of people and land in your group. However, some just won't go along no matter what you do. How do you take this into account for your plans? One island in the middle of your sea of defenses?

You also take into account plans on attacks which is good, but you cannot assume any defensive postures unless you are guaranteed of the manpower you will have. And that typically depends on how many you have right then. Planning is good, but you cannot make plans on what you think you might have. Defensive plans are dynamic in the fact they will always change. Like your comments about the undergrowth coming back in full force. Brushy areas are ideal for concealment for approaching opposition and make the job of a defender far harder. You need more manpower or sensor type systems to detect the approaches, especially in the amount of land you are talking about. Scrubby areas are not suited for defense, but are great for concealment. And concealment works both ways. Your defenses should be situated around fixed points and layered out from there. I.E. defense in depth, overlapping defenses and key terrain (not particularly in that order). Use the CARVER matrix to determine what is critical and what is not.

I'm an Air Force cop and have to think "defense" as a living as it's our job in wartime to defend the base. I know those planes won't fly worth a darn if there is no fuel, so fuel storage areas are a primary defensive concern. The same can be said of the pilots sleeping facilities. No pilots, no planes. No planes and no close air support. No close air support and the battle will turn. So there are several areas which most don't think are valuable which are in fact critical to the mission performed.

Now in a TEOTWAWKI situation, I know crop fields are valuable, but not as much as that hilltop that overlooks your property and provides an attacker the dominating position where your defenses can be sniped at random. Or the house to prepare the food grown in the fields or the barn that stores the implements that helps prepare the soil in the spring and harvest in the fall. The same is said of avenues of approach. If you face military trained opposition, they can and will see holes in your defenses based on misallocation of defensive manpower. They will coordinate with neighbors that didn't join your group and use those areas to stage attacks from. They will take key facilities and wait you out or bargain with you. Or just simply snipe you out from longer range and take over when it's finished. Unless you are extremely remote (and from reading your posts, it doesn't appear to be too remote), manpower and/or sensors are the key to effective defensive operations.

Be careful to make plans according to what you think you might have as opposed to what you know you have right then. You cannot make defensive arrangements based on the fact X number of families live in the local area and will go along with what you planned for. Even bargaining only goes so far. Sure you give family X a number of MN rifles and X amount of ammunition in exchange for being your "sentries" on the outer perimeter. However, when someone comes along and offers them the same deal but with better weapons along with partitioning your land, assets and food storage, which one is harder to choose between? Loyalty among neighbors only goes as far as the next meal. So you provide neighbors with enough food for a week. They know it’s coming from somewhere and you have it. They want it and what you think are loyal friends suddenly become your adversaries because someone offered them a better deal.

Sure some will become friends for life, but human nature means some will be jealous of what you have. They envy you because you were prepared and they won't. They despise you because you have what they don't. They see you in a position of regent because you require certain actions in exchange for whatever your barter is. And suddenly it gets lonely at the top. Just because you are generous enough to give them items to survive doesn't mean they won't turn on you at the drop of a hat. Human nature cannot be changed or predicted.

Just some points to ponder.

[Klayton]

Well, I am not sure how I fit in here. But, here is my current stockpile.

2000rds of .45 (my main handgun)
1000rds of 5.7mm (back up handgun)
250rds of 9mm (wife's handgun-yes I need to buy her more)
500rds of .40 (daughter's handgun-strange she has more than wife)

10K+rds of 22 ammo (in a mixed total of shorts, and long rifle)
500rds of 22MAG
1000rds of .17HMR
200rds of 30-30
100rds of 12-ga 00buck (also need to load up on some more of these)
100rds of .338 Federal

Well thanks for making me go do an inventory. I need to make a purchase next payday it seems. :(