As someone pointed out, you need to be doing PT and no, push-ups and sit-ups don't cut it. If you cannot score at least a 280 in the 17-22 year old category on the Army Physical Fitness Test, you are not in shape to be running paramilitary operations, regardless of how much Gucci gear you have. In my social circle, we expect a guy to bench at least 1.5X his body weight, squat 2.0X his body weight, and run a sub-7:00 minute mile. I still do ruck runs for P.T. I'll strap on my rucksack (I'm running a North Face now, but getting ready to transition to a Kifaru Extended Missions Ruck by the end of January), loaded with 80 pounds, and go do five to ten miles as fast as I can. I can do it faster than a lot of the yuppies I see "running" in tights and UnderArmor.

I understand that not everyone can do hardcore PT and that's okay, just don't have any illusions about your abilities in regards to running "missions." One of the best preparedness investments that a person can make is spending about $300 (new, it's cheaper used) to purchase a weight bench and 300-400 pounds of Olympic weightlifting iron.

As far as specific reading material, Jeez, dude, I read so much it's ridiculous. I'll throw a couple of quick titles out there but maybe later I'll sit down and add a post to this thread with a reading list and descriptions of why I suggest them.

I also suggest that people actually train with their weapons. Take a shooting course if you've never done so. For the guys that were 11B in the military, especially the ones who've done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, make sure you're teaching your people to shoot PROPERLY. Kentucky windage and Arkansas elevation don't count for shit when people are shooting back at you. If your weapon is not zeroed with a 300M battlefield zero, you're going to be too slow in a fight.

If you don't want to "waste" ammunition (WTFO? That's completely beyond me...) or are restricted as to how often you can go to the range, do some fucking dry-fire drills. Ten or twenty minutes a day dedicated to realistic dry-fire drills will improve your combat marksmanship exponentially. Do the work people.

Take a martial arts class! I suggest MMA, Judo, Brazilian Jiujitsu, Boxing, muay Thai, wrestling, or something along those lines (incidentally, I suggest them in that order of merit as well...), but even a class at your local strip mall karate dojo is better than nothing. If you can't manage that, go to the bookstore, buy one of the innumberable books on MMA that are now available, strap on an athletic cup and mouthguard, some boxing gloves, and start banging with your friends or group members. Combatives is less about "how to kill someone with unarmed combat skillz" than it is about building the will to close with the enemy. All of these will teach that--if you approach them with the proper mindset.

Start camping out on your vacations. Don't go to Disneyland or California's beaches. Go to the mountains or the woods and live out of your BOB.

Take up the sport of orienteering or geocaching. Take horseback riding lessons. Take a rock climbing class.

There is SO much available that you can do to prepare yourself, even if you were never in the military.

Really, in my mind, 99.999% of preparing for WTSHTF should be about mental preparation. All the Gucci military gear and stockpiled food in the world will not do you a lick of good if you can't wrap your mind around the fact that history just hiccupped! Having a Bushmaster M4gery tricked out with the latest 6.8mm upper and Leupold glass, plus 10,000 rounds of 5.56mmNATO will not save you if you are not able to wrap your brain around the fact that the police are NOT coming and if you don't shoot that skell with the Lorcin .380 RIGHT NOW, he's gonna kill you and rape your wife and daughter!

I think reading forums like WSHTF.com and Rawles' Survivalblog.com are great. Hell, obviously I do it. (I might recommend my blog too, if it's not verboten...) However, get OFF the internet and go practice shit too!

The moderator on here, "trooper dan" deserves a lot of respect as far as I'nm concerned. He's a young guy that is DOING what so many people talk about doing! Good on him!

I saw in his stickied thread about living out of his truck in Florida that a lot of people posted comments along the lines of "Man, if I could quit my job, I'd do what you are doing!" Horseshit! If you wanted to do it, you would do it. You don't want to do it because living in a house with central heat and air, having a regular 9-5 job and steady paycheck, even if small, is far more comfortable. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!!!!! Just don't live in a fantasy world about what you'll do WTSHTF. If you're sitting around eating Little Debbie Snacks (I LOVE them!) and watching some silly ass shit on television like "Dancing with the Stars," you're not going to suddenly start running direct action or strategic reconnaissance missions next week. That's okay too! Just be honest with yourself.


This post will not be anywhere near as ordered as my previous posts in this thread. I’ve got a lot of crap going on today and really, should wait to write this another day. Since I said it would be done today though, this is what you get. The salient points will be clear, if thrown together rather haphazardly.

Caliber: Is not anywhere near as big an issue as a lot of people make it out to be. When the 7.62X51mm NATO round was developed, it was a shortened .30-06. The Army demanded a round similar to the .30-06 of the M1 Garand, but wanted something that would work more efficiently in a box magazine. WW2 and Korean War veterans who were involved with the testing of the new round decried it as underpowered and insufficient when compared to the .30-06…Sound familiar?

The vast majority of the ranting online and in print about the weaknesses of the 5.56x45mm NATO round are hyperbole. More enemies of this country have been killed with that round than with the 7.62X51. I won’t speak of theory though. I’ll stick to what I’ve seen and experienced.

I’ve seen people shot with the 5.56mm NATO round (for brevity’s sake, I’m going to refer to it simply as the 5.56mm from here on out) and not die. That’s no surprise. What may surprise some is that I’ve seen people shot with the 7.62mm NATO (7.62mm) who were not killed either. I watched one of the guys on my ODA shoot a Hajji with a M14 at a distance of about 30 feet. The round punched right through the bad guy’s chest and he kept coming. Seconds later he died as four of us dumped 5.56mm rounds into him. Would he have died from the 7.62m round alone? Probably so. Would he have been able to get rounds off from his AKM before he died? Probably so. Would a single round of 5.56mm have killed him? Probably not.

Caliber is irrelevant, regardless of what we want to believe. There are no magic talisman calibers (Well, okay….50BMG is pretty fucking magical!). People get shot with .30-06 and survive.

I’ve never had a solidly shot bad guy not go down when I shot him with 5.56mm. Not one single time. I HAVE seen Hajji not go down when shot with 5.56 if he wasn’t hit solidly though. It really does boil down to shot placement.

I read a rant online recently from a guy who claimed that no one can be expected to shoot with surgical accuracy under battlefield conditions. He was right too. If you can shoot a two inch group at 10 feet with your carbine while standing on a flat range in sunny weather, in a firefight, you might be able to hit the bad guy in the chest with one round. Training overcomes that. Not just flat-range training though. Shoot under stress. Do force-on-force training with airsoft weapons that replicate your chosen weapon. Very quickly you will see that being able to handle your weapon under stress is far more important than the caliber of the weapon.

I despise the 7.62X39mm cartridge. It’s anemic. Not in the lack of stopping power aspect but in the range aspect. The doctrinal standards for the caliber are a maximum effective range on a point target of 200 meters. That’s a fucking .30-30! Now, the .30-30 has killed a shit-pile of deer in this country, no one is denying that. However, it’s not what I would consider a premiere combat cartridge!

The 7.62X39mm round is popular in this country solely because it’s the caliber of the AK-47 and the SKS. We have this image of the AK-47 as a tougher than boiled boot leather rifle. It is. It’s fucking idiot-proof. It’s idiot-proof because it was designed for idiots to operate it. The Kalashnikov developed his rifle so that the average Soviet soldier could operate it. The average Soviet soldier was an illiterate peasant whose concept of high-technology was a horse-drawn cart.

You can have your AK-47s. As an 18B, I had to fire the goddamned weapon at least once a year for qualification. In reality, I fired them constantly. We would do a Foreign Internal Defense (FID) mission, where we would go train the soldiers of some allied army in the third world. They would be armed with AK-47s. We would have to use the weapon in order to demonstrate it. When I was working with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, they had AK-47s. We had to educate them why holding it over their heads and holding the trigger down was not very effective…

I know a lot of people have AK-47s and love them. More power to you! If I wanted a .30-30, I’d go buy a goddamned Marlin!

If all you can afford is a piece of crap SKS, then buy one. It’s marginally better than throwing rocks at the enemy. Don’t expect me to “Ooh!” and “Aah!” over it though, because I won’t.

So, since this is my thread and people asked me to post my thoughts on weapons up here, I’m going to state my preferences in weapons.

7.62mm:

The M1A from Springfield Armory is my first choice in this caliber. It’s an inherently accurate design, evidenced by its use at Camp Perry for decades. It’s big and robust. I like the wooden stock because I can butt-stroke some bastard in the head and not worry about the thing breaking off. You can get their Scout version with an 18-inch barrel and it’s even pretty handy.

A lot of people are still stuck on the belief that a bolt-action is more accurate than a auto-loading rifle. They’re full of shit. Any good gunsmith can tune an M1A sub-minute of angle accuracy. So, you get the benefit of a sniper grade weapon, with a 20 round magazine. What’s not to like?

The HK G3s and the semi-auto only copies are cool. They’re as accurate as any German-made rifle (which is frighteningly accurate). The only problem I have with the G3s is the same problem I have with the M1A…They’re fucking huge! I used to laugh at the Guatemalans. These little Hispanic-Indians were running around between 5’ and 5’6” packing big old G3s that HK suckered their government into purchasing. The damned rifles were nearly as big as the soldiers. That being said, they are reliable, accurate weapons. Just don’t expect your dainty wife or teenage kid to run it well.

The FN/FAL enjoys a great deal of popularity among survivalists. I’m not entirely sure why, unless it’s because Rawles raves about them. They’re not bad weapons, don’t misunderstand me. They’re just not the orgasms that a lot of guys make them out to be. DSA does produce some really cool aftermarket stuff that makes them damned near the 7.62mm equivalent of the M16 in regards to modular adaptability. I haven’t messed with that stuff much, but it someone gave me a FN/FAL, I’d slap a 16-inch barrel on it, with a M1913 rail on top for optics and a folding paratrooper stock for it. It might be a cool toy.

5.56mm…

I love the AR15/M16 platform. I’m currently running a Bushmaster M4gery (I’m going to refer to M4geries as M4s for simplicity). It’s my third Bushmaster and I’ve loved every single one. I’ve also got a Rock River AR that I’ve got set up as a Designated Marksman’s Rifle. It’s got the standard 20-inch barrel with a free-floated, railed fore-end, flat-top receiver and a Leupold MKIII glass on top. It’s mostly a safe queen though since my Bushmaster is my truck gun.

You’re not going to go wrong with an AR15 from any of the major manufacturers. You’d be hard-pressed to go wrong with one from a no-name manufacturer either. Eugene Stoner’s design is pretty fool-proof that way.

My M4 is set up the same way it is because it works for me. YMMV.
I’ve got an EOTech 552 on top. I’ll probably end up switching to a 553 down the road, but I like the 552 I’ve got. I’ve got the LMT SOPMOD buttstock on it. It’s got a SureFire M900 mounted on the front end, so I’ve got light and a VFG. I’ve got BUIS on it. (I’ll have to look to see which set is on there right now…). I’m frighteningly prone to removing the EOTech and running straight irons. I do this a lot. I’d be completely comfortable with no glass at all on it.

The Mini-14 is a piece of shit. A friend of mine refers to it as “an 8MOA tack-driver.” I’ve heard that the new ones are better, but I won’t waste my money buying one to try them out.

7.62X39mm.

I won’t waste my time or yours talking about AK47s and SKS. It would simply turn into a rant-fest. I know a lot of guys, some of whom I have a great deal of respect for that love AK47s. I just don’t.

As an 18B, there were about 50 weapons I was required to qualify with annually. Some of them, that was the only time I ever fired them. Others I fired all the fucking time. The list was long and included everything from anti-tank weapons and mortars, to rifles, pistols, shotguns and sub-machineguns.

These are just my thoughts on my primary. I’ll go into sidearms at another time.

All of the above being said, I don’t think firearms are nearly as important a part of real preparedness as we like to think they are. Buy a rifle and train with it, but don’t turn it into a talisman to worship. It’s just a tool, and probably not the most important tool. Instead of stockpiling a dozen firearms, spend the extra money on food storage or a set of Craftsman tools or a new generator or solar panels, etc.