[andy]

autorifles, NO amount of shooting is going to get you clear. You <font color=red>[**censored**]</font>ED UP, and you are going to DIE because of your stupidity. so it's not the lack of "enough" ammo that killed you, it was being stupid enough to be in such a place, AT ALL. There's no reason for it, post shtf. so WHY let such a silly scenario determine your tactics or your gear, hmm?

MOVEMENT is a key element, alright, but SO IS REMAINING UNDETECTED, and ELUDING-EVADING-AVOIDING people in the FIRST place. too much bulk and wt, hanging on you day and night, is GOING to make you prone to errors, illness, injury. Get rid of EVERY oz cubic inch that you can POSSIBLY do without, on TOP of getting OLYMPIC levels of fitness, and be as sneaky and ruthless as you IMAGINE the lowest, cutthroat Gestapo guy EVER DREAMED of being, and you MIGHT have a shot at survival.

 

[Garand]

Geez, I hope you don't consider yourself "SKILLED". Being skilled involves use of a firearm, which you don't do. It must suck, being scared of a parole officer.

Have you ever spent time with Olympic atheletes? I spent 3 months riding shotgun on Olymic buses guarding the atheletes in 1976. Most could out party a seasoned alcoholic! The average infanteer has a minimum of 3 PT periods a week to stay in shape? I currently do 4 periods. How much time a week do you spend engaging in PT other than flapping your gums?

As for kit, please give a detailed listing of your type of pack and detailed listing of the contents that you require on a typical 1/2 day exercise. Then I'll give you a listing of what you will require to see you through 10-14 days without replenishment. There are no guarantees, you can't guarantee that there will be some innocent with all the kit you require, that yopu can shoot in the back. Try planning ahead.

 

[Guest]

BS

 

[Magnum88C]

. . .getting OLYMPIC levels of fitness. . .

That rules you out, you won't even go on a hike.

 

[John in AR]

I'll assume this comes from my earlier post about this same topic...

TRAPPED in bldg, 5-6 SKILLED men with autorifles, NO amount of shooting is going to get you clear. You <font color=red>[**censored**]</font>ED UP, and you are going to DIE because of your stupidity.

Actually, it's not because of my stupidity, it's because the training scenarios are laid out by the instructors. And being the "bad guy" on-site, and there to train the paying customers, I'm stuck with the paramaters laid out.

I'm glad you agree with my experience; that enough guys can kill you. It's happened to me quite often.



so it's not the lack of "enough" ammo that killed you, it was being stupid enough to be in such a place, AT ALL. There's no reason for it, post shtf. so WHY let such a silly scenario determine your tactics or your gear, hmm?

Regardless of the "why" of it, if I ran out, I didn't have "enough".

As for the "no reason for it" line of thought, just "shoe the other foot", as they say in grade school. Instead of 'bad guy' facing the 'good guys', I could just as easily be a lone man (either pre-shtf deputy, or post-shtf forager) who found himself in that situation. Possibly, I did something wrong or stupid that GOT me in that situation; I admit to making mistakes occasionally, all carbon-based life-forms do. Again, regardless of the "why" of it, or the "need" for it, it's absolutely not "impossible" to find yourself in a bad situation, is it... (If it were, we could do away with carrying ammo altogether. What we're doing here, is just disagreeing on "how much" spare ammo "may" be needed.)



MOVEMENT is a key element, alright, but SO IS REMAINING UNDETECTED, and ELUDING-EVADING-AVOIDING people in the FIRST place.

Yes it is. Unfortunately, when you're facing 4-8 guys with FLIR goggles on their helmets, along with IR floodlights and IR lasers mounted on their M4's, as I often am, sitting still can sometimes get you dead even more quickly than moving will. At night (which is the primary time I'm there), their equipment gives them ALL the technical advantage. I know the layouts, but it's still nighttime to me, and basically broad daylight to them.



too much bulk and wt, hanging on you day and night, is GOING to make you prone to errors, illness, injury. Get rid of EVERY oz cubic inch that you can POSSIBLY do without, on TOP of getting OLYMPIC levels of fitness, and be as sneaky and ruthless as you IMAGINE the lowest, cutthroat Gestapo guy EVER DREAMED of being, and you MIGHT have a shot at survival.

One reason I like the 5.56 caliber IS because of weight. Carrying 3 extra 30-round aluminum mags (what I carry in real life, not at the facility) is a LOT less weight and bulk than a similar amount of steel .308 magazines.

Being training, and not "real", I'm limited in how "ruthless" I can be. Best (worst?) one was when a flash-bang somehow got 'magnified' when under a dummy. (Military guys, training for rescuing downed pilots, we use a dummy similar to a CPR dummy to play "pilot".) Rescuer finally gets to 'pilot' dummy, grabs his collar and starts dragging him "to safety". Flash-bang booby-trap hidden under dummy's back goes off with enough force to almost completely detach one of dummy's legs. Air-force "Special Ops" ( ) guy literally dropped a load in his pants. Never seen a man actually do that before.

He was pissed.

Dummy now has had both legs removed and is known as "Mr. Hurt."


FWIW, if anyone cares, it's the "Direct Action Resource Center"; you can see some of it at www.darc1.com .

 

[RIKA]

I checked out the course descriptions and instructor bios. Very impressive although I'm not sure why they have the Russian strong man.

John, do they give you anything like a free course later for helping out or do they actually let you take the course (since you're playing the bad guy).

Neat.

RIKA

 

[mrostov]

There was a similar fight where over 700 Indians attacked 29 Whites (28 men and one woman), mostly buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls (in the Texas panhandle) on June 27, 1874.

It was a surprise attack launched by the combined Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne forces at about 2am.

You see, the problem of attacking men that are forted up is that you often wind up with a 'Mexican stand-off'. Trying to take people like that without heavy artillery, like RPG's, means you lose a lot of men. During a seige, the attacker can also get hurt bad.


"It's not my fault the attack failed," shouted Coyote Dung. "A Cheyenne killed a skunk before the fight. He destroyed my medicine." He backed his horse away from the threatening men.

That may not be the only skunk who dies. Quanah turned his pony. He would return to the Staked Plains. There was no more he could do here.

In the buildings below them, the hunters began to relax. The acrid stench of gunpowder was clearing and someone had brought water from the well. The saloon still stunk of unwashed bodies, made even more pungent by fear, but the men were used to that.

"Bat, hand me your Sharps," said Dixon.

"What are you going to do? They've withdrawn."

"I can see some of them on that ridge over yonder."

"You're loco, Dixon. You can't hit them. They're a mile away.''

"You wanna bet?"

"Hell, yes." Masterson held out his natty black bowler, and men dropped money into it.

Dixon squinted into his sight and took careful aim.

Quanah saw the tiny puff of smoke from the saloon window and saw the man with the quirt fall before hearing the rifle's faint boom. That ended the fight. Warriors scattered, totally defeated by a gun that could hit a man at a distance of a mile.


note: Billy Dixon's shot with a .50 Sharps was actually later paced out at 9/10ths of a mile - 1538 yards

http://www.pan-tex.net/usr/p/pampa-hist/pa03000.htm

Billy Dixon quit buffalo hunting and, the following August, became an army scout.

In September, just three months after Adobe Walls, an army dispatch detail consisting of Billy Dixon, another scout {Amos Chapman}, and four troopers from the 6th Cavalry were surrounded and besieged by a large combined band of Kiowas and Comanches.

They holed up in a buffalo wallow and, with accurate rifle fire, held off the Indians for an entire day. An extremely cold rainstorm that night discouraged the Indians, and they broke off the fight; every man in the detail was wounded and one trooper killed.

For this action Billy Dixon, along with the other survivors of 'The Buffalo Wallow Fight', were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In 1893 Billy Dixon left the army, filing homestead papers on the Adobe Walls site. He built a home and died there, aged 63, on March 9th, 1913.

http://www.oldwestlibrary.com/OWL/adobewalls.htm

 

[John in AR]

Rika - No, rarely get 'free' enrollment; with exception of one hand-to-hand course I got to attend free. I also have "limited" free use of the facilities when it won't create a conflict with ongoing courses. (Rifle range, etc.) Although, I confess to not using it as much as you might expect. The Remington ammo factory is just 6 miles or so from my house (DARC is about 15), and Remington has a 50-yard LE-only range I can use free, so that's where I generally go to shoot.

The 6,000+ sq/ft "shoot-house" is great. Poured concrete walls with replaceable door panels in the door openings. When you're inside, waiting to ambush the "good guys", and they blow the doors off the hinges with a 12-gauge, and then proceed to team-clear the building with flash-bangs, it's an adrenaline rush that's hard to describe. In that concrete confine, they're shatteringly loud. (Yes, I do wear Sonic earplugs, but it's still disconcerting.)

The "town" is pretty slick also. They fast-rope down from the helicopter (mounted as though on an over-size deer stand), and then enter the town, complete with streets & alleys. Then to mix it up for everyone, the instructors will often lob "bird-bomb" 12-gauge shells down in the mix from the observation platform.

My wife doesn't understand why this is "fun" to me...

 

[John in AR]

One view of the "town" with the helicopter and instructors' platform in the foreground. The "good guys" fast-rope down from the helicopter, and then enter the town.

The tops of the buildings are open, so the instructors can see most of "who's doing what"; the 'buildings' are poured concrete walls, with doorways and window openings, but no roofs. To give an idea of scale, those walls that look so small in the picture are eight feet tall.

 

[Guest]

PT? gunkid? With is bad back? The keyboard IS his PT. That and the fantacies he dreams up!

 

[RIKA]

My wife doesn't understand why this is "fun" to me...

May I give it a try, John? The word is challenge. You pitting your smarts against other men in a battle that doesn't kill. You may or may not be winner but you will have done your best and learned a great deal from the experience. The only cost is sore muscles and a few bruises. Its not proof of manhood because you are confident in that - just a battle against others, physically and mentally. Win or lose, we all get the experience. Experience that helps keep the good guys alive. Besides, its fun. We go against each other tooth and nail in combat and then have a beer afterwards as friends.

Beats hell out of golf. (Have I written this before?)

Men are fascinating people and I not only like but want to understand them. Maybe thats impossible. Will keep trying though.

RIKA