by J. B. Craig
There are generally 2 kinds of pistol ammunition – semi auto and revolver. Revolvers have hollow cylinders that one drops the rounds into. Because they are hollow, revolver rounds must have “lips” that stick out on the bottom of them. Imagine a straight-sided glass sitting on a saucer… that lip created by the saucer is what stops the round from just sliding through the cylinder and falling on the floor. So, with revolvers, you typically have bullets like the .38 special, 357 magnum, .44 Smith or .44 magnum. These rounds are made for revolvers, and don’t work in semi-auto pistols.
Semi-auto pistols have bullets that ARE cylinders, with a notch cut out of the brass, so that they can be ejected. If you were to drop a semi-auto round into a revolver (assuming the caliber was correct, it would slide right through the hole, and out the other side. Common semi-auto calibers are the .380 (versus the revolver .38 special – the diameter of the tube/bullet is the same, but .380 is a lot shorter, and packs less punch). You also have the 9mm, .32 Auto, .40 caliber Smith, .45 Auto, and several other “bastard” calibers for semi-auto pistols. The difference between revolvers and semi-auto is not so much an advantage, but a personal taste.
Revolvers, or “wheel guns” usually have 5 or 6 rounds in a cylinder. Their main advantage is they do not jam. If you pull the trigger, and get a bad round, nothing happens, but you pull the trigger again, and the gun goes “boom”. They take more time to reload, because each round has to be loaded into a cylinder, which is often in a lower capacity 5 or 6 round capacity. That process can be sped up with pre-loaded speed loaders, or moon clips.
Semi-auto pistols have become the default military and law enforcement side arm since the early 1940’s. They typically have a higher capacity. A Glock 19 holds 15 rounds instead of 6 in a revolver, for example. They’re quick to reload, because you can have spare magazines on your belt. So, with 1 Glock 19 and 2 spare magazines, you can essentially dump 45 rounds down-range in the time it would take someone to reload their second 6 rounds in a revolver. BUT – if you get a jam feeding from the magazine, you can’t just pull the trigger, it’s time for problem solving, and clearing a jam incorrectly in a critical situation can get one killed quickly.
The Ruger 9mm revolver that Greg had was a special kind of crazy. It shot the same 9mm cartridge as his LC9, but because the shells would slide through the cylinder, they had to be clipped into half-moon clips, which mimicked the “lip” on revolver rounds. This means it took even longer to load, and you were effectively stuck with 5 rounds to play with. Greg did have 2 spare half-moon clips. One was loaded with hollow-point ammunition, and another was loaded with a new spinning frangible round that was billed as something that would spin and cut its way through leather, denim, etc. and really put a hurting on the victim with its hydrostatic shock. So, for this pistol, Greg had effectively 15 rounds of various tools, with 5 in each half-moon clip. The half-moon, when loaded, also allowed for a quick reload, although still not as quick as popping out one magazine and slapping another one in.
Greg could not give up his one “Gucci” Pistol. As a treat, he bought himself a Springfield EMP (Extreme Micro Pistol) in .40 caliber Smith & Wesson. This wasn’t one of the calibers “in the house”, as mentioned above, any longer, as he was bringing it to Rock Harbor. This steel beauty had some weight to it, and was in a 1911 frame, of the famed Colt military frame. The magazine held 8 rounds, with 1 in the chamber. It didn’t have the capacity of the Glock, but it was a work of fine craftsmanship. The gun came with a paddle holster, which slid over the belt. It also had a 2-magazine holder that also slipped over the belt. 25 rounds with 3 magazines was a little heavy, and not as compact as some concealed guns, but had the punch of a .40, which was deadlier than a 9mm. He also kept it because each time there was a newsworthy mass shooting, and the subsequent run on guns and ammo, 9mm was bought up, and prices went up. While .40 cal. was a little more expensive, it was a rarer caliber, and was ALWAYS on the shelves, even during the worst of the buy-outs. This beauty had been Greg’s everyday carry weapon, when he could have heavy enough clothes to cover the pistol. In summer months, he settled for the Sig P938, which he planned to carry until he got all his gear to the family river farm house. His Glock at home was too bulky for him to carry without a jacket, so was right next to the bedside in the hidden holster behind his bedside table.
Greg was bringing the .40 to leave at Rock Harbor, as it would be his home soon. He also brought his P938 and the revolver in the truck to go with his Mauser. He brought all of his .40 ammunition, which wasn’t much – 4 boxes of 50. He didn’t bring any more 9mm ammunition for the pistols than he had in them, as there was not a shooting range near the river house.
In rifle calibers, the Creighton family got down to one Ruger 10-22 (also attached to a backpack in his daughter’s closet). This came with 3 - 10-round circular magazines of .22 LR. The 2 not loaded fit into slots in the rifle stock. Greg also, bought a 30-round extended magazine for it. These, he loaded with hollow points for his daughter. He also left a few boxes of target-load 22 in her backpack.
In his own home, Greg had an Olympic Arms AR-15 in 5.56mm that Greg traded for at a gun show, because he liked the Army Digital paint job on it. While many don’t know this, 5.56 rifles are slightly superior to .223 rifles, from an ammunition perspective, because you CAN run either 5.56MM or .223 caliber rounds though a 5.56, but only an unwise person would do it the other way around. This gave the 5.56 a little more ammunition flexibility than many traditional .223 AR-15’s. He also had a great deal on a Smith & Wesson M&P 10 (Military and Police model) in .308 for hunting wild boars. This was basically an AR-15 platform, but with beefed up parts for the heavier round. He purchased several extra magazines for it, and several hundred .308 rounds, also known as 7.62 x 51 – the same round used in many of the weapons he trained on in the army, like the M60 and M240. These rounds could punch through several walls to take out bad guys, and had tremendous stopping power for large game like Deer, Boar and bad guys in leather. Hiding behind anything besides an engine block was not really cover, just concealment. Greg had at least 500 rounds of ammunition for these rifles, stashed safely with several months of freeze-dried food in his “prepper closet” at home.
Finally, Greg had one “bastard caliber” rifle that he just could not part with. It was an 8mm Mauser bolt-action rifle in the 1898 model. This rifle was a war trophy from his grandfather’s service in WWII, and although it was in the overly large and expensive 8mm caliber, Greg just loved shooting it (although he couldn’t shoot it at the Gun Club, because it would punch holes through the back wall). He upgraded the stock to a modern Sporter stock, and bought a decent Leupold 3-9 magnification hunting scope on it. He brought it to the beach house on his this run, because it was heavy and he couldn’t shoot it at the gun club. He wasn’t looking forward to the good-byes, because he was a regular, but he figured he’d at least get lots of hugs and free rounds… until this happened.
Despite having these weapons to play with at home, April’s apocalypse found Greg in Rock harbor with only the Mauser (and 200 rounds of 1975 Turkish Ammunition that he bought on-line), the “Gucci” EMP .40, the P938 pocket pistol, and the Ruger revolver that he remembered was in the console of his now-useless Toyota Tundra.
In other words, Greg, the Gun Nut who spent so much of his last 20 years collecting guns and survival gear for the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI), showed up to the dance with his Gucci gun and ammo, plus about 20 rounds of 9mm ammunition, and 200 rounds of Mauser ammunition that had to be loaded 1 round at a time, and into a magazine that held an amazingly low 5 rounds when fully loaded. He also had a huge backpack full of relatively state-of-the-art prepper gear, but he left the vast majority of his Prepper stuff back at home, when he FINALLY might need it. Yeah, Greg realized that he and his generally good Karma just had a parting of the ways.
Since it was approaching “happy hour”, Greg sat down for a moment, and had a beer. He needed to reflect on how he got himself in this situa
tion. After all that prepping, he just about wanted to cry over the LACK of supplies he had – especially because if he was at home, he’d be crowing and saying, “I told you so!” to anyone who would listen.
Why here and now?
By early April, Greg was going stir crazy after he negotiated a merger that ended up buying out his contract. His wife was in the middle of tax season and came home late to a dinner and a camp fire in the pit. As they sat around the campfire on their mountain cabin property, he expressed his frustration. “Darlin’, I’m going bat-shit crazy. I don’t know how to handle this unemployment thing! I’ve re-done the kitchen floors, cabinets, and got carpet put down so we can sell this thing with the kids at college. There’s nothing to do but bounce off the walls or go drink at the gun club.”
His wife, Leigh, leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Honey,” she said, “You’ve worked your butt off for 24 years, you put me through my CPA certification, and we’ve gotten Maria and Jared most of the way through college. Now we both need to find our own path. I think we’re done. You know I’ll always love what we’ve done, and our kids, but I think we’re on 2 paths, and so, I want a divorce. Go off, write your book, be what you want to be for the next chapter of your life.
Greg looked at her for a long time. He realized she was right. He probably was done, too. It had been a long time since they had laughed together. So, he took the high road, along with her.
“Well, I have a book in me somewhere, and I need to move some of our stuff closer to where I want to end up, which is near Baltimore somewhere.” He said. “I should probably empty out a lot of the stuff from my ‘prepper cave’, since I’ll be moving, and I’ve upgraded just about everything that I bought when I was young and dumb.” He looked up at the moon, and an idea struck him. “Maybe I should take a bunch of the old stuff, plus our kayak and other bulky stuff that we don’t want to move on short notice to my Grandparents’ house in Rock Harbor. What do you think?”
Leigh got a big smile on her face, and probably not just because he made it easier for her. He also wouldn’t be her problem for any longer. She knew, deep in her heart that they were done. He seemed happiest when he was on short vacations between managing his 250 or so staff at the company that he ran the operations for. Over the many years of their marriage, she tried to knock him out of his “bored funks” by doing things like: Learn how to play guitar this year; get your Master’s degree this year; how about hardwood floors at a 45-degree angle, and other distractions that added value in his mind, and kept her from killing him.
“I think you should do just that. Pack up Bubba the Tundra with all the big bulky things from your shed, including the kayak, and then fill up the passenger seat with as much junk as you can from your prepper closet. Just don’t take my Glock!
“Are you sure I should leave you armed?
“Well, you better. You won’t be here to protect me any longer. You know I’ll always love what we did together, but it’s time for us to chase our own dreams.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Keep an eye on the boy. His shit isn’t straight yet.”
“I know. Give Maria my love when you see her next. They’re twins, so you know they’ll be on the phone in minutes. How about we have lunch with them on Wednesday and tell them at Noon.”
“OK, Darlin.” Greg stood up and kissed her on top of the head.” It’s been good, baby. I’ll see you around.” He needed to get out of here before he lost it, so packed up his most urgent things that night, and drove most of the night, until he found a cheap hotel online in North Carolina.
Deter
Rock Harbor was designed as a weekend retreat and retirement community for people from the Washington DC, and Richmond/Fredericksburg VA area. It wasn’t a formal “community”, so much as plots of land available for people to purchase and develop in a way they saw fit. Greg’s grandfather retired from NSA and bought his shore lot, and a group if inland lots extremely inexpensively, as an “investment for the family”. No 2 houses on the shoreline were alike, and they were built to the satisfaction of the buyers, and the landscape. Many, like Greg’s Grandparent’s house, were waterfront properties. When both Pearl-Harbor-survivor Grandparents died, their 4 children decided to keep the property for family use, and Greg was currently the only occupant of this property. As they needed money, some of the children asked to be bought out, and Greg’s Mom bought them out. For a while, she was the sole owner, then signed it over to Greg. The condition as that he allowed all of the cousins to use it, as long as they didn’t abuse it. Greg’s Mom had retired to Arizona and had told her only son that he would inherit it – along with the headaches of managing family visits and maintenance. She had divorced his Scottish Dad years ago, and Greg saw him once per year at the Salmon fishing camp. Greg called his mom from the road, and she encouraged him to move in, since it was his problem, and possibly salvation now. She was relieved about the divorce, as she never really liked Greg’s wife. Several of the Hawaiian grandparent’s grandkids had lived in this house while they were in a transition, like between jobs or houses.
Because it was the middle of the week in early April (and just barely Spring), Greg knew from driving around the peninsula that most occupants were not in their homes when the shit hit the fan (SHTF). People don’t usually go to their beach homes until May or June. Greg’s fishing excursion was a pleasant surprise to him, as the fish don’t usually start biting until early May, but he could thank Global warming for one thing, if nothing else. He would have to get to the fish on the stringer, but they would be OK for the next few hours, if the disaster going on didn’t stop the tides from rising and falling, or more bombs didn’t fall. He decided he couldn’t worry about shit he couldn’t control.
After taking the quick inventory, Greg took the fish off the stringer, and filleted them. He cut the skin off the filets, leaving the skin attached at the tail. This trick was something Pop had taught him at 10 years old, and saved on the mess. It also made it easier to keep the meat together for the traps. He put on gloves, and carefully hacked the poison ivy, and fetched a few crab traps from under the deck. Each trap got a fish carcasses stuffed into the bait hole, with the spiky fins from the fish locking the bait in place. Greg tied each trap to one of the nearby dock pilings with the line tied below the water. At this point, he was less worried about having an un-marked crab trap as he was worried about someone poaching his crabs. He knew he could defend the traps, but didn’t want to tempt some hungry stranger into getting shot for something as stupid as poaching a half-dozen crabs.
While doing the relatively mind-numbing task of filleting the perch and croakers, Greg mentally went over the list of his assets on hand.
In addition to the kayak and kite that Greg brought to be left at the beach house, he brought the guns previously discussed. He also brought his Bug-out bag (BOB). Basically, it was full of his survival gear. This gear was the gear he had purchased once he seriously into prepping. He left his older bag at home, in his prepper closet. He was going to empty the closet of all the freeze-dried food and other “prepper” stuff on his next trip home, although he’d probably leave some for his wife and son. Now, they could have it all.
For knives, he had his bench-made switchblade, a very high-quality knife that he always kept in his pocket. He had a 5” fixed-blade Buck knife with a rubber handle and deer gutting hook on the back side. He also had a large Gerber combat knife with a 7” blade, half of which was serrated. The handle had a metal point on the other end, presumably for breaking glass. This knife, which he always kept in the side door of the truck, would be living on his belt from now on, opposite his Springfield .40 holster. There was also a low-end folding knife that he kept with his magnesium fire starting stick in the BOB, as he didn’t want to mess up his good blades shaving magnesium flakes from the square. This square also had a flint imbedded in it for igniting the small pile of magnesium shavings quickly, which burned at a very high temperature.
Greg had an Army digi-cam b
aseball cap, embossed with “Army Veteran”, and a “Boonie hat” in the same pattern, sprayed with waterproofing spray. He had a poncho, also in the same pattern – as clashing camouflage patterns was a fashion faux pa that he would not be doing. He was not so well set with cold weather gear, as this trip was supposed to be a trip of 60-degree days, and 45-50 degree nights. He did have a rolled-up set of long johns in the bottom of his BOB, and a polar-fleece pull-over in olive color, with San Francisco embossed on the chest. This was a souvenir of a conference from several years, and he found it in his “gym bag” from the days that he went more regularly. It was a baggy XXL, so it still fit him.
He had many changes of socks, every soldier’s best friend. In addition to those in his travel suitcase, he had 3 pair of green Army wool socks were rolled up in the outer pockets of his pack, along with his warm clothes. To go over them, he had a pair of Hi-Tek hiking boots, and a rolled-up army Digi-cam pattern pair of cargo pants.
For food, he had whatever was in the house (and those abandoned ones around him) and about 5 large packs of Mountain House, freeze dried food. This just-add-water food was very lightweight and was packed with calories. Greg recalled flavors like Chicken and Noodles, Chili with rice, and Beef Stroganoff. He snickered, as he thought about the old joke about the Steer Masturbating, or Beef “Strokin’off”.
