Who’s Covering Your Evacuation?
If you talk to military guys, especially the Special Forces types, of which I’m honored to know a few and am able to seek advice from them, they will tell you two things. First, any evacuation needs to be covered by armed, overwatch support, and second, you can’t have too much coverage. Artillery and air power always make nice additions to a hasty repositioning and withdrawal of your forces. Except you won’t have the luxury of the air power and artillery thing for the withdrawal of your “forces.”
Your cover, or “overwatch,” if you’re lucky, will be maybe one or two people. They could be your spouse, other family members, or friends standing by you obviously armed and watching for anything that is a potential threat while you load the vehicle with gear. They will have to strike a balance between providing an obvious show of force to discourage others, or being behind cover in a low-profile position to protect themselves, you, and the loading team from incoming fire. Once you and your group are in the exit vehicle/s, they will have to cover your convoy as it drives away from danger, which is risky even for soldiers in up-armored HMMWVs (High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, or Humvees).
The danger and difficulty of evacuating from an epicenter of disorder is not to be taken lightly. Simply being armed is not enough. If it was, no cop would ever have to worry about tactics as they approach a risky situation. The presence of their gun would be sufficient enough to deter attack. What should come to mind, if you are in one of these potential epicenter areas and are planning on leaving when things go awry, is to leave before it gets totally and uncontrollably out of hand with as much advance lead time as you are able obtain.
CHAPTER THREE
Primary Weapon Selection
As I began putting the concepts for this book together and looked through my gun safe, as well as through periodicals and Internet writings, I realized there are a least two distinct categories of weapons that should be defined and discussed, as well as a crossover category.
As I watched the various prepper television shows, I saw that some people had made good, solid choices in terms of their armament, while others were going to rely on firearms they had purchased for other purposes such as hunting, target or informal recreational shooting, or defense of home or self during “normal” times. In fact, some of the choices made were, for the lack of a better term, just plain bad, guns that wouldn’t hold up to what they were going to be asked to do—providing protection from large groups of angry people who are armed with similar weaponry themselves. So, in order to help get you on what I consider to be the right track, let’s look first at what I believe to be suitable survival gun requirements.
Six Basic Requirements
There are six basic requirements that a firearm suitable for tactical preparation must meet.
RELIABILITY — This may seem to be a no-brainer, but, from what I’ve seen, it sometimes gets overlooked because of other factors that come into play, including the “looks cool” or “My buddy said this is the best!” concepts that may prevent those who are just starting to explore survival weapons from making a better choice. Throw in bad advice from inexperienced gun shop “commandos” and you may not only be on the verge of wasting a bunch of money, but also of making a choice that could affect your ability to survive armed confrontations. To put it succinctly, your tactical preparation guns must, I repeat must, be absolutely drop-dead reliable. Every time you pull the trigger, you must get the proper bang with the appropriate projectiles leaving the muzzle.
Reliable right out the box the gun came in is best. I don’t like guns that take a relatively long break-in period before they can be considered reliable. In this age of CNC machining and with the modern materials that are available, I don’t feel there’s a lot of legitimate excuse for break-in periods. Detroit and other auto manufacturers gave that up years ago; some of you youngsters reading this don’t remember having to drive your new car at different speeds for certain amounts of mileage, the breaking-in period, so the engine would last longer. Give me a weapon that runs flawlessly, right from the box, without doing anything to it. I don’t care how trendy or popular the gun is in whatever circle or how much of a status symbol it may be to own, neither is of value for this purpose. If we suffer a national implosion, a finicky firearm isn’t gonna get it. If you have to make an emergency evacuation, who are you going to get to fix that fancy (or extremely inexpensive) gun when it goes down? It isn’t likely there will be a gunsmith in the crowd of angry, dangerous people attempting to surround you and your family who will volunteer to fix your weapon so that you can go ahead and defend yourself with it.
RUGGEDNESS — Your preparation gun needs to be able to take a beating without functional damage, especially guns intended for evacuation or travel. They need to hold up to lowered levels of maintenance by you, because, unlike our military, you won’t have an unlimited supply line from a rear echelon to keep you and your gear up and running. Your weapon choices should not be a type that will require replacement parts like new springs every few thousand rounds or other specialized service for the duration of the conditions.
PORTABILITY — When I talk about survival conditions, I don’t mean conditions one might encounter on a weekend Audubon Society bird-watching hike. I am taking about dirty, dangerous, painfully brutal conditions, conditions where you will be short of food, water, and medical supplies because of limited carry capacity. Too, you may be injured or ill.
I will be 55 later this year. While I feel I am still in good shape, carrying heavy things around on foot over long distances in terrible conditions doesn’t appeal to me much anymore. So, do you think I’m going to want to lug around a fancy, piston-driven, heavy-barreled M4-type carbine with its acres of Picatinny rail and every accessory under the sun mounted on it for hours per day, maybe for multiple days? How about the excellent and capable Springfield Armory M1A SOCOM II, which weighs in at 10 pounds without anything attached to the rails? You think you can handle it now, sitting there reading this from the comfort of your armchair, but check with me after a day or two of dragging around these kinds of guns under the conditions I’m describing.