VZ 58

VZ58

The VZ58.

 I am a big fan of the VZ58. It's a great rifle and you can get one at a great price. There are a few different models and I won't go  into that here but you should be able to pick up one for $500 to $800. It's a much better rifle than the SKS but as it fires the same ammo so you can afford lots of it. 

One other thing to point out about the VZ and the SKS is how tough they are. They are old school weapons made from steel and wood. They can take a lot of abuse and keep on going.

SKS

SKS

The SKS. If money is hard to come by and for a lot of us it is then you can't beat the SKS. It's not the best rifle in the world but you can get one for around $100 bucks.

That's an incredible price for a good solid rifle. And it has the added benefit of the availability of cheap ammo. You can get crates of the stuff for a few hundred bucks.

Beretta CX4 Storm

Beretta CX4 Storm

Beretta CX4 Storm.

Now this little gun is totally different from the SKS and VZ. It's a modern design made with a lot of plastic parts and it fires pistol ammo. But I really like mine. It's light and handy with no recoil to speak of and it would be a fantastic weapon for defending your apartment or suburban house.

The pistol caliber ammo is also suitable for hunting small game like rabbits and you could drop a dear or other large animal if you had to. Not that I would recommend it for large animals. 

One drawback is that it is an expensive little gun. At around $1000 to $1200 it's not something everyone can afford. But it's a great little gun.  Another nice feature worth mentioning is that if you are a fan of Beretta pistols you can get one that takes the same mags as the Storm. That can be really handy.

AR 15 Firearm

The AR 15 family of firearms

 A person could write an entire book on the AR 15.  All I will say is that it is an excellent firearm. It has lower recoil and is more accurate than the SKS and VZ58. On the down side it's a little more prone to breaking and it's requires a bit more maintenance.

The ammunition is more expensive but it's available just about everywhere. It is also more expensive at around $1000 to $1200. As I said before there are lots of great carbines and rifles. The AK 47 family. The FN FAL family. The Ruger Mini 14. The M14 family of rifles.

The list goes on forever. I am actually a big fan of my M1 carbine and would have listed it but for the fact that the .30 carbine ammo is getting a little harder to find.

Junk Guns Are A Good Buy And May Come In Handy

An $8 shotgun and a $20 rifle. May just save your life.

I was at an auction sale the other day and picked up some junk guns. A few old shot guns and a 22. I say junk guns as they are old and a tad rusty. Not really something that a person would want to use. But they were almost free and I have a plan for them. I call them give away guns.

Give away guns are guns that have no real value now but could have real value in a survival situation. One can imagine a situation where you need the help of others to defend your group but the others have no weapons.

Give away guns allow you to arm a large group of people with little cost. Now I know that giving guns to other people has risks but the bottom line is you may find that in order to survive you have to form larger groups of people. One family can not survive for ever without the support of the community.

I offer the following scenario for you. The world is falling apart. Gangs are roaming the streets and you are hunkered down in your house. Your neighbor is also hunkered down in his house. The mob reaches your house and attacks. You can ether fight them yourself or you can fight them with the help of the guy next door. You may have a much better chance of survival with your neighbor backing you up.

As I said before that giving guns to others has risks but you can reduce the risk by the choice of firearms you give away. Shotguns are probably the best choice as they are limited in range and penetration. This makes them better for defence than offence. In simple terms its hard to kill someone who is a long way away with a shotgun. So depending on the type of ammo you give away you can have some control over the range the gun can reach. A 12guage #4 can kill a man close up. It will seriously mess him up out to about 80yards. It probably won't kill him at 80 yards but it will hurt like hell. Or if your neighbor is farther away you may give him a few rounds of Buckshot. My neighbor is about 600 ft away so he may be able to hit my house with buckshot he would need to be really lucky to hit me.

Something to think about next time you see a cheap old gun.

  

Bond Arms Snake Slayer or Perhaps Zombie Slayer

I just picked up my new Bond Arms Snake Slayer (Well ok its my Wife's) I wont go into too much detail as you can find plenty of info and reviews on line and I see no point in repeating all that. So I will just concentrate on the anti Zombie potential of Snake Slayer.
 
In brief the Snake Slayer is a cool little .410 shotshell/.45Colt pistol. It looks like an old fashioned Derringer but its made to modern standards and is bigger than the original Derringers.  I should also say that you can get it in many other calibers just by swapping out the barrels but its the .410 shotshell/.45Colt that we are talking about as that's what I have.

As an anti Zombie weapon the Snake slayer has a few problems. I will get them out of the way first so we can talk about all the good features of this gun.



CONS AS A ZOMBIE KILLER GUN

1) Limited to 2 shots. Because its in the style of a Derringer it only holds 2 rounds and reloading is quite slow. The best reload time I can get is about 10 seconds. Someone younger and faster could probably do a little better but its still slow. When surrounded by hoards of the undead 10 seconds is an eternity.

2) Single action. As the Snake Slayer is single action you need to manually cook the hammer for each shot and that will also slow your rate of fire down a tad.

3) Bad sights. The sights on this little gun are just not that great. The rear sight is small and as the gun is all one colour (stainless steel) I find it quite hard to get a quick sight picture. However to be fair the gun is intended to be used at extremely close range so the sights are just a guide.

PROS AS A ZOMBIE KILLER GUN

Now for the good stuff.

1) Quality. The Snake Slayer is well made. It's a solid hunk of stainless steel that just looks really good. It feels like with a little care it would last a lifetime.

2) Reliability. I have found it quite reliable. I have had no issues with any brand of ammo that I have used. In fact I have had no misfires or any failures at all. I should say however that the gun has only had 250 rounds through it so something may crop up yet.

3) Its versatile. This gun is really a little tiny shot gun and as such its very versatile. With a simple change of shells you can go from shooting small animals like snakes or small birds to defending yourself from larger attackers like dogs or Zombies. A blast of .410 buckshot is devastating at close range. And with slugs or .45 Colt you can extend your range out to a considerable distance. I found it easy to ring a 12 inch steel gong at 60 yards from a seated position. I was able to hit it a few times from a standing position as well but I found it difficult. I should also mention that after about 5 shots it started to get a little hard on the hand. The recoil with slugs is managable but some may find it a bit much.

4) Easy to use. Its a really simple gun to use. Push the safety. Cock the hammer. Pull the trigger.

5) Safe. Because its so simple to use I believe it would be a gun that lends itself to safe use. The safety is large and simple and easy to use. Its a single action so one must cock the hammer before you can shoot it. It also has a rather stiff trigger pull that makes it hard for someone who is in a stressful situation to have an accidental discharge. You have to pull the trigger hard to make this gun go bang.

6) Easy to carry. At about 22 oz it's a nice easy gun to carry around. Yes you can find lighter guns but when you combine the light weight with the firepower of .410 buckshot its a nice carry gun.

So to sum it all up the Snake Slayer may not be the best Zombie gun but in my opinion its a handy little gun that would make a great back up gun or a good carry gun for most self defence situations. Just not hordes of the UnDead.

Print A Plastic Gun on a 3D printer.

In the last few months much attention has been given by the media about the possibility of printing out a working firearm on a home 3D printer. Some say its the next big thing. Some say it cant be done. Well as with most things the truth in fact is some place in the middle.

In simple terms it is possible to print a complete and fully functional firearm on a home 3D printer. However it will not be a particularly effective or reliable weapon. The simple reason for this is the limitations of materials available for use in home 3D printers and the poor print quality of most of the printers.

In simple terms home 3D printers print in plastic and plastic is just not that great of a material for making firearms. Firearms generate a lot of pressure and a lot of heat. And plastic is just not that great at dealing with pressure and heat.

The first generation of 3D printed firearms will probably be simple single shot firearms firing low power ammunition. Most of us have seen the plastic flare guns people have on boats. Well that flare gun is a firearm. The second generation will probably be something like a simple single action revolver. This gun will also fire low powered ammunition. The first generations will also probably be smooth bore firearms. It would not be possible to make a rifled barrel out of the plastics we have now for home 3D printers. The heat and pressure would strip the rifling out with the first shot. But rifling is not that important in a hand gun as your target is probably only 5 or 10 feet away. I suspect we are 10 or 20 years from people being able to print off something much more sophisticated like a Glock or an UZI.  

A plastic Flare Gun like the one in this photo with a few design modifications would be capable of firing low power ammunition like .22 or perhaps .32 The heat would cause extensive barrel erosion but as its a single shot firearm you would probably only get to fire one or two shots before the fight was over anyway.

Get Yourself A Toy Gun

One is fake. One is real.

Many people do not like guns. Many people live in places that do not allow guns. But most people (not all) don't mind having a toy gun and live in a place that toy guns are allowed.

Y would you want a toy gun?

From a few feet away many people cant tell the difference between a toy gun and a real gun. In fact some of the toy guns out their are so realistic its almost impossible to tell them from real guns with out picking them up. Another interesting fact is that most confrontations involving a gun end with no shots being fired. People just don't like to get shot.

So in simple terms if the bad guys think you have a gun they will often pick another victim.

WARNING

Most toy guns now have an orange painted muzzle. This is done to help the police tell toys from real guns. I am told that in some places it is illegal to paint over this orange. So you might want to find out about whats legal in your area. Or wait until things are really bad and you no longer need to worry about the law.

My New Zombie Gun. The Smith & Wesson Model 500

Smith and Wesson Model 500
Well I just picked up my newest addition to my arsenal. A Smith and Wesson Model 500 revolver. The Smith and Wesson Model 500 is a five-shot, double-action revolver firing the massive .500 S and W Magnum cartridge.

It is built on Smith and Wessons largest frame, the X-Frame. Smith and Wesson claims it is the "most powerful production revolver in the world today" and this is largely correct. The Model 500 can fire a bullet weighing 350 gr ( 22.7 g; 0.8 oz) at 1975 feet per second (602 m/s) generating a muzzle energy of over 3,030 foot-pounds.

Now many people believe this gun is just way too big and powerful to be of much practical use. In fact that was my first thought when I first heard about this firearm a few years back. But after having shot it I soon changed my tune. Now I will say this gun is not for the novice shooter. The recoil is quite sharp and the weight of the gun (1.59 kg to 82 oz 2.32 kg) would make it just too heavy for some. And the fact that it only holds only 5 rounds would deter some who like a lot of rounds backing them up. However I believe that for the right person this gun can be a practical and let's face it, just plain cool addition to your anti zombie arsenal.

So what good can a heavy revolver with a lot of recoil and only 5 rounds be? Well lets see. Portable, accurate, large caliber, long range fire power that you can take any place. In simple terms this gun fills a niche that many other firearms do not. It gives you the ability to reach out and hit targets at distances that you just can't with an auto pistol or small revolver but its smaller and more compact than most rifles.

So why not just carry a smaller handgun and a rifle? Well the simple answer is that most of the time in a survival situation your guns are just dead weight that you have to carry around. Most of the time you are working or walking or engaged in some other activity and your guns are just a pain in the ass.

Think about it. You are out working trying to scrounge supplies or plant crops. What are you going to do with that heavy rifle. You are going to take it off and lean it against a tree because its just way too hard to do any work with it slung on your back. Yes you may have a smaller pistol on your belt but that's only a short range weapon. Most people can't hit a target with a small handgun beyond about 30 to 50 yards. And that's at a shooting range. It's a lot harder in the real world when the bad guy is hiding behind a car or tree and shooting at you. The 500 allows you to reach out to 100 or 200 yards with precision.

Now I know that there are other firearms that might fill this role. The PDW guns of the last 20 years or so like the FN P90 give fantastic firepower in a small portable package. But the bottom line is people are all different in what works for them or what they like. Their are lots of people who just don't like fancy hi-tech semi/auto guns. People who are used to more old fashioned simple technology. Or perhaps some one who is really comfortable with their smaller revolver and would like something in a format that they are familiar with. The 500 can fill this role.