>societal collapse event happens
>it's a slow regression rather than the snap SHTF scenarios that people like to talk about and plan for
>society still exists
>crime rates do rise, but the world doesn't start turning into Mad Max or anything
>goods become more expensive and you need to spend a larger portion of your income on necessities, but people can still afford necessities
>luxury items become rare
>ammo becomes prohibitively expensive for any regular practice
>this will continue to be the status quo for an indefinite amount of time
What more sustainable alternatives to firearms would be good for continuing to enjoy regular recreational target practice while also having utility for hunting or killing varmints in such a scenario? Bonus if they can be reasonably viable in common self defense scenarios as well. Bows stick out as an option, but what other options would be up to the task?
For me it's the old reliable atlatl, one of mankind's oldest and trustiest friends. Pic semi-related as I would be nude instead.
Honorable mention to the sling.
Slings are inaccurate as shit though.
Mesopotamian giant hands typed this post.
Tell that to Goliath
I still like me firearms, but I have a lot of respect for primitive weapons.
i know how to make black powder
i know how to cast bullets
why wouldn't I just use a muzzleloader?
>i know how
Knowing how doesn't mean shit. The question would be if you're confident enough in your ability to continue sourcing the components to make decent quality powder along with components for whatever method of ignition you use.
You said ammo becomes impossible to get not sulfur.
OP said ammo would be prohibitively expensive to shoot regularly with and that goods in general would become more expensive and sometimes harder to find. Why wouldn't you expect components like sulfur to be affected? Also, black powder can vary massively in quality depending on the wood you use to make the charcoal, with the people I've read about doing it opting for buying specific kinds of wood online rather than just using any wood.
Look up the saltpetre poems from the civil war:
The Confederate View of It
“John Harralson, John Harralson
You are a wretched creature;
You’ve added to this cruel war
A new and useful feature.
You’d have us think, while every man
Is bound to be a fighter
The Ladies—bless the pretty dears—
Should save their pee for Nitre.
John Harralson, John Harralson,
Where did you get the notion
To send your barrel around the town
To gather up the lotion?
We thought the girls had work enough
In making shirts and kissing
But you have put the pretty dears
To patriotic pissing.
John Harralson, John Harralson,
Do pray invent a neater
And somewhat immodest way
Of making your saltpeter.
For ‘tis an awful idea, John,
Gunpowdery and cranky,
That when a lady lifts her skirts
She’s killing off a Yankee.”
The Yankee View of It
“John Harralson, John Harralson,
We’ve read in song and story,
How women’s tears, in all the years,
Have moistened fields of glory.
But never was it told before,
How ‘mid such scenes of slaughter,
Your Southern beauties dried their tears
And went to making water.
No wonder that your boys were brave!
Who couldn’t be a fighter,
If every time he fired his gun
He used his sweetheart’s nitre.
And vice-versa, what could make
A Yankee soldier sadder
Than dodging bullets fired by
A pretty woman’s bladder.
They say there was subtle smell
Which lingered in the powder.
And as the smoke grew thicker and
The din of battle louder,
That there was found in this compound
One serious objection:
No soldier boy could sniff it
Without having an erection.”
Crossbows. Arrows and bolts aren't too hard to make and very forgiving if you're off by a milimeter here or there. You can also reuse them over and over.
But do you have the ingredients and materials? You might have a couple pounds of sulfur but what do you do when you run out? Where do you go for more sulfur? What about lead? Are you planning on retrieving every bullet or are you going to be melting lead down? What are you going to melt down?
>crossbows
Just don't go too powerful, otherwise you're going to be breaking bolts and wearing out parts often.
That's true. Realistically, you don't need more poundage than a hunting crossbow.
Based and black powder pilled, I personally want to get a few more black powder guns in part because I love the history and they were the weapons that my ancestors relied on to survive probably up until the beginning of the 20th century and because I love the history of them.
If you have properly stacked ammo you should not have to worry about running out. One round of 12 gauge buckshot should put meat on your table for weeks/months. All your firearms you plan on depending on in a SHTF should have 1000 rounds. 1000 rounds of ammo should last a lifetime properly stored. Unless its some type of total melt down.
>1000 rounds of ammo should last a lifetime properly stored
Do you anticipate dying after a couple years max or something?
If you shot only rabbits, and didn't figure out how to trap them or anything else, and missed half your shots, 1000 rounds would last you a couple years of eating rabbit supplemented with whatever you can grow or forage.
If you are shooting deer or larger animals, and you don't miss that much, 1000 rounds will last as long as you need.
Also - if your survival depends on hunting, and after a few years of surviving by hunting you run out of ammo and aren't able to hunt any other way, you should probably die before you can pass your genes on
If you have a large stockpile you have to worry about loosing that stockpile. You may be forced to flee your home and might not have the means to transport it. You might suffer a fire and have that ammo cook off. You could be robbed precisely because of that ammo stockpile.
why the frick are you talking about what you have?
you talk to no one.
I'm basically saying that stockpiling bullets for SHTF isn't foolproof. You're just in denial about it so the parts of your brain that could understand shut down.
You really overestimate the difficulty of carrying 1000 rounds of .308. It fits in a tiny box. You also seem to expect modern US infantry combat in SHTF, when the first thing people will do in SHTF is do everything than can to prevent this and appoint police/guards to fend off anyone who thinks its a good idea. Towns would have militia-owned stocks of weapons and ammo for combat against lone wolf homosexuals and raiders. Your ammo would be your personal stock for hunting trips and self defense, which don't even occur weekly and consume 1-3 rounds each max.
1000 rounds of .308 is frankly excessive outside of combat. large game would become scarce quick. you'd want 1000 rounds of .22, or pellets for an airgun, or maybe a mix of 50 carbon and metal arrows, and basic knowledge of constructing traps and snares if not reusable ones made of metal and a decent surplus of fishing equipment.
And I'm saying a stockpile can be lost either through accident or theft. It doesn't matter how many rounds you have, you can loose your entire stockpile either to accident or theft. If you can replace your losses then this is an annoyance. If you can't, it's a disaster.
>starts giving advice based on the common SHTF fantasies everyone talks about rather than the slow decline scenario OP is talking about
Let's assume a young anon living for additional 50 years.
50*12 is 600 months, 1000 rounds would mean one shot per month on average. Wonder how far would that take you if hunting game for survival.
Cheap ammo by the bucket load. Like .22
This will get small game on the table. And even offer some limited defense. Rapid fire at a charging attacker improves your odds . Bandit with some small not immediately deadly holes is better then fresh a uninjured Bandit if you need to fight. Though a second HD weapon would be better.
Crossbow easyer to use than a bow. Deadly and you can somewhat replace ammo. But the spring steel and other parts might wear out. But if you survived that long the transition to bow should be easy.
Traps small, like for rats, of big ones. They work 24/7. Big traps offer Home defense potential if someone dumb tries to raid you.
This kinda shows how far 1000 shots go.
You can dry/smoke meat and freeze in winter.
And if after 50 years you were not able to improve your trapping/ Farming/ fishing/ hunting you are just a moron. After 10 years you should be deep into rabbit starvation while drunk on Apple Cider
If your after deer not far. Last time the food and financial world melted down (Dust Bowl-->Great Depression double whammy)
Deer basically went extinct in many states.
laser gun + solar charger
Get on welfare and use the money to buy ammo and reloading supplies. The ~~*feds*~~ already rob you through taxes and use the money for drag queen story time in Ukrainian schools, so there's nothing wrong with stealing it back.
You got too specific with your conditions, because what you're describing is the Black Powder era.
People got good b/c they were great hunters. Regular slobs can't afford to target shoot.
When Alvin York was shooting at those turkeys, perhaps you forget that the turkeys were given away and food brought to the competition so that everyone could feed well and not be out the lead, powder, and travel time/expense.
Or you may be a dirty disgusting foreigner talking about firearms as if you have some business talking about them. Without a 2A, you have no right at all unless you're from the Isle of Man. You're not.
>You got too specific with your conditions,
>an extremely generalized description of what real societal collapse commonly looks like is too specific
wut
>Regular slobs can't afford to target shoot.
Except guns aren't the only weapon you can enjoy target shooting with.
>Except guns aren't the only weapon you can enjoy target shooting with.
But in narrow times, your tools don't become playthings.
>Horse Racing is the Sport of Kings
For a reason you privileged numbskull. Most people in horse times walked, nobody could afford a horse and they certainly couldn't afford to race/joust with them.
Same will be true in narrow times again. The only type of weaponry that you will use for recreation will be at the King's Pleasure. There will be no recreational weapon use.
>NOOOOO YOU CAN'T ENJOY YOURSELF AT ALL WHEN TIMES ARE TOUGH
Oh, it's another moron with a massively warped idea of how the world actually works.
One of my forebears who lived in northern France in the 1500 & 1600’s had over 30 horses.
>ywn live in the comfy apocalypse with you robo-waifu coffeemaker
why even live?
a katana. op is fricking moronic.
>Teleports behind deer
Crossbows and heavy duty slingshots. There's also that caveman spear thrower but I don't remember the name. For self defence people will start carrying daggers and modified batons.
>slow regression
In this situation, nothing. People will just eventually be priced out of weapons.
There will always be a demand and market for firearms. Compared to other technology, like entertainment systems, computers or cars, they're relatively easy to produce and maintain.
Even in the Old West, far away from all other comforts of civilization, people used firearms and reloaded their ammunition. Same goes for poachers in Africa.
The biggest change will probably be that you will have much more people producing reloading components locally and a stop of big assembly line-style gun production in favour of cottage industry.
>Even in the Old West, far away from all other comforts of civilization, people used firearms and reloaded their ammunition.
Yeah, but it was much more expensive and people didn't shoot nearly as often.
Here's an 1882 catalog and in inflation calculator that goes back that far. ammo is on the last page.
https://cartridgecollectors.org/content/catalogs/U.M.C/1882%20UMC%20HARTLEY%20and%20GRAHAM.pdf
Noteable prices:
>the cheapest .22 (what would today be called .22 short) is $6/1000, or 17c/round adjusted for inflation
>.38 long Colt (which .38 special would later be based on a lengthened version of loaded to higher pressure) is $14.50/1000, or 42c/round
>.45 Colt is $24/1000, or 69c/round
>.45-70 is $1/round
And this is before considering that a lot of normal people weren't paid as much when adjusting for inflation as well (consider how families used to rely on child labor). All of these are loaded with black powder and lead bullets, and fall drastically short of the performance people expect of modern ammunition as well. The original black powder loadings of .45-70 achieved only slightly more muzzle energy from a 32" barrel than what 7.62x39mm can achieve out of a 16" barrel.
Your idea of pay back in those times is a bit skewed to the modern era. Most families lived on farms and relied on that for food and supplies. Money was something that was nice to have to buy tools and other luxurious necessities. There were of course wandering cowboys and farmhands but they were seen as the lower class, mostly mexicans and blacks. City wage slaves are always the same regardless of the time, I say that as a wagie.
Anecdotally, my great great grandfather had to leave his family farm in Iowa around 1890 when he was 12 because everyone in his family were dying of fever and he was forced to leave by his father to survive. Ended up drifting west to Montana and started driving horses up and down from Texas to Saskatchewan.
There is an amusing story that was written up where this one night in about 1915 he heard a rustling in the chicken coop, went out there with a shotgun and found two “chicken stealers”, held them both at gunpoint and got his wife to ride into town to summon the Mounted Police, who found them being held at gunpoint still when they got there.
>muh inflation, muh luxury, muh normies cant afford muh Tiffany engraved long colts and buffalo rifles because muh statistics
Block your path and shoots you, then hacks with machete and cooks for a dinner.
>laws of supply and demand stop existing for some reason
Every motherfricker would have a fricking ammo factory in their garage just like how every towelhead has a field of opium in Afghanistan. Why the frick would ammo skyrocket if we were in such a bad state that you just have active shooting wars between gangs and paramilitary forces all around you?
>What more sustainable alternatives to firearms would be good for continuing to enjoy regular recreational target practice while also having utility for hunting or killing varmints in such a scenario?
Probably airguns, like spring-piston weihrauch 97k's with plenty of replacement springs, barrels, and seals, and some molds for casting slugs
crossbows are probably runner up - offering superior hunting capabilities with the right arrowheads, will only require new limbs, string, and perhaps the odd trigger mechanism replaced occasionally.
but slingshot rifles get my vote - youtube com/watch?v=AHWh3q8Jwhk
Reloading shotgun shells. Pumps can work with smokeless or black powder reliably. Lead is cheap for now. Call me crazy but I suspect it is going up in the next several years but you can always pull it out of a scrap yard. The only issue would be primers but it'll just be another one of those "necessities". And wear a mask when melting it down anon. I know it's probably fine outdoors but why risk it?
Any moron with some basic wood and metal working skills can make a decent crossbow.
Blowguns seem like they'd be fun to mess around with and easy to make your own ammo for compared to other options with reusable ammo. I'm not sure how good they are for hunting though.
Blowguns are an interesting choice, definitely easy to make with salvaged modern materials. I'd say they're deadly enough against small game but absolutely nothing larger than a medium sized cat at close range if you don't use poison. Range varies wildly depending on lungs, darts, and tubes but you should get good results at around 7m-8m with some practice.
Birds are a good target as their fragile wings can be easily broken to ground them. Probably won't kill them immediately but at least they can't fly away now.
You need good lungs though, can't stress that enough. Blowguns are best left to the young and strong. Also go to the bathroom and sit down for ten minutes before you shoot, even if you feel empty. I have absolutely seen people shit themselves after a few puffs.
Compound bows are the single most common non firearm projectile weapon and you should know how to adjust and use them.
Crossbows, as mentioned already. It's hard to imagine such regress that steel is no longer abundant. By the late medieval period, they were very neat.
But even regress to pre-firearm era seems unlikely.
>It's hard to imagine such regress that steel is no longer abundant
You say that like you can't make a crossbow out of wood.
The handheld rock or even better a sharp rock on a stick. In the event of societal collapse we may forget how to create spicy rocks that fly out of hollow sticks super fast but the handheld rock will qlways be available as Mankind's most reliable and battle tested weapon. You can throw it or you can use it to bash Grug from next door over the head with.
A car is only so good as long as you have gas.
Take the kayak or canoe pill. I feel that seeing as how most communities, towns and cities were built along bodies of water, the use of waterborne transportation would become more widespread.