by Art Merrill | Contributing Editor
Dazed survivors looked for loved ones after super typhoon Yolanda. We became prey for escaped convicts in the lawless apocalypse that followed.
I was in the Philippines when super typhoon Yolanda smashed dead-center into our coastal town of Dulag in November 2013. The ferocious storm that killed nearly 7,000 people around us was over in a few hours, but the aftermath was both staggering and long-lasting: near 100% destruction, hundreds of downed powerline poles and trees blocking all roads, no food or communications of any kind, dead carried through the streets, mass graves, bandits, murderous mobs, no law enforcement. The first weeks were grim, and Dulag had no electricity for five months.
On top of all our other immediate survival problems, more than 60 convicts escaped the storm-damaged prison 16 miles away, and they were literally raping and murdering their way toward us. I set up a makeshift defense-in-depth around our damaged home but the only firearm I could obtain in that extremely restrictive country was a dilapidated and dubious homemade shotgun with six rounds of buckshot. Quite the adventure!
That critical need for a firearm in an intense, lengthy urban survival situation leads me today to carefully consider the subject of ammunition and reloading in that context. How can we incorporate handloading into preparedness for long-term survival? And what if we don’t have a reloading bench because we bugged out or it was destroyed?
Choosing the most common calibers ups your options. The .308 Win, .30-30 and .30-06 all use the same diameter bullets. The .30 magnums and 7.62×54 use them too, and though not ideal, they’re better than nothing in the 7.62×39 and .303 British, for example.
First, the firearm
As with any firearm purchase, the first question to answer is, “What is its purpose?” In wilderness survival the primary purpose may be for acquiring meat, but in an urban scenario its first job is defense of family and resources. Certainly there are endless reasonable arguments about which firearms best fulfill wilderness, urban or both survival niches; but regardless of your choice, when you don’t have ammunition for it a firearm is only useful as a jack handle.
You can make your own “pre-measured” dipper from a cut-off cartridge case. Adding a handle isn’t really necessary.
If we expect the ammo supply to dry up, then it makes sense to prepare with whatever is most prevalent to increase our opportunities for reloading. The 9mm Luger, .40 S&W and .38 Spec/.357 Magnum are likely the most popular pistol and revolver cartridges in America; among rifle cartridges the .223 Remington, .308 Winchester and 7.62x39mm probably top the list.
Choosing firearms in the most common calibers also provides a potential additional benefit. If other survivors need cartridges (believe me, you will be cooperating and possibly bartering with others to meet your needs), it’s a good bet they’ve got at least one gun that shoots one of the most common calibers—that’s what made them common.
You don’t have to agree with that argument to consider the following points, which are universal to whatever specific cartridge you favor. Also universal is the certain failure of electrical service in most situations for which we might conceivably prepare. Fortunately, the electric goodies we use in handloading—tumblers, scales and case prep tools—are conveniences, not necessities. Lacking a reloading bench means we won’t have the mechanical advantage of bench-mounted tools, but that isn’t a deal-killer, either.
OK, so we’re squatting in our cave/apartment sewing a bearskin/dining room curtain into a blanket for the nuclear winter while listening to our empty stomach rumble when a neighboring survivor brings us a mixed bag of commercial .30-30 and milsurp .308 Win brass.
“I’ll give you a small pig and my sister-in-law if you reload these for me,” he says.
“Show me the pig,” we reply.
Let’s reload.
A loading bench in a box, the Lee Loader seems a “natural” but has limited survival applications we’ll cover next month.
Press on. The heart of any handloading setup is the reloading press—but we lost that with our reloading bench.
Prior to the invention of the bench-mounted press shooters reloaded cartridges with a tong type tool that held resizing and bullet seating dies. A few similar tools are still available today, the Lee Breech Lock Hand Press being the most economical. See this space next month for a full review of the Lee press (and comment on the Lee Loader), and let’s move on for now.
Case prep. We must first clean cases; lacking electricity we can clean them piecemeal with fine steel wool or abrasive kitchen pads. After resizing/depriming there are any number of manual case trimmers, chamferers and primer pocket cleaning tools, many that are as portable as pocket change. Cases do not need trimming every time they’re reloaded, but they’ll need it after several firings to ensure flawless feeding and chambering—and “flawless” performance is good in a survival situation.
Prime time. Before seating new primers we’ll have to use a hand-held cutting tool to remove the primer pocket crimp from the milsurp brass. A primer pocket uniforming tool works, though your fingers may complain. If we lost our hand-held priming tool in the disaster, we can still carefully seat a primer by setting it anvil-up on a hard flat surface and pressing the case primer pocket downward onto it with a punch inserted through the case mouth. This does not seat the primer below flush with the case head where it should be, but that is of less concern if shooting the cartridge in a bolt action rifle. If needed for a semi-auto, we could use a primer-size punch to firmly press, not strike (duh), the primer below flush.
Measuring powder. We can measure powder charges with a balance beam scale—no electricity or batteries required, it runs endlessly on free and reliable gravity. We might also measure powder charges by volume instead of weight. The only manufacturer who offers fixed volume calibrated powder measuring tools is, again, Lee Precision, with their Improved Powder Measure Kit of plastic dippers. The kit includes load data (laminating the load data sheet would make it as waterproof, if not as indestructible, as the dippers). Also note that Lee includes one dipper and load data with some of their die sets.
We might also plan well ahead and make our own “preset” dippers from empty cartridge cases. Simply choose a powder load, dump it into a case, mark its level, dump out the powder charge and cut off the top of the case flush where we marked it. Then use an indelible marker to write the charge weight and type of powder on the side of the case. I’ve even gone kinda uptown on these by soldering a handle on to make a real dipper.
Bullets. Casting bullets from scrap lead, such as wheel balancing weights or car batteries, has obvious preparedness applications, but most handloaders keep a big surplus of commercial bullets on hand. Here is where the “most common calibers” argument comes into play again. Our fellow survivor’s .30-30 and .308 Win both use the same diameter bullets. Though we wouldn’t normally use pointed bullets in a lever gun or flat nose bullets in a semi-auto, a survival situation might give us no other choice. Also note that both cartridges utilize a good selection of identical powders.
Weatherproofing and storage. Because powder and primers are susceptible to moisture damage, it’s extremely important to protect them to the nth degree. Ordinary milsurp steel ammo cans offer great protection, so long as the rubber gasket is in good condition. It’s important to note that even though a container may be waterproof, it is still possible for moisture to condense inside it, depending upon conditions. Tossing a bag of desiccant inside before sealing the container is good extra insurance.
Vacuum sealing machines aren’t just for freezing meat. Sealing small quantities of powder or primers in individual vacuum seal plastic is another weatherproofing option. If we remove powder from its original container for this sealing method, we’ll clearly mark on both sides of the package the type of powder inside (we could also include personal load data). Same goes for primers.
Particular prep. The two major factors to consider in preparedness handloading are: 1) the lack of electricity, and 2) the assumption of a long-term survival scenario. Other factors particular to your place, prep level and expected situation will dictate specific needs, so your thoughts on those are more valuable than mine (see sidebar). The intent here is to get your own mental gears turning on preparedness handloading.
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Experience vs theory
Regarding survival preparation, it’s important to separate real-world experience from a writer’s opinion. While the latter can be valuable for mental exercises, what really counts when your life is in the balance is to ask, “Has this actually been employed in a real survival situation?”
I graduated US Navy schools in land, sea and desert survival, as well as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) School in preparation for possibly being shot down and captured by an enemy. Techniques taught in those schools are grounded upon lessons-learned experiences, yet they (and a lifetime of outdoorsman skills) did not prepare me specifically how to survive an urban apocalypse amid utter destruction in a Third World country where I didn’t speak the language.
What they did for me, however, was to instill a “survival mindset”—an analytical problem-solving mode and the confidence that I was not helpless and powerless. Most of that problem-solving entailed the use of something we don’t see much in “prepper” advice articles: cooperation. Though we may like viewing ourselves as rugged individualist survivor types (and military training emphasized individual survival), my experience is that in an urban situation, cooperation with others is critical. Cooperation allowed me to acquire a firearm and participate in a neighborhood warning system for mutual protection. Cooperation enabled me to travel with others over the mountains in search of food and to bring it home safely over bandit-patrolled roads. Cooperation garnered water from a neighbor’s hand pump when the electricity failed. The list goes on.
I have not employed the preparedness handloading techniques presented here in an actual survival situation—they are only my opinions based on 30 years of handloading, 20 years of military survival training, and one deadly urban survival experience. Hopefully neither you nor I will need to put them to the test, but hope alone is a terrible thing to rely upon, and so we prepare.
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