[3/23/17] You can read part 1 here.
If the time should ever come (hopefully a very long time from now), that society collapses and you are left to your own devices to survive, you may have to do things that you wouldn’t ordinarily even consider a viable option.
Making do with what you have, making something from nothing, re-purposing items and objects to serve purposes they were not originally designed for; these are all things you may have to do sometime. Some parts of the world may have, or are already experiencing this scenario as a normal way of life.
I myself have experienced this on occasion throughout my life, many times actually. You see a need and you do what you have to do to fulfill that need. Now I am aware that many people are “prepping” for just such an emergency, but seriously, let’s be realistic. What will you really do?
Realistic Thinking
If you were born in a world where you just go to your average bigbox store for goods and groceries and you have become accustomed to that way of life, what will you really do if it’s gone? If you’re accustomed to a life where you just bump up the thermostat if you’re cold, and if you just go to the fridge for a drink, what will you really do if it’s gone? The answer is you will do whatever you have to do to survive. However silly it seems, if it works, it works.
The reality is if you don’t already live this lifestyle of self-sufficiency, at least to some extent, you may find yourself in quite the predicament if it were to suddenly come upon you. Think short term, a bad storm hits your area, hundreds of homes and businesses are destroyed, what will you do? What if it’s worse than that? What if it’s long term? What will you do?
Stockpiling
One thing many people do now to try to prepare for such an emergency is to stockpile goods and materials. Food, medical supplies, guns, ammunition, reloading supplies, these are all things people stockpile, but what happens when they run out?
Eventually it will come down to needing to not only know how to reload your own ammunition, but how to make your own components too. Casings last a long time, but without a primer, powder, and a projectile they are useless.
If you don’t know how to make your own stuff the next thing you can do is improvise. Yep, that word is in the title, improvised ammunition. Many projectiles have the same bullet diameter but they have different cartridge sizes. So if you have different ammunition than you have a firearm for you have to think outside the box. You have to make do with what you have, you have to improvise.
Improvising
I have owned several and currently own a couple of the Mosin Nagant rifles and CZ52 pistols, and I love them both and love those calibers. Well, one day several years ago while ammo shopping online at sportsmansguide.com I found a neat new little toy.
It was a conversion cartridge that looked like a spent 7.62x54r casing that was designed to insert into the rifle chamber and then put the 7.62×25 pistol cartridge in it.
