Like many here, I keep an eye out for Paul Harrell videos. One of his recent ones (well, two, really--one is a short version and the other a two-hour long version) covers firearm choices for SHTF, WROL, and TEOTWAWKI scenarios.

While watching the long version, I thought about my own magazine choices a little bit. I also thought about the variety of ammunition I have for the formats I have.

For my AR-format rifles, I have three types of ammunition: M193, M855, and frangibles. I keep a few magazines loaded in each type--Magpul black for the M193, Magpul brown with view window for the frangible, and Hexmag green(ish) mags for the M855. I like to think that the color/texture differences will make it easier to tell what I'm about to pack if I need to go somewhere with my long pew-pew.

Since the odds of me actually needing any of this in a home-defense situation are pretty darned small, I wonder whether I'm fooling myself into thinking any of it matters. But it seems to me that writing on the mags with markers isn't as easy to discern in a hurry as these more obvious differences.

I don’t know what those situations abbreviations mean but it makes sense to keep things organized by magazine type, I would just make absolutely certain that each mag type functions flawlessly with that ammunition variety in that rifle.

I haven’t watched that video yet but I likely will.

I’ve found that magpul magazines have worked best and functioned reliably in all of my AR type platforms. I absolutely beat the tar out of them when I did 2 gun comps. They can be slightly more expensive than the other generic, plastic mags but worth it, IMO.

I’ve had more variable results with the old mil-spec metal ones, they sometimes seem to get slightly out of shape (stepped on or bent when dropped) and then they can be non-functional. (Mag catch won’t hold, etc.) but they are fine if you baby them and keep them in cases, web gear etc. however, some of them seem to go forever despite … I would just say field test your own ones for reliability.


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Northern wrote: Thu May 11, 2023 7:04 am I don’t know what those situations abbreviations mean but it makes sense to keep things organized by magazine type, I would just make absolutely certain that each mag type functions flawlessly with that ammunition variety in that rifle.

I had to look up two of them:

SHTF = Shit Hits the Fan
WROL = Without Rule Of Law
TEOTWAWKI = The End Of The World As We Know It

The first and third don't really mean anything to me unless someone gives a specific definition, but WROL is something we saw briefly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when people were threatening others, like when a group of people tried to cross a bridge to safety and were turned back by armed vigilantes.

Is the fan on or off?

What kind of law? Sharia?

The beginning of the world as we envision it.

Things can get pretty bad:

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/object ... 20disease.

Let's not make it worse.

I have several old style metal mags and replaced the followers with the yellow Magpul, went from ok to nearly flawless.

I think in the WROL scenario..I think I would 'need' 9mm and 223/556. If me and mine were living 'off the land', while trying to protect ourselves(think walking dead), 22 rifle, 9mm handgun, 223/556 rifle, SG..
So yup, I have mags loaded and sorted...easy access. Plus 'loose' ammo in plain sight so I can see what I may need to buy/order. Plus water, meds, bailout bag, survival stuff...No, not a doomsday prepper....

Simply spend a half hour on any highway in the US and you will see ample evidence that the Rule of Law is only honored and recognized when it's is convenient or expedient.

Rule of Law is not and has not been the norm in the US in a long long time if ever.

sig230 wrote: Fri May 12, 2023 10:27 am Simply spend a half hour on any highway in the US and you will see ample evidence that the Rule of Law is only honored and recognized when it's is convenient or expedient.

Rule of Law is not and has not been the norm in the US in a long long time if ever.

I spent a few minutes trying to come up with counter-arguments, just as a thought experiment, and could not.

F4FEver wrote: Fri May 12, 2023 9:47 am I think in the WROL scenario..I think I would 'need' 9mm and 223/556. If me and mine were living 'off the land', while trying to protect ourselves(think walking dead), 22 rifle, 9mm handgun, 223/556 rifle, SG..
So yup, I have mags loaded and sorted...easy access. Plus 'loose' ammo in plain sight so I can see what I may need to buy/order. Plus water, meds, bailout bag, survival stuff...No, not a doomsday prepper....

The only shotgun I've fired is a Stevens 311 double-barrel that feels like it's six feet long. I was at an indoor range, and that range only allows slugs in shotguns. If I'm going to shoot that thing again, I'm going to do so outside so I can use something other than slugs, and I'm going to get a recoil pad for it (the one that I think I remember seeing decades ago is long gone), and I'm going to have someone who knows more about shotguns help me correct what I was doing wrong. That was an unpleasant amount of recoil.

sig230 wrote: Fri May 12, 2023 10:27 am Simply spend a half hour on any highway in the US and you will see ample evidence that the Rule of Law is only honored and recognized when it's is convenient or expedient.

Rule of Law is not and has not been the norm in the US in a long long time if ever.

Indeed, there is an argument to the effect that laws that defy common practice are tools of autocracy, because of selective enforcement. I think CowboyT recently detailed a historical example involving gun permits in Florida to enforce racial disparity. There are others. "Driving while Black" shouldn't be a crime, but there is plenty of evidence that it effectively is.

It's a long way over the rainbow to the promised land.

If you think the aftermath of Katrina was WROL, you should have seen Marsh Harbour and Freeport in The Bahamas in the wake of Hurricane Dorian. I actually have photos taken by friends and acquaintances of COPS with their stolen loot, that they were shipping to family in Nassau (which wasn't damaged by the storm). Armed gangs wandered the streets and tried to get into residential communities. Two communities organized and manned their own armed border guards at the entrance, and one of the two actually repelled an attempt to get to the community. Luckily, the looters backed off and nobody was hurt. But in Marsh Harbour, looting was rampant. One neighbor, who had weathered the storm in our community, was SO upset and terrified when he had to go up to Marsh Harbour that he moved his whole family back to the Philippines!

Bahamas' gun laws are VERY strict. Handguns are only legal for military and LE, except in VERY rare situations. Shotguns and rifles MUST be re-registered every year, $150 per shotgun, $300 per rifle. So how did the gangs get guns? The ONE hardware store licensed to sell guns was broken in to, and their gun storage was breached.
Despite the harsh gun laws, even in little Marsh Harbour (4000? residents) there are several hand-gun murders every year.

But with the heroization of thugs like Kyle Rittenhouse, and the heroization of Perry, who may or may NOT have been in the wrong, the defense of totally corrupt criminals like Trump, Gaetz, Santos, "Gym" Jordan, Gianforte of Montana, and DeSatan, WROL is already upon us. ROL hasn't been the case in Floriduh since George Zimmerman was acquitted--he later went on to threaten and assault numerous people and NEVER has been held to account.

IMHO, WROL means the police don't exist anymore. Or they exist as the highest form of government in a small rural community, and will deal with crimes, any crime, by shooting on sight. In most cases, WROL goes hand in hand with TEOTWAWKI.

Hiker wrote: Sun May 14, 2023 10:49 am IMHO, WROL means the police don't exist anymore. Or they exist as the highest form of government in a small rural community, and will deal with crimes, any crime, by shooting on sight. In most cases, WROL goes hand in hand with TEOTWAWKI.

I include situations where the police are completely unavailable for an extended period of time, and also when they actively operate illegally themselves.

Eris wrote: Sun May 14, 2023 11:10 am I include situations where the police are completely unavailable for an extended period of time, and also when they actively operate illegally themselves.

Yes I have thought of that, and Hurricane Katrina is the perfect example. Theft and looting aren't going to be investigated. But if someone is killed, the police will investigate. The old saying, "When seconds count, the police are just minutes away," or hours, or days or a week! But they will come and investigate. That's why I went with the idea of the police ain't coming! And I could just be rambling pedantically!

OK, getting back to the OP about mags.

BearPaws wrote: Thu May 11, 2023 12:39 am For my AR-format rifles, I have three types of ammunition: M193, M855, and frangibles. I keep a few magazines loaded in each type--Magpul black for the M193, Magpul brown with view window for the frangible, and Hexmag green(ish) mags for the M855. I like to think that the color/texture differences will make it easier to tell what I'm about to pack if I need to go somewhere with my long pew-pew.

I tried using different color codes for different guns some years ago. But now I have too many. I never thought about different combinations for different types of the same caliber. What came up for me was making that choice in the dark. Perhaps gluing a series of 1, 2, or 3 'dots' on the bottom or the mag. That way you could tell by color or touch. Just an idea.

Hiker wrote: Sun May 14, 2023 1:19 pm OK, getting back to the OP about mags.

BearPaws wrote: Thu May 11, 2023 12:39 am For my AR-format rifles, I have three types of ammunition: M193, M855, and frangibles. I keep a few magazines loaded in each type--Magpul black for the M193, Magpul brown with view window for the frangible, and Hexmag green(ish) mags for the M855. I like to think that the color/texture differences will make it easier to tell what I'm about to pack if I need to go somewhere with my long pew-pew.

I tried using different color codes for different guns some years ago. But now I have too many. I never thought about different combinations for different types of the same caliber. What came up for me was making that choice in the dark. Perhaps gluing a series of 1, 2, or 3 'dots' on the bottom or the mag. That way you could tell by color or touch. Just an idea.

The green mags for the green-tip ammo have a VERY different feel to them than the black Magpul stuff. The brown Magpul mags have the sight windows, and I can feel that difference with reasonable ease. That I only have two calibers, and that only one of those calibers uses plastic box magazines, simplifies things a little bit. The only magazine I have for a .22LR firearm only fits the one rifle, and only holds seven rounds. The only other rifle in the safe is a lever action Rossi Bravo.

Still, your comment reminds me that it would be a good idea to learn to tell my pistol mags apart by feel. Some of them are easy, of course--the single-stack mags only fit the M&P Shield, and the longest pistol mags will fit any but one of my CZ pistols. It seems a good idea to pay attention to the tactile differences between the mags for the polymer pistols and the mags for my PCR.

9mm Sig 320, H-K VP9, and Beretta 92 mags all have very different bottoms making them easy to tell apart. Since all my other mags are AR10 format, they, too, are easy to identify.

Yeah.

I have four CZ polymer pistols (P10F and -C, P07, P09), and the mags from the P10F will work in all of them. My EDC is the 75D PCR, and its mags differ enough that I need to figure out the tactile difference. Also in the inventory is my wife's P365XL and my Shield.

BearPaws wrote:Yeah.

I have four CZ polymer pistols (P10F and -C, P07, P09), and the mags from the P10F will work in all of them. My EDC is the 75D PCR, and its mags differ enough that I need to figure out the tactile difference. Also in the inventory is my wife's P365XL and my Shield.

Even though I know I should have standardized on a type of auto-loading pistol, I just like collecting them. Right now, I don’t have any that take the same mags.

About a decade ago, I thinned my pistol collection down to just 3 calibers: 357/.45 ACP/.22 LR. That didn’t last long now I have the following pistol calibers: .45 ACP, .45 colt, 9mm, .32, .380, .38/.357, .22 LR. Terrible from a TEOTWAWKI perspective, but I’m just more of a “72 hour disaster prepper” now anyways.


Best I can do is my K-frames using the same speed loaders.


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INVICTVS138 wrote: Mon May 15, 2023 4:16 pm Even though I know I should have standardized on a type of auto-loading pistol, I just like collecting them. Right now, I don’t have any that take the same mags.

Nothing wrong with doing both collecting and prepping. They are not mutually exclusive. Once you have the prepping needs covered there's no reason not to branch into other stuff that is just for fun. At worst, you might end up abandoning the esoteric stuff in a real emergency, and at best they will let you use more uncommon ammo that you can scrounge from the radioactive wasteland as you search for bottle caps to buy a plasma rifle for taking on super mutants.

Somewhere in the middle of West Virginia, my wife and I live on 80 some odd acres, about half an hour by car to anywhere to buy food. We have something of a pantry for non (immediately) perishables and sometimes can make food pop out of the dirt. There are two water wells on the property, one requires electricity to have a drink, the other uses a long skinny bucket and a rope (hope it don’t break!). We use neither anymore thanks to something called city water. Wife is something of a prepper, myself not so much. What to do with the waste? Shit, carcasses, those damn non perishable food containers, more shit! Flat tire? No worry, there’s no gas. Ran out of toilet paper? Can’t shit what you can’t eat.

A situation where one needs hundreds of rounds to shoot their way out of? Perhaps against a pack of menacing wolves, but humans shoot back. The odd break-in, street thug/molester, or angry driver can be deflected via gun. The gang, who earlier killed the well armed preppers just down the road (now themselves well armed), would be a bit much for the two of us.

We prep for storms, power outages, road closures. Fire extinguishers are pretty cool. We have a few guns, some reloading stuff. I’m in the process of selling much/most (maybe all?) of the firearm related items.

The population of this state keeps dropping, even all the crooks are leaving (the smart ones, anyway). I couldn’t bring myself to shoot a skinny coyote a while back. Bought a silencer just for such occasions. Useless! If you’re where the noise will be a problem, it’s not safe to shoot (non self defense) anyway.

We just might use the proceeds to buy a couple of motorcycles, and ride off into the sunset.

The Apocalypse of Zombie isn’t what’s got me worried, it’s the idiots who subscribe to the Apocalypse of John.

papajim2jordan, I lived in Charleston for about a year as a young lad (I attended first grade that year). I've driven through it countless times living in Kentucky and visiting friends and relatives in Virginia. The family joke was that it ALWAYS snowed when my mom drove through--even in July!

While the state's politics (and I've seen some crazy stuff about the head of the State Police lately) are not to my liking, I don't hold the problems our family faced the year I was there against the often-gorgeous terrain (well, the terrain that hasn't been ruined by Big Coal...). It's good to know there are folks in WV who aren't beholden to the fascists. Heck, the Battle of Blair Mountain was fought in WV!