Moped

This time next year, we'll be paying $5 a gallon.

Wow! That's incredibly stupid and waste of lives. Good for us though! Also what I meant was they don't really have the medical know how or technology to heal most of their wounded. They aren't tying up personnel, resources and money healing their men. Wound one of us and there are 15 people working on that person (which is good, don't get me wrong!). Wound one of them and it's basically three or four guys carrying that one off the battle field so he can probably die in a cave somewhere. They have unlimited resources when it comes to cannon fodder too. What do you think about going back to the old 55 gr round? If we don't really have to defeat body armor, why stick with the current round or at least change the load for Afghanistan? What about going with the 6.5 Grendel or the Remington 6.8 SPC, are they viable options? Basically you'd just have to change out the upper in the field, I would imagine and the follower in the magazine.

It all depends on the mission, but I would bet the average soldier is going to carry enough to last two or three days in the field at any given time out on patrol. Mostly because you never know. I was in a Combat Engineering Battalion and we hardly ever got that far away from a vehicle. But straight leg infantry typically don't have that luxury. They take what they can carry. I just read an older article about what the average weight was for troops rotating through JRTC over 13 tours and the weight averaged out to 91 lbs! That didn't include body armor. That's freakin' amazing! And somewhat worrying. Carrying those kinds of loads, when those guys hit their 40's, their going to broken down physically. This is one of the reasons I think the U.S. Military still uses the 5.56 round as it's main rifle round. Lot more fire power for the weight. Still pretty accurate. And a wounded man takes more resources up than a dead man does. At least that's the theory. As it turns out that's a pretty good theory for the enemy to go by fighting us. I'm not so sure that ir's a good theory for us to be going by though. I figure the Taliban doesn't worry to much about their wounded.

You can't patrol from a vehicle most of the time. You still have to get out and walk, run and crawl sometimes.

Then it sounds like we need to step back and go back to the slower twist and longer barrel as Suprafly said. Maybe even the old 55gr. round. Or change back to the 7.62. The only thing about going back to the 7.62 is the added weight. I have a friend of mine I work with that is a SGM and he has 3 tours in Iraq under his belt (Desert Storm and two more under Iraqi Freedom). He says the weight our troops carry compared to what we carried back in Desert Storm is almost twice as much. He says the Army is seeing alot more back and knee injuries and he believes it's due to the all the added weight of our equipment. I imagine that 210 rounds of 7.62 is 1.5x or more the weight of 210 rounds of 5.56. That's more weight for our guys to carry.

You ain't just whistlin' Dixie! But it's everywhere. Business ignores those surveys, just like the Government does. I get them all the time too. Filed one out two weeks ago and blasted the company I work for. But the Survey will show all employees are happy little lemmings.

As long as we continue to follow the Geneva Convention(and I don't see us ever not following it) we will never go to expanding bullets. There are other things that we do to offset that however. As Dolomite_Supafly was talking about, we make our bullets tumble upon impacting something. That's why when you get hit in the shoulder with a 5.56 it's liable to come out your ass. But it holds to the Geneva Convention, because it doesn't expand. That was what Supafly was talking about.

This is excellent advice!

For any real chance you need to be with a group.

Congrats on a fine revolver! Thanks for the range report. IMO, revolvers are the best choice for summer concealment.

Heck, I'd give you at least twice that! And I'd think that's was an insulting offer. I'd never go back there for anything, ever.

I had one. Pretty nice little revolver. I'd change the grips out on it though. I prefer .38spl over .380 as well.

I have had both. Now I only have one. Colt all the way! Best triggers I've ever pulled! Not knocking the Smith. They are great guns too, but I love Colts. Have two of them and I'd love more. The reason Colt is no longer around in the revolver market is they got greedy. Much like the way Smith is now. It got to the point where the Colt just cost too much. LE no longer could justify the extra cost and neither could the consumer. I think we are starting to see the same thing happening between Smith and Taurus.

Looks like an Arminius. They have made revolvers for years. My uncle has a 6" .22LR with target sites that's he's hunted rabbits with for years. Got it back in the 1970's. That's about all I know about them. $195 is pretty cheap price, though. If it's worth a damn, then it's an awesome deal.

Also don't forget to store salt, pepper and other spices.

I wish I could find a 20 or a 12 and also wish I had the money to afford one! I think it would be a good investment!

+1 to Halfpint for an outstanding post on #108!

The one I got now. It's a Loaded Springer in SS. Got too many other wants to spend a lot on a 1911A1 that's not going to be much better than what I already got.

It's my understanding that they can't get the old M14 platform into Afghanistan fast enough. All the old M14's that were turned into Redstone from the different Rifle Teams and RTUs back during the Clinton Administration, are being retrofitted as fast as possible and sent over. The M4/5.56 has proven not to have sufficient knockdown power at longer ranges is what I've read and heard. Unfortunately many of the M14s were cut up after being turned, so the pool is small. As for .45 being a maintenance pig, I never carried or operated a M2, M60, M16, M1911a1 or M9 that didn't religiously get cleaned while in the field. So it didn't really make a difference. I've seen all of the above breakdown and not function when dirty and/or not properly lubricated. A troop that doesn't religiously keep his weapons clean at all times in combat, needs his and his immediate NCO's butt kicked. My personal experience was Desert Storm, should someone feel the need to question my credentials. As for whether or not the M1911 platform is the best or not, I leave that to the capable hands of the men and women that are selecting the pistol. They are aware of what's at stake and will make the right selection.

That's an excellent idea about the river stones and gravel! I also like glass marbles. I've also used lead round ball pistol ammo. .31 cal and .36 cal seems to work best. The .44 lead round balls are just a bit to heavy, but I've seen pics of people taking rabbits with them. Another fun thing to practice on is one of those metal spinning targets you get for .22lr firearms and pistols. Ole Rufus Hussey was an incredible shot with a slingshot! Now an alternative to the Flipper style slingshot is the old leather sling (Think David and Goliath). That seems much harder to master to me, but people that do master them like to use larger stones and even golf balls. Of course, a simple leather sling weights next to nothing. I've heard of them even being made out of 550 paracord. One thing about using a slingshot in a BOB, is that if you work for somewhere that doesn't allow you to keep a firearm in your car out in their parking lot (like my place of work), the slingshot probably won't be a problem. My purpose in bringing all this up is to get people to think outside the box a bit.

I actually posted part of this on the Blow-Gun Thread, but then I got to thinking that the Slingshot probably needed it's own thread. I've been reading at other forums how handy a slingshot is to have for hiking, bushcraft and to store in your BOB. I finally was sold several months ago that this could be a handy item, so I bought one at Wallyworld for about $7 along with some ammo to practice with. It takes a bit of practice to get good with it and I still have a ways to go, but I can hit a coke can at 15' regularly now and steel shot will go right threw it. I think it would be very effective on frogs, birds, rats and rabbits or any other animal that size. I've also learned that you can modify a slingshot to effectively shoot an arrow with which you can take bigger game. Here is a cool little video of a guy hunting a pig in Hawaii with one. And here is Dave Canterbury (of Duel Survivor Fame) and another guy explaining out to make one. And last a modification for setting up the sling bow for fishing. If you decide that the Slingshot is something your interested in, then I really like this guy's work. Welcome To A+ Slingshots

Deleted my post to start another thread.

What happens to those apps when the phone battery goes dead and you have no way to charge it?

I tend to agree with OS, that most would starve to death trying to survive out in the Wilderness as we know it here in Tennessee. Better to go storing it like DS and Ghooge said. Rice and beans, while it would get old, would definitely keep you alive through a winter. But then what? Not only should you store up a reserve of food, but also heirloom seeds for a garden. Which also means you need something to help you till the ground. And you better have some sort of knowledge about how to long term store what you grow (canning or drying comes to mind). Preparedness and survival is so much more than hitting the woods and going deer hunting long term like a mountain man. In my mind the best thing to do is group up with people you can trust and try to get by together while sharing knowledge, experience and resources.

CS gets about half their sword models from India and the rest come from China. Seems the better ones come from India. But in the sword realm they are considered mostly sharpened crowbars. They tend to run from about $150 up to a little over $300. There are a couple I wouldn't mind having though. The 1796 Light Calvary sword was considered a monster on the field of battle, able to part limb from body with a single stroke. The CS version, while not historically accurate, is quite capable of doing just that. Their 1860 U.S. Heavy Sabre (Known as the Wrist Breaker) is also considered to be pretty good as well. Their Gross Messer is also quite the chopper, but the quality control on that one left it with a bad reputation. That was several years ago. I wonder if it's gotten any better? That was one I wanted back then!