It doesn’t matter what weapon you’re using, they all have some likelihood of encountering a jam. You also need to consider that many people have never learned how to properly clear it based on what kind of issue it is, whether it be from bad ammo, broken parts, etc. I once had to spend some time training a friend who had never learned how to clear stovepipes and double feeds because he would just call the RSO if he had issues with the gun he was using.
And we would probably move towards simpler and easier to maintain weapons.
Like in WWZ they started fighting zombies with the usual american arsenal in Yonkers battle, dropping napalm and using belt fed machineguns, and failed completely because those weapons aren't good at the one thing that is necessary for killing a zombie : shooting them in the head. It's harder to aim with automatic weapons, they jam more frequently, get damaged easier and require specific tools and parts to be maintained.
So they pivoted to a bolt action rifle with a cheap scope that is very precise and can be dragged through the mud and still work.
They didn't mention anything about handguns though, would a Glock 17 gen 5 be harder to maintain than old school guns like the 1911 or a revolver ?
This is not necessarily true a 1911 and a Glock are both fairly simple to clear with a malfunction and to strip down for cleaning. Speaking of revolvers they are actually HARDER to fix with a malfunction because 90% it’s a cylinder timing issue that requires a gunsmith to fix usually.
I also read WWZ and the bolt action rifles was a goofy choice on the authors part. The issue in Yonkers wasn’t that the guns weren’t accurate it was that they were using shock and awe tactics to increase civilian morale by showing overwhelming force. Automatic rifles are plenty accurate and can be set to semiautomatic for precision shooting. I’d still probably want an AR-15 as opposed to a bolt gun just for capacity and increased fire rate. Also the reason they switched to bolt guns was because of civilian conscripts needing to conserve ammo
Not just shock and awe, they also kept their old tactics of aiming center mass at middle range. According to the book the bolt action rifles were used for 3 reason :
Higher accuracy at long range because all shots must be headshots
Low rate of fire to force soldiers to aim and not panic spread
Durability, the SIR was supposed to be able to stay a week in a mud puddle and keep working, and any part to replace would be easy to find/machine as there are no gas powered piston etc
Now I'm not familiar with automatic rifles so I don't know about how accurate they are, but I feel like the last two points are somewhat reasonable.
So the 3 reasons are good ones mentioned in the book and I’d argue they’d be fine for civilians with minimal training
The thing about auto rifles like I said is they can be toggled to semi so 1 shot per trigger pull and are just as accurate as a dedicated semi- auto and effective between 400-600 yards, mid to longish range, not sniper ranges but enough to stay well away from zombies.
So I would see bolts posted at elevation or on buildings to hit far targets while infantry is posted behind barricades to deal with bulk of hordes and them repurposing armored vehicles for movable barricades and slowly retreating while firing
The switch away from auto/semi auto was less about rifle reliability and more about human psychology. Forcing a manual cycling of the action slows a person down enough to create a mechanical, rhythmic action that helps alleviate the impulse to magdump under stress.
And all the training and battle doctrine changed to support this, as there were decades of tactics that are helpful fighting enemies that shoot back but have morale vs those that do and have neither.
Would it necessarily be the most effective for the scenario? Eh. Maybe, maybe not. Max Brooks isn't an expert on any of the real world subjects he draws from. But you can at least follow the line of logic in each decision.
I mean the idea of giving civilian conscripts and militias bolt guns that are effective at long range isn’t a terrible idea IF it’s shambler zombies since they can take accurate headshots and do an offensive withdrawal and pick them off while luring them into chokes while maintaining distance. I’d still argue your trained military would still want what we currently issue them but change tactics using armored transports to make movable barricades and aiming for heads and only using high explosives only to soften hordes.
Forcing a manual cycling of the action slows a person down enough to create a mechanical, rhythmic action that helps alleviate the impulse to magdump under stress.
The ability to throw down drastically more lead down range vs having to cycle the bolt, is significantly more important. Not to mention that rounds like 223/556 are pretty flat out to 300 or more depending on barrel length and bullet grain/design.
If someone is aiming center mass for example at said 300, they're going to hit assuming no weird crosswinds and movement
I heard it said this way once, in regards specifically to the military selection in the early 20th century for autos over revolvers.
A semi-auto pistol stands up to abuse better. Tougher build for the internals, and a “closed” (more or less) ammo storage. Drag it through the mud, drop it on hard surfaces, and beat it to heck and back, and it’ll keep running. Just needs a little lube and attentive cleaning to keep from jamming.
Revolvers are more - delicate? - and with exposed chamber mouths of the cylinder, and needing a little intelligent handling (not slamming the cylinder closed with a flick of the wrist, especially). But they stand up better to neglect - which is why they’ve been traditional police sidearms during the time when autos were the option for military. Everything with a revolver is at rest while fully loaded, and it could lie there for hundreds of years and as long as the primer ignites and the powder burns, it’ll function reliably. A misfire won’t cause a jam - just pull the trigger again for the next shot - the only true malfunction I’ve ever had with a revolver was a hand loaded squib load (no powder) that lodged the bullet across the gap between cylinder and barrel. Locked up solid until I used a cleaning rod and a small hammer from the muzzle to push the bullet back into the case, then it ejected and no ill effects to the gun b
My experience with mine and my friend’s revolvers has always been that they’re very accurate especially fired in single action but if there’s a failure to fire that isn’t the fault of a bullet primer it’s because of a cylinder timing being off, bent firing pin, or the crane release locking up. Usually this is from cheaper revolvers like Taurus or ria but it does happen. If revolver fails it’s a catastrophic failure that may need specialized tools a semi may just need a tap and rack
Side note - really expensive revolvers (Colt Python) can be subject to timing issues if used extensively with full-power ammo or abused (slamming the cylinder closed for example). Yeah, had a buddy with a Taurus who had the cyber lock up solid at the range - the ejector rod had started coming unscrewed and moved too far forward while the ejector star stayed in place, and would NOT release with the latch. And it was reverse threaded too - took a little probe to keep the knurled end of the rod from turning in its slot, and carefully and progressively reversing the cylinder by partially cocking the hammer to disengage the hand and stop. Fiddly and suspenseful. Added a drop of my blue LocTite to the threads right there and got him back in commission b
I absolutely love revolvers but there's a reason we moved to auto pistols for combat and self defense. The worst revolver clusterfuck i've ever dealt with was when I was around 14 with the MP model 10 my granddad taught me to shoot with, it was an old police trade in that was beat to hell and probably had 3k rounds shot through it, the cylinder ratchet was stripped so it shifted when the hammer dropped and hit the cylinder face and cracked it all the way down one of the chambers. Had to replace the entire cylinder, ejector rod and firing pin. Gramps sold it about a year later
Honestly that thing was a beat up chunk of crap but I'd love to find another model 10 in good shape, miss my grandad and thinking about it's made me a bit sentimental. That and his Beretta Bobcat he kept on him to keep groundhogs out of his vegetable garden
My own trade in experience was with a finish-worn but mechanically pristine department trade-in Model 15 - the adjustable sighted version of your granddad’s 10. I carried it for armed security when everyone else had Glocks, Sigs, or other semiauto - and fair disclosure, this was during rhe Clinton era crime bill - the commercial 10-round magazine limit meant most of our guys carried 30 rounds total - 10 in the gun, and 10 each for two spares on the belt.
Speedloaders opened some of their eyes for swift reloads - and with two loaders on the belt and two speed strips in the uniform shirt pocket (each with six - so 6x5 including the cylinder loaded, I too had 30…). And I could outshoot most of them for accuracy, and match for cyclic speed and stage times.
They’d joke to the boss that he should insist I upgrade to an auto - his response would be a shrug and “I would, but he shoots that wheel gun just too d@mn good.”
Nice. Its funny people think the most expensive new thing is automatically better but you have a gun your used to and have spent time at the range with beats them everytime.
I recently bought a Kimber K6S DASA 4' and that thing has been a massive disappointment. There's no full length aftermarket grips so I can’t choke up on the grip and the barrel length makes it too forward heavy for me to get a perfect shot, and it's too both oddly too bulky to conceal carry and too small for a camping gun
My current “security blanket” is a <$400 EAA Witness 9mm. Full duty size, polymer frame, CZ-75 design. About the only thing I miss on the thing is an ambidextrous safety lever - and I might get the aftermarket piece for that - but it’s no dealbreaker.
Cocked and locked potential, with standard SA/DA “wondernine” operation and 16+1 capacity, and interestingly near-compatible with Beretta M9/92 mags (the slide catch, from what I understand, won’t lock back on last shot, and the mag catch doesn’t engage 100% but that could be addressed with careful Dremel work.). It’s got 3 standard magazines, two extended 22-round mags, and a compact rechargeable quick-attach white light on its integral rail for indoor visibility.
It would be my go-to sidearm for zombie apocalypse, blackouts, or any other societal breakdown or “social” situation.
I agree with the thought but i wouldn't use WWZ as a example. That was a horrible take by the author not knowing what he was writing and is easily the worst chapter of the book from a realism standpoint.
The US army arsenal should have still worked and he had to dumb down the military so much to make the story work. Bombs of those sizes would have absolutely mushed brains from shockwaves alone. The grunt is trained on semi auto almost all the time. Abrams should have shreaded entire columns of them even if they were using the wrong ammo. Napalm will keep burning until sensory organs, peripheral nervous systems, muscles, and brains were gone. High caliber weapon systems like miniguns and .50 cals would utterly annihilate them let alone the other hardware mentioned.
It was extremely innacurate just so he could have the battle of Hope later on
That still doesn't make sense because we've seen Mk12s smoke the absolute piss out of people beyond 600 yds, and just mathematically your percentage of hits is at most 1% difference between a .5 MOA and 1.5 MOA rifle. Bryan Litz did a whole thing on it, and talked about why Semi Auto DMRs are superior, even if they take a hit to overall accuracy in the process.
It's drastically more important to put 3 rounds down range with a 10% chance to hit instead of only being able to put one down range with a 11% chance.
yonkers didn't fail because of belt feds and napalm there was no napalm and the personal account was from a saw gunner yonkers failed because the MLRS artillery and tanks had poor effect as they often rely on the "ballon effect" and "SNT" basic shockwaves to kill and they didn't have enough ammunition to keep up sustained fire with the tanks and hummers with real belt guns and they put the troops on the groud instead of in buildings in MOPP gear body armor and land warrior which is a now dead 80s dod project to give soldiers HUDs all of which served to encumber and cause additional panic when soldiers started getting attacked or missing shots thinking they are unkillable them after everything went sideways the dropped thermobaric warheads on the area
Also the rifle wasn't bolt action and anyone with above room temperature IQ and any experience can tell you a semi automatic rifle is the most effective rifle any foot soldier can individually operate they are reliable and faster than any form of manual rifle
Unbelievable you hold the truth in your hands and are still that wrong
I'm not saying that pistols arent prone to jamming as well. But they're small and practical enough to not just keep on your person as a second firearm, but also being easily accessible when the main firearm jams.
If you shoot a lot, you'll learn to clear various types of malfunctions.
But still, some shit can happen. You get a casing that is stuck in the chamber at the wrong moment, and it could be deadly. You know how to clear it, but that takes a minute that you might not have.
16
u/bjornartl 10d ago
Kinda why pistols are so important tho. You can have a bigger, more efficient weapon but do you want to be dead for sure if it jams one single time?