Another reason is if for some reason we have an oil crisis. Most of what you eat is delivered on trucks. No oil means no food in about two weeks. Hunting used to be par for the course just a few decades ago.
Just doing some napkin math but several sources state the average carcass of a northern state buck yields 72lbs of meat. Does outnumber bucks and are far smaller (plus southern deer are far smaller) but let's be conservative and say the average is 60lbs of meat per carcass. Multiply that by the FDA approved # of calories per pound of ground venision which is 712, and you get 42,720 calories. Let's say you have to feed a family of 4 and you're fine with a starvation diet of 1,400 calories per day. That deer only provides you with 15 days of food assuming it only needs to provide for half that already limited calorie intake. Make that ~11 days if you want to maintain a 2,000 calorie diet with venison being half. Now picture the ramifications of that math as it plays out over a population of millions of families with an experienced hunter in the household and their need to take 2+ deer every month. Not only do you still need additional sources for the other half of your calorie intake, you'll need to replace the portion satisfied by venison fairly quickly as the deer population is hunted into near extinction.
Basically, hunting serves as an excellent way of supplementing your diet in such a scenario but it is by no means a complete solution over any timeframe and it becomes completely non-viable withing a surprisingly short window of time.
Cannibals would of course have a ready supply of food.
There's also more calories of beef in the US than people.
There's 120 sq miles of cornfields in New Jersey and 160 of soybeans, which are enough to feed Manhattan for a year, even if they're not currently allocated to feeding people in Manhattan and not enough to feed the entire metropolitan area. There's a considerable amount of food within one day's walk of even giant cities like New York.
Moreover, non-mechanized transport and storage of grain is kind of something humans are good at. Pre-modern cities relied heavily on it for hundreds of years. Rome, London and Beijing weren't relying on food grown by farmers living in the city.
In any non-magically-fast collapse (eg, the oil supply is cut by 20% per year until only a negligible amount remains on the market versus ALL OIL LITERALLY DISAPPEARS OVERNIGHT) I think there's going to be a decent glide path to an alternate structuring of civilization (electric-solar heavy farm equipment; reduced quantities of grain-fed meat; electric-solar rail and increased river/canal transport) that we'll be heavily incentivized to take.
(The end-of-the-world that scares me most is a _rapid_ shift in climate leading to significantly reduced growing seasons which allow for significantly less food production world-wide; I can't see any way that doesn't turn bad, and I am not sure what an individual would do to safe guard themselves against it besides hide in an unmarked cave with a massive food store until things are magically better.)
Ya, but that's the farmer's food, so you're talking about stealing it. The farmer might not like that and shoot at you. Even if he doesn't, what mechanism is in place to make sure that food is distributed evenly over the course of a year? How are you going to keep that corn from spoiling? What's going to stop a group of people sealing it just for themselves?
That's a lot of faith in local governance and structure.
>I think there's going to be a decent glide path to an alternate structuring of civilization
I would think so too, but it's fun imagining what would happen if it were abrupt (largely because of the word imagining rather than living through).
[1] http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/rooney.html
It took decades for it to return.
The people who have rifles will have a better chance than the people who don't. The people without them will have to rely on the kindness of others to live. I think people stuck in or near cities will have a low chance of survival regardless of if they have a rifle.
My friends who are Into Guns are into feeling tough and powerful, like they've always got an upper hand in any situation. When they go into the great outdoors, it's to drink beer and shoot their guns into the woods. (Yeah, it's stupid and dangerous and shitty. I stopped camping with them some time ago.)
My family members who hunt never talk about their guns, they just hunt with them a couple times a year and fill their chest freezers with deer.
AR-15s are like toy light sabers for adults.
AR-15s are by far the least expensive they've ever been right now, and are substantially less expensive than any reasonable alternative.
You can get a complete AR-15 for <$500, easily. If you're willing to put the parts together yourself, you can do it for ~$350.
You're certainly not going to get a new hunting rifle of similar quality for $70-$100.
> AR-15s are like toy light sabers for adults.
Sure, they can be. It's a fairly common cliche that they're "Barbie dolls for grown men" - but I fail to see how that's relevant. The article was about preppers, not firearms enthusiasts.
Personally, I’m not someone who will survive long in a combat situation, so I don’t spend much time thinking about guns.
These days you can easily get a lower receiver (the part that's considered a firearm by the ATF) for <$100.
If the SHTF .223 is probably better to barter with if nothing else
I started turning down venison at meals for good two years ago. I'm probably being overly cautious.