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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

One consideration is old ammo is somewhere between useless and dangerous. You might get 10 years from date of purchase out of it, but large ammo stockpiles are of limited use in a collapse of society situation and need to be constantly updated.

Long term bow, atal, and sling are much better for hunting.

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Whoever told you this was probably trying to sell more ammunition; modern ammunition is good for decades at least. In the present, use of old ammunition (a few decades or more) is discouraged because the old formulations of primer compound produce corrosive hygroscopic metal salts that will rust your gun badly if you're not dilligent with cleaning. Very cheap old surplus ammunition from overseas is something to be wary of, but that's mostly because of bad QC that made that ammunition unreliable or dangerous from the day it was made.

As for atal or sling, unless you've been practicing with these since you were a child, I think you'll sooner starve to death than score yourself a single meal. The cultures which used those tools had people practicing with them for years before they were useful with them. A sling is easy to make, I encourage you to try it out. I used a pair of shoelaces I bought at the grocery store for $2. It is not easy to even get the projectile flying in the general direction you intended, so if you try this make sure you're far from any buildings or bystanders...

(But really, I recommend buying some canned food. It is unlikely any infrastructure collapse would last more than a few weeks. Any scenario where you have to hunt for food at all, let alone for years, seems exceedingly unlikely.)

I doubt that people are stockpiling ammo for a short term disruption. The point at which tens of thousands of rounds becomes useful isn’t a few weeks disruption in food distribution.

To justify my stance, in a long term survival situation slings are for low risk low reward hunting. With even moderate practice they become very high calories per resources and time invested while your doing something else. Aka, if you’re collecting firewood and see a squirrel, vs specifically looking for squirrels. That’s still true if you’re missing 95% of the time.

Plenty of active bow hunters are around to tell you how long that takes to learn. Unfortunately, manufacturing arrows and replacement bows takes significant effort. Atal are generally worse than bows, but vastly easier to manufacture and maintain.

As to ammo it’s very much possible to find good ammo that’s 50 years old. Depending on specific ammo to still be good in 50 years is a very different thing when you can’t depend on climate control. That’s not a concern at 70+ but a 25 year old presumably has a longer time horizon.

People stockpiling guns may have fantasies about a thousand years of anarchy after an apocalyptic 'SHTF', but their belief that this is likely doesn't actually make it likely.

I completely agree. However, the accuracy of their predictions is independent of how their preparing for that risk. It’s often said to prepare food and water etc for short term disruptions, but having sufficient water is vastly more important than having sufficient food.

This is not true. 50 year old ammo will shoot indistinguishably from new ammo if both have been stored correctly. Prolonged exposure to water or high humidity can damage cartridges by preventing the powder from burning, but that doesn't make it more dangerous, only useless (at worst).

A large ammo stockpiles can make a house fire significantly more dangerous more so if you can’t depend on quick access to modern medical treatment.

Controlling humidity after a long term collapse is much more difficult. Less so in arid areas, but their hardly ideal without modern infrastructure.

Again, wrong. Ammo is not dangerous in a fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlOXowwC4c

As for humidity, I think you would be surprised. Much of Appalachia and the East Coast have high humidity levels (typically 70-90% during summer IIRC) and I've never found ammo damaged by humidity there. I've shot 25 year old ammo that was put in an ammo can and dumped in a hiding spot near a pond (so, very high humidity) and had no issues shooting with it. Even if the ammo is stored in the manufacturer's cardboard box, I wouldn't worry about humidity damage unless average levels are over 85 or 90%. Water damage is a different matter, but I don't have any experience with that.

That video is on Sporting Ammunition which is relatively low energy and shotgun shells which are reasonably safe in a fire. A rifle round cooking off is significantly more dangerous though without a barrel it’s below a normal handgun round, still the difference from that video is still shocking.

Edit: It's mostly true that ammo in a fire will just pop and maybe just throw a little brass a short distance.

BUT from that fire I'm witness to the fact that ammo can also "fire" with enough force to go through steel 50 cal ammo boxes and continue through such things as walls and cans. There were bullet holes through the shop's paneled and insulated tin walls. https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/ammo-in-a-fire...

I will admit I may be overstating the humidity issues, my personal experience was 15 year old ammo in Florida shed which had issues but clearly YMMV.

Do you have a source for that? I don't really understand why shotgun rounds would be less dangerous, particularly if rifle rounds are more dangerous. More powder = more dangerous would make sense to me, but that doesn't sound like what you're saying.

Some parts of Florida are more humid than Appalachia, so maybe the difference between 75% and 95% humidity has a greater effect than 55% to 75%.

I was told the rifle rounds where more dangerous, but not why. My suspicion is the plastic tube around a shotgun shell loses strength before the round is hot enough to go off ~200C. Though it’s probably more complicated.

As to humidity, I don’t know it might be just extreme humidity or it could be humidity + temperature, or perhaps we had a bad case of ammo to start with.

Bow, atal, and sling are all inferior to traps for hunting. Populated areas have pigeons and squirrels, not sheep.

Enemy humans are a very different problem. Humans are smart, and sometimes they hunt you.

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