When SHTF Guns Are Gold

By Major Van Harl USAF Ret

Wisconsin --(Ammoland.com)-  It started with a book titled “The Zombie Survival Guide” that was sent to me by an old Air Force friend.

When he lived next door to me on Altus AFB, in Oklahoma I was always taking him to gun shows and helping him spend his grandkid’s inheritance on more firearms and ammo.

The book is an instruction manual on how to defend yourself against the dead Zombies that have risen up to feed on the living. I would suggest the author had gotten himself some good survival books and a few military training manuals, combined the information and developed the “complete protection from the living dead,” as the cover to the book stated.

The most important thing I took away from reading the book (yes I did read it) was you have to destroy the brain of the Zombie or you cannot stop it.

There was some suggestion that this process also could apply to politicians and lawyers but I digress.

It does not matter how many times you shoot a Zombie below the neck, or how many arms and legs you manage to chop off. When defending against Zombies you have to destroy the brain, cutting the head off does not stop the biting danger.

There is even special ammo made to more effectively stop the living dead. Hornady Ammunition manufactures a line of rifle, handgun and shotgun ammo specifically for the effective termination of Zombies.

Now if a big name ammo company believes there is a clear and present danger from Zombies, so much so that they developed a line of ammunition just to put-down these eaters of human flesh, there must be more to the story.

Enter AMC and The Walking Dead TV series. I did not watch this show when it first appeared. One Saturday AMC was re-running the entire second season as a prelude to the start of the third season. I was sick, stuck in my recliner and out of boredom I started watching the episodes and now I am hooked. This unstoppable virus has spread around the world and turned almost everyone into a walking dead Zombie–a “Walker”. There are small pockets of unaffected humans who are trying to survive.

When I say unaffected I mean medically unaffected, but the survivors are most assuredly continually physically affected by the total breakdown of the normal society, because of the never ending danger of attack by the “Walkers” who only live (so to speak) to feed on the living.

The more I watched the series the more I realized what a great set of survival training films has been developed under the guise of entertainment. If you take out the “Walkers” from this survival scenario and plug in major natural or man-made disasters that completely disrupt our society, the Walking Dead series can show you how bad it will get and how to prepare to survive. In the early episodes there are very few guns and a lot of unarmed people getting attacked because they cannot defend themselves.

By season three, everyone is always carrying a firearm, including the women and the children. The young son of the story’s main hero has become a pre-teen killing machine by the opening of season three. When a handgun is offered to some people who had decided to leave the main group, a protest is noted by a remaining member that is it foolish to give the weapon away. “Guns are gold” is the statement made.

Meaning in this very dangerous survival situation every gun is extremely important to just staying alive. The shortage of ammunition is of paramount concern in the first two seasons.

There are many action scenes where the heroes barely make it to safety due to the lack of ammo to keep killing the “Walkers.” This is TV folks and I truly believe there are no Zombies, but there are crises that can turn into a situation where only the prepared survive. The two items that the living in, The Walking Dead are always trying to acquire, are food and firearms. Of course ammunition is the thing most in short supply. If you try to buy ammunition today (March 2013) there is very little for sale.

This current hoarding of ammo is a Bravo Sierra man-made crisis. It should not be happening. If you do not own a firearm or you have a very limited ammo supply for the gun you do own, you are on the losing end of a real world crisis. Watch “The Walking Dead” it is entertainment but it does teach if you are willing to learn.

Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
[email protected]

About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:
Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret. , is a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. Now retired, these days he enjoys camping, traveling, volunteering with the Girl Scouts and writing. [email protected]