and 100x as many of them are worthless. Then, 30% lived on working farms and ranches, today it's less than 3%. todays garden seeds, even, are hybrid. they won't reproduce themselves. There's no more horse drawn farm implements, nor harness, nor trained horses or trained farm horse handlers. So the loss of oil supplies will mean massive amounts of starvation and desperate predaton. Just the depression, with a few single shots, nearly wiped out the game, and people HAD gardens, HAD "canning" gear and experience to preserve produce. Today, they do not, and they have ATVs, off road motorcycles, mountain bikes, power and sail craft, even ultralight planes, so they CAN get to your "remote" spot, quickly and easily.
We have almost 100 million cats and dogs in the US. if shtf, most will go unfed, and a lot will just be abandoned, or their owners will be dead. they will kill off whatever game and livestock that people have not, before people kill and eat the cats and dogs (and then each other).
The odds are EXTREMELY high that any sort of collape will be horrifically violent. Do NOT risk having just a shotgun, single shot, pellet gun, bow, xbow or bolt action, folks. You'd better have a longarm that's concealable, that's rapidfire, that will pierce Kevlar vests, that has 1/4 mile or so of effective range, that has a silencer. you'd better have either a .22lr conversion unit, or a .22 handgun with which you are VERY skilled. If you'll mount a Bushnell holosight on a Ruger 2245, having a 3" barrel and integral silencer, making the gun sub 10" in OAL, it will help you attain the needed skill level a lot faster/easier.
The .22 unit in the 223 autorfifle (AK< AR, or Mini-14, is a better choice, cause then you can have a POWERFUL sidearm, not a mere .22, and practice with the .22 unit WILL help your rifle skills. practice with the handgun will not. Further more, at dusk or dawn or in thick cover, the scope and the .22 unit in the 223 auto will be a lot more likely to score the small game that you need to hit. The luminous sights on the autorifle and the longer barrel will make it a lot easier to silently brain livestock at night, too. :-) The handgun's considerably less power/penetraton makes such a thing pretty "iffy". Ditto trying to brain sentries or guard dogs at 50 yds, which the .22 unit and rifle can do quite handily.
