If you don’t, no need to reply telling me you don’t. I live in the woods with some critters. I live pretty far from neighbors/police so having a gun gives me peace of mind. I also hunt and consider myself a gun hobbiest. I enjoy shooting targets, cleaning/organizing, reloading and earning food with guns.
It’s just a conversation and discussion at this point … you are right, survival out there is very questionable as it is very difficult without the right knowledge.
But I grew up learning how to do it all from my father who was a life long hunter and trapper. When he was in his prime, in his 20s and 30s, as well as other men like him … they were famous for leaving the community (or family group) with nothing but an axe, a knife and some basic warm clothing (meaning a jacket and a few layers or pants and shirts and coverings for the head, hands and feet) (you have to imagine them being dirt poor in the 1950s and 1960s). Dad would often comment to me about modern parkas and warm clothing - he never had anything like it when he was young and survived with nothing but a thin jacket and many layers of clothing, furs and hides. They would leave in the fall just before freeze up and the start of winter and be on their own. Then arrive mid winter back to main camp with a supply of furs and frozen food. Furs and hides they prepared themselves, food from the animals they killed, snowshoes they made themselves from trees from the land and sinew from animals, sleds they built themselves and then later in the summer birch bark canoes they built with nothing but what was available on the land.
Like I said … none of this means surviving is guaranteed … it just means that with knowledge, capability and plenty of hard work … the chances are higher than for most.
And the keyword you neglected is
A community of like minded people, with sufficient supplies to make it through The First Winter, is potentially going to survive. A lone individual who figures “My dad survived out here in the 50s with just cardboard boxes for shoes when he was walking uphill, both ways, in the snow. The fuck you talking about ‘climate change’?” is not.
All of which gets back to the idea that a gun is going to help at all in those scenarios which, once again, gets back to how easy it is to actually sneak up on people (within 200 meters is an easy shot with a rifle. especially if someone has an optic) or the simple logistics of keeping watch while doing all of this Survival.
Your comments are good but don’t apply. No one would go foraging in the swamplands of northern Ontario. He knows how to survive where others wouldn’t bother to look.