My personal experience with firearms is limited to hunting weapons, from longbows to rifles and shotguns. For my characters, I consulted with my friends, but @big soft moose got me thinking I might need to rethink my armament. The enemies in my story all use 7.62x51mm and 9x19mm Parabellum weapons, mostly the FN SCAR and Beretta M9 handgun. They also use machine guns chambered for the 7.62x51mm round, except in certain cases where they use .50-caliber weapons. My main character (Vincent) knows this, so in choosing his own rifle and sidearm, he wants something that he can use with ammunition he finds in the battlefield. He is an expert marksman, but due to his disability, he can't shoot well except from a prone position. The other three members of his core group are former military SpecOps, and shoot well from any position. They will have to engage zombie-like creatures and mercenaries in prolonged firefights. I'll gladly take any recommendations. I have found a list of 7.62x51mm weapons on Wikipedia. It's also worth noting these four characters have about two dozen civilians, some of whom are war veterans, cops, hunters, and so on, but most of the civilians start out with department store and sporting store weapons like you'd use for deer or home defense.
If the bad guys are equipped by the US army I'd expect them to be armed with M4 battle rifles with under mounted grenade launchers. Machine gun wise they'd probably have the M240. I doubt they'd carry a fifty cal about except on vehicles, and in that case it would probably be the M2 browning your good guy group would mostly be armed with captured weaponry - unless it was from hunting stores etc in which case they'd mostly be .243 or .308
My bad guys are privately funded. They're protected by military authorities, but their weapons and gear are bought by private investors. Their .50-caliber weapons are primarily vehicle-mounted, but they also have a relative few anti-materiel rifles. Most of my civilians do carry .223 to .308, though they'll eventually want to switch to more uniform weapons. I'm trying to figure out what guns my "core four" carry, in terms of rifles or shotguns and sidearms. Vincent needs a semi-auto rifle for urban warfare ranges, primarily for sniping, but also useful in CQB. He also needs something in the 9mm to .38 range for a sidearm. Suppressed weapons are a plus all around.
You can't sensibly supress a battle rifle, but I'd suggest something like the AR15 if he has a semi auto AR15 he'll be able to use ammunition from fully auto M4s and anything else firing nato 5.56 ( the FN SCAR can change barrels to operate on various different calibres, I'd suggest that your bad guys would standardise on 5.56 so that they could use rounds from army/police if they had to) Handgun wise the range in 9mm is huge - my personal preference would be the Sig either P226 or P320 -these can take a suppressor
Why not? I agree, 5.56x45mm does seem a better choice, even if it is smaller. The reason I'd want suppressors is so they don't go deaf, nor are they as likely to give their position away. I'd also like to slowly progress the protagonists from a rabble militia to something of an army, and it's easier if everyone's using the same rifles and sidearms. My concern with the weapons is also how to clean them and maintain them if your supplies for such things aren't exactly endless.
Because a) if the round goes supersonic its going to make a crack no matter what you do at the barrel, this is why most silenced weaponry used by the police etc is submachine gun and fires slower pistol rounds b) suppressors basically work by trapping gas from the fired round, but when colt tried to make a supressed CAR15 they found it was very prone to jams as there was insufficient gas to work the mechanism effectively. If its critical that they have silenced weapons I'd give them H&K MP5s which fire 9mm .... give them to the enemy too so that rounds can be scavenged. They won't be any good for sniping, but you can use a powerful hunting rifle for that.
Diminished sound is diminished sound. You can't truly silence a firearm, though a few come damn close. The Marines have been interested in suppressing every weapon in an infantry battalion. It doesn't silence the gunfire, but it's easier on the ears and may make it more difficult for an enemy to accurately locate their position. Since my story takes place in the future, I can "work out" the jamming problem. Even today people have solutions for the jamming issue on AR-15s with suppressors, from adjustable gas blocks to specialized bolt carriers. Of course suppressors also wear out, but military grade suppressors last for 15,000 rounds at minimum, if memory serves. I think I'll give Vincent, Blair, Padre, and Tommy the AR-15s, but they'll pick up the suppressors later. They'll also grab any weapon they can find, because any weapon is better than none, nine times out of ten. As for pistols, I think it makes sense for Padre and Tommy (former SBS and SAS, respectively) to use Sig P226s or Glock 17s. For Vincent and Blair, the Beretta 92FS seems like a good choice.
If this takes place in the US, the standard arm is the Black Rifle, hands down, simply because it's the easiest to get hold of in terms of working rifles, parts, and ammunition. Keep the important parts wet and they'll shoot until there aren't any more bullets. The real world difference between .223 and 5.56, btw, is that one of them is usually cheaper than the other. Exactly which one depends on what day of the week.
I just said "the Black Rifle" to Google and the first thing it brought up was a bigass book on the history of the M16, etc.
All I got were results for a coffee company. Interesting. I've heard there are some aiming peculiarities with AR-15s, where you have to aim high at shorter ranges to hit what you want. I suppose there's customizations for the AR for just about anything, though.
AR-15 (well, M16A2, but same difference in this case) have their sights mounted (checks old airsoft XM177 that's in the corner) about 7cm above the center of the barrel, and bullets travel in an arc, so there's some weird stuff that goes on. At 25yds, IIRC, the bullet passes through the same plane while it's rising as it will at 200yds as it's falling. We did "BZO", or Battle Sight Zero (0) with live rounds on the LFT (Live Fire Triangulation, or Little Fucking Targets) range when we shot. The thing is, at that distance, the 7cm height of the sights makes a difference, so the LFT targets had a point of aim as well as a point of impact marking. The purpose was to make sure that your weapon, at 8/3-2 (eight slash three minus two, or two clicks down from the 8/3 mark) was putting the rounds about where it should be when fired at a target 200yds (or meters in Pendleton) away. From Wikipedia, with exaggerated angles for clarity: Once the rounds are printing paper, you can go up or down, left or right a couple clicks to bring them to where they need to be, but if you start out at 200yds and you're not getting impacts, it's very difficult (not impossible) to bring the weapon in line to where it needs to be. One of my rifles has this problem, I finally figured out what was going on while trying to shoot beer cans at about 20yds and saw all the dirt it was kicking up in front of them. My stepdad verified the issue, so it wasn't the dope behind the weapon.
Thanks, @Iain Aschendale. I knew bullets flew in an arc, though it didn't occur to me that would effect impact on targets between certain ranges. When I was learning to shoot, it was for "pie plate accuracy" at ranges of fifty to a hundred yards (simulating probable distances for heart-lung shots on deer). It makes sense though, that if you're off by six inches at 25 yards, at 200 yards you're going to be off by significantly more. One of my buddies was a door-kicker in Fillintheblankistan, and said the military trained him to basically point (as opposed to aim) and fire. He did that so much, though, that he'd hit the same basic area pretty much every time. For longer shots, of course, you'd need to aim down the sights, but when you're a goat's butt away from a hostile after you've kicked in his door, aiming isn't really all that essential. At least, that's what he explained to me. The most precise shooting I've ever done is with an iron-sights .22 rifle, trying to fit five shots so they're within the space of a quarter from 25 meters away. That was in the Boy Scouts. I'm happy to say I won the "dime challenge."
Point shooting is for CQB situations where you don't really have time to aim and aren't too concerned about collateral damage - I used to be able to do that with a Browning Hi Power (although as an officer I wasn't really trained to kick doors). At short range you don't need great accuracy to get an incapacitating shot to torso throat or head Also in general aiming down the iron sights is great for training but goes completely to shit in a firefight.
For my Hellions (antagonists) I've decided to nix the SCAR rifles for M4A1 carbines, with Glock 19s for backup. That's based on a photo on Wikipedia of Marine Raiders firing said rifles on a range, and an article on Military.com that indicated a preference by the Raiders for the Glocks. Of course, Hellions will also have a variety of weapons available, but the M4A1 and Glock 19 will be their "default." I need to somehow get the Army and Air Force installations in the city to leave their guns and ammo when they haul ass out of Dodge. This is a problem. How do you get military bases to skedaddle that quick?
Maybe if the attack of the Z virus or whatever it is actually hit those bases, order would be to evacuate asap.... of course it stands to reason that they'd take whatever weaponry was to hand with them, but if the armories were locked and the keys couldn't be found (because the QM had gone Z) they probably wouldnt fuck about trying to get them open
yeah that'd work - although i'd expect them to be ordered to put it beyond use... also you could have whole bases wiped out before they could evac
Blackhawk Down. They go out on an op/patrol/mission whatever with the textbook one day combat load. 210 rounds per man for the M4s, whatever the standard is for the crew served weapons, two canteens and maybe an MRE or two for each soldier, and while they're out there, the base gets overrun by Zeds. Everybody's got just enough stuff for one quick day and back to base, but they're without resupply and no base to go back to.
I assume there's an armory on military installations where a sizeable number of weapons is maintained. If that's true, then I have a few factors working here regarding Fort Carson: 1. The war with rogue nations has diminished the number of personnel on post. 2. The blizzard has further diminished personnel to those considered "essential." That happens here in the winter often, and I assume it means that if your job is to stock printer paper or sort mail in Colonel Clinker's office, you probably aren't essential. 3. The President, Congress, JCOS, SecDef, whoever could order the Army to assist the National Guard with Zed. That would further diminish numbers on post. Zed gets uppity in the city against the regulars fighting alongside the NG. Zed overwhelms the post, forcing people on post to "secure in place" or evacuate. There's skirmishes, but not everyone on post has a weapon on their hip or shoulder, so lots of people get eaten. After a valiant battle in the city, soldiers are cut off from Carson, and whoever orders them to retreat from the city. Plausible? More to the point of the thread, I'd expect to find some of these weapons there. No one's going to have the chutzpah, time, or ability to go in and ask Zed less than politely to return the contents of the armory.
One thing to think about is that armories are reinforced concrete blockhouses with massive steel doors, designed to keep unauthorized people out. Something as simple as the guy with the keys getting dragged into a mob of Zed puts all of those toys out of reach for quite some time until the spare key or some specialized tools can be found.
Not firearm-specific, but some of the descriptions you've given me of your story remind me a little of Battle: Los Angeles. As I always feel compelled to state, this doesn't mean I think you're at all copying, just that, if you haven't seen it, it might give you a couple of different angles to look into. There's a scene (very minor spoiler) where the protag squad is gathering ammo off of KIA Marines that might come in handy (and isn't so original to that movie that it would be plagiarism or anything).
I saw it. It's not a great movie, but certainly not horrible. For what it is, it's watchable. I did get the idea of picking ammo off of folks from playing video games, and it makes sense. That 200+ rounds you mentioned earlier isn't going to last very long if you're in a Black Hawk Down scenario. As for taking on the armory, I might have a way in. If you can't get in but your enemy can, why not let them open the doors for you? It makes sense that Zagan, my lead Hellion, would have the means to open the armory, even if by percussive means. Then my group just has to go in and take it, preferably without being seen by the Hellions.
