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Comment by ktizo | Hacker News Reader

Guns are pointless defensively for anything barring a very narrow range of situations. If you are really that worried, get a big stick, it is far more likely to be useful and you aren't going to get arrested, shot, or accidentally blow off bits of yours or other people's anatomy. Better yet, cheer up and stop worrying about the possibility of some kind of apocalypse, and if it does happen, and you have a 3d printer and a load of material, may I suggest you start with water filters and simple pumps rather than weaponry.

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Good point :-) I didn't actually think "I need a 3d printer so that I could make a gun". If I was seriously worried, I'd try to get a gun the official way.

Not saying I am not worried, but I don't seem to get round to building that emergency package.

The problem with serious stockpiling is that you make yourself a target for anyone who didn't, if the worst actually happened. A stockpile of weapons might help protect you, but if you're sitting on years and years of food and survival equipment in a wasteland of thousands of starving and desperate people, chances are most of your weapons will just be one more thing looted from your corpse after a less well prepared and more desperate person gets lucky.

That's why you need to stockpile something which will be extremely valuable after an apocalypse, but not worth killing you over. Something which is cheap now, but that most people with a little extra food stockpiled might be willing to trade you for. Something you need and will use daily anyway: toilet paper.

Plus, any accidental death resulting from your toilet paper stockpile is probably going to be hilarious .

Or something valuable that clearly requires your personal knowledge to operate. Like a fancy radio.

This is an excellent reason to be a bicycle mechanic.

Interesting idea, but I think toilet paper won't cut it. In an emergency situation, you can probably get by without it. Especially if you don't have anything to eat.

Perhaps batteries? But they would be hazardous to store. Also these days the only things I own that use batteries are alarm clocks.

Antibiotics? They wouldn't take up so much space either, but perhaps they decay too quickly?

I've always thought that in the event of an apocalypse a good plan would be to go and knock off a survivalist and nick all their stuff. Given the name, it would be funny if the survivalists are all the first ones to go.

No doubt it will all go badly and I will end up being suffocated after trying to break into the fortified ranch via what looked like an undefended tower on the northern perimeter, but actually turned out to be the largest of their toilet paper silos.

Erm, if you get more utility for violence from a stick than a gun, I believe you may need to revisit your firearms training. I'm not sure you're doing it right.

Where does the pointy end go again?

I was meaning that the ability to shoot someone is not really needed in the vast majority of defensive situations.

Also, if you are up against someone who wants to kill you and who has a gun, if you have no warning then they probably have the drop on you already, and if you have reasonable warning then you would usually have many other options other than shooting someone. The remaining situations seem to be where you only have limited warning, in which case a gun might be useful.

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