posted on Aug, 8 2014 @ 03:07 PM
There is an obscene amount of stockpiled ammo all over the world, I think it would take a long time to run out, especially if there is any massive
die-off of the population. I'm still buying cans of ammo from the 50s that fire near as reliably as any new stuff.
Additionally I don't see the capacity to produce ammo being totally destroyed, the casings are reusable, bullets easy to manufacture, propellant
possible for someone in the know, primers would be the more difficult part. There is just SO much machinery and SO much material laying all over the
globe people are going to be producing ammo even if the world ends. Manufacturing isn't as hard as you think when it's done on a survival basis with
no government regulations and rules you need to follow.
Look to third world nations to see how people can take a bunch of busted random machines and turn them into useful heavy machinery. Lathes, mills,
etc. The cat is out of the bag, ammo production would be nearly impossible to stop.
Even if ammo did get very rare, I don't think muskets would be of much use. Muskets only overtook the bow because of volley fire, large numbers of
soldiers firing their guns at once. On an individual bases a bow is of much more use than a musket, and I don't think there is going to be huge
armies shooting it out napoleon style on the fields, that's really the only place the musket was useful.
If we ever devolved back to a tribal melee weapon situation, there would be so many things and so much new materials laying around that any melee
weapon that became common probably wouldn't be a simple medieval weapon, it would be evolved from new knowledge, new materials, etc we'll never go
back to the middle ages unless we are talking tens or hundreds of thousands of years and all traces of the modern world are gone.