NWO Survival Planning, page 2

While a sword needs no ammo, it also has no place in modern combat. The proliferation of modern firarms make swords nothing more than collectors items or display pieces. Not only do they have little use as a defensive weapon, then are worthless when it comes to hunting animals for food. Short of using them to cut brush they are worthless and not worth the weight added to your pack.

Since we are getting to the discussion of expanding the capacity of a bugout bag, I think a distinction needs to be made. In principle a bugout bag is supposed to be quick and lite allowing you to move quickly without a huge burden. While this is good, it lacks the capacity to carry larger ammounts of supplies such as food. This is about the dimensions of my current bag, if you want to upgrade to something with more capacity and attach points, get a pack with a metal tube frame like this. As you can see packs with a frame tend to be larger, have better padding and lots of attach points for extra gear. Unfortunately the more space you have, the heavier the pack gets and the more cumbersome it becomes.

I don't know how well vacuum bags would work, since that would require you to either suck out the air yourself, or have some kind of pump to do the work for you. While not boasting the same level of efficency, compression bags work wonders to compact things like clothes down, or just to organize and separate items in your pack (I use three of them to divide my mess kit, firestarting and misc items in my own pack).

I want to take a moment and just brush upon the topic of firearms and hunting. Most can debate till they are blue in the face about what caliber and brand of gun to have and why its the bar-none-best. American Mad Man hit on a good point that ammunition can be a form of currency in the scenario proposed by Indigo_Child. In deciding what caliber of weapon to have, I would suggest researching your part of the world and country to find out what rounds are popular and which ones are hard to come by. To me it seems the 30-06 Springfield cartridge is a very popular round for hunting, and also the .270 is gaining alot of attention among hunters. I personally think between the 30-30 and the 30-06 rounds you can drop just about anything in North America effectively. Its my personal oppinion that you should keep your shots under 150 to 100 yards in distance when hunting for survival, as every shot counts and ideally it should be a one-shot-one-kill system.

Personal defense with a weapon should be a last-resort; avoid confrontations with other people and animals. As for picking a weapon, its a matter of personal choice I think. Long rifles suitable for hunting dont make the most effective defense weapons because they are often limited in magazine capacity, have optical sights, and are bolt-action versus semi-automatic. Unless you intend to use the same weapon for defense that you use for hunting, weight will be a major issue in choosing a defense weapon. I would argue against handguns for defense because they dont offer much in the way of standoff ability. From personal shooting experience I would suggest either a .223/5.56mm weapon such as the AR-15 or Ruger Mini14, or any short barreled 12 gauge shotgun (NO sawedoffs, the shorter the barrel the worse the recoil and accuracy become) If you go the shotgun route, purchase 00 buckshot, slugs, and small game loads so that the weapon can have multiple roles. Don't get hung up on the idea of packing around multiple defense weapons; find one your comfortable with and that doesnt weigh too much and stick with it. Also if your completely new to hunting I would recommend taking a hunter safety course to get you familiar with the concepts regarding hunting, safety, and other necessary things.

American Mad Man > indeed, 3 to 5 days supply of food is a good idea to have as a bare minimum. While shooting game can be an effective way to feed yourself, in the scenario described in the beginning of the thread detection is a concern, and gunshots are a dead giveaway, especially multiple shots.

Food is definately a concern as the colder months approach, because the body needs more food to generate heat to survive. If possible game should be taken and preserved via smoking or other means during the onset of fall in order to prepare for the change in climate.