What kinds of firearms would people start making [After the End]?

[Calvin]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Remember, though, that there have been people around for that time, using up those resources. It's not just a matter of how long it can survive being abandoned.

True enough, but how recently did people get back on their feet? Some guy stumbling through a warehouse isn't going to know what to do with a bunch of empty brass or primers.

Though a lot of the intact ammo probably has been used up.

Brass especially is going to be sticking around for a while though. It can be reused quite a bit, even longer if the people making the ammo is willing to accept a larger chance of failure.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Calvin

True enough, but how recently did people get back on their feet?

I haven't read ATE, but post-apocalypse civilization (such as it is) has to have existed for some time before game start to have, for instance, TL4 villages.

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I haven't read ATE, but post-apocalypse civilization (such as it is) has to have existed for some time before game start to have, for instance, TL4 villages.

Are you calculating that as time to regress to TL4, or time to restore to TL4?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Randyman

Are you calculating that as time to regress to TL4, or time to restore to TL4?

Time to establish an economy at TL 4. Closer to the latter I guess. If they actually had an economy at a higher level and that regressed down to TL4, that means they got "on their feet" even sooner.

[Warlockco]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Right, which is why TL5 stuff is x2 in cost, and TL6 stuff is x4 in cost.

PK explicitly states in this post that there should be TL5 settlements in ATE game:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...&postcount=148

TL6 stuff? Less so. It depends on each GM's view of the game and the genre. My upcoming Nu World has a lot of early TL5 settlements, a few mature TL5 settlements, and handful of settlements that can do limited TL6 or greater manufacturing. If I was doing a game based more on Fallout: New Vegas, there would be a lot of new TL6 and TL7 gear coming out of the New California Republic, but that's not the game my group wanted to play. But Fallout: New Vegas is clearly an After the End game, albeit one set 8-9 generations after the fall.

The NCR has at least two functioning vaults to draw resources from.

A Fallout type setting has bastions of intact and even progressed technology.
The Enclave, Brotherhood of Steel, and several different Vaults are sources of pre-AtE technology and new technology.

Another consideration is how intact parts of the tech-base is in the AtE setting.
Are there machine shops that are still functional? Or does everything have to be forged/hammered out by hand?
Just combat knives, swords, and other melee edged weapons alone would practically need to be relearned how to create from trial and error. Unless someone in the community that survived after the AtE already had working practical knowledge and the tools.
Just look at the show Forged in Fire on how hard it is make knives, and some of the contestants are supposed to be people that make knives for a living.
Guns are on an entirely more difficult level to create from scratch. The best that could be made without being able to drill barrels would be to scavenge suitable lengths of pipe to make a type of zip-gun.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by phayman53

These both make good points--though my understanding of the setting default is that there really isn't anyplace with a few hundred thousand or million survivors working together. But certainly communities large enough for reasonable specialization and innovation are likely a generation or more after the disaster. About the current TL, AtE 1, pg. 29 says:

I don't have AtE 2, but my reading of ATE 1 and Pyramid 3-88, and especially the comments by Kromm and Jason Levine on the forum, give me a different view. Its almost impossible to create a scenario where within 50 years there is nothing left but isolated villages with no machine shops, power plants, ... but its easy to create a scenario which contains the wasteland. Parts of Brazil, mountain Asia, and Africa already have some things in common with the Wasteland even before the zombie plague, unchecked climate change, alien space bats, or nuclear war. In another thread safisher has a long nonfiction reading list ... and he wrote up his expert opinion on your question in Pyramid 3-88.

I think that in that quote from AtE 1, "the world" means "the wasteland" or "the part of the setting where the story takes place."

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Warlockco

Guns are on an entirely more difficult level to create from scratch. The best that could be made without being able to drill barrels would be to scavenge suitable lengths of pipe to make a type of zip-gun.

Quoting High-Tech (3rd edition) p 9 "[David Marshall] Williams made his first working short-stroke, semi-automatic rifle while he was a prison inmate. The barrel was a discarded axle. His most complex tool was a file."

There's a lot of guns people can make from scavenged parts, using simple tools. STEN SMGs are designed to be made by hand in the home. They're perfectly adequate weapons.

Yes, it's nice to have an industrial process for all of this stuff, but it isn't required.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by Warlockco

Guns are on an entirely more difficult level to create from scratch. The best that could be made without being able to drill barrels would be to scavenge suitable lengths of pipe to make a type of zip-gun.

Also, early gun barrels were made by taking a bar of iron, heating it, and welding it into a tube around a mandrel.

But a machine shop isn't so hard to make, and with one you can make a bore and rifling tap. Look into the Gingery Books- they're all about bootstrapping a machine shop starting with nothing. I have most of them- they're fascinating. This would be very labor-intensive, though, and thus ridiculously expensive.

[starslayer]

What type of weapons will they be making?

Look no further than the mountains of Pakistan where severely disabled blind legless blacksmiths can produce functional mp40 copies from assorted scrap in a campfire forge and with an improvised anvil.

Ammo will be there more limiting factor, I would expect to see more wad and cap revolvers than breach loaders or muzzle loaders though - shooting more often between reloads is a good thing.

Of course this assumes that no one had the capacity to produce smokeless powder, or stamp out steel casings. If anyone is doing that it will have a huge impact on weapon production and types, if someone is producing 7.62x39 round then ak-47s will be everywhere, if someone is producing 9mm than pistols and smgs will be prevalent.


Further much like the Pakistani smitg I mention above, they won't be working with 'nothing' or 'from scratch', they will have a huge glut of former technology everywhere full of precision parts just waiting for someone with an inkling of what they are doing to extract and build.

[Rockwolf66]

When asked about what could possibly be made after an apocalypse I tend to point people to Improguns. As the site is dedicated to improvised and home made firearms. What is show ranges from suicidally badly made to weapons that are "factory" made and as good as anything available legally.

Improguns

As far as Pakistan goes I have pictures on my computer of Gunsmiths there making Armsel Striker copies. They had one Origination copy and they were cranking out knockoffs. When I found said photo I also found out that they were making Select fire AK pattern 12 gauge shotguns.