moot. Second, I am not the ideal person to review this book ... I could not tell what makes an automatic weapon different from a semi-automatic weapon. And that's why I'll make a separate thread here, to offer an opportunity to someone who actually knows something about guns to throw in some comments. After all, something similar to the novel's scenario is frequently discussed here, and, after all, that long-running thread in "Planning for the future" surely indicates the fascination that a large chunk of Peak OIl.com's readership has with guns.For this is a novel about guns. In fact, I think this may be the first novel written by an inanimate object, a gun, or perhaps a committee of guns.
Guns are the heroes, the plot, the actors, and the raison d'etre for the book. The plot appears to be that a large number of weapons go looking for humans to use them, and, happily, find a small band who are willing to devote their lives to customizing, servicing, and using guns. Purchasing for each member began with a battle rifle, a riot shotgun with a spare "birdgun" long barrel and screw in choke tubes ...
There's much, much more along those lines. I think those of you who appreciate guns would love this. I'm a birdwatcher, and much of the novel reminded me of me and my buddies' discussing feather striping patterns, or relative tail lengths (yes, we do discuss birds to this level of detail!). There are paragraphs and paragraphs of description to delight the gun enthusiast.
The trigger for the action is a financial panic that leads within 3 days to mass rioting and a fairly complete breakdown of society along with the loss of millions of lives. A small group of friends in Chicago have quietly prepared for years for the scenario. They have a planned retreat in Idaho, and they all make their way there more or less intact.
They then set up housekeeping for the guns. The rest of the humans' lives excite no detail. Food? You thought they would be out foraging for herbs to go along with the fish and game. No, instead the group stockpiled thousands of MRE's apparently on the theory that they only needed enough nutrition to go on patrol with the guns. I was interested in laundry, but the group had ordered one wringer washer years before and apparently that worked out fine, because it is never mentioned again after the first time.
No, the skills that were involved here were almost entirely related to weaponry. The group house was designed with crossfire in mind. The entry road was lined with hidden foxholes (insulated in various ways). Lookout points were excavated and fortified.
Obviously all this had been accomplished long before the collapse, and one of the issues I have with the book is that its message is pretty despairing: unless you have already been preparing for a decade, it's too late. And preparing means acquiring welding equipment and skills, learning to drill steel, customizing your own ammunition, and spending your vacations at shooting school. (Forget that booklet on caring for poultry!)
Another issue I had was the lack of internal conflict - 3 years crammed together in a modest house would surely send a lot of well-armed folks over the edge. Maybe the ceaseless patrolling kept them out of each other's way! Internal group conflict would be a big issue for me.
Also, the group was perhaps too well armed to be the subjects of a novel. Their weaponry and training was so superior to those around them that they essentially had no trouble dealing with any of the post-collapse rogues and roving gangs (mostly bikers). They blew them away!
So the guns needed a bigger challenge, and they constructed a plotline that finally derailed the novel completely for me. Lacking any worthy opponents in northern Idaho, the guns create a preposterous scenario of a UN invasion (now remember, the whole world has been engulfed in crisis, and you're telling me the UN (with its total force of maybe 50,000?) is going to spare troops to invade Idaho?? But nonetheless the guns manage to overcome the UN troops, start and win another US civil war over the Second Amendment ??, and at the end are working to make the rest of the world safe for concealed weapons.
Although there are fuel shortages at the beginning, Peak Oil is not at base a factor in this novel, as by the end all the groups are driving around at will in armored vehicles getting 4 miles per gallon (but of course our group had constructed an underground tank - with stabilized gasoline - years before). If Peak Oil were the driving force in the novel, everybody would be grounded by the end. No UN invasion. No Abrams tanks. Of course, that never stopped our ancestors from carrying their clubs to the next village, but you get my drift.
Is it likely? God knows that things like this are happening in Zimbabwe today. But we have also seen huge difficulties in societies that have generated nothing along these lines. In any case, the novel's message is that if you haven't bought your weapons, your retreat, your camouflage sticks already, you will probably be killed. Not a message I want to hear!
I do think those of you who enjoy The Gun Thread would have a great deal of fun with this novel. And I would be interested in your takes on whether the gun descriptions are accurate and feasible.
