The Firing Pin Journal brings us a new hypothetical situations which requires you to chose one rifle caliber to take with you:
You are heading off to a rural area where you will spend three weeks having to survive on your own. All of your food must be caught and to add excitement to the scenario, a group of 5 zombies are out there who are very bad zombies, part of a zombie drug ring. You are on their turf and must survive. If you can avoid contact that’s good but if they find you they will be upset with you.
Oh and you don’t get any spare parts and 200 rounds of ammunition (For five days that should be more than sufficient).
Zombies only go down with head shots so having a massive caliber in that regard isn’t necessary. On the other hand if you want to hunt something like deer you’ll want something of decent size. I’d opt for my M1A SOCOM 16. The 7.62x51mm is certainly large enough to drop a deer and can really reach out and touch somebody. The gun is reliable and not known for breaking anything. Head shots on zombies will be no problem at all. The only issue would be weight but it’s not that dreadfully heavy in all honesty. Also I know the rifle like the back of my hand which means in a fight with the drug gang zombies I’d have less problems involved with being unfamiliar with my rifle.
Damned drug gang zombies, they are the worst kind!
If we’re talking about our own rural areas, I want 7.62x39mm.
You see, in my neck of the woods, we’ve got this bush called Salal.
It’s a 5-7 foot tall, perennial, evergreen weed. within a few years it will engulf all but the largest of clear-cut plots. As you can imagine, it makes long shots problematic. It also is quite sturdy, so I’d need a little more “oomph” than a .223 could provide to blast through it.
The rifle I’d take is a Mini-30, for all the reasons for your M1A, but I need something smaller.