I feel your pain. My one regret from the 1990’s is that I never felt I ever acquired an adequate SHTF weapon. Now of course I’d pick a Colt 6920 and keep rocking. I guess I should have snapped up a couple more pre-ban Colts back in the day and not dabbled in all the AK’s, SKS’s, M1A’s, HK’s, and other crap.
Now- I buy it ASAP when I feel I need or want something.
We’ve had a couple years now of pure gravy-best time to buy guns, ammo & gear Ive really ever seen in decades. If you aint now loading up, you’re screwing up, imo. Im getting all I can, while I can.
Cool thread! I was stationed at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks Alaska When the whole Y2K thing went down. I wasn’t really a gun guy then, I had a 7MM rifle, Mossy 500 shotgun, a couple Marlin 22 rifles, and a Ruger Redhawk. None of my friends were stocking up on ammo as we all reloaded, and I suspect I had a couple bricks of 22s, and maybe a few hundred rounds on the other stuff.
My personal biggest worry was our base power plant. If that went down, we’d be screwed. I worked in the base resource management shop at the time, and my account was civil engineers, who manage the power plant. We funded a bunch of upgrades for their systems that ran the big coal fired boilers, so everyone was sure they were good to go. Turns out they were, and everything went fine. That plant provided all of our electrical and heat for the base. During the dead of winter, when temps hovered in the -40°F range, they burned 40 Train cars of coal every day.
On New Year’s Eve, 1999, we took our kids downtown to see the fireworks. It was 53° below zero, and ice fog blanketed Fairbanks. They called off the fireworks, but on our way home, we stopped for ice cream (in AK, it’s never too cold for ice cream ) and watch some guys in a coffee shop parking lot in North Pole setting off fireworks. My daughters (3 & 7) thought it was really cool, sitting in the truck, eating ice cream, watching fireworks explode 100 feet away.
I was a paramedic, and everyone was on duty, we staffed extra ambulances. I kept asking why, was there supposed to be some sort of mass attack of shortness of breath or chest pain at midnight? Never got a good answer of why we’re so over-staffed. 0700 rolled around, I went home, and slept the sleep of the just.
My prepping included taking a few hundred bucks out of the ATM’s in case the ATMs were down for a few days.
I was 99.9% sure the whole Y2K thing was BS, but just to hedge my bets incase of that 0.1%, I got up on the 31st, squirted some oil on my thumb-hole stocked NHM-91 and loaded up my 3 pre-ban “High-Caps” with yellow box, steel-core, Norinco FMJs. Ah, yes…Those were the days. Simple times, I tell ya!
LOLZ. On the 31st I put on my warmest longjohns, thermal socks, camo BDU pants, M65 jacket with liner, and my genuine 1970 Soviet Ushanka. I grabbed a twelve-pack of beer and my favorite lawn chair and went outside to watch the grid go down and leave us all in the dark.
A couple hours later I was cold enough to say, “This is nuts”, and went back inside.
Nothing happened that night.
I’ve heard people claim that Y2K wasn’t the disaster they thunk it would be due to their diligence in correcting things so it WOULDN’T happen–but I wonder.
I was working second shift at the PD at the time and we all worked over to have two shifts on the road at midnight when society collapsed. We posted officers at all the transfer stations around town. Mostly we just made a bunch of DUI arrests and broke up fights at all the over packed bars.
Before I went to that legendary shitshow of a party I partook in, I dumped my crusty BHP mkII(+3 KRD mags), my Randall BFK, an MRE, a compass and a Red M18 smoke grenade in my Camelback HAWG. Tossed that into the back of my 71 Chevelle and rolled out hoping y2k would be at least half as interesting as they claimed. Those were definitely the days
I kinda miss those days. I had not a care in the world. Honestly aside from an errant range day; I had no real interest in guns. My first real rifle was an STG 58 and I miss it. Not enough to buy another FAL though
I was 16 at the time, my mom worked for NYDOT (still does) and worked all night Incase something happened. I forget where my little brother and sister was that night but my dad and I went down the hill to a family friend’s house who was having a party and I got drunk on mudslides. At midnight we called my mom and drunkenly asked her if the world had ended yet.
My dad is an electrical engineer and didn’t think anything was going to happen so we didn’t prep at all. At the time the only gun that I owned was a mossberg 500 and it stay locked up.
It would be funny to have a movie about someone who went total hermit mistakenly at Y2K because they thought everything had gone down and they just come out now or in 2020 or something about how much the world has changed.
I learned to reload from a local man in ne KY where I was living at the time. In '98 - '99, we reloaded CLOSE to 40k rounds of ammo :eek: 9mm, 10mm, .40, .45, 5.56, .308, and .30 Carbine(!) all told. EVERY weeknight, ALL weekend long! My wife thought I was nuts, until my old 486 DX266 proved me RIGHT at midnight, Jan.1, 2000, and went “ker-FLOOOIE!!!”
I remember my wife’s family was all obsessed with it. They, knowing I was a gun nut, were flabbergasted that I wasn’t stocking up on food and water (beyond my usual basics). They actually brought a huge tub of stuff to us a few days before. It was sweet. Her dad was like “what if there isn’t any food?” I said, “I have an AK47, I can get food.” I was frowned at!
I remember saying “so you are telling me tomorrow all the windows computers are going to be crashing? Amazing…”
Also, I enjoyed the article. BUT, it really describes 1989 more than 1999. ARs, Glocks, etc were already wildly popular, at least around here. 1911s were cool but in decline (although given a temporary boost by the mag limits of the 94 ban). People LOVED high cap guns. I remember paying serious bucks for P99 “Pre-ban” 16 round mags…pre-ban. In fact, if you look at threads discussing “end of the world” over on Thefiringline and other forums of the time you see plenty of ARS, Glocks,1911s, Berettas, Aks, HK91s, an occasional lever gun dead-ender. But honestly, there wasn’t a whole bunch that was that different. Still, I suspect the Bush Ban of AW imports of 89 had a lot to do with winnowing the field down to the AR.
Yeah, my prepping went all through the 1990’s. I remember gun nuts like me making fun of the Y2K people as ignoring the whole decade’s realities. In my experience the AR didn’t become Amerca’s rifle until the GWOT.
Yeah, like I said there were some time line errors but that is probably how the author remembered things. And the import ban definitely had a lot to do with everyone jumping on the AR bandwagon.
The other big thing was that side folding Ruger GB, nobody had one. Bill Ruger was pretty serious about nobody needed and assault weapon and unless you were willing to use an aftermarket choate / butler creed side folder, you had a wood stock.
GBs didn’t get into civie hands until LE surplus put them on the secondary market. I remember when the stocks themselves first popped up at gunshows and people went nuts over a “real deal factory folder.”
Back in the day, I had the Ramline folding stocks on my Camp 9, 10-22, and Mini14. They worked for a while, but the plastic eventually got brittle with age and they all cracked.
Now, the Ramline plastic 10-22 barrel? Still going strong nearly 30 years later - just ran 150 rds thru it this afternoon.
