Books and Ballistics: How John Ringo is both right and wrong at the same time

  So I've been working my way through John Ringo's Black Tide Rising series as of late. I'm partway into book 2 right now. If you haven't read this series and like ZPOC fiction give this one a whirl it's good.Warning however, there are some spoilers ahead.

To 1st understand this discussion you need to understand the context of Black Tide Rising. In this series the Smith family gets word from a relative that a major, world ending event is imminent and that they need to "bug out". In this case the "bug out" is done via the sea in a 45 foot sailboat. The event is a Zombie Apocalypse. The zombies aren't dead they are infected with a highly modified Rabies virus and thus still living beings not the typical walking dead we see in so many tv shows and movies.

  The Smith family is ofcourse an armed family, they are a family of survivalists. Their firearms consists of hand guns in .45 acp, AKs in 7.62x39, and Saiga shotguns in 12 ga.

  To make a very long story at this point short, one of the protagonists is working with rescued Marines to clear ships at sea of infected. In doing so she complains their M4s, which were salvaged off a US coast guard cutter, are "barbie guns" and they take several shots to put down a zombie where as the shotgun she normally uses takes 1 or 2 shots instead. The book disparages the 5.56x45 and puts forth the notion that the 12 ga buckshot ammo is superior in stopping power.

   John Ringo is entirely correct here. He's also completely wrong. This is where CONTEXT is so incredibly important. One or two seemingly tiny variables completely changes the outcome.

  Its all about the ammo, and the condition of the target here, that is creating this zombies not being stopped situation.
  The M4s, and their ammo, is being sourced from a military vessel, a coast guard cutter. In the early 1980s the US Army, and by extension the other branches adopted a new version of the M16 and new ammo. The old Vietnam era rifles were regulated to reserve and Guard use as was their older ammo. You see the new ammo only worked correctly in the new rifle, where as the old ammo worked in both the old model and the new one. This new ammo is called M855 and the old ammo M193. The M855 round uses a 62 grain bullet with a steel insert in its tip to aid in penetration of think skinned vehicles and infantry helmets. The old M193 round used a simple copper jackected 55 grn FMJ. When the US Army adopted the M4, they stuck with this newer M855 cartridge.

  Ok so you've gotten a breif history of small arms of the US army what does this have to do with not stopping Zombies?

  Bullets do one of four things when they strike a fleshy target. They bore a hole straight through and this is commonly called "ice picking". The bullet, while it does hole the target, does very little damage to it.
  The second thing a bullet may do, if its of a type that does so like a hollow point or soft nosed bullet is that it expands. This expansion inside the target does significant damage, sheds energy, and reduces the chances of over penetration. Common hunting bullets and defensive pistol bullets are bullets designed to expand.
  The third thing a bullet may do is yaw. Yawing is when the bullet looses stability inside the target causing it to change direction and or flip end over end. Yawing can do significant damage to the target like an expanding bullet but without the expansion. Typically this yawing only occurs with rifle bullets.
  Lastly the bullet may fragment. Fragmentation can produce terrible wounds. When the bullet fragments it breaks up sending small bits in different directions through the target and sheds  enormous amount of its energy in doing so.

  The old M193 bullet is a fragmenting bullet. At velocities above 2700 fps it yaws and then breaks up inside targets its shot into with regularity. The original M16 had a 20 inch barrel and M193 had a muzzle velocity of 3250 FPS. This gave the old M16 a fragmentation range of around 150-200 yards.

  The newer M855 is a slower bullet. It travels at around 3100 fps for the newer model M16 and about 2900 fps from the M4 used in Ringo's book. This is significantly slower than the old M193 and the bullet is much longer making it more likely to not yaw.

  When the M855 bullet does finally yaw and fragment, its late to the party. The distance between the entry point of the bullet and the spot in which it begins either yawing or fragmenting is called the neck length of the wound. The neck length of M855 can be as much as 8 inches.

   So you're two months into the ZPOC. Your average fat american is now a skinny raving biting zombie. You've got a short barreled carbine which reduces the bullets velocity combined with a bullet not designed to yaw but to penetrate.

  You're gonna have a bad time. John Ringo is right about "the barbie gun".

  But I'm not in the service and likely you the reader aren't either. I get to pick whatever bullet I want for my AR-15 and I get to pick its barrel length. This is why Ringo is wrong about "the barbie gun". The 77 grn Black Hills 5,56 ammo fragments violently with little to no neck length. The Hornady 75 grn BTHP match has a short 1-2 inch neck before it too fragments violently. Even M193 in this instance is going to be pretty effective. It might not frag every time but it will fragment frequently.

   John Ringo has likely never bugged out once in in life. Most people who write about it have never done it. I've done it 3 or 4 times. FOR REAL. Not practice bug outs. We call them Hurricane Evacuations but its the same thing. Its a balancing act between space, weight, and do you need it? Twelve ga shotgun ammo is very bulky compared to 5.56. Twelve hundred rounds of 5.56 will fit in a 50 cal usgi ammo can while just 375 2.75 inch 12 ga shells fit. Nearly 700 rounds of 5.56 fits in a 30 cal ammo can but only 175 12 ga shells.

  5.56 mm simply consumes much less space than 12 ga shot gun ammo. In the confined spaces of a boat a short 5.56 mm carbine or AR pistol is going to be superior to the shotgun. Combined with lower recoil and high ammunition capacity it beats the shotgun. However it has another attribute the shogun doesn't have: Range.

  On land, or simply a large boast like a ship, a shotgun with buckshot is good for a maximum range of around 50 yards. The carbine's effective range is up to 200. Notice I said "effective". You can hit a target much further but past 200 yards your bullet will be ice picking the target.

   To conclude this discussion, John Ringo was right in his assessment of the "barbie gun" M4 but its due to the poor bullet choices the military and NATO made back in the early 1980s. Modern fragmenting 5.56 mm changes the game completely.

My advice to writers is this: Do your research. Nothing is more infuriating to a gun guy than reading horrifically inaccurate or plain wrong information in some novelists works. I can't read Lee Child's work because the firearms writing is so hopelessly terrible.

I'm back to the black rifle why did I do it?

  I'm an AK guy. My 1st semi auto center fire carbine was an SKS. Then I owned a couple of AKs and for awhile was an AK-74 shooter. Then I got bit by the black rifle. I owned and built several AR15s back during the 94 AWB ban era. Then I got out of the BR and back into AKs and for the last 8 or 9 years owned a couple of AKs. Last year I divested myself of the AK platform.

  Why? Why did I sell off my last AK and why did I buy another AR-15? The short and simple an answer was I was broke and needed the money. Money was tight in 2017 and in order to survive I had to make some cuts. But I made that cut knowing I wasn't coming back to the AK. After shooting AKs for years and owning more AKs than another platform I made the decision to leave it and not return.

  Ok so money was tight? Now that money isn't tight why not get another AK? Because the AK in the USA is dead. Its a dead platform. Importation and regulatory bans have reduced the AK market to low quality, and even dangerous, American made "AKs" (I use the quotation marks here because many of these guns are an affront to name Kalashnikov). These are rifles that shear locking lugs off bolts, peen their carriers, and crack trunions regularly. The fact is to build an American AK that's going to be of the same quality as a combloc produced gun its going to be extremely expensive. Like $1500 expensive. That price point puts someone into a used SCAR or a new M1A.  The second major problem with the AK here is ammo supply. AKs are entirely dependent on cheap Russian import ammo.

   Our relationship with Russia these days is tenuous at best. A shift in power in DC will likely result in more sanctions of Russia. That shift in power would also be entirely  Socialist  so a ban on imported ammo from Russia would be a no brainer.

   Lastly in the past 10 years something happened. AR-15s got SUPER CHEAP. I remember when an SP1 was a $700 rifle. This was back in the days of $75 sks carbines and $200 chicom AKs. Cases of 7.62x39 sold for $69 then. Now a quality AK will set you back $1000+ and a case of ammo is $200 but the last Colt 6920 I saw for sale, new in a gun store, was $789. Ten years ago that was a $1500 gun. Back in the early 2000s I built an AR-15 from a collection of new and used parts and spent $400. Now a $400 parts AR-15 is literally a click away. As I write this  Palmetto State Armory has a nitride m4 upper complete for $220 and a matching complete lower for $130.  That's with free shipping. A cheap $20 rear sight can be bought on Amazon.com and once you pay your FFL for transfer the complete carbine is under $400.

   Its not just the guns that have gotten cheap the magazines and the ammo have gotten cheap too. While a quality AK mag will set you back $10 a quality AR mag will set you back $7-10 or cheaper! The gulf between cheap Russian .223 ammo and brass cased m193 5.56 has narrowed so much the Russian stuff isn't worth buying anymore. Russian .223 is $220 a case after shipping and I just ordered Federal m193 for 26.6 per round  delivered. That's less than a nickle per round difference to shoot quality, accurate, re loadable ammo.

  So this year I completed an AR-15 build. I had a lower I had bought a few years ago and at some point installed a lower parts kit in it. A few months ago I purchased a rifle kit from Palmetto State Armory (PSA). It's a  basic mid length gas system carbine with a nitrided barrel with an M4 stock. I used all the parts in the kit minus the LPK since I had already assembled my lower with another. I bought a UTG slim line rear sight. This was a brand new product and only $33 delivered with my prime account. The sight is an A2 style with a an elevation drum and a windage knob. I threw an M16 silent sling on the rifle and for the 1st time in 8 years had a working AR-15.