More Panic in the Cities

We discussed the countryside bound panicked hoards  that are expected by all the most exciting apocalypse-in-progress (aip) novels.  We have already commented on One Second After earlier, but the modern version of the genre goes back at least to the movie Panic in the Year Zero, which itself is said to have  been (without attribution) based on Ward Moore's Lot and Lot's Daughter.

A love fest? Yes indeed!

  

O.K. let's play a scenario game.  We live in the world of Lucifer's Hammer, No Blade of Grass,  the prequel to Starvation Ridge, Nova's second book in the American Apocalypse before the Norse Goddess shows up, or Crawford's Lights Out.  We are the heroes of the story, we have noodled around for a while, had a little drama, and now we are waiting for the bad guys - the city hordes - to show up. 

However, we are going to change the rules a little.  We will insist on at least a modicum of reality.

So what happens?

If they are driving normal passenger vehicles, the hordes can make it about 300 miles.  That is somewhat the standard range for an off the shelf passenger vehicle.  However, as Busted Knuckles noted in our earlier post, most of us are running around town with about a quarter of a tank of gas.  Considering a quarter tank is good for maybe 60  miles of city traffic, that is not all that surprising.  day-to-day, it gets us where we need to go. 

So the reality is, at some point they are going to have to get out and walk at some point.  I mean it is possible that they could raid a Dick's Sporting Goods and show up as the second coming of a Wehrmacht bicycle company, but it just doesn't happen that way in fiction.  Given how hard it would be to round up more than a hundred adult sized bikes, it also does not make for much of a horde.  Kids bikes of course are more common, so it would remain a viable option for the four foot-and-under crowd.  If they teamed up with the rampaging mice hoards it would certainly make a unique threat mix.

Now we will pause a moment to look at some numbers.  To be exact, the load that a U.S. infantryman carries on foot:

• Average fighting load:   62.43 pounds
• Average full load % body weight: 34.90%
• Average Approach March Load (AML): 94.98 pounds
• Average AML % body weight: 52.59%
• Average Emgergency March Load (EAML): 128.35 pounds
• Average EAML % body weight: 73.62%.
•  
• The average mission duration: 48 -72 hours.

So when these heavily loaded troops (we are not back to our urban hordes yet) get to the area of engagement, if they really open up and blaze away, how long will their ammo last?

• About 5-10 minutes.
  

from Modern Warriors Combat Load (pdf), Spring 2003 p13,

That's right, if they really open up and let someone have it, they will run out of ammo in 5 minutes. This is actually something of a military truism. The "Five minutes of rooty-tooty" in World War 2(John D. Salt, The Nugget, Feb 2008) becoming the 10 minutes of rooty-tooty with lighter modern ammunition  so to speak.  It is not just U.S. troops.   It is one of the reasons that the ever astute Germans made a point of making an immediate counterattack after loosing a position.  They wanted to catch their opponant before they were settled in and were still low on ammunition.  You simply canot carry enough ammunition to keep you in a long fight with semi- or full-auto weapons.

The typical load out for an infantryman with a M-4/M-16 is 7 magazines with 30 rounds, and 140 rounds in stripper clips for a total of (210+140) 350 rounds.  At the leisurely pace (even on semi-auto) of one shoot per second or two,  the ammo will be gone in 5 to 10 minutes.  For what it is worth the light machine gun crew (SAW) is carrying about 1000 rounds and will run out quicker on full auto.  Note that someone carrying heavier rounds (.308) will likely even have less ammunition: rounds-per-pound  of 19 versus 37 (from here).

No we are back to our hordes.

That infantryman is carrying a lot of weight.  It is what they carry around to accomplish 2 to 3 days of work. Granted they have more, and better equipment than your typical hordesperson (we want to be PC here), but they are also not hauling around any kindergartners, family heirloom silver sets, or other odd critical items that a four-hours of sitcom/reality shows a day educated person might think they need to survive.

Our average hordesperson  is not likely to be in as good of shape as our combat infantryman.  It is difficult to see them carry much in the way of provisions and ammunition and great distance.  Groups of people move slowly, being really generous our horde makes 10 miles a day.  If they are going to maraud further than 30 miles, they are going to have to trade of hauling ammunition for hauling food.

That trade off may not be difficult, it is my understanding that the typical gun owning U.S. household has less than one-hundred rounds of ammunition.  Much of that is likely pistol ammunition.

So what is our horde looking like?

Note that our scenario is not the same as those traffic jamb that occurs on our southern exposed coasts when a mega-hurican threatens. It is far worse.  The gas stations are not open, and the highway patrol is not keeping things orderly.  There is no expected friendly destination point for most of these people.

The front edge of the horde can make better mileage and time if it does not run into any roadblocks.  It scatters into a fairly loose gaggle of individuals that are potentially dangerous.  However, most of the horde is going to get caught up in the traffic.  Bridges will be your most severe choke points.  There are an awful lot less bridges over major rivers than people think.  Only in the cities themselves - the point of escape, are there usually multiple bridges over a river.

U.S. Geography is so variable that it is hard to predict.  But most of your hordes are not going to get very far before they have to start walking.  The quarter tank of gas gets them well into the suburbs, and not much else.  A few go further, but they of course are much more dispersed.  At this point they can walk 20 miles over the next couple of days before they run out of food.  When they show up at the place they are supposed to be marauding, without our combat infantryman's fire dicipline, they will shoot up their (less than) 100 rounds of (mostly pistol) ammunition in a matter of minutes.  If fire is returned, they will go to ground too soon and hit nothing.

It doesn't make for a lot of novelistic excitement.