[brandall10]

I got a whiff of this mindset when I found out about peak oil circa 2005 or so.

There were folks who had transitioned off the grid in a sustainable way. The point of these weapons is to protect their families against roving gangs looking to scavenge resources ala Mad Max. A family of four will not be able to fight off dozens with shotguns, even against a large unarmed group they will be quickly overwhelmed after taking out a few - semi-auto weapons though they have a fighting chance.

This is also the primary reason they tend to move far away from cities - it's not that they don't like people or civilization in general (they may or may not), it's just that it thins out the number of people who could reasonably access their homestead.

I feel the vast majority of folks who have these weapons have them because they're 'cool'. But for the hard-core preppers convinced that the world is going to end they're an essential survival tool in a post-apocalyptic future.

[omgbananas]

Roving gangs won't stick to cities, they will branch out and then that family alone on their homestead won't stand a chance. However if they are in a neighborhood and work together with their neighbors, then they have a fighting chance.

[brandall10]

That's near term thinking. Longer term thinking had the # of people who were living sustainably OTG to be a vastly small minority of the populace, hence everyone aside from immediate family members were your enemies.

In regards to population density, the further groups had to travel on limited resources the more dispersed and weaker they would be, and in turn the amount of resources available would be more dispersed relative to lack to nearby neighbors, all of which would be reasonably well protected.

Basically, you want to be relatively well fortified slim-pickings that are hard to reach.

[blacksmith_tb]

That seems unlikely - why try and pillage the relatively sparse countryside when so many more resources are concentrated in the cities? I suppose if we're talking the end of civilization then eventually, sure, but who wants to survive that anyhow?