Quote:
Originally Posted by mmartin798
A quick search for vendors that service the petroleum industry in Texas that offer machining services yields about 100, some with mobile on-site capabilities, many of which are in the greater Houston area. If some of these were considered necessary for survival, then it is likely that a few mills and lathes may have survived. The bigger questions are: did enough skilled operators survive that can mill replacement parts for the machines, can tooling be created of sufficient quality and hardness to keep up with wear and can the generators be maintained.
I would claim that on a small scale this is possible, but whether or not it scales to the manufacturing of arms for an army is your call.
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In the late eighties a lot of things had not yet been outsources so large industrial facilities often had their own in house machine shops. These places also often had emergency generators. Some of these facilities will be in the middle of nowhere and won't be nuclear targets. Marine salvage yards will also have machine shops and may be able to get out to sea for a the immediate postwar period (forming the beginning of the Gulf shipmen). Remember the scale up doesn't have to happen in a minute, they have decades to switch from cannibalization and salvage to restoration and new construction.
BTW here is an interesting article on ammunition feed systems
http://www.m1919tech.com/26513.html