But once the electricity has stopped and the factories are no longer working and the skilled workers are all dead or impressed into military or farm service EVERYONE is going to run out of ammo.
Unless they can make their own

Two words: Sticks and stones...

BTW, does anyone remember the Microgame called Sticks & Stones that was made by Metagaming (later Steve Jackson Games) in the late 1970s? It was about warfare in the Stone Age -- scenarios included inter-tribal warfare, hunting large game, and one really big scenario that someone came up with in Space Gamer magazine that pitted Cro-Magnons against Neanderthals. Talk about taking warfare down to its roots!

Provided you had dies to make the bullets with, or the skills to make them (a lot of stuff in T2K is real easy if you have the knowledge to build the tools needed to build the tools . . .).

Revolvers and black powder should work out well -- all revolver cases are oversized for what they are and so you'd better be able to deal with the drop in power by switching to black powder. You'd still have fairly anemic loads compared to +P+ smokeless loadings, but you'd be putting rounds downrange when a semi-auto couldn't.

Blackpowder will work in semi-autos if you're willing to accept that your weapon is going to be a straight-pull bolt action. You likely wouldn't ever get enough pressure to cycle actions built for more modern powders at all, or possibly just enough to get misfires even if the weapon is spotlessly clean.

Does anyone know any real information about using these metals in bullets? I've heard that a gold bullet would be dense and heavy, but pretty soft; it would have poor penetration, but make a bigger mess than a dumdum on soft tissue. I don't have any real idea what the characteristics of a silver bullet would actually be.

I remember asking this on the Yahoo group about 10 years ago, but never really got a good answer: on some cop show, they couldn't at first find the bullet in the body, even though there was no exit wound. It turns out that the bullet was made of ground beef frozen in liquid nitrogen. Other than the difficulties of keeping such a bullet frozen, what would the characteristics of a ground-beef bullet really be?

I saw an episode of Mythbusters a few months ago, where they tested the idea of an ice bullet. Turned out that every time they tried to fire the ice bullet (even when frozen in liquid nitrogen), the bullet just shattered inside the barrel and did no damage to the target. So that idea's out the window.

Hmmm -- interesting question, and I don't really have any answers.

Silver is nearly the same specific gravity as lead, so a silver bullet should retain energy and such as well as a lead projectile. No idea on how the other characteristics of the metal would translate into ballistic performance.

I'd think a gold bullet would behave like a lead one, only be quite a bit heavier. You might have to use some sort of gas check or similar to protect the base of the bullet from powder gasses (and some sort of jacket as well if you're using it in an autoloader).

Initiative
 

We have had combat and now I can answer your question. I would not say the initiative system is too slow. While it may not be the fastest of other systems I think it plays out fine. We had fun and the game rolled on quite smoothly. I give it a thumbs up! I definitely like the details of combat with 2013.

Interesting to hear. I might break it out and have another look at it. I agree with you that the details are quite good - especially the gun range and visual range modifiers being split.

Do it.
 

Yeah man, I would definitely dig it up and give it a try. I really must press the issue on you about TRYING it, the way I see it you really got to get some people together a actually PLAY the game before you can opinionize it brother. I only say this because alot of people I know could have passed on the system as well for it seemed too complicated and involved to run smoothly, but when they actually got some gametime in with it ,they saw as well as I did at how smoothly the system really does run. And it rocks! The detail in the game and combat are sweet, the details in combat really play out a story so you can imagine exactly whats happening. Its something else man! 93 Games Studio really knocked this game out of the park, and hopefully when you get some gametime in you'll see exactly what I mean my friend.

Too true.. KNOWLEDGE is the KEY weapon in survival, along with APPLICATION for said knowledge.