How Much Ammo Can A Human Being Carry

[Rev]

No reason to get nasty guys. It's a well meaning question.

[aus.templar]

I know we should play nice but it's completely variable though...

How fit he is, what caliber he's using, how much is other gear weighs, how far he expects to travel, etc, etc, etc

It's even more vague than asking how long is a piece of string, because he hasn't said what type of string or what he's doing with it

[Rev]

I know but the best thing to do would be to tell him that and give a vague description of the average persons ability to carry X amount of this or that ammunition.

[aus.templar]

Well if he's got the money and time, I'd work out how you want to carry your ammo and then fill those carriers up with weights and work out how much weight you can actually travel with.

Then get the loaded magazine weights of all possible weapon candidates you've got.

Before you do the math, think about how many rounds you would WANT to carry, then work out how many loaded mags you actually could carry for each platform and caliber.
You'll see that the amount of rounds you want to carry is often very very heavy, so you either need to compromise and rethink engagement SOPs and/or get fitter.

There's always going to be a trade off between having thousands of rounds and actually being able to move. (unless you go with .22LR )

[Rev]

I think with the .22 we start running into space more than weight.

[austin93906]

whattabout .177? you an carry lots of .177

[aus.templar]

.177 minigun!

[Rev]

For when you absolutely must wipe out entire species of varmints within 20 seconds.

[aus.templar]

someone with too much money and spare time make one of these and send me a youtube vid of it...

[Rev]

I always wanted to get the crank for the 10/22 but never could bring myself to do it.

[Stab74]

42

[HardcoreSlot]

i pic .223 in AR mags

I COULD prolly pack 20 or 30 mags comfortably
But i think 10 full mags would do me in just about any realistic situation that I may stumble into.
If I needed a side arm id prolly take the ol Px4 in .40 wit 5er so mags.
if almost 4.25 hundred rounds dont do me then I should prolly stay home....

[Regular Guy]

.177 minigun!

Noooooo, you didn't......

Oh, it hurts, my God, it hurts....

Stop fricken shooting me with that.....Ouch, STOP!!!

[quantum_dragon]

42

LOL, and don't forget your towel!

Ok, at the risk of sounding like a mall ninja/commando (Keep in mind I am not claiming to own the following weapons, be an expert in them or ammo weight, or have the money to purchase them, it just makes sense to me from logistics point view.) you could equip yourself with a FN Five Seven for a sidearm (even though I suck with pistols), and a PS90 for use as rifle type (civilian semi-auto version with longer barrel, been told is worth a 4x20 scope) both of these take the exact same ammo; 5.7x28mm.

I did some searching and there is conflicting info on the weight of the ammo, 1 source(Wiki) says 23 grams a bullet, which comes out to about 20 rounds a pound. A lot of sources says that the PS90 only weighs 3kg (a little more for the civy model with extended barrel) loaded, and 2.54kg empty. Which means the magazine (made of polymers) and 50 rounds is about a 1 lb.

So to experiment by not carrying around a bunch of ammo and getting into a potential lot of trouble, just carry a lot of weights around and think about 50 rounds a pound, or play it safe and go 30 rounds a pound for these two weapons. Now I don't know about the ready availability of this kinda ammo, since I don't cruise a lot of gunshops, but I think acquisition of this ammo would be more difficult to due its rather unconventional nature. But if I had to leave the house with as much as one chunk of ammo as I could carry, I guess I would go with these.

But this would give you a good idea about how much ammo YOU could carry of these two weapons.

If anyone else has more or better information on these weapons feel free to pitch in, I just thought it would make it easier since they both take the same ammo.

[furpiles]

i pic .223 in AR mags

I COULD prolly pack 20 or 30 mags comfortably
But i think 10 full mags would do me in just about any realistic situation that I may stumble into.
If I needed a side arm id prolly take the ol Px4 in .40 wit 5er so mags.
if almost 4.25 hundred rounds dont do me then I should prolly stay home....

thank you, that wanted to know. To me 2 cartride belts/ bandolier or 8 mags for long gun and 5-8 mags for side arms was about as much as one person could carry. thats with 30rnd mags 240 and with 15rnd mags 120.

I have seen chest carriers for 8 ar or ak mags and belt carriers for 8 handgun mags. http://www.tuffproducts.com they sell the 8 mag carriers.


If you must know what i carry when useding my airguns, it 5,000 bbs or .177 pellest + 25 co2 + 50 pack of paper targets + gun + Heavy Machete on back pack. I have all in my back pack and in pockets and i carry all this when i go out hunting, which i do 2-5 miles of walking with all of this. The most i every carryed was 25 pounds of stuff. A few co2 are light the 25 packs are i think 3-5 pounds and 5000 bb is 3 pounds and my gun is 2 pounds unloaded(2.8 with 22bb and co2 in it).

[Jeriah]

Since the range is going to vary quite a bit from nerf darts to .177 airgun pellets to .22LR to 9mm to .50BMG to 20mm cannon rounds, I'm just going to pick what I think of as a nice, typical round (5.56mm) and answer accordingly.

According to Kevin Dockery in Special Warfare, Special Weapons, a loaded 30-round USGI M16/M4 magazine weighs 1.02lbs (0.46kg), while an empty one weighs 0.24lbs (0.11kg). That plus my leet math skills tells me that 30 rounds of 5.56mm weigh 0.78lbs, or 0.026lbs per round. That's 38.46 rounds per pound. So one can multiply one's maximum load by 38.46 and get the number of cartridges he or she can carry.

A commonly cited figure is that a person can carry up to 1/3 of their body weight; anyone who's been in the military (I haven't, but I've known enough who have) knows that this figure is regularly exceeded by anyone in combat. A 150lb soldier or Marine is commonly tasked with carrying far more than the 50lbs that figure would suggest as the maximum load. People carry 100lbs pretty regularly, not that it's good for your back or knees, but they do it.

So I'm going to take 100lbs as a maximum figure, but feel free to calculate your own based on your body weight. Using my math above, with a maximum load of 100lbs, you can carry 3,846 rounds of 5.56mm ammunition.

This doesn't account for how you're going to carry it; a backpack that can handle 100lbs may itself weigh as much as 12lbs, empty. Nor does it account for magazines; at the above figure of 1.02lbs per loaded 30-round magazine, 98 magazines weighs almost exactly 100lbs, and would hold 2,940 rounds.

These figures are of course absurd, they don't account for the weight of your weapon, clothes, the pack, LBE, etc. But if you wanted an absurd high-end figure, there it is.

[Jeriah]

I actually thought about this one time, let's say zombies were real and I decided I just wanted to walk out my front door loaded for bear, and kill as many zombies as I could before they ate me, or maybe I wanted to thin 'em out from my rooftop, how many round could I carry in loaded magazines accessible w/out removing a pack? In short, how many mags could you cram in some LBE if you really, really wanted to?

I figured the following:

A chest rig could fit up to 18 mags, if you wear it low and use 3-mag pouches.
An ALICE pistol belt could fit up to 24, in 3-mag pouches, if you don't carry any water or anything else (4 pouches per side).
A drop-leg rig could fit 6 mags per side, which would be heavy and floppy as Oprah's tits but they'd fit.
You could have 3 mags clamped together in the weapon, plus one as a VFG and one, maybe two on the buttstock = 6 more mags.

This would give you a total of 60 magazines, would weigh 61.2lbs, and would give you 1800 rounds in readily-accessible magazines.

I am in no way advocating anything even remotely close to this course of action, as it is absurd and would probably get you killed, especially if you had to move around. I guess if all you had to do was go up on your roof (don't fall!) and shoot zombies all day, you could throw on a Camelback and go for it. But for anything else it's crazy.

[Regular Guy]

You know the funniest thing about this thread, furpiles was the most mature and didn't fall for the trolls, including me.
Way to go man, really.
IMHO, I'd say 8-12 30 rd mags in the AR/AK family and 6-10 mags in the 308 family. Really, I think 6 for AR and 4 for 308.
In the military I was assigned the M-60. I'd have to carry my blow out kit, body armor, alice pack, the M-60, 200 rds and wear a Kevlar helmet. It got heavy fast even after ejecting the pack. It literally wore me out. Then we'd do the same drills and exercises in chem gear. Woo-hoo that was fun.....
When I'd carry my M-16 I'd carry 6 mags in suspenders. Much easier to carry.
So there are other things to consider apart from ammo.

[Jeriah]

You know the funniest thing about this thread, furpiles was the most mature and didn't fall for the trolls, including me.
Way to go man, really.
IMHO, I'd say 8-12 30 rd mags in the AR/AK family and 6-10 mags in the 308 family. Really, I think 6 for AR and 4 for 308.
In the military I was assigned the M-60. I'd have to carry my blow out kit, body armor, alice pack, the M-60, 200 rds and wear a Kevlar helmet. It got heavy fast even after ejecting the pack. It literally wore me out. Then we'd do the same drills and exercises in chem gear. Woo-hoo that was fun.....
When I'd carry my M-16 I'd carry 6 mags in suspenders. Much easier to carry.
So there are other things to consider apart from ammo.

Way to be realistic and ruin the fun.

[gravediggerfour]

I have never been so disgusted by a sig that I deleted my sig before. Im going to take this out on the mouth breathers at work tomorrow.

[Kommander]

Sig? Whose sig? Not mine I hope.

[Big B]

Sig? Whose sig? Not mine I hope.

I'm thinking he was referring to furpiles.

[Kutter_0311]

A commonly cited figure is that a person can carry up to 1/3 of their body weight; anyone who's been in the military (I haven't, but I've known enough who have) knows that this figure is regularly exceeded by anyone in combat. A 150lb soldier or Marine is commonly tasked with carrying far more than the 50lbs that figure would suggest as the maximum load. People carry 100lbs pretty regularly, not that it's good for your back or knees, but they do it.

I remember Skinny telling me about that "1/3 body weight" concept one day in the field.

We got a good laugh, since we all carried about the same, without any regard for a guy's size.

I was 165# at the time, and he was about 130# as long as I made him eat half my issued MRE's. Otherwise, he'd evaporate.

All our individual gear came in around 180#, and that was before adding the 29.5# sandbag representing a grenadier's TO ammo(5.56mm/40mm)

We stopped laughing when the 110# mortarman walked past with the base plate lashed to his ruck...

[Jeriah]

A commonly cited figure is that a person can carry up to 1/3 of their body weight; anyone who's been in the military (I haven't, but I've known enough who have) knows that this figure is regularly exceeded by anyone in combat. A 150lb soldier or Marine is commonly tasked with carrying far more than the 50lbs that figure would suggest as the maximum load. People carry 100lbs pretty regularly, not that it's good for your back or knees, but they do it.

I remember Skinny telling me about that "1/3 body weight" concept one day in the field.

We got a good laugh, since we all carried about the same, without any regard for a guy's size.

I was 165# at the time, and he was about 130# as long as I made him eat half my issued MRE's. Otherwise, he'd evaporate.

All our individual gear came in around 180#, and that was before adding the 29.5# sandbag representing a grenadier's TO ammo(5.56mm/40mm)

We stopped laughing when the 110# mortarman walked past with the base plate lashed to his ruck...

The 1/3 figure was the result of some study, circa WWI. I doubt anybody really follows it. For one thing, allocating gear by body weight would be logistically insane.

I had a mortarman as my student a while back; he had MAJOR back problems from that shit. I don't know what MOS has to hump the most weight but mortarman has got to be up there.