AA-12: The anti-zombie overkill shotgun
Regular readers of Cyde Weys Musings may recall that I have a mind-consuming fascination with zombies. Although I haven’t written about zombies in a little while, I assure you, they are no less of a frequent topic in my internal musings. So naturally, when I saw this clip from the television show Future Weapons talking about the AA-12 Combat Shotgun, I immediately thought of its effectiveness as an anti-zombie weapon.
The AA-12 is a fully automatic shotgun firing 300 rounds per minute that can use 20 or 40 round drum magazines. It uses an advanced recoilless firing system that nearly reduces recoil to zero (or so the manufacturer claims, but the video above looks pretty convincing). And it can be loaded out with the full range of 12 gauge military shotgun shells, including fin-stabilized fragmentation grenades with an effective range of 200 meters. Yeah, that’s right, a shotgun that can fire grenades. 40 of them. In 8 seconds. Run!
Obviously the AA-12 would have no problem whatsoever in taking out zombies. But its greatest strengths may also be its greatest weaknesses. The consensus amongst zombie scientists is that when the coming zombie apocalypse arrives, the type of zombie we will be faced with will be the slow zombie. Fully automatic thus becomes worse than unnecessary as it leads to a greater waste of ammunition. And as we all know, conserving supplies, and especially ammunition, is all important during the zombie apocalypse, especially because you may end up facing off hordes of hundreds of zombies before it is all over. The weight of ammunition is important to consider when going mobile; on a per-zombie-kill basis, shotgun shells are less efficient than, say, rifle ammunition.
So keep the AA-12 on semi-automatic when dealing with slow zombies. And at least the fragmentation grenades will prove useful against zombies, allowing you to take out many zombies with a single well-aimed shell. And the AA-12’s rugged design, with all stainless steel parts, means it won’t require much maintenance or cleaning. Every second you don’t have to spend cleaning the weapon is another second you can use it to shoot any zombies munching on your legs — an obvious huge advantage.
Unlikely as the possibility may be, we do have to consider fast zombies. If the zombies in the coming zombie apocalypse are fast zombies, then all bets are off. If you can’t put a lot of rounds on target very quickly, ammunition conservation won’t even matter. The AA-12 would be unrivaled in such a situation. Remember, zombies have to close to melee range before they can hurt you, and shotguns are the king of close-range weaponry. And with 40 rounds in the drum magazine, you can take out a lot more zombies before reloading than you could with a typical pump-action or civilian autoloader shotgun.
