Black powder and the zombie apocalypse?

I thought about this subject as well, including the feasibility of pneumatic weapons in a zombie apocalypse. I even built a prototype air musket assembled from common copper piping, a bicycle pump, and a coke bottle that fires makeshift sabot nail munition, goes through quarter inch plywood at 10 yards at 50 psi and its dead quiet, but it takes a while to pump. I thought about hooking a 5 gallon pre-charged air tank to it and backpacking it, which I figure out to be good for 24 shots at 50 psi per shot. This is strictly for a scenario where one can't get access to firearms and have to assembled a "practical" ranged weapon from scratch.

Blackpowder I believe is a godsend in a long-drawn out zombie apocalypse where standard ammunition becomes scarce and um-reproducable. Technically one can refill brass cartridge with make-shift guncotton from nitric acid and cellulose materials (like cotton fabric), but guncotton is highly unstable and corrosive relative to blackpowder. Add to the fact, you'll need to somehow reproduce priming caps for use in conventional firearm designs, I think its a more arduous technological route to take relative to simpler blackpowder weapons.

Components like potassium nitrate and charcoal can be readily prepared for making blackpowder. The nitrate can be produce by farming a nitre bed, a shedded soil bed with burnt wood ash in the bottom where manure and organic waste can be mixed in, wetted with urine each week or two, and aerated often with a hoe to give ample oxygen to the little bacteria in the soil to turn the urine and manure into nitrate compounds, usually by the end of ten months as recommended in a Confederate military manual. Charcoal can be easy as raiding the BBQ charcoal at your local hardware store, or prepared yourself simply by heating wood in a airtight metal container.

Sulphur is the biggest issue, with the most prevalent source for a urban-dweller being a small container of 98% rich flower of sulphur found in hardware/garden stores as a fungicide. Maybe you'll be the only person with the long term insight to grab this precious commodity while everyone else was busy looting other parts of the local Home Depot, but the dependability of this source leaves much to be desirable. But not to worry, as sulphur is actually a very abundant and overproduced material in our modern world, and is produced as a byproduct of mining, oil extraction, and ore smelting. So abundant, that huge Aztec pyramid-shaped mountains of sulphur sit outside mines and smelters with nowhere to go in a flooded market. A smart scavenger and his group can simply locate nearby establishments such as these, and with luck, find a nearly endless supply of sulphur for the purpose of manufacturing blackpowder, as well as sulphuric acid for making batteries and other useful stuff.

As you mentioned, flint can be readily found given that you are knowledgeable about the local geological terrain. Pyrite can also be used, and modern substitutes like those found on torch spark lighters can be adapted for a musket with the right ingenuity. I would prefer to invest into a electric ignition system, perhaps a dynamo or piezoelectric device which would be more dependable and consistent relative to a flintlock.

Blackpowder I feel has endless possibilities, as it is not too powerful, important when you're creating a weapon from non-standard materials. Barrels can be prepared from thick gauge steel piping, saw offs from modern rifles or shotguns that you have no munition left for, or with the proper machinery bored from car axles. The design and use of finned flechette rounds sheathed in a sabot for munition I believe can offset the inaccuracy and lower power of using blackpowder in a smoothbore musket without sacrificing rate of fire. If one had the no how, perhaps Minie-ball rounds can be prepared with a die cast mold and melted lead from pellet gun munition or car battery plates.

That's it for tonight, have a test tomorrow. Happy hunting.