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3) .308 WIN cannot even come close to .338 in ELR shooting.  .338 currently holds world record verified kill in Afghanistan at 2,708 yards.  Navy seals don't use .308 WIN for anything longer than 500 yards, if they can help it.

After the worldwide cataclysm, which brought about TEOTWAKI ("the end of the world as we know it"), instituting a world WROL ("without rule of law"), Catholic survivors will have a whole new set of moral problems to deal with.

Certain types of cataclysm will make the production of food almost impossible for a time (e.g., nuclear war: Polluted ground, radioactive meat, nuclear winter blocking sunlight), and in these types of disasters, cannibalism will emerge as the primary threat: People will hunt people for food.

Here is a moral scenario I wondered about:

Hidden in a field above my bunker, I spot a woman and child being pursued by a gang of men who, if they capture them (which seems imminent), will rape, murder, and eat them.  

It seems there are a number of (apparent) conflicting moral principles which would lay claims upon my duties and reaction:

1) Necessity imposes a grave obligation to come to the physical aid for anyone who has the possibility of rendering it (i.e., I may sin gravely if I do nothing, and be damned);

2) Duty of state: If I attempt to intervene, I will be overwhelmed, killed, and my family will be without protection, and in turn probably suffer the same fate as the woman and child.

Questions:

1) Is it the probability of victory which determines whether or not the duty to intervene compele one?

2) Or, will I be damned for intervening, knowing I will probably betray my family to the same fate if I intervene?

What would be the Catholic thing to do?

As an aside, this difficult situation and decision suggests Catholics group themselves into their own militias/prepper groups, and you will have less liklihood of having to wrestle with such situations (i.e., If we had a militia, we would surely intervene and wipe out the marauders).

Interesting question.

The Catholic thing to do would be to do what you can to help the innocent at the same time not getting killed yourself. But should you get killed, it would not have been in vain or for no good reason, so your own well being is secondary to trying to save the woman and child.

If the woman and child were your mother and sister and some other man in a bunker saw them fleeing the gang, what would you want that man to do - nothing or turn his back and just ignore the situation?

Then there's the Golden Rule; if you were the woman and child, wouldn't you want the man in the bunker to do something, anything? Futile though it may be, it might give you and child the chance to get away - even if it meant he got killed.

Perhaps it's easier to justify the above if you were to take the word "Catholic" out of the question, in which case it'd play out along these lines; "Sorry lady, you and the kid are on your own". Then you just go back in the bunker pitying them, close the door safe and sound, and get back to whittling spearheads.