Survivalist's Rifle

The Survivalist's rifle is a weapon in the Fallout: New Vegas add-on Honest Hearts. It is the unique variant of the service rifle.

Background
This weapon was originally a U.S. checkpoint guard carbine used in Canada, issued from the Long Branch Arsenal in Ontario, USA territory. Chambered with the 12.7mm round, this rifle was supposed to offer guards the firepower necessary to intercept anyone attempting to breach a checkpoint, regardless of equipment.

Characteristics
This particular rifle once belonged to Randall Clark, an ex-U.S. army serviceman who found himself hiding out in Zion National Park after the Great War. The rifle was used by the Survivalist for decades and shows signs of improvised repair such as clamps on the foregrip wood and mismatched wood furniture. The front sight is also damaged. Clark apparently couldn't repair it, using it as-is.

In terms of in-game performance, the rifle has a very decent rate of fire, relatively low spread, respectable AP cost, and a high damage that can be raised considerably with Grunt; the damage is slightly higher than This Machine loaded with regular .308 rounds if Grunt is taken, but the Survivalist's rifle shoots faster and far more accurately. Even if This Machine is loaded with .308 JSPs, the damage difference isn't substantial and can be mitigated by using 12.7 JHPs from the Gun Runners' Arsenal add-on.

However, it uses rare 12.7mm rounds that generally must be bought from vendors, and the high rate of fire makes it relatively easy to waste ammunition if not careful. The spread is high enough where a sniper rifle may be a better option for very long ranges. The bent iron-sights, which can be rectified (see the notes below), may require a bit of practice if using true iron sights.

That being said, this can be a fantastic jack-of-all-trades rifle at most ranges with practice, a reserve of caps for ammunition and crafting 12.7mm rounds at a Reloading bench to supplement your supply of ammo.

Variants

 * Service rifle

Location
Found at the Red Gate in a duffle bag marked "The Survivalist's Duffle Bag" next to Randall Clark's skeleton. Yao guai, giant cazadores, green geckos, and/or bighorners may be found here as well. Sometimes, as a rare occurrence, the rifle may not appear in the duffle bag. It may be equipped by a White Legs pain maker in Bighorn Bluff. That being the case, the only way to obtain it is to kill him.

Behind the scenes

 * The French word "Arrêt", translated as the words "stop" or "halt", on one side of the stock is paired with "Stop" written in English on the other side of the rifle's stock. This, combined with information from Randall Clark's terminal entries, indicates that this rifle was used during the U.S. occupation of a bilingual area of Canada. However, the way it is written on the rifle is in noun form so it would be closer to "a stop" (e.g. a bus stop) as found on stop signs in French.
 * The Survivalist's rifle was loosely based on the .50 Beowulf AR-15 platform conversion.