While not everyone cares to include them, and you can argue the weight might be better spent elsewhere or elsewise, firearms are a perfectly appropriate tool for wilderness survival. For small to moderate size game and potentially rouge wildlife, .223 is a practical cartridge. I carry such a firearm myself at times. Not sure what it being a magazine fed rifle has to do with it. There's nothing in the article of a "survivalist" bent, assuming by that you mean the adverse connotations the word has taken on, and for which we avoid that term here.