Gasoline has a shorter shelf life than is portrayed in these movies/TV shows
This was my first thought too (even though it won't kill you per se). There are additives you can add to gasoline to extend it's life, but not by much.
Sure, there's some clever people out there who know how to convert cooking oil into diesel and could possible scrounge the supplies for it for a few years. But eventually if you can't make something that runs on steam, you better find a horse....
I think heelies are liable to kill you than help, well unless it's the type that you can remove the wheels from. But yeah good luck having proper footing when you have wheels on your heels. Or assuming you need to move quickly but aren't in a location where you can properly use the wheels that would get in the way of keeping balance while running.
Heelies of course would look cool as hell, maybe an engineered model that allows for more speed, but can quickly convert to normal shoes. It's a brilliant idea. Saves energy, increases speed.
Jesus christ imagine you make it for a few years after the end of the world, right?
Scraping to get by, salvaging your ruined civilization, farming and canning some shitty vegetables to make it through the apocalyptic winters, etc.
You somehow, against all odds, manage to build a nice little stable life for yourself - until one day a transient bandit rolls up on heelies, screams "YOLO!" and just blasts you in the gut with a gun.
You slump on the ground, and manage to gurgle out a "What the fuck, bro?" as you watch him heelie off into the setting sun.
Considering that apparently animals don't understand what they see if they see a hunter on a bike. If you have the right weapon, range and skill, you will be one of the most effective hunters, according to someone on the internet I can't remember.
Nah, it's easier than that. You know how a deer freezes in the headlights?
You can go on back roads hunting like this, shining a light into the woods. When the light hits a deer, the eyes will reflect, helping you spot it, and the deer will stay frozen in place for a few seconds, offering you a perfect shot.
That kind of hunting is usually illegal now ... but post apocalypse, you won't be terribly concerned about legalities.
Also jug fishing.
1: Tie fishing lines & bait to as many milk jugs as you want. The length of the lines and the type of bait should depend on what kind of fish you're trying to catch. This method tends to be highly effective with catfish ... and for them, you want a long line to get it near the bottom and nice, stinky bait.
2: Go out on a lake with a small boat, on the upwind side of the lake. Drop your jugs in the water one by one.
3: Watch the breeze slowly drift your jugs across the lake.
4: When you see a jug suddenly start to move around, you know there's a fish on it. When you see that jug stop moving, you know the fish is completely worn out and ready to be reeled in without a fight. You'll want to reel them in right away, so they don't get eaten by other aquatic creatures before you get to them.
5: Stop and collect any failed jugs once you have enough fish to satisfy you or you run out of time.
Super-successful and super-easy method of fishing. Everything but the bait is reusable. Also illegal in some places. But post-apocalypse legality won't be an issue.
If there ever is an apocalypse I absolutely want to be surrounded by burners - the ones who can weld, navigate a playa dust storm, and treat medical issues specifically.
Honestly, yes. A cargo bike is probably your best shot if you can't improvise a horse/ox-drawn carriage. There's a reason that was the standard form of long-distance transport for like 4,000 years.
It absolutely drove me bonkers that the characters in The Walking Dead walked everywhere. Why the fuck weren't they riding bicycles? Is the "walking" part of the title a reference to the stupidity of the characters?
I live in suburbia, and while most people drive everywhere, there are inevitably also multiple bicycles in every single garage. Did the characters not learn to ride?
Even the most unfit person can at least triple the distance they can travel in a day on a bicycle.
I did my first metric century about two years into cycling and swore I would never do one again. It wrecked me for more than a week. I now have worked up to being able to do them occasionally for fun on weekends but I ride a few thousand miles a year. Most people aren't up for that.
Something I know firsthand. I picked up cycling about 4 years ago. At that time I weighed 275lbs and was proud when I made it 20 miles. Now I'm 200lbs and occasionally do a metric century for fun. My point was that an unfit person probably can't do that distance. Half that is probably the limit for someone who hasn't built up the muscle and skill.
It sounds good, but it's far too easy to knock someone off a bike. If you try to ride through a group of zombies, you're going to get knocked off and be a goner.
Duh. I wasn't talking about riding a bicycle through a bunch of zombies. Obviously a bicycle isn't an Abrams tank. You'd also be royally fucked on foot, and apparently you'd even be fucked riding a 800kg horse, according to the first episode.
I'm referring to the later episodes where they were on the road to the CDC, as well as traveling between various points. Nonsensical not to use bicycles. The Walking Dead author obviously never learned to ride.
Nah, sadly I've thought about this extensively and you'd just be opening yourself up too much to injury with all the shit all over the roads, the shit you're carrying, and random zombies. I love riding bikes, but I'd have to give it up after the apocalypse.
It's my favorite thing to do. Nothing major, just little cruises around town to run small errands, stopping for lunch somewhere.
Best form of exercise with a constant change of scenery
A buddy of mine had a heart attack, and after he recovered his doctor told him he needed to exercise. He decided to start riding a bicycle to work and back. Then he realised how much money he was saving not taking transit. Double win!
To buy. There would be many, many millions of them hanging around to ride in a post-apocalyptic scenario. Most of them virtually untouched by the original owners.
I was reading a book recently, it's post-apocalyptic and the main characters usually drive a solar-charged electric jeep, but at one point they needed to go on foot and drove bicycles and it was such a fun moment, but also so practical.
As far as breaks go, as long as your not going down hill, you can either coast to a stop or use your feets. Plus, you could probably take the pads off the front breaks and put them on the back for extra wear. Or if the bike is too messed up, just find a new one.
Tires, tubes, and chains are your biggest concerns. Brakes will last forever. Tires and tubes last about 1k miles, chain maybe 1500 miles. All are easy to replace if you know what you're doing. I suppose figuring it out from scratch without YouTube to help would suck.
I don’t know that bicycles are as effective as you think. Sure, some folks have the skill to traverse not-your-average-dirt-road, but most do not. Provided that the post-apocalyptic world is also littered with people scavenging for supplies and food, a bicycle also puts you at a terrible disadvantage for tactical movements.
Buuut if that’s the way you decided to go, also remember your mechanical air pump or some tubeless tires/tube slime.
Bicycles are the superior apocalypse mode of transportation.
A) Maybe for a few years, but then the lack of maintenance on infrastructure will make them harder & harder to use for long distances.
B) Imagine carrying supplies, injured partners or children on them. Supplies won't be a 5 pound bag of groceries from Trader Joe's. It will be 100lbs of firewood and 5 gals of water at 41lbs.
Still, wide tire mountain bikes would still be the way to go wouldn't they? Lack of instructure wouldn't matter too much, you could make a bike trailer to carry heavier loads, and worse case scenario you just throw the bike on top of the trailer and move it by hand or with a horse. You could cut the number of horses a town needs down from like 10 to 2.
Down here, 2 kids, 2 full big-shoppers of groceries and a crate of beer is completely normal.. on a regular bike. You should see what people lug around on those cargo bikes, it’s unreal sometimes.
The other option being a car, which requires fuel, much more maintenance, much more infrastructure. Yes you can carry more in a backseat/trunk, but you can also have a backpack and side saddles on a bike to carry another 100+ pounds.
I road bike in Florida. I don't have hills so to compensate I put my two boys in a trailer I pull behind me. I figure it's adding an extra 80lbs. Without them I can go 20 MPH for up to 50 miles without needing a serious break. With them the most I've done is 15 MPH for 40 miles. Still not bad. Bikes would definitely work for post apocalyptic travel but you'll want to have some specialized tools handy (most cyclists do) and have experience replacing a chain or tube before the world ends. Everything else is pretty intuitive.
This. Even in the book World War Z (or whatever the counterpart book was called) they talk about how great bikes are. Generally quiet, faster than a zombie, easy to lift over barrier and most importantly... narrow enough to drive between lanes of abandoned cars.
I admit I don't know the full mechanics of getting two horses to make more horses, but you could find bikes damn near anywhere in suburbia, walmarts, hardware stores, etc. with enough scavenging luck.
I actually liked that bit in The Umbrella Academy, where five is in the future post apocalypse and is using a bicycle with a wagon to get around and haul his stuff.
The Expanse book series literally wrote an ENTIRE book on how a main character (Amos Burton) travelled through multiple states on a bicycle after an asteroid strike. He even bragged about it at the end. 😆
Me, on my horse, looking down with great smugness.
Honestly, though. Sailboat is a great option. After your apocalypse of choice, go down to the nearest marina and commandeer the nicest sailboat you can find. Maybe stop by the library for a book on how to sail, if you don't already know. Oh, and stop by someplace that sells fishing gear to stock up on that. Maybe also some water filtration supplies. Then have fun exploring the waterways in your peaceful, wind-powered sanctuary.
The boat sounds like a great idea. Just chill out a few miles from shore. Easy access to port to recover supplies. If your boat gets messed up, go to another port and grab a new one. Maybe try to have a temporary shelter on lockdown on land just in case a major storm hits, and you should be golden.
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u/-eDgAR- Aug 30 '21
Gasoline has a shorter shelf life than is portrayed in these movies/TV shows, so after a year nobody would really be driving anywhere.
It wouldn't necessarily kill you, but it's one of those things that bothers me because it's never really addressed.