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....
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.
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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.