It’s a common gripe among post-apocalyptic fiction aficionados that everyone surviving whatever the catastrophe may be, seems to forgot that bicycles exist. They’re (compared to automobiles) low-maintenance, somewhat fast, highly manoeuvrable etc. so seem like the obvious go-to means of conveyance once you realise the roads are rammed with vehicles full of zombies, the dead, or what have you.
The nuclear war film Testament features a bicycle somewhat prominently although it always annoyed me that drama was made of the bicycle getting stolen, since most of their neighbours are now dead bikes would one thing that would be in plentiful supply! I can’t think of any other examples. Can you?
TV/radio/short stories/novels/novelas/videogames/movies, anything really but push bikes not motorbikes please.
I dimly remember a teacher describing a story about a group of people in a huge underground bunker (whether or not they were there because of an apocalypse or just in anticipation of one, I don’t recall) getting around on bikes.
I honestly can’t recall or share any further details, beyond that the silence of the bunker was a story element to some degree. I would have heard about this circa 1983-4.
The movie version of World War Z had a group of soldiers using bicycles in an attempt to get past dormant zombies without waking them up, would that count?
Jack Williamson’s The Humanoids, his follow-up novel to his classic short story With Folded Hands, features the hero riding around after the Robopocalypse on a bicycle. What’s interesting is that the illustrated edition I have shows the bike as a 10-speed, although the novel was written well before the time those became widespread and popular, so the image doesn’t seem as odd.
I noticed that films like this tend to just have characters on Horses- The Postman, for example. I think its meant to convey that technology has moved ‘backwards’.
Horses would have the advantage of being able to move under their own power, saving energy. They can also carry stuff. But, not being a horsey person, I don’t know how maintenance intensive they would be in regards to a post apocalyptic setting. They’d need forage and water, stuff a bicycle certainly wouldn’t need.
Plus I have a hard time imagining this imposing gang terrorizing other survivors by riding around in circles on bicycles
“Just pedal away. And there will be an end to the horror.”
They need food. A LOT of food. If you live in a climate where you have an actual winter and you expect horses to carry you or do other work you’ll need to harvest and save horse food for when browsing fodder isn’t available, or not available in sufficient quantities. So in addition to making sure you need enough to eat you’ll need to get enough food for the horse(s). As a rule of thumb a horse eats 1-2% of its bodyweight a day. For a small horse, pony size or just above, that’s 8-16 pounds per day (the more work/distance traveled the more food required). For a more average sized horse that’s 16-24 pounds of food per day, every day. Horses that work really hard get additional grain, 1-3 quarts per day. Heavy draft horses doing hard work, like plowing or pulling large carts, can eat 40 pounds of hay a day plus grain.
Oh, by the way - you have to change the diet gradually, not suddenly, or you could induce colic, which is a nasty form of stomach. Which can kill your horse.
Horses need daily grooming. In the wild they’ll do this for each other, but if you only have one horse you get to do that. Brush all the hair everywhere. Clean the crap (sometimes literal crap) out of the hooves. You may need to do that more than once a day. Horses wearing a saddle or pulling in a harness will need special attention to prevent sores under saddle and other equipment, and to catch any sores when they’re minor things.
Horse feet are designed to carry horses, not a person in addition to the horse. This is one of the reasons we invented horse shoes. Unfortunately for the post-apocalypse, horse-shoeing is a specialized craft, as is refining the iron/steel usually used for horseshoes. You can ride your horse with bare feet, but be careful about terrain. A split hoof is certainly painful, and can be fatal.
Horses are prone to panic or “spooking”. This can range from a startled jump to a full-out linear panic gallop. Bicycles do not spook. Ever.
Horses being able to move under their own power can also result in them wandering away and losing them.
If your bicycle gets a flat time or damaged wheel you can potentially change the tire/wheel/whatever. If your horse has a serious enough foot injury or breaks a leg there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Well, you can shoot or other euthanize the horse. I strongly advise this if the animal is screaming, a screaming horse is really awful to hear and they can keep it up for quite a while since a broken leg isn’t immediately fatal.
Horses require care every single day. Well, OK, they can go a day or two with neglect, but for the most part, if you want a horse to be useful transportation you need to take of it every single day. Bicycles don’t care if you park them in a shed for a year and forget about them all that time.
Riding a horse requires some skill. Nor is it an entirely passive activity, that’s why people not accustomed to it are so sore the next day. You’re constantly moving, balancing, and so forth. It’s not the same motion and effort as riding a bike but it’s certainly more effort than sitting in a car.
Horses only make sense if you have ample forage, or the means to grow, dry, and store enormous amounts of hay, that is, horse food. Even then, you’re talking about at least a few hours every day taking care of them no matter what, with no days off ever. If you’re doing serious farming, yeah, or pulling wagons horses make sense. For being a nomad with limited supplies not so much.
Kunstler’s World Made By Hand does specifically address why bicycles aren’t used much (no rubber for tyres, not really useful if the roads have degenerated). I might not agree with him, but he did think about it at least.
Oddly enough, I remember wondering when I was reading The Road about how useful a bicycle would be for the main characters. However, I disregarded that notion when I considered how much stuff the main characters carried and the fact they had to go over steep mountains on highways built for automobiles.
It’s not apocalyptic, but it IS pre-industrial – Mark Twain puts King Arthur’s knights on bicycles in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I thin k he really liked the image of fully armored knights on bicycleback.
And before you say anything, Twain didn’t address the issue of tires. I can think of a few possibilities:
1.) They didn’t need or use them. Considering the quality of roads, inflated tires wouldn’t necessarily help an awful lot. The first pedestrian curricles had wooden wheels, after all. “boneshakers”, they called them.
2,) They could’ve put layers of leather around the rims to somewhat cushion the ride.
3.) There were rubber substitutes, used as late as mid-19th-centuiry America, such as “composition” --a mixture of animal glue, molasses, and tempering agents (like chalk) that was used for printer’s rollers and suchlike. Basically the same as melted and congealed gummi bears.
That is just an exception. The bicycle suited them in these specific conditions.
Many armies until recently used mules, donkeys, and horses. Or simply… their own feet. In few cases bicycles were preferred to the already mentioned means of transport.
Services, like mail, also preferred animals to bicycles, when they had to cover considerable distances.
But I know the power of images…
So, yes , you can use your bike to transport goods through the watery rice fields :rolleyes: .
They used them quite a lot in John Varley’s recent Slow Apocalypse - mainly for scouting ahead and finding the best routes as they made for safety. It all takes place during and shortly after the collapse, though.
And from the epilogue to The War in the Air by H. G. Wells (30 years after the bulk of the novel is set)
, you can use your bike to transport goods through the watery rice fields :rolleyes: .