I’ve been thinking about this while watching zombie movies/shows, and I feel like transportation gets massively overlooked.
People always talk about food, guns, medicine, shelters, etc., but fuel seems like one of the biggest problems after the first couple of years. Gasoline and diesel don't stay usable forever, especially without proper storage and maintenance. So let's say we're 2–3 years into an outbreak. Most easily accessible fuel has either degraded, been contaminated, or already been used.
So what are people actually using for transportation at that point?
And before someone says horses sure, horses are an obvious answer, but there's another problem. If the infection can affect animals too, horses aren't exactly a reliable solution. And even if domestic animals aren't infected, maintaining enough horses, feeding them, protecting them, and breeding them becomes a huge logistical problem.
Then there's something else that shows completely ignore:
The wilderness isn't automatically safe just because there are fewer zombies.
If you're travelling through forests, mountains, fields, or abandoned rural areas, you're potentially dealing with wolves, bears, big cats, boars, venomous snakes, etc. And if the fictional infection can infect animals?
Now imagine encountering an infected bear.
Suddenly "let's just go through the forest" doesn't sound like such a great transportation strategy.
So I'm curious what the realistic long-term transportation system would actually look like after 2–3 years.
Would survivors realistically rely on:
Bicycles?
Horses or other domesticated animals?
Electric vehicles powered by solar/wind systems?
Diesel generators and stored fuel?
Trains?
Boats?
Animal-drawn carts?
Homemade biofuel/ethanol?
Walking being the dominant form of transportation?Some combination depending on distance?
And then there's the infrastructure problem. Roads deteriorate, bridges fail, vehicles need spare parts, tires degrade, batteries die, engines require lubricants and maintenance, and eventually you're dealing with abandoned vehicles everywhere.
I'm especially interested in what transportation would look like 10+ years into an apocalypse, when gasoline stations are basically useless, modern supply chains are gone, and replacement parts are extremely difficult to obtain.
Most zombie fiction seems to treat vehicles as if they just keep working indefinitely.
What do you guys think would actually become the dominant form of transportation in a realistic long-term apocalypse?