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Başvurunu YapTransportation Post-Apocalypse: Who gets it right?
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Looks like you’re right about ethanol affecting shelf life, but it goes from 3-6 months to around 12 months. So still an issue in longer term apocalypse worlds
https://universaltrades.co/blog/gasoline-shelf-life-guide-en/
Also, I don’t think setting up a small scale biodiesel plant would be out of the question for a large enough sect of sufficiently educated humans in an apocayse setting. But it’s definitely a step above something that a small homestead could reasonably expect to setup imo.
but you wouldn't be able to get methanol you'd have to use ethanol, and also perhsps make your own sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide (wood ash + slaked lime) not saying it's impossible but it gets a notch harder
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One thing I always look at in post-apocalyptic literature is how they treat transportation: notably, are people still driving cars and how long can they do so and under what conditions?
Entering our current oil crunch, I think it's obvious how fragile the ecosystem around cars are, but just letting the car sit unused and untreated for as little as a month can start to introduce\ problems. The idea that you can just pop into a car that's been abandoned for 3 years, pull the keys out from behind the visor, and start driving is unrealistic.
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Best: The Postman. We're back to walking and riding horses.
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Good: The Last of Us, Season 1. People walk or ride horses, when our heroes DO find a working truck, it is treated as the jackpot it is--and I think it even had a spare gas tank in the back to maximize distance traveled to harvest gasoline. Realistically, gas as a fuel for fires would be a valuable enough commodity that it would have been scavenged, but they need to do some traveling and high speed dragons are not available in this genre (Reign of Fire aside).
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Worst: Jericho. Nuclear explosions in the US pretty much wreck everything and despite the town of Jericho being completely isolated, people just drive their pickup trucks around all seasons long without comment. Horses and bicycles are maddeningly present but rarely used. I think the show thought American audiences could accept a premise where the federal government collapses after multiple nuclear strikes, but not where people in Kansas got off oil dependency--that would be too out there.
Turbo Kid
Bicycles
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Turbo Kid
Bicycles
Now I have to update what I said about bikes not looking cool and heroic.
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Looks like you’re right about ethanol affecting shelf life, but it goes from 3-6 months to around 12 months. So still an issue in longer term apocalypse worlds
https://universaltrades.co/blog/gasoline-shelf-life-guide-en/
Also, I don’t think setting up a small scale biodiesel plant would be out of the question for a large enough sect of sufficiently educated humans in an apocayse setting. But it’s definitely a step above something that a small homestead could reasonably expect to setup imo.
Obtain good-quality oil. The easiest oils to use for biodiesel are neutral vegetable oils like canola, corn, and sunflower oil
I think this where the crunch would come in. Biodiesels are economically feasible because of factory farming, which have massive carbon inputs. Could a small community farm enough biodiesel to make the investment in that bushy tech tree worthwhile? I tend to doubt it.
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Cars made sense in the beginning, but after two or three seasons, finding gas that hasn't gone bad would be next to impossible.
Does petrol go bad!? Lol I didn't know that, does it evaporate if poorly stored or something?
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I was thinking of a situation where the people had enough skills and knowhow to make conversions of existing bikes.
https://www.motorcycles.news/en/biodiesel-harley-kubota-conversion/
In that situation, you might be better off converting to using propane or ethanol like you suggested depending on available resources and expertise.
Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re right about gasoline’s shelf life however. If stored properly AND stabilized it looks like around 3 years is the best you could hope for.
The conversion is a possibility, but mechanics also requires an eco-system of parts or at least machining. Let's say you're a machinist. How are you going to run your machines without electricity? With a generator, of course. But what if you need a part for that generator?
There's an ever-expanding web of dependencies...
And you can scavenge and modify, but rubber's another issue. It gets dry and brittle with time. Where are you going to get more rubber?
You can figure something out with enough time and effort, I guess, but that's time and effort likely spent elsewhere, especially if gas isn´t cheap. A lot about vehicles requires economy of scale and global supply chains.
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I think you'd see more bikes. A lot less upkeep than a horse, you can find them relatively easy, and they can sit in a garage for months or years and only need some minor maintenance to get going again.
Edit: I can't think of any books I've read recently that depicts primarily bike based transportation though. Probably because it doesn't look super cool lol
"Dies The Fire" SM Sterling.
One day the laws of physics change. Guns and electric power no longer work.
One of the first groups to gain power is a motorcycle gang that loots a bike store.
First book in the series is B plus, the rest get worse imho
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but you wouldn't be able to get methanol you'd have to use ethanol, and also perhsps make your own sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide (wood ash + slaked lime) not saying it's impossible but it gets a notch harder
For sure. And I’m not claiming to have all the answers or the best long term or sustainable processes. I think you could reasonably set up a still to make methanol:
https://www.sciencing.com/make-methanol-5396607/
Similarly for NaOH, though you’d need to source cacium hydroxide
https://theblogjournal.com/how-do-you-make-sodium-hydroxide-at-home/
I could see sourcing some of these more shelf stable components from places that apready had them, but as for what happens when those run out, yeah, you’re just going to have to find something else or find a way to make it yourself.
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Obtain good-quality oil. The easiest oils to use for biodiesel are neutral vegetable oils like canola, corn, and sunflower oil
I think this where the crunch would come in. Biodiesels are economically feasible because of factory farming, which have massive carbon inputs. Could a small community farm enough biodiesel to make the investment in that bushy tech tree worthwhile? I tend to doubt it.
Yeah I’m inclined to agree with you. More likely to me would be sourcing and preserving some of those oils so you have a more stable mid term fuel source, but eventually when that runs out you’d need to pivot to other options.
Something like use cars and motorbikes for 1-2 years, then convert to other fuels based on availability and knowhow for the next however many years, then back to horses.
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Yeah I’m inclined to agree with you. More likely to me would be sourcing and preserving some of those oils so you have a more stable mid term fuel source, but eventually when that runs out you’d need to pivot to other options.
Something like use cars and motorbikes for 1-2 years, then convert to other fuels based on availability and knowhow for the next however many years, then back to horses.
Cool. You can be Transportation Secretary for Schipelblorpia Enclave.
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The conversion is a possibility, but mechanics also requires an eco-system of parts or at least machining. Let's say you're a machinist. How are you going to run your machines without electricity? With a generator, of course. But what if you need a part for that generator?
There's an ever-expanding web of dependencies...
And you can scavenge and modify, but rubber's another issue. It gets dry and brittle with time. Where are you going to get more rubber?
You can figure something out with enough time and effort, I guess, but that's time and effort likely spent elsewhere, especially if gas isn´t cheap. A lot about vehicles requires economy of scale and global supply chains.
For sure!
Ideally you have enough redundancy in machining and power generation and such that you can sustain yourself for a while, but it’s highly likely that you end up needing a component you can’t replace or substitute that causes you to lose capability over time and eventually you backslide to something like American pioneer level tech plus a few things you can limp along with.That said, with a water wheel and some basic hand tools along with a a lot of starting equipment, you might be able to maintain a few key machines for quite some time.
Having a working lathe and blacksmith shop with starting tools would get you pretty far for quite some time if you had enough people with some skills to use them.
But yeah, eventually you’re probably back on horses livestock power for the most part until you can build enough stability back up to start specializing and trading and such.
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Cool. You can be Transportation Secretary for Schipelblorpia Enclave.
Lol. What an honor.
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For sure!
Ideally you have enough redundancy in machining and power generation and such that you can sustain yourself for a while, but it’s highly likely that you end up needing a component you can’t replace or substitute that causes you to lose capability over time and eventually you backslide to something like American pioneer level tech plus a few things you can limp along with.That said, with a water wheel and some basic hand tools along with a a lot of starting equipment, you might be able to maintain a few key machines for quite some time.
Having a working lathe and blacksmith shop with starting tools would get you pretty far for quite some time if you had enough people with some skills to use them.
But yeah, eventually you’re probably back on horses livestock power for the most part until you can build enough stability back up to start specializing and trading and such.
Yes, surely a lot of what we would be doing is going backwards, to watermills and smithies; but I wonder what would be new, what little tricks and things we've learned that would be thoroughly modern.
Edit: I'll answer my own question: Photovoltaics last forever. You can rip 'em off abandoned homes pretty easily.
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One thing I always look at in post-apocalyptic literature is how they treat transportation: notably, are people still driving cars and how long can they do so and under what conditions?
Entering our current oil crunch, I think it's obvious how fragile the ecosystem around cars are, but just letting the car sit unused and untreated for as little as a month can start to introduce\ problems. The idea that you can just pop into a car that's been abandoned for 3 years, pull the keys out from behind the visor, and start driving is unrealistic.
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Best: The Postman. We're back to walking and riding horses.
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Good: The Last of Us, Season 1. People walk or ride horses, when our heroes DO find a working truck, it is treated as the jackpot it is--and I think it even had a spare gas tank in the back to maximize distance traveled to harvest gasoline. Realistically, gas as a fuel for fires would be a valuable enough commodity that it would have been scavenged, but they need to do some traveling and high speed dragons are not available in this genre (Reign of Fire aside).
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Worst: Jericho. Nuclear explosions in the US pretty much wreck everything and despite the town of Jericho being completely isolated, people just drive their pickup trucks around all seasons long without comment. Horses and bicycles are maddeningly present but rarely used. I think the show thought American audiences could accept a premise where the federal government collapses after multiple nuclear strikes, but not where people in Kansas got off oil dependency--that would be too out there.
Probably bikes and walking honestly.
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One thing I always look at in post-apocalyptic literature is how they treat transportation: notably, are people still driving cars and how long can they do so and under what conditions?
Entering our current oil crunch, I think it's obvious how fragile the ecosystem around cars are, but just letting the car sit unused and untreated for as little as a month can start to introduce\ problems. The idea that you can just pop into a car that's been abandoned for 3 years, pull the keys out from behind the visor, and start driving is unrealistic.
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Best: The Postman. We're back to walking and riding horses.
-
Good: The Last of Us, Season 1. People walk or ride horses, when our heroes DO find a working truck, it is treated as the jackpot it is--and I think it even had a spare gas tank in the back to maximize distance traveled to harvest gasoline. Realistically, gas as a fuel for fires would be a valuable enough commodity that it would have been scavenged, but they need to do some traveling and high speed dragons are not available in this genre (Reign of Fire aside).
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Worst: Jericho. Nuclear explosions in the US pretty much wreck everything and despite the town of Jericho being completely isolated, people just drive their pickup trucks around all seasons long without comment. Horses and bicycles are maddeningly present but rarely used. I think the show thought American audiences could accept a premise where the federal government collapses after multiple nuclear strikes, but not where people in Kansas got off oil dependency--that would be too out there.
Big fan of Jericho and yea you’re right to call that out. Spoilers if you haven’t watched it yet but during the first season the main characters have to go and beg the town folks for gas from their cars to keep the generator at the HOPSTIAL running. Also many of the characters have farms of a variety of types but horses are indeed very rarely used it’s maddening.
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Big fan of Jericho and yea you’re right to call that out. Spoilers if you haven’t watched it yet but during the first season the main characters have to go and beg the town folks for gas from their cars to keep the generator at the HOPSTIAL running. Also many of the characters have farms of a variety of types but horses are indeed very rarely used it’s maddening.
It's been ages since I've seen Jericho and don't remember that subplot.
Ugh, so they acknowledge gas shortage to advance a short-term plot, but not enough to effect Skeet driving from his farm into town and back again several times every day....
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Something else that’s often ignored in these scenarios is that gasoline is not shelf stable for very long. Without refineries or biofuel, most gasoline would degrade within a year from what I understand.
Most realistic would be horses, bikes, maybe biodiesel converted cars or motorbikes and a biodiesel creation setup.
I could also see electric vehicles with solar or constructed wind/water wheel power to charge batteries. But batteries of course degrade as well so that isn’t a long term solution unless you can make and repair batteries. Which is a stretch.I think bikes are also not very good since they need maintenance and parts, and it will be very hard to find those and they won't be produced anymore.
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Does petrol go bad!? Lol I didn't know that, does it evaporate if poorly stored or something?
Not sure what happens to it chemically, but it doesnt evaporate. They sell fuel preservatives that make it last longer. But as a rule, shouldn't really use multiple years old fuel, unless you have some old bulletproof engine. New engines with their fancy fuel management systems and whatnot will just throw a hissy fit and die.
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I think you'd see more bikes. A lot less upkeep than a horse, you can find them relatively easy, and they can sit in a garage for months or years and only need some minor maintenance to get going again.
Edit: I can't think of any books I've read recently that depicts primarily bike based transportation though. Probably because it doesn't look super cool lol
Even bicycles would be ruined quite fast. Bearings are quite intricate things, you cant really make one on your own very easily. Unless you have some excellent metal making capabilities and accurate lathes. They also need lubrication.
My dad does some bicycling and hes doing small maintenance ever 80-100km or so. Major maintenance once or twice a year. Involves lubrication, cleaning stuff, tightening things, changing parts..
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One thing I always look at in post-apocalyptic literature is how they treat transportation: notably, are people still driving cars and how long can they do so and under what conditions?
Entering our current oil crunch, I think it's obvious how fragile the ecosystem around cars are, but just letting the car sit unused and untreated for as little as a month can start to introduce\ problems. The idea that you can just pop into a car that's been abandoned for 3 years, pull the keys out from behind the visor, and start driving is unrealistic.
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Best: The Postman. We're back to walking and riding horses.
-
Good: The Last of Us, Season 1. People walk or ride horses, when our heroes DO find a working truck, it is treated as the jackpot it is--and I think it even had a spare gas tank in the back to maximize distance traveled to harvest gasoline. Realistically, gas as a fuel for fires would be a valuable enough commodity that it would have been scavenged, but they need to do some traveling and high speed dragons are not available in this genre (Reign of Fire aside).
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Worst: Jericho. Nuclear explosions in the US pretty much wreck everything and despite the town of Jericho being completely isolated, people just drive their pickup trucks around all seasons long without comment. Horses and bicycles are maddeningly present but rarely used. I think the show thought American audiences could accept a premise where the federal government collapses after multiple nuclear strikes, but not where people in Kansas got off oil dependency--that would be too out there.
Survival Family : People use their old bicycle to go in a road-trip away out of the city.
Not sure why bicycle is so much ignored in post-apocalyptic context when it's very efficient
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