Fred's Bike: Where are the Bicycles in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction?

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Where are the Bicycles in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction?

by Megan McArdle Jan 28, 2013 9:37 AM EST

Randall Parker hits on one of the things that always irritates me about post-disaster movies and books:

disaster bike

I'm reading some after-the-electromagnetic pulse disaster novels where the electric grid has collapsed. Lots of people walking home or fleeing home on foot. In the vast majority of these novels there is no mention of any means of human transportation between a car and walking. So some guy has to walk home hundreds or thousands of miles across a post-apocalyptic landscape to get back to his family. Every person he comes across either is on foot or has some Mad Max truck fuel. What's with that?

Is this bias by the authors due to a total lack of bicycles, skate boards, roller skates, and push scooters in their rural or suburban neighborhoods? Am I so out of touch with life in some American states that I'm mistaken in thinking that large areas have no bikes? I do not think so. In the United States annual bicycle sales at 20" wheel size and above run at 11 to 14 million per year. If we suddenly couldn't get any gasoline easily tens of millions could bicycle and maybe well over a third the population. Throw in skate boards, roller skates, and other smaller stuff and 3 mph travel seems avoidable.

drools on parade

What's even weirder: post-plague novels have this problem. So, fine, most people do not own a bicycle. But if 99+% of the population has just died surely there is a bicycle for each and every person still alive. Hiking is really optional in such a scenario. The average travel speed should be above 10 mph if almost everyone dies.

Where are the Bicycles in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction? - The Daily Beast

No comments:

Post a Comment

Bike Quotes

As I get older the tendency to stick my foot up someone's ass is starting to subside. - Fred on Pump Track Pricks

The 29 inch chingaderra rolls best downhill! ~ Fred

I thought of that while riding my bicycle.

~ Albert Einstein on the Theory of Relativity

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving ~ Albert Einstein

If constellations had been named in the 20th century, I suppose we would see bicycles. ~ Prof. Carl Sagan

It never gets easier, you just go faster. ~ Greg LeMond.

~ Charles M. Schulz

The bicycle is the noblest invention of mankind. ~ William Saroyan Nobel prize winner

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I have hope for the human race. ~ H.G. Wells

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. ~ H.G. Wells

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Get a bicycle. You will certainly not regret it, if you live. ~ Mark Twain Taming the Bicycle. 1884

PEDAL. Pray Every Day And Listen. ~ Rev. Johannes Myors, The pedaling preacher

The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine. ~John Howard

A bicycle does get you there and more.... And there is always the thin edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably apprehensive. Dogs become dogs again and snap at your raincoat; potholes become personal. And getting there is all the fun. ~Bill Emerson

Until mountain biking came along, the bike scene was ruled by a small elite cadre of people who seemed allergic to enthusiasm. ~Jacquie Phelan

Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own. ~Louis J. Helle

The secret to mountain biking is pretty simple. The slower you go the more likely it is you'll crash. ~Julie Furtado

If you worried about falling off the bike, you’d never get on. ~ Lance Armstrong

Never use your face as a brake pad. ~ Jake Watson

Refrain from throwing your bicycle in public. It shows poor upbringing. ~ Jacquie Phelan

When I was sick, I didn't want to die.
When I race, I don't want to lose.
Dying and losing, it's the same thing. ~ Lance Armstrong

"It is no longer a beast of steel,
no it is a friend it is a faithful
and powerful ally against one's worst
enemies. It is stronger than anxiety,
stronger than sadness. It has all the
power of hope." ~  Maurice Leblanc