Transportation

[NightSG]

You know, it's funny that in a church known for its missionaries on bicycles, so many are absolutely dependent on the family minivan.

The first sign a disaster is real is when the fuel prices go through the roof...if there's any fuel to be had.

How are you planning to get around when you can't top off the tank for $20?  How many have a commute/utility bicycle available and stay in good enough shape to get to Sacrament Meeting or across town on it?  Lots of options out there for hauling kids, too, though as soon as they can be trusted on a two wheeler, letting them carry their own weight (literally) is the best plan.  

[Guest]

Enjoy your bike. I like my van.

[NightSG]

43 minutes ago, Eowyn said:

Enjoy your bike. I like my van.

How far can you push it?  When 9-11 hit, gas prices went up 150-500% in plenty of places, and many hurricanes have left gas stations out of gas for several days.  When my bike runs out of fuel, it'll be because I'm finally so finely chiseled that I can just take my shirt off and wait for the sugar mamas to line up and fight for who will take care of me.

[Guest]

A few years ago I was trying to tackle this question as well.  I wondered how did people get around before the ICE?  Horses?  Well, we can't afford that.  Bicycles?  That is only good for basic terrain.

As I was wondering the 2011 tsunami wiped out a huge portion of the Japanese coast.  Villagers assigned several of their able-bodied men to go walk for several days to find help.  They could only carry so much food and water.  They had to forage a bit and starve a bit.  They made it and got word out that their village was devastated, but they had survivors.  Help came.

So, walking.  Yup, that was another method they used before the ICE.  Why didn't that occur to me?

 

[NightSG]

5 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

So, walking.  Yup, that was another method they used before the ICE.  Why didn't that occur to me?

Hard to carry more than 3-4 days worth of basic supplies on foot, and if you can drag a handcart, you could have gotten even a fully loaded touring bicycle through.  Maybe pushing the bike in the bad spots, but riding in the good ones.

Plus, short of massive surface shifting and buckling, huge mudslides or lava flows, the roads we now have aren't likely to go away,  You'd easily be able to triple your daily walking distance even with a heavy load.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, NightSG said:

Hard to carry more than 3-4 days worth of basic supplies on foot

There are not a whole lot of people who would need to travel farther than that on foot to get to help.  I decided a while back that if it takes longer than that to find help, we'd better be prepared to shelter in place.

[NightSG]

3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

There are not a whole lot of people who would need to travel farther than that on foot to get to help.  I decided a while back that if it takes longer than that to find help, we'd better be prepared to shelter in place.

Loaded, across terrain that a bicycle can't handle, 2mph average (when actually moving - i.e. not counting rest breaks) is pretty optimistic.  Lots of factors impact that, but realistically, 15-20 miles a day is about the best you could hope for, and that maybe two days in a row before fatigue or injury slows you down more.  40 miles could easily still be within the catastrophic destruction area of a large disaster, where everybody else is too busy tending to their own problems to help.

I figure if I'm having to head for a hunker down spot, I'm only going 6 miles to mom's place far enough out of town to be overlooked for a while.  On a bike, I could make multiple round trips in one day if I want more than I can carry at once.  Walking, a round trip would take up too much of the day.  If we need help from out of the area, the next place of any significance at all is 30 miles, and the nearest real metro area (Fort Worth) is 70 miles.  4 days minimum on foot, two not-too-rough days for a reasonably fit touring cyclist with a moderate load, or an intense morning for a dedicated road racer with the bare minimum of supplies.

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, NightSG said:

Loaded, across terrain that a bicycle can't handle, 2mph average (when actually moving - i.e. not counting rest breaks) is pretty optimistic.  Lots of factors impact that, but realistically, 15-20 miles a day is about the best you could hope for, and that maybe two days in a row before fatigue or injury slows you down more.  40 miles could easily still be within the catastrophic destruction area of a large disaster, where everybody else is too busy tending to their own problems to help.

I figure if I'm having to head for a hunker down spot, I'm only going 6 miles to mom's place far enough out of town to be overlooked for a while.  On a bike, I could make multiple round trips in one day if I want more than I can carry at once.  Walking, a round trip would take up too much of the day.  If we need help from out of the area, the next place of any significance at all is 30 miles, and the nearest real metro area (Fort Worth) is 70 miles.  4 days minimum on foot, two not-too-rough days for a reasonably fit touring cyclist with a moderate load, or an intense morning for a dedicated road racer with the bare minimum of supplies.

Night, you're making my point for me.  What's the deal with a bicycle?

How far does an average person really need to go to "get help"?  If it is not to get help, why is he leaving?  If there is no help to be had within a decent walking distance, then you'd probably be better off sheltering in place.

You alluded to bugging out.  That's fine too.  But if you can do it with a bicycle, why not a car?  Just store some extra fuel just for emergencies -- enough to get to the bug out location.  Fuel preservative makes it easy to keep around.  Rotate it by adding some to the car or to the lawn mower periodically.

[NightSG]

1 minute ago, Carborendum said:

You alluded to bugging out.  That's fine too.  But if you can do it with a bicycle, why not a car?  Just store some extra fuel just for emergencies -- enough to get to the bug out location.  Fuel preservative makes it easy to keep around.  Rotate it by adding some to the car or to the lawn mower periodically.

The other question becomes what has happened that causes us to need message runners; even in the case of a widespread EMP, there are plenty of us who could rig up spark gap transmitters and crystal receivers from pulse-resistant scavenged parts and send quite a lot of information in the time it takes even to drive 70 miles..  If we need some physical object small enough to carry (vaccine, whatever) from outside the area, then it makes more sense for the carrier to come from the less damaged area, where they're likely to be able to use at least a dirt bike to cover 70 miles of damaged/cluttered road in an hour or two, compared to four hours of heavy exertion for even a serious bicycle racer, who would then have to make the return trip to deliver the item.

Far more likely that we're looking at temporary migrations outside the disaster area.  If we're talking EMP, major weather disaster or mass casualty event, there are probably a bunch of dead cars blocking the roads, so even your points ignition 1969 Ranchero with a dozen fuel cans in the back is going to eventually run into something you can't get through.  Your Kawasaki can go around, but most aren't really set up for cargo, so you're not going to be hauling much in the way of supplies, and if you run out of gas, a motorcycle has a lot of useless dead weight to push.  Additionally, if fuel has gotten scarce, even just locally, the sound of an engine is going to be like an electric can opener among hungry cats to those of lesser moral values.

Then there's other travel; you'll hunt out the area around your bug out location, if it's any good for hunting to start with.  A utility bike gives you a good way to head down the road a few miles, and hopefully lug some sort of dead animal back home.  Family and friends will be an important resource, but only if you can get to them effectively.  If you're bugged out away from town, you'll probably want to go in to trade from time to time.  Then there's home teaching, because a little catastrophe is no excuse for letting your numbers slip...

 

[Guest]

An EMP is not likely to take out cars.  That's hollywood hype and military misinformation.  Car engines are in a faraday cage.  It would take a pretty high frequency to get into that one.

For messaging or for utility once at the bug out land, yes, that's probably a good application.  But we can certainly fit a couple of bikes into our maxi-van.  If you've only got yourself, you could probably put a bike into your truck or SUV.

You outline many what ifs.  But it is a very rare combination of events that would give bicycles an advantage over motorized vehicles for long travel.

And, yes, if I were in the middle of a metro area wide catastophe, I'd skip HT.

Edited June 14, 2016 by Guest

[NightSG]

15 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

An EMP is not likely to take out cars.  That's hollywood hype and military misinformation.  Car engines are in a faraday cage.  It would take a pretty high frequency to get into that one.

The engine, sure, but there have been a number of odd placements of the ECM (often in the passenger compartment, sometimes just under the vinyl shell of the dash) that leave it fairly vulnerable.  Even when it's well shielded, it shares a bus with the BCM, which is usually in the passenger compartment, and often controls other critical bits like an anti-theft ignition lockout.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, NightSG said:

The engine, sure, but there have been a number of odd placements of the ECM (often in the passenger compartment, sometimes just under the vinyl shell of the dash) that leave it fairly vulnerable.  Even when it's well shielded, it shares a bus with the BCM, which is usually in the passenger compartment, and often controls other critical bits like an anti-theft ignition lockout.

How many cars have such devices in such odd placements?

[NeuroTypical]

A few years back I totally immersed myself in the delicious prepper heaven of a hundred books and movies of country or global economic collapse and etc.  Pandemic virus, clean EMP bomb, pre-2nd-coming Luciferian nuclear shenannigans, you name it.  So fun.

Along the way, I did actually try to gather relevant data on the realistic levels of actual threat.  What I've found out regarding EMP, is it depends on who you ask.  Yes indeed, some emp tests were conducted that were so powerful they could set fire to everyone's Duracell batteries.  Then you think about the complexity of the devices and delivery mechanisms needed to effectively deploy something like that, and the risk of such things go down quite a bit.  Except for the occasional solar-caused events, which may well blow out every transformer across a third of a hemisphere.  Also pretty darn rare.  And by "rare", we mean "Yes, it happens regularly, just lots of years between events."

I love me a good zombie movie.  And I must admit to decent odds of some major event occurring in my lifetime or the lifetimes of my children.

[zil]

4 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

some emp tests were conducted that were so powerful they could set fire to everyone's Duracell batteries

Phew!  Glad I use Engergizer (brand batteries).

[NightSG]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

How many cars have such devices in such odd placements?

Of the last four I had, one put the ECM in the dash under the vinyl, another had the BCM mounted there, and a third had the BCM under the driver seat. (And the BCM in that one controlled the kill switch, so even if it didn't send a pulse through the bus big enough to kill the ECM, the car wouldn't have started.)  None of them had the conductive glass coatings that would help shield the interior at all, and frankly, the ones that do tend to use it as a radio antenna...and that radio is connected to the BCM for the fancy steering wheel controls.  (And in GM's case, so there can be OBDII codes for stuck CD and speed-controlled-volume sensor failure.)

[Guest]

The one under the driver's seat is probably ok.  The ones under the dash may or may not be depending on what you mean by "under the vinyl".  Is there any metal at all between the exposed windshield and the device?