I feel like any apocalypse is going to see lots of people try to rush to or from somewhere leading to clogged roads that make cars virtually useless until one gets way way into the boondocks.
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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What i learned from doomsday preppers is that you need guns and food and shelter. Apparently it doesn't matter that you're an unfit fuck that can't walk 20m without a car.
Food (or a way of getting it), same for water and medicine. Some form of shelter is good, but not the utmost priority, and a simply tree or something to sleep under can be good enough. I wouldn't immediately go for guns, as there are usually nonviolent solutions to conflict and bringing in a gun only raises the stakes and makes it more likely for people to get hurt.
The knowledge you know in you mind has the potential to be just as valuable, if not more so, as physical items you have. Knowledge on how to catch food, and build shelter, can be more useful that simply owning some cans and a basement.
Or that you wouldn't last a year without your statin.
>Survivor finds car
>plenty fuel
>pry open gas cap
>siphon
>go back home and run generator.
I knew hauling around a random jerrycan would pay of some day
shit, this thing is heavy when it's full
> Realize if I don't have at least some plan of how to use fuel or a container to put it in, why am I looking for it?
>Either fill the container I brought specifically for this, or abandon this useless pursuit to look for a bit of wire to make snares.
> Its electric
Boogie woogie woogie
Trigra masapara tubi top top tubi
For the longest time I through those were the words. I barely spoke any English then. The 80's and 90's are a slight blur. Please don't send me to Guantanamo.
collect batteries and add it to the solar/battery bank back at base.
They'll be dragging classic cars out of people's garages and sheds.
If you were going to be realistic about this, it would be old, mechanical injection diesel engines still going long after the apocalypse. And bicycles, of course.
What will be considered a classic car in 50 years? A 2017 Toyota Camry Station Wagon?
Technically yes, a 50 year old Camry would be considered a classic.
If you are being realistic, your best shot is probably EVs and having solar panels, those can maybe last about 20 years.
Diesel and Petrol will go bad in a year.
Either way you are on a finite resource, so the actual best bet is having horses
You think you’re going to drive anywhere 2 years after the apocalypse?
After a winter or two, between abandoned vehicles and lack of maintenance, the roads are going to be impossible to navigate for any distance that you couldn’t just walk or bike.
Depends where you are, in my neck of the woods there are plenty of roads that have been largely abandoned for 20 plus years and are still drivable. Not a comfy ride but still a drive none the less.
Most road damage comes from being driven on so assuming it doesn't get undermined most would still be usable even ten years after abandonment, not factoring in getting buried or flooded.
Diesel lasts longer then a year. If you can get a commune going, you can grow diesel fuel from seed oil, but only with older diesel. Not that you'd want to direct too much food resources to transportation, but if you have enough farm land, diesel tractors are much more common then electric and easier to work on.
You can also run modified gas engines to run off of Wood Gas and wood could be scavenged from most places. Probably the best option for any fast scouting operations, although you would need to let the system idle. The start up process takes some time.
Can confirm, my dad still uses the same tractor and diesel barrels his grandpa did. They are all from the 70s.
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It depends, because if the car breaks down, you will need parts to fix it. Hopefully parts you can get off another car of similar make. Also older cars can use universal parts, newer cars are more heavily proprietary, so electric may not be the way to go for longterm use.
I'd bet on an old diesel running on vegetable oil outlasting an EV.
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Bikes are the apocalypse ideal vehicle. They are immensely underrated on apocalyptic media.
Fuel I need to constantly scavenger? No thanks.
Noise that would attract the zombies? No thanks.
The highway is collapsed and my RV cannot go through? No thanks.
A bike would get you quite good through many apocalyptic scenarios.
Or just use Heelys like a normal person.
Omg just imagine the war boys from fury road gracefully gliding down the road screaming 'witness me' 😂
Mad Max the musical now on Broadway
You should read the book "Wolf and Iron"
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I think modern apocalypse movies should show someone grabbing solar panels off apartment balconies to recharge an abandoned electric car.
Not even close to enough energy to be practical in the real world, but close enough for movie logic.
Kinda wrong.
You can't get enough solar energy to directly drive a car any practical distance, but you aren't actually driving your car most of the time. When you look at weekly energy requirements, most drivers would be able to accumulate enough energy for all of their driving with just a few decent panels. You would need a battery to take advantage of this, or only drive at night.
Also, check out the solar cannonball run. A guy made a mobile rig of like 40 flexible panels and drove a Model three across the US using only solar charging.
practical
If the car is tied to a location that is already safe and secure in a post apocalyptic setting, then sure. But a post apocalyptic car is really only needed to haul stuff around or as protection against things outside the vehicle, and depending on the apocalypse you likely need to stay mobile, reinforce a secure location, or relocate to somewhere remote away from urban areas. Transporting the panels to a remote location will take time and effort, and if you need to be mobile you won't have time to charge.
Now if you had a rural home with solar panels on the roof and the location was secure an electric car would serve you well until something mechanical or the batteries failed and if you didn't need to travel far you could use it regularly too.
Electric vehicles can charge from a standard outlet. I would imagine if you gather enough of those panels that actually plug into a standard outlet, you could charge a car (though slowly). Your average EV can put on about 10 miles to its “tank” every hour of charging at 120 volts. I don’t know what the amps of those panels are though.
The alternative would be if the protagonist found a home with solar panels and backup batteries. These exist today, and are becoming more common. I don’t know if sodium ion backup batteries have a longer life than LFP or lithium ion.
It would be easy to find enough solar panels to charge an electric vehicle in most sunny areas, though it would probably be easier to just look for a large enough existing install and skip all the DIY. (Just look for the shiniest roof.)
But I think the real problem is in the EV itself. Batteries self-discharge and chemically degrade over time, so unless the apocalypse was recent, a lot of EVs you find might have damaged batteries, especially if fully discharged to begin with.
You could cannibalize one or more EVs to cobble together enough good cells to get past the safety cutoffs, but it would take a while and you would need to be careful since internal voltage in EVs tends to be high (like 400-800 volts).
TLDR: if this is a movie depiction, definitely use a montage.
In a real apocalypse scenario, those BEVs would get scavenged to create electric ~~bikes~~ generators, grain mills, and water pumps. The original cars are not useful in a world without deliberately car-dependent economic systems, and it's just not a proper apocalypse if you've still got an automotive lobby.
Edit: BEV motors 2 big 4 bike
it's just not a proper apocalypse if you've still got an automotive lobby.
Mad Max
Say what you will about the bloodstained vision of senseless carnage and hopeless grief portrayed therein, but at least most wastelanders worked near home.
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Bigger problem is going to be old fuel. Gasoline degrades over time and becomes less combustible. It also gets gummy in small passages like fuel injectors, especially with ethanol. Wiring insulation gets hard and breaks, wires corrode. Animals intrude and eat wires. Brake and fuel lines rust through, brake hoses swell shut from the inside.
You want a carbureted small block Chevy or Ford. It might still be effort to make it run, but it’ll be far more likely to scrounge up the very generic spare parts and supplies needed.
You want a carbureted small block Chevy or Ford.
Nope.
Pre 1990 mechanically fuel injected, naturally aspirated diesels. 7.3 or 6.9 IDI, 6.2 Detroit, most Cummins industrial engines.
Diesel lasts significantly longer in storage (2+ years) than volatile gasoline (6mo max). I've even seen some non-mixed diesel last 10+ years when stored right.
But the biggest deal is that compression ignition engines can basically run on literally any vaguely flammable liquid substance. You can make biodiesel from a ton of stuff ranging from oil bearing crops to animal fat. They run way longer on oil changes because they don't dump as much thin gas into their oil. And there are no real consumables like spark plugs, distributor caps/rotors/points.
In a post-society situation real fossil fuels or petroleum lubricants or parts will not be available.
Old petrol engines do have something making them worthwhile though - they're easier to run on wood gas. A gasifier would open options for fuel availability considerably as wood is a lot more likely to be accessible.
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All this fuel talk when IRL you can't drive anywhere if fuel in the tank is older than several weeks.
It takes much longer than that for gas to go bad... I have left untreated gas in lawnmowers, motorcycles, boats etc for entire off-seasons (plus a couple months on top of that) and the gas still goes boom just fine. I wouldn't race with it... And I'm sure it would test at a lower octane level, but it will still run an engine
Except most modern cars have turbo and direct injections and are very sensitive to gas/diesel quality. Even your diesel car will break down on an aged diesel. If the tank is not full, it will have degraded in contact with air, and if it stayed too long, it may have absorbed too much humidity and will ruin your advanced diesel engine.
Correct, I have let gas sit for over a year and it still works fine in carbureted engines like my mower and motorcycle. I just pick up the gas can and swirl it around vigorously to stir up the parts that might have settled. Also this is only non-ethanol gas being stored, probably would be worse with the ~10% ethanol blends that are standard.
Even right now. Look at how people have to wait in huge lines to get some gas every time there is a natural disaster, or extreme weather. After a few days, or even hours, it's mostly gone.
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