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.
The problem with cars is primarily fuel. Gas is only good for a few months then it degrades fast. Now, they can be made to run on alcohol, but making enough alcohol to be feasible to fuel a car is a pretty big undertaking. Then you have things like oil, grease, and tires. Plus, modern cars are complicated and, honestly, pretty fragile once the roads start to degrade. Without maintenance, roads degrade pretty fast.
If you have to have an engine, motorcycle will be better,. but at the end of the day you still need fuel, oil, grease, and tires.
Horses are fine if you know how to ride and care for a horse. Horses eat a lot, not much of a problem, however, come winter time you’re going to start searching for fodder. Horses require a lot of upkeep. Can you shoe.a horse and trim the hooves? No? Congratulations, your horse is now lame and the most humane thing to do is to shoot it. Horses are unpredictable and flighty. You might get lucky and get a calm horse that will comply with your commands, but I wouldn’t bet on it. They are prey animals and they are jumpy as fuck. The amount of times I’ve had a horse drag me into the woods at full speed because it saw a stick that kinda looked like a snake is too many. If you must ride an animal, get a mule. He won’t be as fast and might be more stubborn, but he also won’t take you anywhere that will get you killed and he’ll climb hills and mountains much better.
Bikes: Bikes are great and don’t need much maintenance. However, once the roads are wrecked after a couple of winters, they lose a lot of practicality. Another problem is that they require you to up your calorie intake in an environment where that may not be possible or will at least be difficult. Tires are still a problem, but at least changing a bike tire is easy. One problem I see is that once the roads are potholed and grown over, off road areas are even more overgrown, granted, a good mountain bike will still make it through, but you’ll be burning even more calories.
If you don’t have the calories to spend, you’re not traveling on foot, either. Depending on how good you are with the gears and how horrible the roads are, slow biking might actually burn less.