Lol. What an honor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

https://build-construct.com/practical-guide/gasoline-shelf-life-how-long-does-fuel-last-and-how-to-store-it-properly/

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.

https://www.wikihow.com/Make-Bio-Diesel

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.