If You Want To Write A Disaster Novel

Hey disaster novelists: Remember bicycles, skate boards, roller skates, and push scooters.

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.

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.

And another thing: If almost everyone dies then stale gasoline is not not a reason for all cars to stop working. You could still cruise around in a diesel Jetta or Benz or a diesel pick-up truck. The diesel fuel will last a long time.

So make your post-disaster personal transportation realistic.

One other thing: If you are writing a self-published Kindle book find someone you know to read it for grammar and spelling.

Update: A practical point for preppers: If you are the kind of guy who keeps a gun and a backpack full of food and camping gear in your trunk (never knowing when civilization will collapse while you are far from home) then you should put a bicycle in there too. If you are keeping all your prepper gear at home then keep bikes at home too.

This brings up another point I do not see in WTSHTF disaster novels: What's cheap to buy extras of before TSHTF to use for trading once civilization has collapsed? Water filters. Bicycles. Think of the trading value of a bike WTSHTF. How about superglue? Stores for a long time with lots of uses. Ditto duct tape.