No Bikes in the Apocalypse

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
In most of these films, there always seems to be a gap between having a vehicle and gas and being shit out of luck, as if no other possibility existed.
—Cracked.com, "6 Technologies Conspicuously Absent from Sci-Fi Movies

So somebody dropped the nuke. Maybe the zombies showed up and ruined society. Or it was the aliens and their battle lasers. But somehow, you're stuck in a crapsack post-apocalyptic world, and you need to stay on the move.

You hear that there's some nice little place to hole up in somewhere in Maine, and you jump in your car to drive there. What's this? You're almost out of gasoline, and nobody owns a gas station any more? Well, you'd better hope that you used to own a horse ranch, because otherwise you're walking. After all, bicycles never seem to stick around for Ragnarok.

This odd anomaly in transportation availability seems to manifest in many stories where it logically shouldn't. Sure, of course Frodo can't mountainbike his way into Mordor, and his pal Aragorn can't grab a BMX to reach Gondor with some fancy wheelies. But that doesn't stop Viggo Mortensen from somehow forgetting that bikes exist in The Road. Whether you're watching 28 Days Later or Mad Max, the problem remains. Fantasy and Sci-fi works involving post-apocalyptic worlds all have selective amnesia when it comes to the world-changing invention of the bicycle. Maybe it's because horses are just cooler than bikes, or maybe it's because all the idiots in the plot don't know how to pedal, or maybe it's because those world-destroying nanobots have a specific affinity for aluminum frames.

At some point, the Fridge Logic sets in and viewers start wondering just what's wrong with post-apocalyptic humanity for them to completely ignore the world's most popular form of mechanical transportation.

Now, if the ancient technology is randomly picked at and put together improperly, you've got yourself a Scavenger World, and it might at least make a bit of sense not to have too many bikes. That's at least a bit excusable. But if you're watching or reading a story where gas-powered vehicles exist and foot-powered ones mysteriously don't, then there are No Bikes in the Apocalypse.


Compare Schizo-Tech and Scavenger World. Contrast Ragnarok Proofing, for those rare cases where bicycles are still around and in working order, 500 years after the fact.

Examples of No Bikes in the Apocalypse include:

As described

Film

  • The Road
  • Mad Max
  • Terminator Salvation
  • The Book of Eli could potentially have this be a Justified Trope, since the main character is blind, even if he also has a Disability Superpower. It doesn't explain why nobody else has them, though.
  • Dawn of the Dead
  • Lampshaded in Zombieland, when the main character remarks on the useful attributes of a bike during a zombie apocalypse. Notably, the main cast still doesn't bother using any of them. Justified in that abandoned cars with at least partially full gas tanks are everywhere.
  • 28 Days Later. Pretty ironic, since Jim's character was a bicycle courier before the accident that got him into a coma in the first place.
  • The four main characters in Carriers are perfectly willing to shoot innocent people for their gas, even though the world is almost entirely intact. The idea of getting gas from other cars or finding bikes never comes up. The only justified instance is with the father and his sick daughter because he needs to get her to medical attention ASAP.

Live Action TV

Video Games

  • in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are partial aversions. There aren't any bicycles, but there are tricycles which serve no practical purpose for the playable characters.
  • Inverted in Half-Life 2. There are bikes, but you never see anybody using them. You can find several of them and indications of the rebels using them (eg. "Highway 17", where one is found next to a corpse and a crossbow), but they are more all rusted beyond usage, and work as little more than decorations and Gravity Gun ammo.
    • The inversion is subverted in the derivative Concerned Web Comic: Gordon Frohman's vehicle of choice is a rusty bike.
  • Justifed in Devil Survivor, it's mentioned the ruins of Tokyo aren't suited to anything but walking.

Inverted

Films

  • Bikes are common modes of transportation in the safe zones in Warm Bodies, just in the novel.

Literature

  • Emberverse series: Bikes became a popular mode of transportation due the EMP attack known as "The Change" render all motor vehicles useless.
  • Max Brooks, the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, recommends bikes over motor vehicles due to the ease of maintenance, nearly quite, fast, and versatile since they can cover many terrains, where motor vehicles couldn't.

Live Action TV

  • In "Chained Heat" from Revolution, bikes became a top seller following the blackout.

Real Life

  • Many survivalists would recommend bikes after the apocalypse since along with mentioned above, they normally require human power rather than fuel.
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