Hacker News Reader

Comment by pugworthy | Hacker News Reader

It struck me the other day that post-apocalyptic fiction authors are going to have to really change their game in a while. Imagine rewriting, "The Walking Dead" where half (or more) of the cars were electric.

It does though bring up an interesting question: In the event of natural catastrophe and loss of critical infrastructure due to natural disaster (or brain eating contagions), how does one keep the literal wheels of industry and commerce moving?

Will preppers of the future focus on having gas cars, or having radically self-sufficient sources of electricity for their cars?

View on HN

The Car Wars board game originally published in 1981 already imagined a post-apocalyptic world using mostly electric cars: "There are two kinds of engine available in 2040: gas and electric. With gasoline unavailable in many areas of the world, multiple-fuel-cell electric power plants are far more common than the old-style internal-combustion engines". That is from the 1990 rulebook. The original rulebook had the year 2031 instead of 2040 (because "Car Wars is set 50 years in the future").

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/2829/game-car-wars

Industry already now is heavily reliant on electricity. So not really a change there.

Preppers will just use their generators and PV system to charge their cars.

Gasoline fuel infrastructure is heavily reliant on the electric grid to operate. It wouldn’t operate at any significant scale without it.

EVs can be paired with solar panels to be completely independent of the grid for many years.

“Radical” self sufficiency for EV cars isn’t exactly radical. Many have already achieved full energy self-sufficiency for their homes with solar panels and battery packs. And this is true long term self sufficiency, which is much harder to achieve if you rely on gasoline for cars and generators

In an actual post-apocalyptic situation there wouldn't be any usable gasoline left within a year. EV's would actually last longer with a proper solar array.

Did you not consider solar cells when you wrote this?

Yes, along with whimsy.

Gas and diesel have relatively short shelf lives.

They last around 12 months (way less for gas with added ethanol) if stored properly meaning not too cold or hot and no big temperature changes.

This can be extended with preservatives/stabilizers to a few years but after that you are fucked if you don’t run a refinery.

So yeah preppers should go with electric. Batteries also have a limited lifespan but it should be longer if managed properly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com