Ask Lemmy

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.