Getting Around Part 1

If you want to have success in the waste land, the most essential equipment is a good pair of boots. Multiple pairs more likely, because you have to treat your feet well. They are really the best option for trasportation.

There are plenty of vehicles to be found. No more than two or three dozen nukes went off after all, so most cites are intact, if a bit over grown and infested. Old highways are chocked with cars deadlocked from the exodus from the cites when the reanimates started showing up. Of course someone spins out, the crash squeezes traffic, more slow downs, another crash, traffic piles up into a big cluster, then reanimates catch up...

Maybe your better off checking old parking garages - a lot less depressing at least. Still won't do much good though, because there isn't anything to make the cars run.

Everyone was either running away, or killed outright, which meant the distribution systems fell apart pretty quickly. Surge protectors tripped from EMP were only partially reset. When the world is going to hell in a handbasket, clibing utility poles kind of takes a secondary importance, which when coupled with five years of snow and stroms, means that despite the dozens of green plants and at least a hundred still fuled fisson units, electrcity isn't going to flow anywhere.

In turn, no electricity impacts the capacity to refine other fuels. There are personal facilities for making plant based hydrocarbon fuels in the G-zones occasionally, but without major farms or commercial throughput, there isn't much to convert. (Trust me, you do not want to refine what has been sitting in an abandoned restaurant's grease trap for five years. I still can look at a yellow M without retching.) Nor do we have huge refiners churning through sugar cane, corn, or plant waste.

Considering most oil wells ran dry 15-20 years ago, you're not going to get any museum pieces running.

Five years of neglect hasn't ruined the roads quite as badly as the power lines. After all, the stress of thousands of cars hasn't been pounding them everyday now. Still, its been a while since anyone has fixed a pot hole, replaced a road sign, or cleared stalled vehicles. Vehicles not meant for off roading are going to be stymied a lot.

Bikes are a bit of a mixed bag. Uneven terrain and the aforementioned road issues make them uncomfortable. They offer no protection from the elements or the walkers, and limit what you can load up and how for balance reasons. Lacking other options however, you can count on finding a good number of riders if you're following a well used route.