Zombie apocalypse! What bike would you pick?

Fast, reliable, quiet? What's your take?

This competition is now closed

By Russell Eich

Published: February 3, 2017 at 3:00 pm

Let's hope it never happens, but if the zombie apocalypse were to decimate the planet, what bike would you choose? There are a lot of considerations: do you have a home base from which you venture out occasionally, are you on the move constantly in search of safety, are you in a city or out in the country?

Is a fast bike, like a road bike, the get-away answer? Zombies are notoriously slow and lumbering, so even if you had nowhere near Cavendish's sprint, you could still most likely pedal away from the flesh eaters.

But what about the (I’m assuming) disheveled roads and broken, discarded remnants of society littering your every turn? What style of road bike makes the most sense: a race rocket or an endurance machine, carbon or aluminum?

While conceding a bit in all out speed, a mountain bike is generally able to take on difficult terrain pretty simply. Transitioning from the road to the woods and blasting around the city up and down stairs is all within a mountain bike's realm.

But what if your suspension fails or you bang a wheel out of true? Which genre would you pick: an XC whip, enduro crusher, downhill sled or fat bike?

Perhaps you’ll have all your possessions haphazardly bundled together in children's bookbags. Maybe you need to cover some miles and do so not with speed as much, but with reliability.

A tough-as-nails steel touring bike outfitted with racks and puncture-resistant tires wrapping 48-spoke wheels might be your salvation. Sure it's not going to be the fastest or the lightest or the easiest to maneuver, but there's a lot to be said about slow and steady.

What if the electrical grid is still functioning? Would an e-bike be the escape vehicle of choice? An e-bike would allow you carry heavy loads relatively quickly and allow you to flee the undead up almost any hill.

But it's all within reason, because once the e-bike runs out of juice you’re stuck with a bike that's still functional but seriously heavy. And if the electrical grid fails, then you just have a heavy bike.

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