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Anecdotally, diesels can sit for a long time and be just fine. I suspect there's something a mechanic could do with an abandoned gasoline car as well. The limiting factor, if we're talking full collapse of civilisation, is refined petroleum.
During the world wars, there were people converting IC engines to run off of wood gasifiers. For that, you either need the skills and tools to reprogram engine timings, or a carburator, though. Diesels can run on vegetable oil, and EVs can run off a solar panel, or, if still running, a wind turbine.
Horses aren't cheap or free to run, either. No matter what, there will be less vehicles, the ones that do exists will tend to be heavily loaded to save money (like you sometimes see in the third world) and they're going to take longer to get where they're going.
Horses can run off grass.
Which isn't anywhere near infinite. Humans also run off of grass (wheat, oats, barely, rice...), in most traditional societies.
You're not even saved the trouble of gathering it if there's a snowy winter to get through. Plus, there's shoeing and various kinds of other care to factor in.
??? You don't need infinite grass to feed a horse. It grows. They roam.
Humans need to plant specific species that we can digest, and then process it so that we can digest those parts because we can't eat the whole thing, and then cook it. We can't just eat it raw in the field. This is nowhere near the same. I can't even.
You do know wild horses exist right?
*I think I'm just gonna leave it at that.
Nice mansplaining, city person. I'm from a farming family, and live in a rural area that has all these things.
You need a certain amount of pasture land (and fodder during the winter). If you don't have enough, the grass runs out - that's called overgrazing. Edit: The history of using grass to fill empty space in NA cities is a thing all on it's own. It's not because it's inherently ever-available.
(And because I've had this kind of argument on Lemmy before, imma point out that the animals you eat probably ate staple crops. On this continent, at least, we grain-finish everything)
No, you gather it, pull off the seeds, and if you want to avoid a lot of chewing, grind it a bit. I'm sure all ready from your local bakery it seems like magic, but it's not.
Access to land is rarely an issue in the post-apocolypse.
Horse shoes are technology from 600 AD, easy enough to replicate and obviously not necessary.
The first cavalry was fielded 4,000 years ago--that we know of. I think we can scrape together the technology, especially in fair climates.
And, yes, you do have to feed horses. Thank you for that information.
Yes, we all agree it's possible. And depending on the apocalypse in question, that it would make a comeback. If you scroll back, the question was if horses are cheap. They are not. They weren't back in the day, either, but there was no alternative.
A note on shoes - I'm not a farrier, but my understanding is the need for shoes and trimming depends on how much natural wear the hooves get. A wild stallion is constantly digging around and running over rocks, so it doesn't need it, and back in the day, a London coach horse on hard streets might have needed a shoe to prevent wear. If your horse spends most of it's day stabled conveniently near where you live, so you can ride it at a moment's notice, it will probably need that kind of care. Ditto for a soft pasture. Farriers make decent money now, and if demand was through the roof like that, they'd charge a king's ransom.
If the local population is low enough, and you're willing to give up living in one place (and the technology that enables), you could go full nomadic pastoralist. Then, sure, you just migrate wherever grass naturally is, and you probably don't need shoes or a stablehand. They still don't seem to be cheap that way; the size of your herd is the entire measure of wealth in those societies. If I had to guess why, it's because whatever remote valley is hard to defend against rustlers and predators.
I like you teach me your ways lemmy farmer
Always complain about the weather (if it's perfect make something up), and be snooty to anyone who's not a farmer. /s
TBH I'm still more Lemmy than farmer. I'm exposed to it, while I wonder if some of the people on here have even driven between cities, but my branch of the family moved in another direction.
I'm still farmer enough to know keeping horses is a thing. Doable, but a thing. (Keeping chickens is easy, though)