Pedal powered battery charger and an IKEA refugee shelter (because of course IKEA makes refugee shelters) for your post-apocalyptic RPGs/world building needs

First up, Boing Boing posted a video detailing how to rig a bicycle to recharge batteries. Becky Stern, the woman behind the video explains that in the black out caused by Hurricane Sandy, she was able to use this method to stay online thanks to her friend Hackett setting this rig up. Check it out below.



Interesting. I can see this being useful as part of a quest in a post-apocalyptic RPG like Mutant Future or Gamma World.

Quest ideas:

• Maybe a party has to construct one or several to help out a settlement
• They find a piece of pre-apocalypse technology, but need to charge up its battery in order to activate it.
• If the party has a base, they have to build some of these to power objects.

In terms of fiction/world building, a bicycle-turned-generator could be a fairly common sight in post-apoc settlements since bikes would likely be in abundance.

Second, Web Urbanist has this interesting shelter that the IKEA Foundation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees teamed up to create for use in refugee camps. The shelters normally employed in the camps are only meant for temporary habitation.

Like the bike generator, these have uses in both gaming and world building:

• Possibly a common sight in settlements or at the players base.
• A quest aimed at acquiring a load of these shelters to bring to an existing settlement or to help establish a new one.
• The main character(s) come across a warehouse or derelict truck with some of these inside and decide to appropriate them for their own use.

Are you a DM running a post-apoc RPG or a writer of post-apoc fiction? Do these look like something you'd use?