As part of the writing, (and I got up to 33% done today!) I have some characters walking through New Orleans. They need to be quick, and they can't use a car for reasons I won't get into here. But Google Maps is a useful device. I'm pretty familiar with New Orleans and walking, and I have all the places loosely held in my mind's eye. But to get down into Google Maps, you can see streetview, see exact locations. In my head, verisimilitude is always added if you toss the accurate name of a street, or turn right when you're supposed to turn right.
So I asked Google maps to give me a route from point A to point B. It says it's about 10.3 miles, and it would take about 3 hours and 25 minutes walking.
That's pretty brisk walking. It's a little more than 3 miles per hour. Now, when I'm in good shape, I can walk the mile running track near my house at a brisk pace (getting the cardio good and going) in 45 minutes. But that's brisk. Few stops. And I'm not being chased by bad guys (well, I am listening to the zombies on my running app). In fact, the closest I ever got to the above time was back when I was training myself to jog and I would sprint now and then. I believe the best time I ever had was about 3 miles in an hour. And that included several sprints, and slow jogging (I wrote that out at first as slog... which is accurate for how I run.)
Whew. Google! You need a button for "slow walking" or "walking with children" or "walking while lugging a 10 pound apocalypse bug out bag and being chased by bad guys."
I mean, c'mon. How are we gonna survive the apocalypse without googling how to get away?
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