Bear in mind: this is the first book to describe a post-apocalyptic future without Morlocks and Eloi in it. Gasoline was a petroleum distillate with tetraethyl lead, not the postmodern witches' brew we have these days and power generation was a lot less optimized and therefore more stable. When the book was written in 1949, "gasoline" was a newer technology than "fax machines" are today. Shit, when that book was written, fax machines were fifteen years in the future. Now? Sure, we've got a popular culture sheep-dipped into Dark Tower and Walking Dead and Road Warrior and every other postapocalyptic tale I'm forgetting but Patient Zero is that 70-year-old book that you're quibbling science over. I think my only real quibble with it is that the author thinks some things will last a lot longer than they really would.