When you break a spoke riding your bike can be one of the worst things you can do as you can make a minor problem a major one. Modern wheels run at much higher tensions and have far more dish so when a spoke breaks things can go to hell pretty quickly.

I have seen older wheels with 36 and 40 spokes come into the shop with numerous broken spokes and the old steel wheels have not gone out of true. They are heavy and stiff and can lack the braking an alloy wheel does but they do hold up to serious abuse and were designed with some redundancy.

I was actually explaining the physics of new vs old wheels to a new mechanic and he insisted that I was wrong... right at this time a fellow rolled in on an ancient Raleigh that had 4 broken spokes in the rear wheel and it was still straight and repairable.

The guy had been riding the bike like this for a long time too.