Oof. You definitely were taking a risk with that drive train. I'm glad the worst of it is a few broken spokes.
That's clearly have a working bike, not some sort of weekend roadie show piece. Put a dork disk on there! There isn't any shame in favoring function over form.
Awesome call-out on zip ties. They're the duct tape of the bike world.
One small thing I noticed is how your fender and rack are mounted. It's fine to share a single eyelet to mount both, but it's best to mount in the order of frame, rack, fender, washer, and bolt. That ordering shortens the cantilever of the rack load, a much higher load than a fender, on the bolt.