Alternatively you can boot from the Recovery Drive and install a copy of Mojave on the thumb drive. If you have a WiFi connection and even if your Recovery Drive is toast the system will boot from a Recovery Drive on Apple's servers. These days, I can't find much use for a bootable install CD/DVD/thumb drive except to run third party volume repair utilities and the occasion for doing that is becoming ever rarer.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
Thinking about it, in enabling bootable install thumb drives, Apple has quietly (almost) given us back the install discs they so ill-advisedly took from us.
The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.
In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire