this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Transcription: Meme with mad max-type cars facing the viewer with the caption: "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of car culture"

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In most cataclismic sci-fi cars seem to be of little or no importance, which makes sense given that most countries have no oil themselves and even for those which do, the ability of actually extracting the stuff from the current hard to reach modern reserves (the stuff doesn't just boil out of the ground nowadays) and refining it isn't likely to be available at all for what's left of society.

Curiously, electric cars and solar panels make post-catacysmic use of cars more likely than the ICE engine of the cars in Mad Max.

That said, given enough time whatever stock of solar panels use will be gone to just natural degradation and exposure to the elements and the technology to do more won't be there anymore (though wind and water generation would still be possible), plus the roads themselves will become unusable as Nature does its thing.

The most likely Mad-Max post-cataclismic future will be using animal-drawn vehicles or just people riding the animals.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Counterpoint, Imagine a dystopia belonging to transit ….. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6156584/plotsummary/

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I hate cars and Mel Gibson but I love the Mad Max franchise. Mad Max (1979) Society is on the verge of collapse, so the presence of gasoline is still reasonable. The Road Warrior (1981) Society has collapsed but a group of civilized people have held onto an oil well with a small refinery. Beyond Thunderdome (1985) No one is driving. Max's car is mostly a status symbol. Barter Town runs on methane. Furiosa (2024) and Fury Road (2015) Warlords have formed an economy of slave labor based on control of bullets, sustenance and fuel. Throughout it all, Max struggles with PTSD induced psychosis and each time he has a chance to regain his humanity, he rejects the opportunity and wanders off into the wasteland alone. A never ending quest for vengeance which will never be satisfied. To hell with redemption.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I've been watching clips of Furiosa and for me the most amusing thing is all the brand-new knobby tires on all the vehicles. I'm sure they have to have that for safety during filming, but it's the most glaringly unrealistic aspect of these movies. Even in developed regions today lots of people run their tires into the ground, and in poorer parts of the world they generally keep using tires until they explode. The latter is absolutely how things would be in a Mad Max world, even if they did have facilities for new tire production.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 45 seconds ago

The new tires are because the cars in both Furiosa and Fury Road are all real cars! Even immortant Joes Gigahorse and the War Rig!

I like to try and find the roll cages while I watch the movies. And yeah I could see how that could break your immersion but for me, knowing that these are real cars doing largely practical things is really cool.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Turbo Kid (2015), there's no more gas, riding around the wastelands on bicycles.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

I will check out the movie.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago (5 children)

it's probably a much less exciting film if they're on bicycles

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I was thinking that once the roads are bad enough it's gonna be horse/camel-mounted warriors and maybe animal drawn wagons.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

Well, depend.

Also depend on the capability of the writer and the director.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This post got reported because it's an image of text without a transcription. That's not against the rules, but it would be nice if you could edit it to add one.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

gotta train that AI somehow :D (/s)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

It's realistic that the most vicious people would hold on to the status symbols of before, and to indoctrinate those born after into the same way of thinking

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

IIRC, the first Mad Max was partly imagined as a satire of car culture in Australia

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Interesting! Got a source on that?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I remember seeing in an interview of Director George Miller. But! I may have another source: https://gizmodo.com/stories-from-the-sets-of-mad-max-the-road-warrior-1702490722

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago

Needs a sequel where they’re defeated by a cooperative riding war bikes

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (3 children)

What I love about the whole Mad Max post apocalyptic wasteland is that ...... everyone has enough fuel to go wandering around the desert. A raiding party of a dozen transports, riding with a bunch of small cars and motorcycles would probably consume several hundred gallons of fuel in one afternoon.

It would probably take a year before all available fuel would be depleted and then there would be nothing to replenish it all. Sure you can use alcohol but that is in even smaller supply and most of it would have been consumed by people anyway.

We'll be able to build, fix, and maintain gas powered engines after the apocalypse but we won't have any fuel to keep them running.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

In Germany during WWII they were able to keep cars running using wood gas, where they'd burn wood and vent the off-gassing into the car's engine. This would be realistic for the Mad Max universe but it wouldn't be very cool for all the Apocalypticars to be towing wood stove trailers - and I don't remember ever seeing a tree in a Mad Max movie.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The newer movies expand the wasteland to three "fortresses" that factions fight for control: the citadel has a fresh water reservoir and food, the bullet farm was a mining town turned into an arms factory, and gastown controls an oil refinery that everyone depends on (and slaves to keep it working). Lore wise, gasoline is one of the commodities they've continued creating and exporting.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unless gastown is sitting on one giant underground oil reservoir that they actively pump themselves .... gastown will run out of fuel as fast as everyone else.

Bullet farm also needs to keep importing or manufacturing specialized chemicals and compounds to make the explosives for bullets.

The only town that could actually exist is the citadel. Any place that has a supply of fresh clean water will always draw human habitation, even without guns, fuel, big trucks or motorcycles.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unless gastown is sitting on one giant underground oil reservoir that they actively pump themselves .... gastown will run out of fuel as fast as everyone else.

It very conveniently pumps it's own oil from the sands! But fiction aside - I do think gas is a resource that would be processed and controlled throughout a mad max like downfall. Too much in war depends on fossil transport to allow that supply chain to crumble. Just reinforces the meme lol.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I agree ... in a post apocalyptic collapse everyone will be scrambling to control fuel reserves ... but the only places that will occur is wherever the oil or raw resources are located in the ground. For the first few years, everyone will fight for whatever fuel is lying around in tanks or storage facilities. After that everyone will go after the sources because none of it will survive being transported anywhere far from where it is manufactured. Everywhere else that is not within about 50 - 100 km of a fuel source will revert to the middle ages and will be using horses, swords and bows and arrows.

A better use for any fuel that anyone could have is to use it as a weapon like Greek Fire .... or mixing it with wax or styrofoam to use it as napalm for offensive attacks or defence against attackers

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wouldn't even be a year. Gasoline has a shelf life of six months. Three months if it's an ethanol blend.

After that, you're down to homemade diesel, electric vehicles, and bicycles.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's not correct. I have ethanol-free petrol for my chainsaw that has a shelf life of 5 years guaranteed (probably lasts longer, since that's from the time of purchase)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Not everyone knows that ethanol is simply worse for fuel efficiency and only exists to be a corn subsidy for farmers. I know E85 tuning exists which is cool but it’s still mostly trash.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Yah. The fact that we're turning edible food into worse gas, and thereby driving up food prices worldwide for no reason, is nothing short of inhumane. It's not even a reduction in greenhouse gas; it requires so much processing that it's about the same as just pumping crude out of the ground.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

It would have made more sense to just pay farmers more with subsidies, instead oil lobbyist tricked ag lobbyist into accepting this deal (or more likely bribed them).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Hmmm, interesting. Looks like there's some fuel stabilizers that can preserve it for a few years (most of what I can find are for 1-3 years). I'm guessing the 5-year blend has a shorter shelf life once opened? The really interesting part seems to be that some of these stabilizers can be added to old gasoline to make it usable again. So as long as an organization had an utterly gigantic supply of stabilizer, they could potentially keep using gas for quite a while.

These stabilizers are definitely not in regular gasoline, though, so everyone except the extremely paranoid would be SOL.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

Stabilizers are marketing BS, they can't rejuvenate old fuel and they generally work by introducing an additional component that reduces the ability of the fuel (mostly the methanol content) to absorb water ... however they rarely have a positive effect over all because they cause other problems.

Long shelf-life fuel is made in the refining stage. European standard E10 petrol can last a year or more if it's stored correctly ... I know this because I sometimes do store it for that long by accident.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

TBF public transport is kinda lacking in the apocalypse

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wdym I take Immortan line to gastown every week

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

I mean, that is one glaring point of fridge logic. If you've seen how many people can cram onto a bus in developing countries, Immortan Joe's guys should have been like 15 to a car. Also, if gas is precious, why not use a train? They're substantially more efficient.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Same, but gun culture.

And the end of Australians.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

They tend to go hand-in-hand

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lol where would they even get the fuel

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

Gas Town of course

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Fury Road on every street in every city throughout the world!