Hacker News Reader

Comment by stnmtn | Hacker News Reader

I liked how it wasn't explained because the goal is to make you think about those questions. In a post apocalyptic wasteland where valuable resources are scattered far away in an endless desert, wouldn't cars become an almost mythical and religious item? Without the Chrome Cars, everyone would die as they would be unable to travel and get food/water/etc. So is it any surprise that after generations of living like that, they would worship chrome much in the same way primitive cultures worship the sun/rain/water?

View on HN

I don't think the Mad Max world building is sufficiently deep to stand up to scrutiny. For example, cars are extremely dependent on high industry. Without an advanced chemical industry cars are impossible to build. There is no way cars would be around long in a post apocalyptic wasteland of endless desert.

All the cars are cars that they are maintaining, they have not built any cars from scratch. They find pieces of metal laying about and can put that on cars.

While I have no plans to watch these, I have been very curious how they cover gasoline production. Fracking and cracking aint easy.

Pieces of metal are the easy parts. Rubber, lubricants, fuel are much more difficult.

There weren’t generations between the collapse and the film. Style of the old characters may have started off in “normal” civilization. Given how many cars there are today, how the cars in mad Max tend to be simpler/older cars and how everything is Frankensteined together, the technology seems plausible. Compare to Cuba, where people are still driving around in 60 year old classic American cars.

Also consider how many people live now and their resources and assets, compared to the world of mad Max, where perhaps 1% of the humans remain. It implies a lot of junk.

What? Anyone can make a basic car in a workshop with metalworking tools. Henry Ford made cars. The only advanced chemicals you need are fuel to burn.

Try making a rubber wheel with a lubricated ball bearing in your home workshop.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com