How Long Has It Been Since The Disaster Started?

[SnakesX4]

Does anyone know how many years its been since the disaster started?

I ask because I find it strange how Max is the only one who seems to know what old things are and how things once were. He even has that picture of presumably his wife and daughter. But it seems that all of this happend very long ago, if you look at structures and the giant bridge even. They all look very old as if its been hundreds of years since this all started.

This might sound a bit strange and perhaps even completely wrong. But is it possible that Max is perhaps immortal, or am I just completely wrong and was this only a few years ago?

[FloDuMalawi]

bump for interest

[SnakesX4]

Originally posted by MasterRazzerr76:

watch the movie and read the comic

Or answer the question?

[Memnoch]

It is an odd thing. Max clearly remembers water, trees, getting maried etc. The oddest thing is that even the oldest characters you meet don't seem to indicate they remember.

Perhaps the oddest thing is that society has collapsed so utterly in such an apparent short period of time. There is the age of Max to cotend with compared to the utter devastation you see. In the south the utterly alien landscape can be explained because it is all at the bottom of the sea and ocean. But go north and you see the remains of building, highways etc. that look like they have been there for decades, way to long for Max to have been anything more than a baby and yet he was a cop before the Fall.

Either the environmental effects have damaged, aged and destroyed things way faster than you would expect or there is something off with the timeline. Or they just left out telltale dialogue from those who might have been around. But the thought still occurs when you see how much has been clearly made and built after the fall of civilisation that this is years if not decades of building.

Speaking of disasters, as you explore historical records I have not found any that explains where all the water went and none then mentions anything in detail such as possible nuclear war. In this world it seems like it wasn't mans doing that ended it all but some environmental catastrophe and then makind ate itself alive.

[Zariah]

http://madmax.wikia.com/wiki/Max

[SnakesX4]

Originally posted by Memnoch:

It is an odd thing. Max clearly remembers water, trees, getting maried etc. The oddest thing is that even the oldest characters you meet don't seem to indicate they remember.

Perhaps the oddest thing is that society has collapsed so utterly in such an apparent short period of time. There is the age of Max to cotend with compared to the utter devastation you see. In the south the utterly alien landscape can be explained because it is all at the bottom of the sea and ocean. But go north and you see the remains of building, highways etc. that look like they have been there for decades, way to long for Max to have been anything more than a baby and yet he was a cop before the Fall.

Either the environmental effects have damaged, aged and destroyed things way faster than you would expect or there is something off with the timeline. Or they just left out telltale dialogue from those who might have been around. But the thought still occurs when you see how much has been clearly made and built after the fall of civilisation that this is years if not decades of building.

Speaking of disasters, as you explore historical records I have not found any that explains where all the water went and none then mentions anything in detail such as possible nuclear war. In this world it seems like it wasn't mans doing that ended it all but some environmental catastrophe and then makind ate itself alive.

Exactly, this might just be a poor timeline or whatever but there's a lot of elements.

Such as the cultural aspects too. Modern day religion is compeltely gone too and people seem to worship machinery now. Religion and culture like that would be assumed to take a very long time to develop.

I feel one quote I've hear in the game thus far sums this all up pretty well. Whilst driving through the wind farm, by the giant set of wind turbines, Chumbucket says something along the lines of;
"The people of old once used those great fans to fly or some such things."

Very strange indeed.

[Memnoch]

Exactly! Chumbucket would have been alive pre-fall. Society is too far removed, and suffered too much change in their behaviour, the way they speak etc. to all have occured inside a single generation.

It feels like many generations would have to have passed for these changes to take effect.

[Lingerie Goat]

It depends on how you want to imagine the universe works in the reboot. From everything they say in the movies, its been about 70 years. The resource wars started to have major effects in 1979/1980, and full on nuclear war/nuclear winter happened around 1983 or 1984, and Fury Road is taking place in around 2055. But, Max was around, and old enough to have a wife and kids, before the resource wars started. So going by the new movie time lines, Mas is around 90-100 years old...

If you go solely by the old movies, and assume that Fury Road is a sequel to Beyond Thunderdome, then its only been about 40 years and max is in his late 50's/early 60's (same age as Mel Gibson).

Basically, the timeline is incredibly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up because they didnt really think about it when they were making the movies, either the originals or the new one. The only things "confirmed" is that water started to run out in the 70s, Mad Max (the movie) was around 79/80, nuclear war happened in 83 or 84. Road Warrior was 99, Thunderdome was around 2015, and Fury Road is supposed to be 40 years from wednesday, and Mad Max (the game) takes place sometime before Fury Road. Even then, in Road Warrior the nuclear war hadnt happened yet but it supposed takes place 15 years after it should have.

[Memnoch]

Not even all the nukes in the world could evaporate the worlds oceans so where did it all go? It can't have simply evaporated as the atmosphere would be so think you might not see the horizon half the time and there would be constant storms. It can't have gone inside the Earth either, surely? This has always been a curious thing to me.

But being able to drive around in this alien landscape I only wish the game world was so much larger. There is so much to explore, something new just over that hill in the distance....and then you meet invisible walls or the Big Empty!

[Lingerie Goat]

Originally posted by Memnoch:

Speaking of disasters, as you explore historical records I have not found any that explains where all the water went and none then mentions anything in detail such as possible nuclear war.

Theres a couple that mention the nuclear winter (the guy on the snow-mobile, and the guy sitting in a flooded park) that said the nuclear war caused a nuclear winter, which then caused massive flooding, and then the water dried up and never came back. The best guess you can make is that the water might just be gone in australia, but is still around in other places. The nuclear war may have altered the global climate to the point that some areas dried up and some others remained flooded over, or maybe the north of the planet is completely frozen while the southern half is completely dry and barren.

[Zariah]

Mad Max - Max is in his mid 20s?
Road Warrior - 5 years later, max is about 30.
Thunderdome - 15 years later, max is about 45.
Fury Road - Some indeterminate time after thunderdome. Max is 50ish?

The game is set somewhere between Thunderdome and Fury Road. See the wiki I posted above.


Edit: Actually, just looked it up, Mel Gibson was actually 21 when he auditioned for MM, so the character could be even younger.

[Memnoch]

You just reminded me of somthing one of the characters said. Something about there being rumours that across the empty wastes there is a mountain range and on the other side there is still water, like something out of Waterworld in reverse. Perhaps those mountains could be the continental shelf of SE Africa?

What I wouldn't give to explore more of this upside down hell of a world! :-)

[Memnoch]

Originally posted by Jherad:

Mad Max - Max is in his mid 20s?
Road Warrior - 5 years later, max is about 30.
Thunderdome - 15 years later, max is about 45.
Fury Road - Some indeterminate time after thunderdome. Max is 50ish?

The game is set somewhere between Thunderdome and Fury Road. See the wiki I posted above.

The Wiki is made by people just like us those, with nothing more than the available footage we all have access to and wild speculation, right? Does 20-30 years look like long enough for the wasteland look as bad as it does, with these huge rusting structures in the desert? Perhaps a combination of nuclear weapons and constant sandblasting would do that.

[Zariah]

Society was already breaking down pretty heavily in the first movie - I suspect Max only saw *normal* life in his childhood. As for the rusting stuff, whilst oxidation is slowed in a dry environment, it can certainly still happen over a few decades. Thunderdome contained hints of a nuclear event somewhere. As you say, the sandblasting of the desert would really help remove protective paint.

https://www.google.com/search?q=australian+outback+rust&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch

[Zariah]

Oh, nearly forgot - there's a lot of talk in the movies and game about the oceans disappearing. I have no idea what could do that and how long it would take - but it would also be fair to guess that a lot of salt would be left behind. Salt increases the speed of rusting.

There was still grass, water, and a fairly normal climate in the first movie despite the breakdown in society.

[GM Pax]

Regarding Max's age, ponder this: antigerone treatments.

That means, essentially, an "eternal youth" medical procedure. Something that stops your body from aging. Maybe Max himself is 100+ years old, and only looks a third of that because just before the Disaster, he got those antigerone treatments. Even if civilization was already sliding downhill, as long as the technical and industrial base existed to provide them ... I can see police being fairly high up on the list of people to receive the treatment.

Which means, Max might be twice as old as anyone else you see, anywhere in the wasteland ... and he might be doomed to another century or two of that hell.