My Mad Max Timeline website is up!

[Uncle Entity]

The World ran out of oil during MM1 and chaos escalated through MM2 due to the decay of society.

Think of this. Oil doesn't actually have to run out. Just the fear of being without fuel would send the Planet into a tailspin. I've seen people change very quickly when my area went without electricity for seven days. Can you imagine what would happen if more time passed? Looters escape the shadows quickly in an 'us or them' frenzy.

Good insight.

[leadcounsel]

First, I think any consideration of this has to be in context with real world events. World wars take years to develop and are complicated.

It's likely that the world in MM1 was badly falling apart. Localized conflicts and wars, much like today, which were rationalized but impacted global prosperity due to the value of oil. World was suffering from oil shocks. Perhaps larger wars were breaking out, or men were recruited to fight/defend oil interests in the middle east. Perhaps this created a power vacuum in regions. Trade embargoes. Global shipping lanes shut down. Economies and budgets suffered, as we see evidenced by the disrepair of the Halls of Justice. MFP had only a few members. Perhaps men either left to go fight, fled the cities, or joined the gangs. Of course by MM2, we see what appear to be ex-police, so that leads to the conclusion that this did happen. Perhaps some limited nuclear war, not directed at the region of MM, but elsewhere.

MM2 occurs a few years later. The narration is from the child, who grew up on stories of how this all played out. He grew up after the wars. He's young, probably about 8-10. Reasonable to think that he was a baby during the wars, and grew up after, before he could learn to speak. He may have a jumbled timeline, but he does say that 2 warrior tribes touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Moot point on who those tribes are, but we get the idea. We do NOT see an atomic blast, which is noticeably absent. The stock footage of nuclear bombs was available and not used. We do see however the aftermath of Hiroshima, so we can draw our own conclusions. But we do see traditional warfare. I'm led to believe there was some warfare before MM1, but between 1 and 2, there was massive global conventional war and the complete breakdown of society and commerce and law. Perhaps limited nuclear exchanges but not total global destruction (nuclear powers do have the ability to completely destroy the world many times over). Max and his car are appropriately weathered and modified for a few years of hard living. His dog is probably around 3-5 years old, which would make sense.

Between MM2 and MM3, many more years transpire. His hair is long, and he's collected a not of goods, camel, vehicle, etc. I'd say probably 5 years has gone by, which puts us some 8+ years from MM1. Between MM2 and MM3, there have been more nuclear exchanges on a larger scale. He has a geiger counter and it reads radiation on the water being sold in Bartertown. Fuel seems non-existent and all is run on labor or methane.

It'll be interesting to see what 'fuel' the vehicles in MM4 run on...

[pauli77]

http://www.madmaxmovies.com/archives/we ... chron.html

This is the timeline I've always gone from. Uses the novels, but it does state that they are conjecture.

[banistersmind]

http://www.madmaxmovies.com/archives/we ... chron.html

This is the timeline I've always gone from. Uses the novels, but it does state that they are conjecture.

I like this time line but two things intrigue me. Fifi seems a little too young and what became of the Great Northern Tribe? Where can I find out more about their post MM2 story?

[banistersmind]

Enjoy:

http://madmaxtimeline.blogspot.com/

Please, have you some grammar or narrative suggestion to do? I need feedback to improve it. Thank you so much!

(must add more contents, among the other things).

I've spotted a few grammatical errors in your time line. It's interesting to say the least, but I think the more recent poster's time line better reflects the consensus hallucination of the MM canon.

[Uncle Entity]

Enjoy:

http://madmaxtimeline.blogspot.com/

Please, have you some grammar or narrative suggestion to do? I need feedback to improve it. Thank you so much!

(must add more contents, among the other things).

I've spotted a few grammatical errors in your time line. It's interesting to say the least, but I think the more recent poster's time line better reflects the consensus hallucination of the MM canon.

Tell me, I will fix.

[decosabute]

This was an interesting discussion. For what it's worth, I certainly agree more with Taipan's account and I think we can all be grateful for the numerous brilliant sources he has given directly quoting George Miller. However, I can see Uncle Entity's point that sometimes these 'universes' take on a life beyond what their creator intended. The films are vague and thus require, or at least allow some room for, imagination filling in the blanks. While I won't go into too much detail - only mentioning the major points and focusing mainly on Max himself - here's my take on it, which I think stays true to Miller's own accounts, as well as the very limited evidence provided in the films.

1970: Max Rockatansky born

During 1980s and 1990s law and order begins breaking down, fuel rationing due to ongoing conflict in the middle east tipping the balance. Some of the world's largest oil fields are set ablaze, 'and the Middle East's once-mighty torrent of energy had slowed to a trickle'.

1993: Events of Mad Max - This would put Max at 23 years old, a year older than Gibson was when they shot the movie. I've used 1993 as the year for the first film based on Miller's assertion that he sees it being 'about 15 years from now'. Although, that quote come from an interview for a 1984 book, I took Miller's quote to mean that he imagines the films being set 15 years from when they were being written/made, which was 1977-78. Fuel rationing is reaching crisis point and law and order is fighting a losing battle against rapidly increasing numbers of gangs.

1993-96: In the wake of Jessie and Sprog's deaths, Max retreats to the Outback as society begins its final descent. Armed conflict has progressed from the middle east to far broader Eastern-Western superpower bloc aggression. As energy supply has dried up, industry has slowed to a halt, and 'the normal bonds that keep society together have broken down completely'. The house of straw of western society, based on oil, has collapsed. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage, will survive.

1996: Events of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - Miller's own preamble details that the sequel takes place 3 years on from the first film. Australia is almost totally lawless, fuel being the most precious commodity.

1997: The final bell tolls for existing civilisation, as the global military conflict results in a final solution - a limited, but still devastating nuclear exchange between Western and Eastern Bloc forces. Nuclear winter ensues worldwide. Attempting to escape from a Sydney that has torn itself to pieces, Captain G.L. Walker attempts to flee Australia in a Boeing 747, but crash lands due to extreme atmospheric and weather conditions at Crack in the Earth, 500km inland.

1999 (September 10th): Captain Walker and the Great Leaving Party depart Crack in the Earth in an attempt to find remnants of civilisation, leaving mostly children behind. As Uncle Entity points out, this seems to be the only date revealed in the trilogy, written on the wall as Savannah takes the tell. It is thus an important reference point for making sense of the rest of the timeline. In the following years, further adults and now-grown up children will also leave attempting to discover what's left of the wider world.

2011: Events of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome - Miller has mentioned in interviews that approximately 15 years has passed between the second and third films. This would somewhat make sense with the 1999 date of Captain Walker leaving and the age of the children - the oldest of the waiting ones, Slake and Savannah, would thus have been young children when they originally crashed in the desert, now with little or no memory of the world that was. It would also make sense with time needed to establish something on the scale of Bartertown in the middle of the wasteland. BT is the first film to have any mention of a nuclear war and radiation. This, along with Miller maintaining that the first two films 'are not postnuclear', leads me to believe that the any nuclear apocalypse occurred after Mad Max 2.


That's it. Obviously this isn't going to satisfy everyone, but I've attempted to stay true to the official accounts from the writer/director himself, as well what we can take as hard evidence from the films. I have not read the novelisations, and would consider them far less canonical than the films themselves and the word of George Miller anyway.

I'm very interested to hear what anyone thinks

[Yok]

Can't agree with that timeline.

[decosabute]

Can't agree with that timeline.

OK, fair enough, but care to elaborate?

[PL-12Airtruk]

The time line seems way out of alignment to me.
It seems anyone can do one of these but theres no official one written for the "Mad Max Expanded Universe."

The MM3 novel clearly states that the nuclear war happened a few weeks after the events of MM1 concluded.

Theres any number of senarios for a nuclear exhange - an actual war could last months if theres limited exhanges
while "the leaders talked and talked..."

It seems to me that World War 3 was over by the time MM2 started with the population migrated to the outback.

There was a very well written timeline done a number of years ago that gave the timeline datum of MM1 as being
the year 2000 with all other dates built around this - Max born 1975, MM2 in 2003 and MM3 in 2015. The site
disappeard but I always thought this was as good a timeline as any.