The world, as everyone knew it, had ended.

The death bell for society had been prepared for months. For years, unemployment had been sky-rocketing, resources had been dwindling and the economy had slowly tumbled into a deep, inescapable mire. The infrastructure of the Western world had been unravelling at a frightening rate, even as the Government scrambled for a solution.

Slowly bleeding out of the open wounds of society, there was a sickening madness. Gangs of violent, nomadic outlaws were terrorising the roads. Initially they were isolated incidents, the cause of a couple of escaped crazies, set loose thanks to a justice system that was all but spent. Then their numbers rose. The highways were closed off from all but the Main Force Patrol, a group that was formed and operated in the utmost haste, almost identical to the gangs they fought countless road battles against, save for a badge and the anchor of bureaucracy.

But they couldn’t stem the tide.

One day – it happened. The lights went out across Australia. Television signals went dead and radios received nothing but static. Electricity, running water, fuel pumps – they all died, heaving their last gasps. No more banks. No more shopping malls. No more schools. No more government. For a moment, there was a frenzied joy across the nation – now anybody could do anything they liked!

However, the country quickly became a war zone. The cities were battlegrounds of looting and pillaging as the weak huddled in their homes and their former businesses. The bleeding wound of the rogue bikers had scabbed and congealed into something worse, something far more savage. Soon, people began to realise that they had to fight and kill for what little was left. Many took to it with ease – the criminals, the dispossessed, the closeted psychopaths – people who had been kept away from the general populace by the laws and rules of society were now set loose to do as they pleased.

Joining them were former lawmen, the military – even members of the now-defunct Main Force Patrol. In this new, broken world their old titles and standings meant nothing. Prepared with high-end vehicles and martial knowledge, they headed into the Outback and preyed upon well-stocked houses of rural estates, small towns and villages and the desperate refugees, fleeing the nightmarish cities. Organising themselves into structured groups, these modern-day barbarians rolled across what soon became known as the Wasteland in their modified death-machines, raiding the detritus of the old world for that most precious of resources – guzzoline.

Max Rockatansky had been one of the first to leave the crumbling Main Force Patrol. As the world fell apart, so did his. His family were run down by The Acolytes, one of the prominent of the biker gangs and a fitting precursor for the marauders that would follow in their bloody footsteps. With the last of the V8 Interceptors and a mind filled with vengeful bloodlust, Max ran them down, slaughtered them like cattle and rode off into the dying days of the country, having become that which he feared and hated the most.