Well, the first one assumed that almost all oil suddenly disappeared, there
were no industrial grade methods of producing it from coal, and no alternative
propulsion methods were available, all at the same time. Which is silly, if
one thinks about it, but still good enough to establish a background story.
Seneca Curve / Cliff is the concept that the higher the technology level, the more horizontal the growth curve and the more vertical the decline curve. The decline rate of frack'd well is pretty staggering. I'd have to look it up to be sure but I'm pretty sure we've passed the point where the majority of wells that have been frack'd are now no longer producing. Same story with horizontal drilling decades ago etc. If we're not at the technology level today where the decline rate could be extremely sharp, we're certainly working toward it via ever higher technology in that field.
Are you sure that we have no technology at all that would produce gasoline
from heavier fractions of oil? I think we have, only they're not as cost
efficient as simple distillation, which can rapidly change if lighter
fractions become less available.
As far as I know, we neither exploit nor track the deposits of heavier oil.
I think the point of the Mad Max plot was not that you couldn't extract oil from other sources, but that the damage had already been done to the economy and society so it was past the tipping point and already on to pure chaos.
By the way, we exploit oil sands which are about as heavy as you get. The stuff is basically asphalt.
My point is that Mad Max assumed a very sudden and unrepairable damage that
can't be worked around.
It's hard to believe that people would panic if the oil price went high, or
even sky high. It wouldn't be pretty, sure, probably several industry sectors
would die, but I don't see how it would end our world.
Most of the oil we use today is consumed by transportation, but there are
plenty of other propulsion systems than just internal combustion engine (to
name a few: electric ones, pneumatic, flywheel, external combustion (that can
run on burning guano; e.g. Stirling engine)). Then there is the thing that we
can still produce gasoline artificially from coal, it's just more expensive
than how we get the gasoline currently.
I don't question the vision of collapsed society shown in Mad Max (I don't
know if it makes senese or not, I just don't think about it). But how and
why the society collapsed (MM1 version) doesn't stand the basic scrutiny.
"It's hard to believe that people would panic if the oil price went high, or even sky high. It wouldn't be pretty, sure, probably several industry sectors would die, but I don't see how it would end our world."
You might be interested in watching "The End of Suburbia":