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In the world of Hokuto no Ken, as far as I can see, there is no industry left.
There is nowhere to produce parts for vehicles or repair the current ones.
Also I don't see any industry for finding oil and distributing it to towns.

However, there are a lot of vehicles running in the series. Where do they find
so much oil? What is the explanation of why there are so many fuel engines
able to run?


CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-28T19:34:45.453
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2016-06-01T20:44:56.043
2014-04-27T23:37:19.227
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question
fist-of-the-north-star
Why are there so many vehicles in the world of Hokuto no Ken?


Hokutou no Ken was created in 1983. A lot of inspiration for the post-
apocalyptic world in the manga came from the movies [Mad
Max](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max) (1979) and [Mad Max
2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max_2) (1981).

In these movies (especially in Mad Max 2), oil is very important. Gangs of
marauders fight for oil. They have the same kind of vehicles as we can see in
Hokuto no Ken. In fact, in Mad Max 2, Max, the hero, protects a group of
people around an oil refinery.

Ken and Max have a lot in common as characters.

So why is oil so important in the movie Mad Max in the first place?

In 1973 the world endured what was later called "[the first oil
crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis)". 1979 was the time for
the second oil crisis.

So the 1970s were years when people were talking about oil a lot. It was THE
topic of the decade (maybe the second topic, just after disco music). In a
way, it is logical to imagine that a movie made at that time would give such
importance to finding oil.

If you have oil, you have power. In a post-apocalyptic world oil would be more
important than money. In fact, money doesn't exist anymore, there is only
barrels of oil to trade.

For the manga, the world is very similar than the world of Mad Max 2, but the
topic of fighting for oil is not the main theme. Ken fighting for revenge,
seeking his brothers, martial art, ... are the main themes. The problematic of
oil/energy is not really explained, since it would be a little bit off-topic.

The enemy organizations are just bad guys and the don't really need a reason
to attack the normal citizens. They attack normal people because they are bad
guys. This is a reason good enough for Ken to fight them. There was no need to
add some stuff about fighting for oil.

If you really need an answer, we can probably say that the bad guys are
fighting for the control of oil. The gangs probably gather around an oil
refinery, or a storage of oil barrels. This explains why the bad guys have
vehicles, while normal people just live where they can. However, this
problematic was not considered important to the scenarist and he just omitted
it.


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2013-04-03T21:37:38.090
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2013-04-04T06:44:59.823
2013-04-04T06:44:59.823
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answer