Hypothesis:

kaasknot:

laureljupiter:

adreadfulidea:

kaasknot:

The War Boys aren’t actually that sick.

1) It could be that a particular kind of tumor is common in the Citadel, courtesy of Founder’s Effect; this would explain why everyone from the Citadel’s genetic pool has tumors/boils/buboes, but individuals from outside populations–Furiosa, Max, the Wives (possibly), the Vuvalini–don’t have them. This would also explain why supposedly pervasive radiation toxicity appears only to affect one population instead of all populations.

2) The War Boys’ and the Wretched’s ailments are curable. The tumors are relatively benign and easily removed (there was no sign of cachexia in populations that weren’t starved, and Nux didn’t seem to be suffering from organ failure); the night fevers are a series of infections endemic to the War Boys’ shitty living conditions; and the reason they need blood transfusions so often is because they’re highly active while on a subpar diet, and thus chronically anemic.

3) If maintaining a death cult is critical to your holding power, one of the best ways to keep the members of said cult properly suicidal is to assure them their lot will be better in the next life. For them to believe it, their lot has to be suitably miserable in THIS life. That’s really not hard to do in Mad Max Land, but it’s even easier if they believe they’re running out of time. How to do this? Tell them their ailments are fatal. Tell them they’re living half-lives on borrowed time. Tell them only cowards die in bed, and that the bravest, the ones who die in battle, are the only ones who get to paradise.

Conclusion: Immortan Joe is a dick. News at 11.

All possible, especially given the apparent uniformity of the War Boy’s illnesses which would either suggest that they come from the same genetic pool (not likely given how many of them there are) or that they’re being exposed to some environmental contamination that is causing that same illness over and over again. Could be the fuel, honestly. Who knows what “Guzzoline” even really is.

I did have a theory myself… that they were that sick, even to dying, but it was being caused deliberately. Immortan Joe controls water supplies and presumably food as well; he could poison them easily enough for all the reasons you outline in point #3. That way when they are (very) young and strong they’re devoted to him, but as they get old enough to possibly start questioning him they sicken and die so he never has to deal with a potential rebellion or movement against him.

I was wondering about this too, mostly because the thought of the surviving women and Furiosa heading back to a place that was so irradiated most of the population dies in their early 20′s was pretty horrible; I finished the movie weirdly anxious about how they needed to to find whatever in the Citadel was giving people half-lives and get it the fuck out of there and dump it at the local This Place Is Not A Place Of Honor ASAP. 

But whatever illness the War Boys are all dying from, the women being milked don’t have it, the wives and Miss Giddy are fine, Joe’s sons respectively have OI and some kind of mental disability but no cancer, no tumors, no need for blood transfusions.  The only people dealing with anything like what’s going on with the War Boys are the War Boys and Joe himself, which makes me think you’re right that they’re being poisoned, and that suspect #1 for whatever contaminant is making them all sick is in that white war paint.  Joe wears it for public appearances but washes it off when he’s at home.  The War Boys ritualistically cake themselves in it from an early age and apparently wear it 24/7, so by the time they hit Nux’s age, they’ve got at least a decade of built up exposure.

I like this theory a LOT. Especially if their white paint is based off of titanium dioxide, the same chemical that goes into pretty much every white dye that we have, as well as sunscreen. Normally it’s not exceptionally hazardous, as it can’t penetrate our skin; but it’s classed as a carcinogen if inhaled:

“Titanium dioxide dust, when inhaled, has been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as an IARC Group 2B carcinogen, meaning it is possibly carcinogenic to humans. The findings of the IARC are based on the discovery that high concentrations of pigment-grade (powdered) and ultrafine titanium dioxide dust caused respiratory tract cancer in rats exposed by inhalation and intratracheal instillation.” (courtesy of Wikipedia).

When Joe applies the white paint, it’s applied as a powder. Tack on high concentrations of harmful environmental radiation and you’ve got yourself a health problem. Added to that, there’s a lot of toxic chemical slag that goes into titanium dioxide production. And if the War Boys produce the powder themselves, then that’s another cause.