[dropcap letter=”B”]efore heading to the theatre to catch “Mad Max: Fury Road,” here are a few things that might help you survive the wasteland:

Fertile beauties are especially prized in the Wasteland for their ability to breed the next generation of humanity. The Warlord King Immortan Joe has some of the most beautiful and wives in the person of the pregnant Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), Capable (Riley Keough, also happens to be Elvis Presley’s grandchild), Toast the Knowing (Zoë Kravitz), The Dag (Abbey Lee), and Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton).

Vehicles are the lifeblood of war in these parts. So having killer cars and outfitting them with armor, blades and spikes, nitro boosts and other accoutrements will give your clan a decided upper hand.

There is no shortage of awesome Frankensteined motors here: Nux’s Chevy five-door coupe, with a super-turbocharged, nitrous-boosted, steel coil, V8 engine; Furiosa’s War Rig truck; Max’s Interceptor, Mercedes Stretch Limos with death grilles; the “metronome” cars of the War Boys that can catapult pole riders to other cars; Immortan Joe’s Gigahorse which is two 1959 Cadillac Devilles; the Doof Wagon which brings “sonic carmageddon”; and the splendidly tacky Rictus Erectus’s Bigfoot, a 1940s-era Fargo workhorse of a truck with a harpoon, a belt-driven machine gun, 66-inch tires, and a supercharged V8 engine.

The berserker drug of choice for the Warlord Tribe and his War Boys is Chrome: a silver-colored drug spray-painted onto your lips and teeth to give you an adrenaline boost. Usually the War Boys chant “I live, I die! I live again!” they scream and leap to their kamikaze death in tribute to Immortan Joe.

In the Wasteland everything is extreme, even storms. These things pack a wallop–usually there’s a tornado inside and enough static electricity to fry your vehicular circuits. Avoid at all costs, dumbass.

When pressed, ride it out or die trying.

The future wasteland is divided into warring clans: Imperator Warlords, The mysterious Vuvalinis, the brash and quick Rock Riders, the Buzzard Tribe with their spiky hedgehog vehicles, and The Wretched who are the pariah underclass.

Being the biggest and most dominant of the clans, among the Warlords there are also generals called Imperators like the Prime Imperator, Imperator Furiosa, and the Ripsaw Imperator; all of them led by Immortan Joe, worshipped like a living god by his War Boys and War Pups.

This unexpected flower will bloom in the strangest of places and between even stranger bedfellows.

If you ever get to the level of clan leader or, in the case of the Warlords, an Imperator, things get a little bit more complicated with the politics. Furiosa discovers this towards the end of the movie.

Aside from the frequent dangers of death by violent means, the year 2060 is full of nasty things for your normal homo sapien. There is the ever present risk of a leprosy-like disease that wastes your internal organs, afflicting your skin with bulbous pustules, which means you’ll need an almost steady supply of fresh plasma from a reliable, clean donor. Woe betide the universal donors, like Max, who get turned into “blood bags” for those who can take it by force.

All photos courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

“MAD MAX: Fury Road” is rated R-16 by the MTRCB and opens across the Philippines on Thursday, May 14, in 3D and IMAX 3D.