As the text for the Chopper states, AW in its default state has enough gas and bullets. But what about a game where that is not the case?

The idea of the postapocalyptic world being one where cars and guns are not only ubiquitous, but also necessary for survival, is deeply rooted in the genre, but I also feel that it speaks to a certain set of assumptions: masculine-coded, akin to the fantasies of the stereotypical American reactionary. When everything came crashing down, those city dwellers with their bicycles and gun control laws must have been the first ones on the skull pile, while the new world belonged to the true men, those who stocked up on guns and made sure their car had four wheel drive. However, these are also mostly resources that don't get replenished. How about an apocalypse set in a world where they've mostly dried out, and people have adapted to their absence? We'd have to ditch the Chopper and Driver, and I don't know if the Gunlugger would remain the same with a big fuck-off crossbow instead. A bunch of other playbooks would probably remain unchanged, though, except for the weapon choices. Would the tone of the game change if one of the initial premises was the rejection of the myth of the car and the gun?

That sounds quite neat, and is probably a good way of handling a situation where material scarcity is not very interesting.

Another question: what's their relation to the psychic maelstrom. Do they ever open their brains, and why?

The Pleb is someone who's scraping 1-2 barter a month from the corpse of the world. They don't have much power but are willing to do anything to survive. That probably means something more like drinking tainted water or kissing gangster ass than raiding. They're the victims of everything, and when things go wrong on a large scale they're the first to suffer. They're probably way tougher than you or me, but not the characters. I don't think it'd take much to upend their lives, since we look through crosshairs and have to get the players doing stuff. They'd be willing to swing towards whatever offers salvation, just to keep things interesting. They're still important, because everybody needs to eat.

When you're playing, what does that "scraping 1-2 barter" entail? Hunting, fishing, farming? When they dress, is it in tatters from the Golden Age, or do they know how to make cloth and leather? When their lives have been upended, what is it they long to get back to?

Taking our eyes off the protagonists, who are the average people who populate your hardholds and wastelands? How do they survive? What do they believe in? What do they fear? What do they know of the world? What can they make for themselves, and what is beyond their ability? Can they read? Can they farm? Can they work metal? Can they make a world for themselves, or are they at the mercy of more powerful individuals? What is their capacity for violence? What is their capacity for love?

I think that move should only be in play if the Quarantine also is. The presence of someone from the Golden Age actually makes it easier for people to master their self-control and resist the violence of the present.

I felt that this fight scene from Marco Polo showed a very good example of the combo of An Arresting Skinner + Impossible Reflexes.

(Not worksafe, in case the combination of those two moves isn't enough of a hint)

A while ago, I started thinking about the implied chronology of Apocalypse World, and what this would mean for teh setting we present. What do people know about the Golden Age? What are their relationships with the actual apocalypse?

For the sake of this post, I'm assuming that the apocalypse happened roughly 50 years ago, as described in the core rules. More specifically, I'm assuming an "apocalyptic period" of years 55-45 before Now, where things were breaking down and the world was in complete disarray. At some point during this time, the psychic maelstrom emerges. With this in mind, I'm thinking we can see the following generational groups in Apocalypse World:

Ancients
The Ancients are 80 and older. They are the people who were adults when the apocalypse came, who already had jobs, families, valuable skills, all that stuff. They were adapted for a different time, and thus it is no surprise that most of them died during the apocalypse. Furthermore, the loss of everything they held dear and the exposure to the maelstrom is bound to have made them at least slightly insane. Still, the few who still survive are bound to have useful skills (either from before the apocalypse, or gained after) and be the best possible sources of information regarding life in the Golden Age, although their memories might be scrambled from the Maelstrom. These are likely to have "normal" names, although most of them are sufficiently unique in their communities that everyone refers to them by some monicker ("the Old One", "the Doctor", "the Teacher", "the Chief"). Surviving to this age in Apocalypse World is rare, and an Ancient is an almost legendary figure.

Elders
Elders are in their sixties and seventies, and where children or young adults during the apocalypse. They had less to lose than the Ancients, but also less security, so they, too, are the survivors of a generation that mostly died out. The maelstrom has been with them since their early years, but they are still not native to it. Many carry intense traumas, like any child growing up during an age of massive devastation. Their recollections of the Golden Age are less reliable, for they are frequently distorted by an idealised image of their childhood. They were given normal names, but some might have shedded them and donned new ones. Not all communities have Elders.

Inheritors
This generation consists of people in the forties and fifties. They were born during or right after the apocalypse, to parents belonging to the Ancient and Elder generations. They grew up knowing nothing but the post-apocalyptic world, but heard plenty of stories about the Golden Age, and are likely to have learned the basics of their parents' pre-apocalyptic skills. I assume that this is the generation where you find most authority figures the characters encounter. Many of them try to remake the world in the image of a Golden Age they've only heard of. Their names are more similar to the ones in the playbooks.

Natives
Natives, people in their twenties and thirties, tend to be born to Inheritors or the younger cohorts among the Elders. They are the ones who grew up without any relevant first-hand knowledge of the Golden Age in their families, except in the rare cases when a grandparent or other older relative survived long enough to tell their story. They are, therefore, the true natives of Apocalypse World, the ones for whom this is the only way to live. Their skillset is more related to present concerns than to transmitting knowledge from the past, with a few exceptions (among player characters, we might assume that Angels, Savvyheads, Hoarders and some others are exceptions). Literacy is not guaranteed. People interested in recreating the Golden Age are uncommon -- most care more about survival in the here-and-now.

And younger...
The teens and children of Apocalypse World have very little connection to the Golden Age. In the case they care about it, it's as a legend, not as something people they know actually lived through. Whatever future they make, it will be one where devastation is the natural state of the world.

As a structure for investigative or knowledge-oriented moves in general, I've been thinking about asking the MC three questions you want answered and rolling +Sharp. On a 10+, you get true answers to all three. On a 7-9, true answers to two, false or distorted answer to one. On a 6-, one true answer, the rest false or distorted. That way, you'll keep the players on their toes, never really certain what to act upon unless they roll well enough.