Rubber in Apocalypse World

Hello, survivors.  I'll be running my first game of AW soon and I've been talking to my players about setting and whatnot and we're closing in on a setting that may have rising water levels and lots of buildings underwater.  I think it would be really neat if characters could do some underwater scavenging, and I started considering scuba gear in AW.  I think the tanks could be preserved for a very long time with careful maintenance, scraping, etc., and the same with the valves, but the rubber hoses and the rubber parts of the regulators would certainly rot in much less than fifty years.

But, Ten, in AW people can read minds and the future and nobody would really blink at mutant monsters and undead.  Why worry about something like the shelf life of everything in the damn world?

Good point.  I don't know.  I just do.  Maybe I'll unclench later on.  Anyway, loads of stuff is made of rubber, most notably car tires and motorcycle tires and latex fetish wear.  Does everybody hand-wave the problem and say that when your tire blows or Balls shoots it out then you can go find a car on the highway that's been there since the apocalypse (probably with an artfully placed skeleton in the driver's seat) and jack its tires?  Just curious.

Also thought about having the rubber hoses on everything that uses rubber hoses replaced with cow guts or something...

Material experimentation and substitution are at the heart of AW.

I say: go nuts!

Encourage your players to also think about the new origins of their everyday objects.

First, what if we a materials revolution in the next 50 years where rubber is replaced with something that has a much greater shelf life?

Second, is your world in a state of recovery or is it continuing to degrade? I ask, because depending on that would determine whether I would have a suitable material replacement that would be availble without the need to scavage for it.

Third... yea what Evan said. Go nuts!

Yes, we hand wave it. A post apocalypse without rubber isn't fun.

Cool, good to know.  Yeah, I think I'll go with "some synthetic rubber was invented that lasts a hundred years."  Thanks much.  More questions to follow, no doubt.

I'd throw the question back at the players.

Maybe there is a holding with a rubber manufacturing plant (or rubber-based industry).

+1 lin

"I don't know. What do you guys do when the seals start wearing out?"

"Jerry, where'd you get your last replacement tire from?"