Excellent video! I love the theory that the Smokers at one time had a fleet of tankers! Let me know if you want to ever collaborate on a future Waterworld video!
Absolutely, found your channel the other day love your content there. If you ever want to DM about it I'm on Twitter @historicalnerd. This was more of a one off type video but I'm always open to discuss Water World stuff. :)
I was thinking about the smokers yesterday in the shower, I wonder how long the tanker was drifting before they found it. Starting with a baseline of: Deez was abandoned with a fully stocked oil tank compared with their estimated usage at time of final check by Tanker Guy.
Do we know that the Smokers came into existence when the ice caps melted? The smokers may be a "last one hundred years" phenomenon. My head canon; There were probably tribes of humans in flotillas, with different ships providing different functions (think the 2000s era Battle Star reboot). There was probably a menial labor sub group. That group decided to rebel, either because they saw that they were out growing their supplies, the working class had enough, or some more intricate grab for power coup. They raided the food and booze supply ships and dropped then on the Valdez (which was their first target) They took the Valdez and the rest of the ships couldn't keep up without the fuel. The cigarettes were probably found in a cargo ship post split and the leader(s) of the proto-Smokers realized this addictive substance would be a great tool to keep the people controlled.
They also don't say how fast the disaster was, in the comics additional water from space debris helped flood most of the world but theres a chance that either global warming happened after or before that, meaning there's a chance that it wasn't just a "suddenly no more land" but a gradual decline, if I recall one the games lore mentions how higher elevations maintained more civilization and that early smoker analogs where being targeted by remaining governments via airstrikes, either from carriers or high elevation airfields, I legit love this theory and would love some what ifs written about this possible origin
It's even worse than you guessed; according to production notes from filming, the Smokers were supposed to have a total population of *5,000* people; not 500. Now do the math with that figure in mind!
I think you may be overestimating the amount of cigarettes used by the average Smoker. The film seems to depict that a single cigarette is a highly sought-after commodity to them, at least for the rank and file members.
I too thought that the regular smoker would maybe get 1 or 2 cigarettes per month, if lucky, and that the deacon would hand them out on special occasions.
I remember seeing at least one person on the Deez making cigarettes. So I don't see it as a "How many cigarettes do they have?" But more of a "How are they growing their tobacco?" Tobacco plants are infamous for depleting soil nutrients.
But with that they had filtered cigarettes in a lot of scenes in the movie so there still had to be left over manufactured cigarettes. But I probably should have looked harder for wrapped cigarettes to see if they had other means of getting them.
This problem always bothered me about the movie as well! Thanks so much for addressing it! I guess you could always handwave such a logical plothole off by arguing that it was only the "upper echelon" Smokers (i.e., Deacon & his inner circle) who had unlimited access to their cigarette supply, with a few packs tossed here and there to appease the "rabble", as we see him doing twice in the film.
Incidentally, only materials released in Asian countries used the 2500 AD date for the film. Western releases never gave a specific date, and implied it was sometime in the late 21st century, which is much more reasonable. Further, I believe expanded universe lore says the Deez was originally part of a much larger fleet of ships, but the Deacon eventually went rogue and struck out on his own, possibly after having stolen as much as he could in the way of supplies. He got incredibly wasteful with his resources in order to keep the crew happy and prevent them from mutinying, passing out cigarettes and Smeat on a regular basis, wasting fuel on tractor pulls and jet ski races, blazing away on full-auto instead of conserving ammo, etc. Whereas the reason their supplies had lasted so long in the first place is because the larger fleet they were part of was extremely strict in rationing its resources. The Deacon wanted to find Dry Land and/or engage in piracy, and convinced the crew to go with him by being more 'generous' with the smokes, fuel, and food, and keeping part of the loot they acquired for themselves.
I can get behind the Deez starting out as a massive fleet. But by the same token. That same fleet will consume more, making it less likely to be able to last as long as it did. Mind you being a solidly provisioned and really tightly regulated rationing of the supplies might cause a revolt, leaving only the one ship with only the toughest, most vicious being able to survive and the decline happening super fast. Like it was a high tech fleet for hundreds of years and it only turned into the scrapped out rust box in the last 50 years or so. Deacon only vaguely remembering what was once possible.
Thanks! Personally love the film. It did a good enough job at presenting an entertaining story that you didnt really have time to question much of what was going on. Totally agree its an underrated classic.
The issue is not how many cigarettes they have, but how it is possible that the cigarettes are still in such a great conditions. Time and humidity are huge enemies for cigarettes.
I'm sure that after a point, they either don't care or know that the cigarettes are stale or degraded. They wouldn't have the reference point of a fresh one to relate it to. For them, it's just what cigarettes are.
My interpretation was that the culture and lifestyle of smokers were basically a parallel to prison life. That things like spam and cigarettes were treated as a kind of currency. I think the scene where everyone scrambled for these things shows they actually have very little of them, and they are therefore commodities held in reserve by the upper management. We only see a lot of cigs in the film because there’s a threat and the soldiers need enticing and morale boosts. Or the ones actually smoking are simply using their daily cigarette ration. I think the cigarettes are scarce because they’re.. well, paper in a world of water. The term smokers probably derived from them being one of the few groups to be able to regularly acquire cigarettes. So yeah, they probably found them, or hijacked a large cargo ship with cigarettes and those in charge keep them stored away to ration out later or dole out as they see fit. I never thought each smoker had packs upon packs at… wherever they all stay.
That is very sound logic for the smokers. I personally had a thought that they perhaps went through a coup at some point and exhausted a larger number of them. But it seems like based on scenes where they said they had less places to raid that their way of life was very much on the decline.
I started the video thinking "ian has too much time on his hands". After it was done "that was one of his best videos... Damn, I must have too much time on my hands."
At the beginning of the video I was gonna say that maybe they smoked algae cigarettes rolled with seaweed paper, but in that clip those were definitely some smooth, full flavored looking, filtered cigarettes rolled with grade A tobacco... Man, they look cool smoking those too. I should probably start smoking.... 🚬
@@HistoricNerd No, if you start smoking you should go with Camel or Marlboro, so you can save up those Camel Cash or Marlboro Miles and get something cool! Maybe a Camel Joe windbreaker jacket or something 🐫
Personally I think that the film is set in the year 2500 or some time around that, but in my own head cannon the flooding didn’t happen over night, the way I see it is for hundreds of years the ice caps kept melting and melting with dry land sinking and sinking as in expanded media it’s mentioned that atolls and mountain top communities went to war with each other over resources and so only in the past 120 or so years do we have what we see as water world, and it’s possible that the smokers only appeared within that time period.
@@TheMrPeteChannel it also explains why SMEAT cans are yellow, when everything was flooding they took the technology used to make SPAM, changed it to SMEAT so they can tell the difference between the old cans of SPAM and the new cans they made so that there could be an easily available source of protein for the citizens and the reason they made the can yellow was so that if any cans were floating in the water they would be more easy to spot over the blue SPAM cans and someone can scoop it up with a net. Just a little theory but I feel it makes sense.
Im honestly more curious on how long their fuel would last given the measurement (4 feet 9 inches i think) and how long tjey would have lasted, I love the theory that at one point they had or raided larger fleets to collect their resources, legit would be intresting to see a prequel exploring earlier into the deluge to show how society collapsed and how ships, resources, etc. Became even rarer, hell a series that shows the progress of land being eaten by the sea could even be neat, like set shortly before the last islands aside from everest sank
Haven't watched the video yet, but the question posed in the title "How many cigarettes did the Smokers have?", is something I was discussing with a friend a couple months ago after a rewatch of that movie. There were just too many little things like that, that I can't help but nitpick at. Too many logical failings for the movie to be "Good Good", and it is instead, "Bad Good".
Honestly had way too much fun diving into this idea. Personally always liked water world I wouldn't say it's an amazing movie but is a great example of films in the vein of Madmax.
a twenty dollar one pound pouch of pipe tobacco regular flavor can roll three cartons of cigarettes, so you'd need to buy three boxes of tubes that have 200 in each box to roll up a pound. if you get the smaller 6oz pouch, it will roll at least a whole carton of smokes.
I didn't think about the self rolling aspect. I honestly was viewing it as the smokers in the film were using cartons since they seem to already be packaged.
This is of course dependent upon them having lived upon the ship for 500 years...I bet it was only the last few generations since the ship was found. Maybe even 80+ years at most.
@@HistoricNerd I know this is a super late response, but its funny how the moral of the story is that we just have to reasonably assume the overpollution and idiocy of humanity led to the flooding of the world, and thus need to make better choices ( the 1990s were all about green friendly content in media). But also...showing how bad smoking was, though it didnt quite hit the mark, yet the "smokers" also ate the worst preserved food, aka SPAM, and drank vodka. SO drinking and eating bad food were also "hidden messages" to try and steer folks on the right path, but they too got overshadowed but one mans...quest...to drink his own pee. lol LOVED the movie as a kid though! ^
One thing stuck out in MY mind! Now people say the dry land at the end is Mt Everest. I call BULLSHIT. The city the mariner free dove to was Denver. He didnt dive more than 500 feet MAX. That would mean nearby Cheyenne, and indeed almost all of Wyoming would be dry land. Not to mention lots of New Mexico including Santa Fe, which is at 9000 ft. All of that would be dry.
It’s movie canon that it’s Mt. Everest, the girls find a Metal Sign at the end that was erected as a memento fo the first Everest Crew. It’s implied that the continental plates shifted and deformed/sunk irregularly while the ice caps melted due to unforeseen circumstances after a meteorite impact, at least it’s explained like that in the comic book
Spam is safe to consume indefinitely as long as it's stored properly and the can isn't damaged thanks to the roughly 4.74 grams of sodium nitrate per 198 grams of slimy meat product.
Obviously, as the land became flooded, people stocked up on those necessities (except toilet paper), versus food that can grow and soil to grow it in. ;-)
So I have a question how are the cigarettes still good? Cigarettes usually only have a shelf life of about a year if they are still sealed in the pack and properly stored
That one is apparently explained in the movie novelization by the Smokers talking about how smart the ancients were in sealing their cigarettes in foil. But I don't think they'd still be good after 500 years.
Yeah thats kinda nuts...but some how doesnt surprise me based on some smokers i know. Thanks i thought the modeling was just too funny of an idea no to include in the video
Look, I'm not down for this whole global warming thing if there's not going to be enough smokes. If I were to guess, the smokers have been going around raiding the remaining cargo ships for the past 500 years. The Deez might be the last remaining ship of the smoker's once formidable fleet. The oldest guy on the ship is like 80, and he doesn't seem to be in a position to tell anyone much of anything down in the oil tank.
Haha! Yeah I don’t think anyone asked for this…And I wouldn’t have wasted my time trying to answer this question but for some reason I’m very glad you did. Also this kinda made me want a cigarette 🚬
I was thinking about that while making this. But based in how neatly assemble all the smokes we saw in the movie were I could only assume tobacco plants are probably gone.
I wondered that as well. Perhaps one of the "fleet" ships had the equipment and seeds to grow tobacco. However, HN is right about the cigarettes' looking too new.
Ian, we're all worried about you. Just walk away from the editing software and come home. *edit* well since you're counting stuff in movies find out how many dollars Silvester Stallone racked up in swearing fees to circumvent the three shells.
When this movie came out, cigarettes were roughly $1 a pack in the us. At the time I made a pretty good business of buying Camels for $0.79 a pack an reselling them in school for $0.25 a cigarette. Other name brands were about $1.10. Three laws happend in the last 25 years or so. For the government to cash in, smoking was heavily taxed. But the tobacco companies got to cash in too. Minimum wholesale price laws were put in place, making big tobacco several times what they use to make per pack. Stores also got a piece of the pie. There were minimum markup laws "making" stores mark up cigarettes way more than they use to. It was all wrapped up as a stop-smoking campaign. But it was really about everyone cashing in. The tax was big news, the fact that tobacco companies were making more was swept under the rug. Everyone assumed all that extra cost was taxes. Only about half was. If you live on a boat, an can stock up anywhere in the world, you can still buy them for $1 a pack. You just cant do it here because government.
how did they avoid accidents like blowing themselves up?. they had oil on board, that could easily lead to vapor and everybody was smoking for 500 years..
Only thought I have is maybe they had really high safety standards at one point and time? But yeah not sure how they made it that long with out serious accidents.
