This was an interesting discussion. For what it's worth, I certainly agree more with Taipan's account and I think we can all be grateful for the numerous brilliant sources he has given directly quoting George Miller. However, I can see Uncle Entity's point that sometimes these 'universes' take on a life beyond what their creator intended. The films are vague and thus require, or at least allow some room for, imagination filling in the blanks. While I won't go into too much detail - only mentioning the major points and focusing mainly on Max himself - here's my take on it, which I think stays true to Miller's own accounts, as well as the very limited evidence provided in the films.
1970: Max Rockatansky born
During 1980s and 1990s law and order begins breaking down, fuel rationing due to ongoing conflict in the middle east tipping the balance. Some of the world's largest oil fields are set ablaze, 'and the Middle East's once-mighty torrent of energy had slowed to a trickle'.
1993:
Events of Mad Max - This would put Max at 23 years old, a year older than Gibson was when they shot the movie. I've used 1993 as the year for the first film based on Miller's assertion that he sees it being 'about 15 years from now'. Although, that quote come from an interview for a 1984 book, I took Miller's quote to mean that he imagines the films being set 15 years from when they were being written/made, which was 1977-78. Fuel rationing is reaching crisis point and law and order is fighting a losing battle against rapidly increasing numbers of gangs.
1993-96: In the wake of Jessie and Sprog's deaths, Max retreats to the Outback as society begins its final descent. Armed conflict has progressed from the middle east to far broader Eastern-Western superpower bloc aggression. As energy supply has dried up, industry has slowed to a halt, and 'the normal bonds that keep society together have broken down completely'. The house of straw of western society, based on oil, has collapsed. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage, will survive.
1996:
Events of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - Miller's own preamble details that the sequel takes place 3 years on from the first film. Australia is almost totally lawless, fuel being the most precious commodity.
1997: The final bell tolls for existing civilisation, as the global military conflict results in a final solution - a limited, but still devastating nuclear exchange between Western and Eastern Bloc forces. Nuclear winter ensues worldwide. Attempting to escape from a Sydney that has torn itself to pieces, Captain G.L. Walker attempts to flee Australia in a Boeing 747, but crash lands due to extreme atmospheric and weather conditions at Crack in the Earth, 500km inland.
1999 (September 10th): Captain Walker and the Great Leaving Party depart Crack in the Earth in an attempt to find remnants of civilisation, leaving mostly children behind. As Uncle Entity points out, this seems to be the only date revealed in the trilogy, written on the wall as Savannah takes the tell. It is thus an important reference point for making sense of the rest of the timeline. In the following years, further adults and now-grown up children will also leave attempting to discover what's left of the wider world.
2011:
Events of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome - Miller has mentioned in interviews that approximately 15 years has passed between the second and third films. This would somewhat make sense with the 1999 date of Captain Walker leaving and the age of the children - the oldest of the waiting ones, Slake and Savannah, would thus have been young children when they originally crashed in the desert, now with little or no memory of the world that was. It would also make sense with time needed to establish something on the scale of Bartertown in the middle of the wasteland.
BT is the first film to have any mention of a nuclear war and radiation. This, along with Miller maintaining that the first two films 'are not postnuclear', leads me to believe that the any nuclear apocalypse occurred after
Mad Max 2.
That's it. Obviously this isn't going to satisfy everyone, but I've attempted to stay true to the official accounts from the writer/director himself, as well what we can take as hard evidence from the films. I have not read the novelisations, and would consider them far less canonical than the films themselves and the word of George Miller anyway.
I'm very interested to hear what anyone thinks
