Set in 1997, Battletruck depicts a world fractured by the "Oil Wars," a series of global conflicts triggered by the depletion of petroleum reserves. While major cities remain under strict martial law and experience frequent food riots, the rural countryside has devolved into a lawless frontier. The film follows a community of peaceful survivors attempting to maintain an agrarian lifestyle in Clearwater Farm, a walled commune governed by traditional democratic principles, as they are targeted by a renegade warlord commanding a massive, armored tractor-trailer.

The film’s worldbuilding is heavily informed by the energy crises of the late 1970s and early 1980s, reflecting contemporary anxieties about fuel scarcity and the fragility of global supply chains. Earth’s geopolitical landscape is portrayed as a ruin: the Middle East is described as a collection of radioactive wastelands and burning oil fields following limited nuclear exchanges. Society has diverged into two main factions: those attempting to reconstruct sustainable, localized food systems and those who use superior, fuel-hungry military technology to pillage remaining stockpiles.

In terms of prediction, Battletruck accurately captured the psychological tension of resource dependency, though its timeline for total societal collapse was overly accelerated. While the 1990s did not see the end of the oil era, the film’s depiction of non-state actors utilizing improvised armored vehicles—a "used-future" aesthetic—mirrors modern asymmetric warfare tactics seen in 21st-century conflicts. The film also highlights the vulnerability of rural infrastructure when centralized government protection is withdrawn to focus on urban centers, a dynamic that remains a core theme in modern survivalist discourse.