Dopass.com

Have you ever considered how many tires there are in the world? There must be billions! Right now, there are about 300 million cars in the USA, roughly 40% of the cars in the world. So that means there are something like 750 million cars, world-wide. That means that, not even counting tires yet to be bought or tires that have been thrown out, there are at least 3 billion tires in the world!

Let's assume that each car is responsible for 3 sets of tires: the set the car used last, the set currently being used, and the set that will be used next. The 750 million cars currently in the world would be responsible for 9 billion tires. Of course, cars usually go through more than three sets of tires before the cars themselves are retired, so that's a conservative estimate. Now, consider this: Cars aren't the only things with rubber tires. Consider carts, tractors, trucks, motorcycles, lawn mowers, bicycles, etc. There are, quite likely, tens of billions of tires out in the world, right now.

Tires are infinitely useful things, too. They burn, and they keep burning for awhile (the smoke isn't great, but they're lighter than logs and burn way longer, pound for pound). I might not want to throw a tire in the fireplace, but what about a signal fire, or a community fire? Most modern tires are woven with steel, reinforcing the rubber and making them an interesting choice for things like walling, or armor. Rubber is useful in a million other ways, too. Heck, some modern tires are lived with Kevlar.

I think that if things ever really went "mad max" bad, tires would be one of the most common resources of that post-apocalyptic world. You can build with them, use them for armor, use them as fuel for the fire and even take them apart to salvage other, rarer, resources like steel or Kevlar. You'd be a fool to just let them sit and rot.