History Main / ScavengerWorld

* The former Soviet Union in ''Film/BabylonAD''.

Compare CosyCatastrophe. See also DisasterScavengers. If you ask a scavenger about where this stuff came from, they'll say it was all made in TheBeforetimes. May also involve an ArchaeologicalArmsRace. When technology is rebuilt from scavenged trash it's ScavengedPunk.

* In India many poor people will pore over rubbish dumps and tips for anything useful/worth selling to recycling companies. It has been described as one of the most efficient recycling methods ever. Unfortunately, India (like many poor countries) is a dumping ground for vast quantities of toxic waste that First-Worlders don't want to bother recycling, like electronics. The scavengers picking through these things are unknowingly exposed to all kinds of ''lovely'' toxins such as PCB, lead, cadmium, mercury, poisonous solvents, and carcinogens.

** Some poorer parts of the developing world (e. g. in Africa or India) can afford little new technology or replacement parts to speak of, forcing them to weld metal using old car batteries or welders with transformers made out of ''cardboard''.
* Many second and third-world countries buy planes off the first-world's airlines. This isn't so bad at first because many first-world airlines replace planes every five years or so. But then these second-hand buyers sell on those planes to a lower-class airline, who will sell those planes on and further on... and then the planes get cannibalized until it gets to the point where some third-world airlines own planes that are a ''combination'' of third, fourth and fifth-hand planes.

* Became quite common during the Great Depression as hardly anyone could afford to buy anything. One of the best examples is the Hoover Wagon a common site which was a car rigged to a harness and pulled by a horse or donkey, as the owner couldn't afford gas.

** China, in particular, is one of the world's most polluted countries because many people there buy broken-down computers and other tech-junk to burn off the plastic and get to the valuable silver and gold in the circuit boards. The resulting smoke is incredibly toxic, and these people work 9, 10, 11-hour days in this smoke.

* In ''Manga/DesertPunk'', there are the remains of whole cities that are occasionally found with scavengeable supplies, though by the story's start one hasn't been found in decade. In fact, it seems as if the only reason the Oasis Government gives food to people in the desert (rather than the {{Elaborate Underground Base}}s its citizen's live in) is so that they're a work force to gather more technology.

** And then there's the Orks, a technological spacefaring race... with no heavy industry and no understanding of physics. Their spaceships are salvaged hulks with jerry-rigged engines, and all their weapons and ground vehicles (apart from the ones they manage to steal intact) are cobbled together from mismatched bits of battlefield salvage by a bunch of idiot savants. And somehow it all manages to work.
*** It's actually the opposite for Orkz. All Orkz have knowledge of basic physics and mechanics literally encoded into their genes, thus every Ork can smelt metal to make their choppa & scrounge enough junk together to make a functioning shoota. Some Orkz, the Mekz, have an even greater instinctive understanding of these principles, and can make teleporters, laser & plasma weaponry, massive walkers & even spaceships (with assistance of course). The problem is, the Ork doing the building doesn't really understand what he's doing, because its mostly subconscious, which is why Ork technology looks so ramshackle & generally isnt standardized.
*** There is also the fact that Ork technology is at least partially [[MagicPoweredPseudoScience powered by the gestalt psychic field]] which connects all of the Orks, and allows them to compensate for mechanical deficiencies in their machines. For example, an Ork can cobble together a gun from spare parts and an ammo magazine, and it will work reasonably well; it will also work for a non-Ork, but not nearly as well. It also means that certain mechanical principles which shouldn't actually work do so because the Orks [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve really believe they should]], the most notable examples being "The red ones go faster" (painting a vehicle red makes it go faster) and the instance when an Ork raiding party successfully stole and flew to their base a human ship that had been drifting in space ''because it was out of fuel''.

This is the basis of a ScavengerWorld, and if enough of the cogs are lost you end up with LostTechnology.

Moreover, the physical cogs don't last forever; a ScavengerWorld that goes on long enough usually has to invoke RagnarokProofing to explain why ''anything'' still works at all.

An elaboration of SchizoTech. PossessionImpliesMastery is always averted here. AfterTheEnd examples of the ScavengerWorld often overlap with CrapsackWorld, though Scavenger Worlds no better or worse than the modern have occured in fiction here and there.

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]

* ''{{Gunnm}}'' -- Rather [[JustifiedTrope justified]] by the trash of (and occasional exiles from) the apparently utopian sky city being dumped into the middle to town.
** While {{Gunnm}} ''looks'' like a scavenger world, it really isn't. Advanced technology hasn't disappeared, nor have people forgotten how to use it. The Scrapyard (actually [[spoiler: the remains of the pillar that connected Tiphares to the surface]] simply happens to be a convenient source of raw materials. The CrapsackWorld is a {{Dystopia}} ruled by a KnightTemplar with lots of [[AncientConspiracy ancient (relatively speaking) conspiracies]] heading towards a GambitPileup in current chapters with only a BloodKnight who [[spoiler: caused it all]] standing between it and EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, but that's not what this trope is about.
* The colony world (or far-future Earth, depending on your interpretation) on which ''{{Mai-Otome}}'' is set seems to be in the beginning stages of this. Certain technologies -- like the Otome nanites -- are only available in specific cities, and there generally isn't sufficient scientific skill elsewhere to reproduce them. This is, in fact, a major plot point.
* ''NausicaaOfTheValleyOfTheWind''. Very few people know how to make or repair most of the machines in the film, and the weapons that caused this AfterTheEnd scenario are hoped to remain LostTechnology. In the manga, characters are always concerned to salvage the engines from downed aircraft, and the Valley of the Wind maintains its independence from two large empires by virtue of owning a two-seat pre-collapse gunship.
* In ''{{Trigun}}'', most of the human population of the planet "Gunsmoke" has settled near the broken remains of the spaceships that brought them there. Very few people survive who know how to fix and repair the surviving ship "plants", and the current tech level of society has apparently decayed quite a bit from the level it once had just to make the trip.
* ''Anime/AfterWarGundamX'' has an entire class of people called "Vultures" dedicated to scavanging technology, their AfterTheEnd was a pretty bad one too. 10-Billion casualty mass colony drop. It's lucky any humans survived!
* ''CasshernSins'': metal parts that ''aren't'' corroded by The Ruin are very valued and coveted by both humans and cyborgs.

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* The ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' comic strip ''NemesisTheWarlock'' features a warlike human culture, Termight, who are at war with everyone else in the universe despite the fact that culturally and technologically, they are regressing. They fight with medieval weapons, their HumongousMecha are recycled, one of them can only move its feet with the aid of men turning capstans etc.

* ''[[MadMax Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior)]]'' was successful and influential in bringing the Scavenger World trope to the big screen. The tone and visuals inspired many subsequent works.
* ''ABoyAndHisDog'': Despite the TalkingAnimal angle, definitely [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids Not For Kids]].
* The British dystopian sci-fi movie ''Doomsday'' [[PlayingWithATrope plays with this trope]]: The walled-off Scotland looks like something from a ''MadMax'' sequel with no or few gunpowder weapons in use, very limited electricity and ''really'' ramshackle cars kitbashed together from old wrecks; the rest of Britain still bears a passing resemblance to what it's like today but seems to be turning slowly into this, as we see its authorities treat ''tanks'' as LostTechnology.
* ''{{Threads}}'': The legendarily bleak British {{Docudrama}} is indirectly based on this trope, the title threads being those that hold society together - the food we produce, the goods we make. Following a nuclear war, we follow an increasingly desperate struggle for survival in a grim world where deputised traffic wardens shoot looters on sight, a pregnant woman is forced to eat raw sheep and mill her own grain after stealing it from a government depot and the only remaining form of powered agriculture is an antique traction engine. Not to mention the horrific parody of [[DumbStruck school]] played on a barely functional VCR.
* The middle section of the 1930s movie ''Film/ThingsToCome'' shows a scavenger society slowly breaking down.
* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}''. Scavenged anti-aircraft machinegun used as a terrestrial (well, aquatic) attack weapon? Check. Small town/islands made of scavenged sheetmetal and random equipment? Check. Scavenged ''oil tanker'', moved with ''oars''? Check.
* ''Sky Blue'': The Diggers' society works much like this; some, such as Shua and Moe, know how to assemble machines, but they mostly have to steal the parts from Ecoban.
* ''Film/{{Hardware}}'' superimposes a ScavengerWorld with a functioning military-industrial complex going to hell in a handbasket. Scavenging is central to the plot: the story kicks off in war-blasted desert when a wandering scavenger finds a dismembered robot buried in the sand, and takes the pieces back to the City to sell.
* ''Hell Comes To Frogtown'' is another work inspired by ''MadMax''.

* Post J-Day ''TheTerminator''.

* ''Film/{{Oblivion2013}}'': [[spoiler: The underground world beneath the surface of the Earth, where the remaining humans live.]]

[[folder: Live Action Television ]]

* ''FallingSkies'': Takes place in a world six months after an AlienInvasion has destroyed most major cities and wiped out a large majority of humanity. The survivors first priority (as well as making sure to avoid the aliens) is raiding stores and warehouses for remaining food and weapons. In the pilot, the protagonist is captured by a gang of outlaws. The leader offers him a beer, which the protagonist is surprised to learn is cold. Apparently, the outlaws managed to salvage a working generator and a fridge. The survivors also have to extract fuel from cars to use in their own vehicles (all pre-microchip, as the aliens used EMP on a massive scale).

[[folder: Tabletop Games ]]
* ''BattleTech'' started out this way, with the destruction of almost all the infrastructure to build the instellar starships (FTL warship shipyards were all lost), and most of the factories to produce advanced technology were destroyed or abandoned, causing mechs and tanks to be pilfered for spare parts. Things eventually got better with the discovery of a data disc containing schematics for the destroyed factories and the underlying science for some equipment. Battlefield Salvage is still a critical component of most games.
* The RPG ''[[{{Deadlands}} Deadlands: Hell on Earth]]'' takes place AfterTheEnd, and has hosts of broken machinery that not many people know how to use. (Then again, unless it helps keep your head out of an irradiated zombie's mouth, most people don't ''care''.) Enter the Junkers, "techno-shamans" who duct-tape together odd amalgams of old tech and [[WeirdScience enchant]] it back into working order. A player character can even be a Junker, and Junkers are known for (re-)creating odd bits of technology that [[SchizoTech seem at odds]] with the rest of the world's current level of knowledge.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', much of the Imperium of Man's technology is ancient and only kept running by a specialized [[MachineCult religious priesthood]] performing maintenance by ritual. It gets a bit ridiculous, to the point where they ''worship tanks.'' Big, impressive, Titan-killing tanks, but tanks nonetheless.
** The [[MachineCult Adeptus Mechanicus]] don't worship tanks directly, but rather the "machine spirit" (but only as an alternate manifestation of the Emperor, because it would be heresy otherwise). The Imperium falls somewhere between ScavengerWorld and LostTechnology; because they're not actually scavenging existing technology for the most part (except for a few ancient and notable pieces of equipment); but rather are dependent upon use of ancient "templates" used by their automated manufacturing plants. The technological caste functions more as archeologists than researchers; and any "advances" are not due to modification of existing designs, but re-discovery of lost templates. ScavengerWorld applies best to the really big weapons systems like Titans and superheavy combat vehicles; where there are no templates left, and thus no ability to manufacture more.
** And then there's the Orks, a technological spacefaring race... with no heavy industry and no understanding of physics. Their spaceships are salvaged hulks with jerry-rigged engines, and all their weapons and ground vehicles (apart from the ones they manage to steal intact) are cobbled together from mismatched bits of battlefield salvage by a bunch of idiot savants. And somehow it all manages to work.
*** It's actually the opposite for Orkz. All Orkz have knowledge of basic physics and mechanics literally encoded into their genes, thus every Ork can smelt metal to make their choppa & scrounge enough junk together to make a functioning shoota. Some Orkz, the Mekz, have an even greater instinctive understanding of these principles, and can make teleporters, laser & plasma weaponry, massive walkers & even spaceships (with assistance of course). The problem is, the Ork doing the building doesn't really understand what he's doing, because its mostly subconscious, which is why Ork technology looks so ramshackle & generally isnt standardized.
*** There is also the fact that Ork technology is at least partially [[MagicPoweredPseudoScience powered by the gestalt psychic field]] which connects all of the Orks, and allows them to compensate for mechanical deficiencies in their machines. For example, an Ork can cobble together a gun from spare parts and an ammo magazine, and it will work reasonably well; it will also work for a non-Ork, but not nearly as well. It also means that certain mechanical principles which shouldn't actually work do so because the Orks [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve really believe they should]], the most notable examples being "The red ones go faster" (painting a vehicle red makes it go faster) and the instance when an Ork raiding party successfully stole and flew to their base a human ship that had been drifting in space ''because it was out of fuel''.

* In ''{{Exalted}}'', the River Province of Creation is more widely known as the Scavenger Lands, because it's the only place with a fairly large stock of half functioning [[LostTechnology First Age tech]] (much of which has not yet been recovered) available in societally usable quantities.
* The society of ''FadingSuns'' is locked in a FeudalFuture a thousand years after the collapse of non-feudal civilization. Although it is functioning, most technical advances are still caused by recovery of pre-collapse tech. Discovery of a decent stash can be a major tilt to military and political balance, and there is a major guild specializing in digging up lost tech.

* The planet of Bara Magna in ''{{Bionicle}}''.
* The original minicomics packaged with the [[WesternAnimation/{{He-Man and the Masters of the Universe}} Masters of the Universe]] figures had Eternia as such a world, devastated by "the Great Wars" (however, the Wind Raider was still a recent creation of Man-At-Arms). This is absent from later minicomics and other media.

[[folder: Web Comics ]]
* ''AMomentOfPeace'' is a LighterAndSofter version of a post-apocalyptic scavenger world.

* The world of AuroraDanseMacabre, thanks to a yet unexplained apocalypse.
* In the world of ''Webcomic/{{Glorianna}}'', old-time tech is generally used only in the crudest fashion (e.g., a tribe living in the hollowed-out remains of an old cargo plane), and only the small, fanatical cult of Syons actively tries to get ancient devices working again.

* [[http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/scavenger.html These]] [[http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/slaver.html pieces]] of [[http://www.keiththompsonart.com/pages/church.html concept art]] by Keith Thompson.

** In fact, several songs from that album fall into the ScavengerWorld category: notably "Black Powder and Alcohol", "Blue Bread Mold", and "Hello! Remember Us?"

[[folder: Real Life ]]

Now, suppose a large majority of mankind were to be suddenly wiped out? There would be huge holes in the knowledge of how to produce things. Sure, someone might know how to fix the engine of a car, but if there's no one who knows how to make spark plugs, one is forced to hope they can find workable ones in the debris left AfterTheEnd. And then there's the need for gasoline. Heck, unleaded gasoline for that matter. And oil, and tires, and antifreeze and batteries, and... well you get the idea. And even if someone does know how to make those key components, all that knowledge is little more than useless trivia if the infrastructure of society has been disrupted to the point that the raw materials can no longer be supplied. It would quickly be forgotten as humanity focused on more important things, like finding enough food to keep from starving.

* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': Set fifteen years after the electricity goes off all over the world. The Monroe Republic is able to make their own black powder muskets but have to scavenge for more advanced technology and cannot manufacture ammunition for their pre-Blackout weapons. They have a functioning railway but their steam engine was salvaged from a museum. In contrast the Georgia Federation is much more advanced and is building new steam engines and seagoing ships.

* ''TheColony'': This show is a simulation of life in a world where most of the population has been killed by a virus. The objective is for a group of strangers to build a working society using stuff left behind in a (mostly) empty city.

* Leslie Fish's song "[[http://www.lyricsty.com/leslie-fish-the-discards-lyrics.html The Discards]]", from ''Firestorm: Songs of the Third World War'', describes a post-apocalyptic encounter between super-sophisticated transports, "sleek and bossy, all stuffed with high-tech gear", and scavenged vehicles composed mainly of [[BoringButPractical simple but effective]] [[RockBeatsLaser "armor, wheels, and gun"]].

* Leslie Fish's song "[[http://www.lyricsty.com/leslie-fish-the-discards-lyrics.html The Discards]]", from ''Firestorm: Songs of the Third World War'', describes a post-apocalyptic encounter between super-sophisticated transports, "sleek and bossy, all stuffed with high-tech gear", and scavenged vehicles composed mainly of "armor, wheels, and gun".

* ''Film/{{Oblivion2013'': [[spoiler: The underground world beneath the surface of the Earth, where the remaining humans live.]]

* ''Series/TheTribe'' deals with a world AfterTheEnd, where a virus wiped out every person beyond the age of 18. The remaining kids and children, of course, struggle with exactly this trope.
* Probably part of the inspiration behind ''Scrapheap Challenge'' or, as it was known in the US, ''Junkyard Wars'') -- two teams comprised of three engineers go into a junkyard and build anything ranging from buggies to firetrucks, and they always end up looking like something from a Scavenger World.
* ''TheColony'' is a simulation of life in a world where most of the population has been killed by a virus. The objective is for a group of strangers to build a working society using stuff left behind in a (mostly) empty city.
* ''Series/{{Jericho}}'' follows the immediate aftermath of an apocalypse, but there is a bit of this: improvised or scavenged sources of electricity, scavenged weapons, no food outside of what can be grown locally, etc.
* ''FallingSkies'' takes place in a world six months after an AlienInvasion has destroyed most major cities and wiped out a large majority of humanity. The survivors first priority (as well as making sure to avoid the aliens) is raiding stores and warehouses for remaining food and weapons. In the pilot, the protagonist is captured by a gang of outlaws. The leader offers him a beer, which the protagonist is surprised to learn is cold. Apparently, the outlaws managed to salvage a working generator and a fridge. The survivors also have to extract fuel from cars to use in their own vehicles (all pre-microchip, as the aliens used EMP on a massive scale).
* In ''Series/TheWalkingDead'' as a result of ZombieApocalypse.
* The ''Series/{{Aftermath}}'' episode "World Without Oil" explores the hypothetical scenario of what would happen if the earth's oil reservoirs suddenly disappeared. It involves society's slippage into one of these as people scavenge the dumpsters for electronics from which they can extract precious metals as well as plastic products that they can reuse.
* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'' set fifteen years after the electricity goes off all over the world. The Monroe Republic is able to make their own black powder muskets but have to scavenge for more advanced technology and cannot manufacture ammunition for their pre-Blackout weapons. They have a functioning railway but their steam engine was salvaged from a museum. In contrast the Georgia Federation is much more advanced and is building new steam engines and seagoing ships.

Compare CosyCatastrophe. See also DisasterScavengers. If you ask a scavenger about where this stuff came from, they'll say it was all made in TheBeforetimes. May also involve an ArchaeologicalArmsRace. When technology is rebuilt from scavenged trash it's ScavengedPunk

[[folder:Literature]]

* Terry Brooks' ''{{Shannara}}'' as a whole, with the Druid order being the only people with any knowledge of technology left. Specifically, the most recent Genesis of Shannara trilogy, which aside from the usual scavenging for supplies includes sports stadiums as the last organized holdouts of civilization.
* ''CiaphasCain'': An apt example of the level of superstition around machinery can be found in the novels. At one point a techpriest worries about whether a device will work when she doesn't have any ''incense'' to light first, of course it does. Said techpriest is also something of a black sheep when we meet her because her rather pragmatic and creative approach is seen as a failure to understand the theology. Which of course had limited her advancement.
* The parts of Creator/StephenKing's ''Franchise/TheDarkTower'' set in Mid-World have this flavor. It tends to become both more prominent and more dangerous as the series goes on: in the first couple of books Roland's six-guns are rare and precious artifacts, but by the fifth we've seen working robots, giant cyborg bears, weaponized ''HarryPotter'' props, and a supersonic maglev train with a yen for riddles, all of which are decaying and homicidal.
* ''Literature/EarthAbides'' by George Rippey Stewart deals with the consequence of most of the human population being wiped out by some plague. The protagonist sees mankind's technological advances undone, because the scattered survivors do not have the cohesion, nor the education or even the motivation to keep the technological marvels (electricity, indoor plumbing, metalworking etc.) running. Humanity reverts to a hunter-gatherer society.
** Curiously, we do meet a family of semi-literate farm-laborers somewhere in the Southern US who look like they're just going to carry on working the land as they have for generations (indeed, their situation may have improved insofar as they aren't working for someone else any more). They're only mentioned again at the end of the book...generations after their encounter with the protagonist, their descendants [[UnfortunateImplications still grow cotton for their departed masters]] despite not having the knowledge or technology to use cotton for themselves. There's also a Native American settlement in New Mexico and a cult in southern California that both appear pretty well-organized and self-sufficient.
* In ''Literature/TheSundered'' by Ruthanne Reid, there is a whole industry made out of scavenging thigns to sell. When the main characters find a cache of guns, they are overjoyed because nobody had even seen any in years.
* ''The People of Sparks'' by Jeanne Du Prau, the sequel to ''TheCityOfEmber'', takes place somewhere in the United States about 250 years after several successive wars and pandemics, where descendants of the survivors have reverted to old-style farming settlements, sending out 'roamers' to search pre-Disaster houses and such for supplies such as clothes.
* In ''TheLordOfTheRings'', the kingdom of Gondor has ancient cities and monuments constructed by means lost to the current dwellers due to a civilization regression.
* In ''LifeAsWeKnewIt'', by Susan Beth Pfeffer, the United States is on its way to becoming like this after an asteroid hits the moon and causes climate change around the world.
* CormacMcCarthy's ''TheRoad'' is exactly this. The story follows a man and his son walking south through the ash-covered ruins of America after an unspecified cataclysm, scavenging whatever food they can find and avoiding bandits who steal and murder to survive. Many people have even resorted to cannibalism.
* Robert [=McCammon's=] ''Literature/SwanSong'' takes place AfterTheEnd, where people barter old calendars for rubber bands because nobody has produced anything since before WorldWarIII.
* ''Literature/ACanticleForLeibowitz'' features this trope heavily, being a classic of the post-apocalyptic genre.
** Also averted, since the novel goes on long enough that the world regains its mastery of science. It's heavily implied that the remnants of technology the monks preserved was instrumental in the reconstruction of a technologically advanced society. (Whether or not this is a good thing is left as an open question).
* The Kinetic Novel ''{{Planetarian}}'' also takes place AfterTheEnd and involves Junkers, with one critical difference: instead of restoring technology, the Junkers pilfer it (as well as other valuables) from the ruins for fun and profit. Well, as fun as dodging autonomous killer robots can be, anyway.
* ''MortalEngines'' takes place [[AfterTheEnd After Several Ends]]; futuristic technology is scavenged from ancient ruins and traded.
* Somewhat averted by S.M. Stirling's Emberverse series. The laws of physics have been altered [[spoiler: by [[ThePowersThatBe the Universal Mind]] having an argument with itself]] so that electrical circuits, internal combustion engines, gunpowder, and nuclear decay no longer function as expected, leading to the collapse of civilization. But still the wreckage of technological society is useful: the survivors scavenge the wreckage for useable parts and metal alloys difficult or impossible to manufacture under the new conditions. The results are swords made from automobile leaf springs, catapults powered by heavy duty springs salvaged from truck chassis, windmills and water wheels using gears salvaged from automotive transmissions, etc.
** So far the Emberverse is only 28 years into the Change, so a lot of the more durable stuff like the machine parts mentioned above are still in play, and more valuable soft goods like books are being preserved in most civilized areas (a few universities are mentioned to have survived, so at least the knowledge of high-tech society has been preserved). How well things are preserved down the line is still very much up in the air.
* Sylvia Engdahl's ''[[http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/trilogy.htm Children of the Star trilogy]]'' shows off just such a world.
* ''Literature/AliceGirlFromTheFuture'' features a planet which suffered a collective memory loss 300 years ago. The king uses a dentist's chair as a throne... his guards are using chamberpots as helmets.
* Theodore Cogswell's story ''The Spectre General'' extends the concept to an interstellar scale, with a Galactic Protectorate rising on the ruins of TheEmpire and using technology it can no longer duplicate or reliably maintain [[spoiler:until it makes contact with a lost outpost that has preserved the old technical knowledge]].
* ''Literature/DeathLands''. The Trader specialises in tracking down [[SurvivalistStash Stockpiles]] left by the [[AfterTheEnd now defunct US government]] and selling the contents to the various BigBad wannabies. As this included pre-Apocalpse weapons that can be used against him he now realises it was a major mistake.
* In ''Literature/ShipBreaker'' by Paolo Bacigalupi, the world is like this. After GlobalWarming led to changes in sea levels, many cities were destroyed. The protagonist, Nailer, lives in what once was Louisiana and takes apart former oil rigs for scrap metal. They run into a problem when they find a ship that has a living person in it.
** Also the short story ''The Calorie Man''. Oil supplies have run out so the protagonist makes a living scavenging useful items from the now abandoned suburbs before they're [[BioPunk reclaimed for cropland]].
* The multi-author ''DeathZone'' series (taking place in the same universe as ''{{STALKER}}'' but 50 years later) involves five anomalous zones which are formed after an unknown cataclysm wipes out 4 major cities (plus the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone) and covers the areas with gravity bubbles. The zones feature many anomalies and rogue nanotechnology, as well as survivors called stalkers scrounging for supplies and hunting for tech. Unlike a typical example of this trope, the outside world is mostly fine, and supplies are often smuggled into the zones. However, most of the novels barely feature anything beyond the zones, so the atmosphere of the stories often makes it seem as if there is nothing else.
* In RobertJordan's ''{{The Wheel of Time}}'', many ancient arts have been lost, including the art of creating magical items (''ter'angreal''). In an unusual move, we actually see characters rediscovering many of the lost arts over the course of the series.
* Zilpha Keatley Snyder never gets explicit about this, but she does go into considerable detail in the {{Green-Sky Trilogy}} about how their great public buildings, palaces and temples were all built by teams joining their telekinetic powers together to lift heavy stuff. That "uniforce" ability has been lost for many generations. These buildings involve some pretty complex engineering and are all made out of wood and vine in what is pretty much a [[SingleBiomePlanet rainforest planet]]. Stuff deteriorates very fast in these environments. Who's going to do the maintenance? [[spoiler: Fortunately, TheMagicComesBack (or starts to) and by the end of the third book we're pretty sure they're going to be okay.]]
* ''The Girl Who Owned A City'' combines this with TeenageWasteland after a plague wipes out all the adults.
* In ''Hatch'' - set in the ''Literature/GreatShip'' universe - several million refugees are trapped on the exterior hull of the [[PlanetSpaceship Great Ship]]. Surrounding their city (built inside a sealed up rocket nozzle larger than the Earth) is the remains of the [[HiveMind Polypond]], which periodically spews out billions of biological and mechanical creatures. The refugees use needle-like ships (raiders) to harvest the creatures for building material, organics, and bits of technology.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* The ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series is set in a post-apocalyptic ScavengerWorld in which getting an old car to run is a major quest. However, it's a world that's on its way to fill the holes: in the good endings of both ''VideoGame/{{Fallout|1}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'' new cities are created, new governments established and it's implied that things are going better. It should be noted that the scarcity that seems to have hit the automotive industry has apparently left the weaponry one untouched, at least judging by the ludicrous amounts of energy blasters, miniguns and assault rifles scattered all over the place. They did manage a HandWave with one character late in the game, a blacksmith who produces his own gunpowder and loads it into recycled shells to make new bullets for sale.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' takes place on the opposite coast of America, and is much closer to this trope. Megaton for instance is a town with houses, furniture and outer walls made out of scrap metal from an old airport. It also affects gameplay too, as buildings that you've picked through for supplies stay empty. The armor used by Raiders and Super Mutants [[ImprovisedArmour are made from scavenged materials]], such as car parts and old tires. One piece of concept art for the Super Mutant Behemoth depicted it wielding a ''car engine'' attached to a chain as a makeshift flail.
** ''VideoGame/{{Fallout New Vegas}}'' averts this to a certain extent, given how there are factories building new weapons and ammo, as well as gear. Much more new material is also produced and created than before- though scavenging is still a good way of finding weapons and cheap items to sell.
*** In one quest, you're asked to ''shut down'' one such factory. Why? It's making bottle caps, the universally accepted currency in the Wasteland, and making more would crash the market.
* In the spirit of post-apocalyptic worlds like ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', old [=CRPGs=] like "''VideoGame/{{Visions Of Aftermath The Boomtown}}''" and "Scavengers of the Mutant World" are good examples of old survival/scavenging games from the old PC era
* "NEO Scavenger: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival RPG" is a new game basically going around surviving and resolving the main story via scavenging
* ''BattleTanx'': Nominally what the world is supposed to be. Yet somehow EVERYONE seems to be effective enough scavengers to all have tanks...
* The Blastia in ''VideoGame/TalesOfVesperia''. It's stated that there is no known way to create the Barrier Blastia used to keep monsters away from cities, along with most other Blastia. [[spoiler:This is because excessive blastia use in the past created a planet-eating EldritchAbomination, so the knowledge was destroyed and the surviving blastia were all given to one family so that they could be regulated]].
* This happened in ''EveOnline'''s backstory: When the wormhole connecting the New Eden and Earth collapsed, most of the colonies died off or regressed back to pre-industrial status due to the lack of self-sufficient infrastructure. It got better, but there's still plenty of LostTechnology to be found.
* This trope is invoked constantly in ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}''. Lesser technology, including [[HumongousMecha Gears]], is scavenged by previous civilizations that died out. [[spoiler:More advanced technology is scavenged from the ship and cargo that originally crash-landed and brought humanity to this planet 10,000 years prior, as seen in the intro movie.]] In fact, [[spoiler:all of the technology that had ever been used in the game comes from the Eldridge; the Galactic Federation that produced it was pretty high up on the Kardashev Scale.]]
* Played with in ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'': people on Pandora tend to scavenge and salvage gear and tech, but it's implied that it's because Pandora never really had an industrial base to begin with, and most of the people on planet were convicts. Also, it's implied that this situation is fairly unique to Pandora; it's mentioned at least once that Pandora got supply drops from off-world.
* The main protagonist of ''SepterraCore'' grew up on a world shell where the most common way to make a living was by scavenging scraps dropped from the higher, more affluent world shells.
* ''MassEffect'': The Krogan homeworld of Tuchanka is this -- essentially a planet-sized postapocalyptic junkheap whose inhabitants no longer care about ''making'' things but instead concern themselves with fighting over the few remaining scraps of technology.
** And the Krogan ''like'' it this way, because it [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy apparently proves how tough they are.]]
* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarZero'' has a LOT of this. The world's gone to pot, and pretty much everything remotely advanced has been scavenged from the ruins. Scavenging ruins for relics (whether usable or reverse-engineerable) is a full-time profession, often as a civil service. In fact, one of the major storyline quests involves scavenging a suitable CAST body for an ally from a ruined city.
* ''Phantom Dust'' has technology that looks like it was jumbled together from all sorts of tech. They seem to be set for equipment, though, so the few scavanging missions you go on usually has food, recipes, or medication as the goal.
* In ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', there is a sidequest early on which involves locating food for a group of survivors in the BadFuture. Unfortunately, by the time you do find it, it's all spoiled because no one was left to run the refrigeration (or it simply didn't work). Also, it's worth noting that the reason you're doing this is because the survivors have been heretofore relying upon a machine that replenished their health instantly, but as the party notes, it could break down at any time, and no one knows anything about fixing it.
* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireIII'' has intensive use of machines built from scrap parts from an unknown origin and people don't have the knowledge to reproduce them.
** Likewise does ''VideoGame/MegamanLegends'' from the same publisher, which has a scavenger world that looks and feels quite similar to [=BoF3=]. Legends 1 even thanks the "[=BoF3=] Rescue Team" in its credits.
* The settings of ''{{Planetarian}}''. The viewpoint character's job is raiding depopulated ruins of cities to find [=MREs=], or just anything that is potentially valuable. It's not an easy job because the competition is cutthroat, and the ruins are patrolled by autonomous death-machines that are supposed to defend the cities, even if they are pointless because the cities are no longer inhabited AfterTheEnd.
* ''IAmAlive'' is the most scavenger-y of them all. How many bullets do you usually find at a time? ONE.
* The Facebook game ''Wasteland Empires'' is all over this like white on rice, at least for the first four tiers, after that it appears you start a steep learning curve with recovering the old technology.
* A released ''VideoGame/XRebirth'' [[http://www.egosoft.com/games/x_rebirth/screenshots/x_rebirth_screen_027.jpg screenshot]] shows a Split Python (a destroyer from the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3]]'' trilogy) stripped for supplies, with power lines leading from the ship to a nearby installation. The shutdown of the [[PortalNetwork jumpgate network]] at the end of the Terran Conflict may have set off a dark age for small colony worlds.
* ''VideoGame/{{Metro 2033}}'' is a PostApocalyptic CrapsackWorld taking place in the subway tunnels of Moscow AfterTheEnd, when a nuclear strike irradiates the surface almost beyond survivability and plunges everything into a nuclear winter. The few creatures and people who survived above-ground have become horrific mutants of some form or fashion. Most of the equipment found or seen is put together from bits and pieces of pre-war technology or repurposed altogether. This is most evident in the weaponry. While guns are obviously a necessity in the game's setting, all the better to hold off bandits or the occasional monstrosity that approaches a population center, the weapons that are there are generally cobbled together from pipes, plywood, and parts of proper guns. The game's basic double barreled shotgun and SMG equivalents are the guns that are most obviously built from scavenged pieces, as they are visibly and obviously constructed from pieces of old plumbing with receivers and stocks welded on.
* Played with in ''Warzone2100''; salvaging pre-Collapse military technology is a key game mechanic and indirectly kicks off the plot, but when you find it, you have your engineers reverse-engineer it and put it back into production.
* The [=iOS=] game ''Rebuild'' involves survivors of a ZombieApocalypse trying to [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin rebuild]] human civilization while fending off attacks by zombies and raiders, finding more survivors and convincing them to join you, reclaiming zombie-infested areas, sending people out to find food and supplies (which you can't build yourself), etc. You can even reclaim labs and research new techniques in them, including the zombie virus cure (one of the ways to win). Some equipment can also be purchased from or sold to a visiting merchant for food. The equipment includes weapons (anything from a [[ChainsawGood chainsaw]] to an assault rifle), dogs (which the game treats as equipable weapons), tools (and yes, some tools, like sledgehammers, double as weapons), leadership items (e.g. a megaphone to talk to survivors or a NiceHat) and scientific equipment. Each survivor has stats associated with various skills (killing, scavenging, leadership, research, construction), which improve with successful use or equipment. The game never has you run out of ammo, though.
* ''RedDeadRedemptionUndeadNightmare'' applies this to the original game's setting. Nobody's selling any goods now. You've got a horse on call, but that's it. If you're lucky, you'll get back enough bullets after a fight to replace what you spent ''on'' the fight. Bait? Bombs? Any other tools? Make them yourself.
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* The parts of Creator/StephenKing's ''TheDarkTower'' set in Mid-World have this flavor. It tends to become both more prominent and more dangerous as the series goes on: in the first couple of books Roland's six-guns are rare and precious artifacts, but by the fifth we've seen working robots, giant cyborg bears, weaponized ''HarryPotter'' props, and a supersonic maglev train with a yen for riddles, all of which are decaying and homicidal.

** Likewise does ''VideoGame/MegamanLegends'', which looks and feels quite similar to BoF3.