History Main / ScavengerWorld

* ''Hell Comes to Frogtown'' is another work inspired by ''Mad Max''.

* ''Manga/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.

* ''Film/{{Hardware}}'' superimposes a Scavenger World 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.

* The Dust Zone in ''Anime/DigimonXrosWars'' is one that's also a [[DownInTheDumps massive junkyard]]. The local villain is forcing the other Digimon to give it parts so it can escape to another zone.

* ''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.

* Similarly, anyone in the retro video game or computer scene knows the feeling all too well. While things like the ''UsefulNotes/{{Commodore 64}}'' or the ''UsefulNotes/{{Apple II}}'' have plenty of off-the-shelf components that are still produced to this day, anything proprietary like the 6502 Processor, keyboard keys, CRT Tubes, and etc are finite and in constant dwindling supply. Meanwhile, while there ARE many third-party controllers for retro consoles still produced to this day they are often made in poor quality and lacking necessary features (like a central pivot in the D-Pad, or lacking the pressure-sensitive shoulder buttons of the ''UsefulNotes/NintendoGameCube'') that make them abyssmal to use in lieu of the ever dwindling supply of official leftover components. It's not uncommon to see these things on eBay, advertised as broken and non-functioning, actually being bid on by retro enthusiasts who crave those sweet sweet parts they can scavenge to keep their babies running.

* The colony world (or far-future Earth, depending on your interpretation) on which ''Anime/MaiOtome'' 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.

->''"...did you ever try to put a broken piece of glass back together? Even if the pieces fit, you can’t make it whole again the way it was. But if you’re clever, you can still use the pieces to make other useful things. Maybe even something wonderful, like a mosaic. Well, the world broke just like glass. And everyone’s trying to put it back together like it was, but it’ll never come together in the same way."''
-->-- Moira Brown, author of ''The Wasteland Survival Guide'', '''''VideoGame/Fallout3'''''

* During and a little while after the Franchise/{{Batman}} series of No Man's Land, everybody scavenged everything. One apple was worth more than a crate of 9mm ammo.

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

* ''d20 Apocalypse'' (an expansion for ''TabletopGame/D20Modern'') specializes in the post-apocalyptic setting, and features rules on scavenging supplies and bartering with them.
* The RPG ''TabletopGame/{{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/{{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 ''TabletopGame/FadingSuns'' is locked in a FeudalFuture a thousand years after the collapse of non-feudal civilization. Although it is functioning, most technological advances are still caused by the 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.

* ''TabletopGame/MyriadSong'' is a bit of a mix, a few planets survived the disappearance of the [[AbusivePrecursors Syndics]] with their industry and infrastructure intact, others, known as "derelict" worlds, not so much. The result is a SpaceOpera where one side of a battle might be armed with rayguns, while the other has zip-guns made from rusty pipes.
* ''TabletopGame/NuclearRenaissance'' has a design style that seems to echo [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Orkish]] engineering, both in terms of size (vehicles way too big for real-life roads) and in the fact that it all seems to have been sculpted from riveted-together fragments of scrap metal. Many of the vehicles are available piece by piece from the store, allowing all manner of custom nonsense creations.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Junk}}'' was set on a planet of exiled rednecks where they amused themselves by building [[HumongousMecha giant robots]] out of junk with beer-fuelled engines to fight each other with. You were free to make minis out of any old cr@p you could find.
* ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'', despite being a RaygunGothic setting has Io. Io, being a blasted post-apocalyptic wasteland, is full of native tribes searching for the best materials among the ruins. Occasionally Earthlings come by to try their hand at treasure hunting; if things go poorly they can easily find themselves facing off against Iotes armed with zip-guns, bows, and crossbows.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Godbound}}'' from Sine Nomine has this on two levels. One, most of the old technology has stopped working due to the laws of physics failing, making it interesting loot for any pantheon with the power to get it running again. Two, Heaven itself is broken, and the Godbound are scavenging its bits to see if they can fix it, build something better, or just kick the backsides of their rivals.
* ''Atomic Highway'' goes so far as to have a Scavenger Pursuit (essentially a character class), a Scavenge skill, and multiple pages of tables for what you find when scavenging a specific kind of location.
* As part of it's [[ScavengedPunk]] appeal, ''[[TabletopGame/MutantYearZero Mutant: Year Zero]]'' is one where nearly everything found in The Zone of The Dawnworld can be used for something. No matter how useless it may at first seem to be.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Numenera}}'' is set on Earth billions of years into the future, after eight great civilizations (''at least'') have risen and fell, leaving behind a world practically made of unaging ruins where DungeonCrawling is [[DungeonBasedEconomy a vital part of life]]. Much of the current, primitive civilization is built around scavenging ancient technology and exploiting it, [[NotTheIntendedUse not always in ways it was necessarily meant to be used]].

[[folder:Web Comics]]

In a modern society, everything is so interconnected that any product is the result of that entire society. People who put products together, people who got the materials the products are made of, people who run the machines that generate the power required for those things... et cetera. Even the things people tend to forget or disassociate with the production of a product: people who write the manuals, people who act as "gofers" for all the other people, middle-management, the people who drive materials and products around, etc. And that's without going into all the people who need to do their jobs so ''those'' people can do ''their'' jobs [[note]]For example, all these people need to have access to food, water, soap, and clothes. Drivers need gas, vehicles, tires, and paved roads. And so on, and so on...[[/note]].

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. This is especially true if the power grid has been destroyed, since most modern manufacturing processes require extensive use of computers, power tools and precision that no human hand is capable of.

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

* ''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!

* The planet ''Anime/GargantiaOnTheVerdurousPlanet'' takes place on. After an apocalyptic event, the entire surface of the planet is covered by ocean. People live on floating cities and scavenge the ruins under the ocean. Good scavengers seem to be respected.

* In ''Manga/DesertPunk'', there are the remains of whole cities that are occasionally found with scavengable supplies, though by the story's start one hasn't been found in decades. The Oasis Government, seemingly the only ones capable of producing food in the manga, supply everyone outside of their {{Elaborate Underground Base}}s with resources to get by for the sole purpose of having a workforce to doing the scavanging while its citizens on the inside have whole corporations based on reverse-engineering it (and to provide an example of how bad things are, one incredibly rich and legendary scavenger we meet made his fortune and fame out of salvaging an intact copy of ''The TabletopGame/GameOfLife'').

* The ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'' comic strip ''ComicBook/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.[[note]]If that reminds you of [[TabletopGame/Warhammer40000 another popular franchise]], it's not a coincidence; they share a number of writing credits.[[/note]]

* ''Film/{{Hardware}}'' superimposes a Scavenger World 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.

* ''Film/{{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.

* ''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.
* ''Franchise/TheMatrix''. The real Earth is a wasteland. Mankind has cobbled together technology to form the sole oasis for humanity, underground. The kicker? [[spoiler:All but the One aren't aware that the Machines destroy that city every 100 years or so, when the One shows up, keying the required reloading (reboot) of the Matrix.]] According to the Architect in ''Film/TheMatrixReloaded'', [[spoiler:they've blown Zion up five times before Neo.]] Zion is used to allow uppity humans that reject the Matrix a place to hangout [[spoiler:so the Machines can keep most others unaware and enslaved in the Matrix.]]

** The desert world of Tatooine is this for the Jawas in ''Film/ANewHope''. They pick up lost droids and wrecked ships' components, when they don't steal stuff at least.
** Jakku from ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' is yet another desert world. It is littered with the burned out hulks of Imperial and Galactic Alliance war machines, which the few inhabitants break apart to exchange for food and other supplies.
* ''Film/ScreamersTheHunting''. The cyborg Screamers and the few remaining human survivors scavenge each others bodies for food and equipment.

* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Implied in "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars". Far in Earth's future, a "great burn-out" has pushed humanity back into the medieval age. The Rangers try to slowly reintroduce technology, but have to rely on extraterrestrial help to come by supplies like gasoline.

* ''Series/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).

* ''Series/The100'': The Grounders are a hunter/gatherer society, but still have access to plenty of steel weapons and tools left over from before the apocalypse.
* ''Series/{{Thunderstone}}'', in its first season, finds Noah in an underground city during an ice age caused by the destruction of the Nemesis Comet, source of the titular Thunderstone, and somehow manages to modify the VR helmets the citizens use to travel in time. Upon meeting the tribe of feral kids, he believes he is in the past, but turns out to be in the future, as is revealed when he encounters the remains of the underground colony and finds another faction of scavengers who form a dictatorship and use mechanised vehicles.

* ''TabletopGame/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 society of ''TabletopGame/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.

** Much of the Imperium of Man's technology is ancient and only kept running by a specialized [[MachineCult religious priesthood]] performing maintenance by ritual. The [[MachineCult Adeptus Mechanicus]] worship the "machine spirit" (but only as an alternate manifestation of the Emperor, because it would be heresy otherwise). The Imperium falls somewhere between Scavenger World 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. Scavenger World 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.
** For Orkz, it's opposite from the above MachineCult. All Orkz have knowledge of basic physics and mechanics literally encoded into their genes, thus every Ork can smelt metal to make their choppa and 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 and 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 and generally isn't standardized.

* ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'', despite being a RaygunGothic setting has Io. Io, being a blasted post apocalyptic wasteland, is full of native tribes searching for the best materials among the ruins. Occasionally Earthlings come by to try their hand at treasure hunting; if things go poorly they can easily find themselves facing off against Iotes armed with zip-guns, bows and crossbows.

* The world of ''Webcomic/CyberScrapyard'' webcomics was densely populated and technologically advanced long time ago. But after the mysterious Catastrophe, most of humanity died, and many of the industrial buildings were destroyed. Not surprisingly, the most advanced technologies were lost. So finding high tech, remained from the old world, is a good business here.

* Definitely TruthInTelevision in poor nations without native industrial capacity, especially where high-tech imports are scarce. Especially in Cuba, due to USA trade embargo after their revolution. And North Korea, with its crumbling infrastructure and isolationist policies.

* Some 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.
* 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 and various poisonous solvents and carcinogens.

* In his semi-satirical treatise on economics, "Eat the Rich", P.J. O'Rourke illustrates how even something as simple as a pencil requires the combination of so many differing component parts (wood, graphite, rubber, steel, paint) and specialized skills to get each of ''those'' (botany, geology, mining, carpentry, milling, metalworking, chemistry, painting) that it's functionally impossible for any single person to make one on their own. Yet a single pencil is seen as a cheap throwaway item because modern industrial society can mass produce them seemingly effortlessly.

* Ironically, hobbyists who practice traditional handicrafts sometimes find ''the modern world'' to be a ScavengerWorld of sorts, in that historically-accurate materials and tools can be almost impossible to track down in a society where advanced technologies have long since supplanted them. Just ''try'' tracking down replacement parts for a 13th century spinning wheel or a Roman-style suit of armor outside of a museum.

* ''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.

* ''Anime/KazeNoTairiku'' (or ''The Weathering Continent'') is set in a desolate world ravaged by disasters and other catastrophe leaving people to scavenge for precious resources like water.

* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Implied in "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars". Far in Earth's future, a "great burn-out" has pushed humanity back into the medieval age. The Rangers try to slowly reintroduce technology, but have to rely on extraterrestrial help to come by supplies like gasoline

* The world of ''Webcomic/CyberScrapyard'' webcomics was densely populated and technologically advanced long time ago. But after the mysterious Catastrophe, most of humanity died, and many of the industrial building were destroyed. Not surprisingly, the most advanced technologies were lost. So finding high tech, remained from the old world, is a good business here.

* The world of ''Webcomic/CyberScrapyard'' webcomics was densely populated and technologically advanced long time ago. But after the mysterious Catastrophe, most of humanity died, and many of the industrial building were destroyed. Not surprisingly, the most advanced technologies are lost. So finding high tech, remained from the old world, is a good business here.

* ''d20 Apocalypse'' (an expansion for ''d20 Modern'') specializes in the post-apocalyptic setting, and features rules on scavenging supplies and bartering with them.

* ''Godbound'' from Sine Nomine has this on two levels. One, most of the old technology has stopped working due to the laws of physics failing, making it interesting loot for any pantheon with the power to get it running again. Two, Heaven itself is broken, and the Godbound are scavenging its bits to see if they can fix it, build something better, or just kick the backsides of their rivals.

* ''[[Film/{{Screamers}} Screamers: The Hunting]]''. The cyborg Screamers and the few remaining human survivors scavenge each others bodies for food and equipment.

* The planet of Bara Magna in ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}''.

* ''Film/Mindwarp'' has Crawlers; mutants savages lead by a charismatic cult leader played by Angus Scrimm who work mining a garbage dump for useful materials and artifacts from the previous civilization in order to build a new one.