History ScavengerWorld / Literature

* ''Literature/{{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.
* ''Literature/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.
** Cain himself wonders, after building an [=IED=] in ''Death or Glory'', if it can really work without a techpriest's blessing. He decides that killing Orks is "the Emperor's work", and He will probably cut Cain some slack on this.
* 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 ''Literature/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.

* In ''Literature/TheSundered'' by Ruthanne Reid, there is a whole industry made out of scavenging things to sell. When the main characters find a cache of guns, they are overjoyed because nobody had even seen any in years.
* ''Literature/ThePeopleOfSparks'' 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 ''Literature/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.
* Creator/CormacMcCarthy's ''Literature/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 ''Literature/{{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.

* S.M. Stirling's ''Literature/{{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.
* Sylvia Engdahl's ''[[http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/trilogy.htm Children of the Star trilogy]]'' shows off just such a world.
* ''Literature/TheCityWithoutMemory'' takes place on 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.

* ''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 ''Film/Stalker1979'' 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 Creator/RobertJordan's ''Literature/{{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.
* Creator/ZilphaKeatleySnyder implies this in the ''Literature/GreenSkyTrilogy''. She describes several times how their great public buildings, palaces and temples, which involve some pretty complex engineering, were all built by teams joining their telekinetic powers together to lift heavy stuff. That "uniforce" ability has been lost for many generations. Now the FridgeBrilliance kicks in. These buildings 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.
* ''Staying Behind'', a short story by Ken Lui. BrainUploading has caused the collapse of civilisation because most people chose to live forever in digital form. The protagonist tries to hold onto the living world, only for his children to desert to the Singularity. When he tries to stop them, his wife points out that he's nothing to offer them but a hard life picking over the technology of the old world until it runs out.
* Zenna Henderson has a variant of this in ''Deluge'', one of her novellas of The People and the only one to take place back on the Home world. With their PsychicPowers taking the place of labor-saving devices, they've simplified their daily lives to the point of minimalism. So when they find out the planet is about to explode and they need to get the heck out of there, they don't have the technology to do it. Fortunately, what they do have is scavenger ''minds'' -- access to the memories of dead ancestors, going back thousands of years, to the days when they did have interstellar spacecraft. By taking time to Remember back that far, each person can learn the skills of an ancestor who, say, built the navigation instruments, or [[NobodyPoops installed the toilets]].
* In the [[CrapsackWorld crapsack]] future England ("Inland") of ''Literature/RiddleyWalker'', the only source of iron is whatever rusting hulks of 20th-century machinery they can manage to dig out of the ground.
* ''Literature/DinnerAtDeviantsPalace'' is set after some cataclysm blew large radioactive holes in southern California and led to a collapse of society and LostCommonKnowledge. The current society is built largely around digging useful (or just neat-looking) stuff out of the rubble of the past. Some people drive cars as status symbols, but they're drawn by horses because there's no gasoline any more.
* The world of ''Literature/CthulhuArmageddon'' is one, explicitly compared to ''Film/MadMax'' and ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' in the opening. The human race scrapes out a bare-bones existence living in those few structures not destroyed by the Great Old Ones' rising. It's notably also turned into a NewOldWest WeirdWest.
* ''Literature/{{Bearheart}}'': The characters struggle to find gas.
* ''Literature/DreamPark'': In ''The California Voodoo Game'', the Game-scenario occupants of MIMIC use materials scrounged from the damaged {{Arcology}} for clothing, tools, weapons and artwork. One of the first enemies "killed" in the Game carries a club made from a table leg with an old can strapped to the end, and a chunk of concrete stuffed inside for weight.
* ''Literature/TheSisterVerseAndTheTalonsOfRuin'' has this in the Dreadlands, a massive plane that connects every universe, where all the infrastructure has essentially collapsed. The same can be said of Jacob's world in act 2, where the Sisters of Ruin survive off technology scavenged from earlier wars.
* In Kate Wilhelm's ''Literature/WhereLateTheSweetBirdsSang'', the clone community living in the Shenandoah Valley is all that remains of humanity. Requiring a high technological base to continue their cloning processes, they salvage supplies from the nearest cities. The first expedition to Washington D.C. is a major part of the book.
* This is the fate of the Slavs in ''Literature/TheManInTheHighCastle'', who were driven out of Europe by Nazi Germany. While the rest of the world has moved forward technologically- to the point of colonizing the moon by 1962- they've been rolled back to the Stone Age, riding yaks and hunting with bows and arrows.
* In ''Literature/ScavengerAlliance'', as the title suggests. During the Exodus Century, humanity rushed to colonise other worlds, using too many resources and emptying Earth of too many educated people too quickly. As a result, society's infrastructure has been all but crippled, and old technology is breaking down because there aren't enough people around who can fix or replace it.
* ''Literature/TheCityAndTheDungeon'' overlaps this with DungeonBasedEconomy, with [[AfterTheEnd the remnants of society]] being supported by [[AnAdventurerIsYou delvers]] exploring and scavenging from [[EldritchLocation the massive, eldritch Dungeon]] located in the center of [[LastBastion the last City]].
* A few of Creator/HarryTurtledove's works focus on societies like this:
** In ''The Valley-Westside War'', a nuclear exchange in the 60s led to the collapse of the United States, the USSR, and it's implied most other countries. 130 years later, the former area of "[[UsefulNotes/LosAngeles Ellay]]" is divided into several petty chiefdoms with nothing more advanced than muskets (some modern firearms survived, but nobody knows how to make new ones or make more ammo to fit them, and there's always a risk that it'll blow up in your face). Many of the abandoned cars have been repurposed into horse-drawn carts, since they're not that heavy after removing the engine, and others have been cannibalized as a source of metal. Bicycles and lighters from TheBeforetimes still exist, though they have to replace rubber tires with wooden ones and lighter fluid with alcohol spirits.
** In the short story ''Secret Names'', a hunter-gatherer tribe in what was once Texas uses artifacts from the time before the "Big Oops", and some of them are still literate. The tribe's shaman, Madyu, discovers a taxonomy book with the scientific names of various North American animals, which he believes are their [[TrueName True Names]]. He invokes these names in his rituals, to ensure a good hunt, and [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane it works]].
* ''Literature/StarsReach'' takes place in a future America (well, [[LanguageDrift Meriga]]) ravaged by climate change and resource depletion, so its inhabitants have to take what they can get. Trey works as a [[AdventurerArchaeologist ruinman]], and most of his job prior to his journey consists of scavenging through old, ruined buildings to find materials that can be used or sold. On a greater scale, certain cities have walls made of parts of old freeways that have been torn up. [[spoiler:Jennel Cobey's EvilPlan is to [[SubvertedTrope subvert]] this, by using the knowledge of Star's Reach to build modern-style war machines.]]

* The multi-author ''DeathZone'' series (taking place in the same universe as ''Film/{{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.

* ' ''Literature/{{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.

* In ''Literature/TheCaliforniaVoodooGame'', the Game-scenario occupants of [=MIMIC=] use materials scrounged from the damaged {{Arcology}} for clothing, tools, weapons and artwork. One of the first enemies "killed" in the Game carries a club made from a table leg with an old can strapped to the end, and a chunk of concrete stuffed inside for weight.

* Zilpha Keatley Snyder implies this in the ''Literature/GreenSkyTrilogy''. She describes several times how their great public buildings, palaces and temples, which involve some pretty complex engineering, were all built by teams joining their telekinetic powers together to lift heavy stuff. That "uniforce" ability has been lost for many generations. Now the FridgeBrilliance kicks in. These buildings 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.]]

* In ''Literature/ShipBreaker'' by Paolo Bacigalupi, the world is like this. After ClimateChange 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.

* 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.

* ''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.

* Terry Brooks' ''Literature/{{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.

* S.M. Stirling's ''Literature/{{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.

* Zilpha Keatley Snyder implies this in the ''Literature/GreenSkyTrilogy''. She describes several times how their great public buildings, palaces and temples, which involve some pretty complex engineering, were all built by teams joining their telekinetic powers together to lift heavy stuff. That "uniforce" ability has been lost for many generations. Now the FridgeBrilliance kicks in. These buildings 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.]]

* Somewhat averted by S.M. Stirling's ''Literature/{{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.
** The latest books are 46 years into the Change, and salvage is still discussed as a major component of most post-Change nations' economies. In particular, mining has been entirely replaced by scrap metal salvage, and no one will have to open an old mine or start a new one for centuries as the scrap metal of the Change is used up. Salvage goods are valuable enough to go to war over, even though manufacturing under the new rules of physics is starting to catch up.