History Main / DisasterScavengers

** Easy Pete, a character you meet early on in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', prefers the more charitable appellation of "Prospector", both to tie in to the "Post-Apocalyptic Western" vibe New Vegas is going for, as well as to differentiate between folks looking for usable tools, medicine, and weapons, and ''other'' folks looking for junk that can be repurposed. Being a former Prospector, Pete was of the opinion that none of the stuff ''he'' ever found was junk, and sure enough you can find Prospectors and their claims all over the Mohave.

* This is also what's going on in ''Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone''. On planet Terra-Eleven, where an Earth colony has failed catastrophically after a plague, space salvage worker Wolff finds a gang of scavengers fighting bandits who kidnap the stranded travelers Wolff has come to rescue. He teams up with scavenger Niki to find them.

* ''The Survivalist'' series by Jerry Ahern. John Rourke and his sidekick stop to salvage ammunition from an abandoned semi-trailer. As they exit the truck they find themselves confronted by a self-appointed militia who declare them looters who will be summarily executed. Rourke kills two of them and forces the others to walk back to their base -- the [[MoralMyopia militia commander is quite outraged at this]].

* "In Iron Years" by Gordon Dickson has Americans living in a WildWest / CrazySurvivalist mashup. Jeebee Walthar, one of a handful of scholars who mathematically predicted The Collapse, now struggles westward to join with other professors who'll help rebuild some day. He is an actual coward, psychologically unfit to survive in the newly primitive, violent society. The original story is how he obtains vitally important tools, and is accidentally befriended by a huge shepherd dog. This became the novel ''Wolf and Iron'', which is almost a {{Robinsonade}}, and the dog is rewritten as a half-tame grey wolf.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Plenty of animals that will gladly take advantage of natural disasters to snap up some lunch. For example, storks will often use wildfires as a means of eating small animals that are frightened by the flames.
* Unfortunately this is ''extremely'' common during and after natural disasters, riots, and battle zones in war torn countries. Some relief workers have even been attacked by people who want to ''prolong their opportunity to loot and scavenge''. People who really are just trying to get necessities (food, diapers, etc.) before the relief trucks arrive are sadly often still considered to be "looters".
* Archaeologists studying ruined castles often learn as much from examining the older buildings in nearby villages as they do looking at the site itself, as local residents invariably helped themselves to the rubble for their own construction projects.
* Minus any disasters, you'll find urban scavengers, dumpster divers and freegans in any modern city or community. Freegans believe in living entirely on what they find in dumpsters as a way to reduce waste and to protest [[CapitalismIsBad the capitalist system]]. Others do it for profit, selling what they find on Craigslist and Ebay, or keeping what they find for themselves.
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* The pterosaur gang from ''WesternAnimation/TheGoodDinosaur'' make their living by tagging along with storms and picking off small creatures left homeless and disoriented in their wake.

* Mostly everyone in ''Series/{{Jericho}}'', but especially teenager Dale, who gets supplies for the local grocer; and Jonah Prowse, who runs a road gang.
* How the children have survived for over 300 years in ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Star Trek]]'' episode "Miri". Kirk and his team note that the surviving canned goods are starting to run short and that the children will soon starve to death unless they intervene.
* In the ''{{Series/Supernatural}}'' episode, "The End", Dean Winchester meets [[FutureMeScaresMe his future self]], who leads a group [[spoiler: survivors of the Apocalypse]]. He is told by [[spoiler: Prophet of the Lord]] Chuck to "hoard toilet paper like it's made of gold."

%% * The Roamers in ''[[Literature/TheBooksOfEmber The People of Sparks]]''.

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* Minus any disasters, you'll find urban scavengers, dumpster divers and freegans in any modern city or community. Freegans believe in living entirely on what they find in dumpsters as a way to reduce waste and to protest the capitalist system. Others do it for profit, selling what they find on Craigslist and Ebay, or keeping what they find for themselves.

* More than a few places in ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'', perhaps most notably the city of Chiaruscuro (a ruined First Age coastal metropolis composed of skyscrapers of magically durable glass). Even though it is an inhabited and functional hub city, many people still travel into the ruins in search of valuable First Age goods (or even just usable shards of the glass), even though this sometimes necessitates crossing into the shadowlands.
* Many people in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' fall into this, mostly through raiding Space Hulks (waking up the genestealers they tend to contain) or exploring tomb worlds (waking up the Necrons they contain).

%%
->''"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."''

* [[Franchise/{{Kirby}} Sword and Blade]], after resorting to stealing to survive in their war-torn home, try to rob Metaknight while the latter is running from a demon beast. He then saves them from it and they become his [[{{SideKick}} loyal sidekicks]].

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/Fallout4 https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/xqha2xt668fy9yltvwm8.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350: After the whole world breaks, the only way to survive is by picking up the pieces.]]

* ''VideoGame/Warzone2100'''s plot initially revolves around searching for and salvaging pre-[[{{ApocalypseHow}} Class2 Collapse]] military technology, but unlike a typical ScavengerWorld you're collecting it in order to reverse-engineer it and manufacture it yourself.

* Quite common in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' games, and a good way for the PlayerCharacter to make some [[WeirdCurrency caps]] or find good loot. That said, one of the franchise's themes is about rebuilding rather than holding on to the past, [[ApocalypseNot so the setting as a whole is moving away from this]] - new cities have been built out of the ruins of the old, groups like the Followers of the Apocalypse are figuring out how to make medicine out of post-apocalyptic herbs rather than rely on pre-war Stimpacks, while the Gun Runners started as a gang but figured out how to refurbish a gun factory, recycle shell casings, and make fresh gunpowder and propellants. Plus it's been over two hundred years since WorldWarIII, so folks are running out of stuff to scavenge.

* The "S" in VideoGame/{{STALKER}} stands for Scavenger.

* Unfortunately this is ''extremely'' common during and after natural disasters, riots, and battle zones in war torn countries. Some relief workers have even been attacked by people who want to ''prolong their opportunity to loot and scavenge'', but [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment we're going to leave the specific examples of this elsewhere]]. People who really are just trying to get necessities (food, diapers, etc.) before the relief trucks arrive are sadly often still considered to be "looters".

Contrast NobleShoplifter. In a CosyCatastrophe, this character is likely to be TheScrounger. If multiple groups come into conflict, you'll have an ArchaeologicalArmsRace on your hands. Expect DisasterScavengers to frequently be ReducedToRatburgers when their scavenging attempts fail to turn up other food.

* Many people left behind in the ravaged Gotham City in the ''Comicbook/BatmanNoMansLand'' storyline. In a twist, many scavenged for 'useless' stuff like jewels and cash and gold, because the Penguin had a line on food to the outside and knew Gotham would come back sooner or later. But most just looked for food. A can of unspoiled peaches was worth far more than a gold bar.

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[[folder:LiveActionTV]]

* In one DisasterMovie of the Week, the protagonists trying to refuel at a service station while getting out of Dodge, only to find its owners are RightWingMilitiaFanatic-types charging inflated prices.

[[folder:TabletopGames]]

[[folder:VideoGames]]

* The sarcastic novella ''[[https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/8355843?doc=18703 They Don't Make Life Like They Used To]]'' by Creator/AlfredBester is all about scavenging after the nuclear holocaust ("shopping" by leaving [=IOU=]s) to create a semblance of a normal life. Linda Nielsen works on fixing up an ideal home in the [[http://assets.centralparknyc.org/images/things-to-see-and-do/kerbs-l.jpg model-boat house overlooking the Conservatory Waters]] of Central Park. (The [[https://bikerentalcentralpark.com/content/uploads/attractions/5823a140128bb_alice_in_wonderland_sm.jpg Alice in Wonderland monument]] figures prominently too.) Jim Mayo and his friend Gil Watkins ran a bar and a TV station in New Haven just in case anyone ever came there.

* In one DisasterMovie of the Week, the protagonists trying to refuel at a service station while getting out of Dodge, only to find it's owners are RightWingMilitiaFanatic-types charging inflated prices.

[[folder:WesternAnimation]]

* Unfortunately this is ''extremely'' common during and after natural disasters, riots, and battle zones in war torn countries. Some relief workers have even been attacked by people who want to ''prolong their opportunity to loot and scavenge'', but [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment we're going to leave the specific examples of this elsewhere]]. People who really are just trying to get necessities (food, diapers, etc.) before the relief trucks arrive are sadly often still considered to be "looters".

* Unfortunately this is ''extremely'' common during and after natural disasters, riots, and battle zones in war torn countries. Some relief workers have even been attacked by people who want to ''prolong their opportunity to loot and scavenge'', but [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment we're going to leave the specific examples of this elsewhere]].