Survival Skillset #6: Scavenging

This article is part six of a continuing in-depth series about survival skills, the beginning of which can be found here.

Scavenging & Salvaging

This skillset covers the subject of scavenging for items and materials to use and then salvaging those things for use in your new post-collapse circumstances. For the most part, this skillset is really just more about awareness of the new reality of the world and your actions within it rather than specific skills. Although many of the needed skills are covered already, there remain a few things to sort out with regard to scavenging in particular. In general, this is not something that traditional preppers spend too much time going over. Everything out there that is not your property is, after all, someone else’s property.

The difference for a collapse prepper is that this ownership of things is no longer the case. There are no more governments, no laws or regulations, no property rights, and in fact, there is no society that such things need in order to function.

No matter what else happens, the collapse of civilization means the old world is gone for good. And unless you are one of these billionaires building fancy bunkers in New Zealand and such, eventually you are going to run up against the problem of running out of things. Whether it is food, medicine, or some more obscure materials, you are going to have to find more of it. The good news is that you no longer have to budget your finances to account for it, but the bad news is that you have to leave the safety of your isolated compound and go out into the world and find the stuff you need. And that can be dangerous.

Scavenging Vs Looting

Before we get into this too far, it is important that we define what “scavenging” actually means. Many people, including prepper types, will use the word in conjunction with looting, but the reality of it is that looting and scavenging are quite different things. Looting is the taking of property that you know belongs to someone else, with the intent to deprive them of it for your own benefit. A malicious and immoral thing.

After any disaster, and certainly as a part of the collapse in an urban area, quite a few people will be seeking to improve their own survival position by looting property and supplies from businesses and houses whose security has been compromised by the disaster. You see it happen all the time in hurricanes, floods, and even places affected by economic disasters, such as Sri Lanka or Lebanon most recently. In the beginning stages of a collapse situation, it won’t really be much different than any other disaster, except maybe even more common.

However, scavenging is much different than looting. Scavenging and salvaging are context-specific and morally guided processes in the very specific situation of societal collapse. In this context, society as a whole has not only broken down but is not coming back again, and it will most likely be accompanied by several mass casualty events that render owners of property…unalive. This is not a time when you are stealing from anyone. This is a situation where the global community has degraded to the point where all previous status has been rendered moot and it is every person for themselves. And each person, or group, has to prioritize improving their own chances of survival, casting aside societal norms and rules which no longer apply. This means that those about to engage in scavenging need to be situationally aware, and clear about their moral stance, but they must also keep in mind that the world has irrevocably changed forever. There will be no standing to laws and rules anymore, and you will have to rely on your own moral compass for guidance.

Morality is something that is going to come up all the time regarding scavenging. More than one of you reading this section is going to want to lecture me and everyone else on how stealing is wrong. And the thing is, I agree with you completely on that. But at the same time, during the total collapse of civilization, it is a guarantee that you will have to do a lot of hard things if you don’t want to suffer and die, or watch your loved ones go before you. The world, and its ideas of right and wrong, will shrink to become you and your immediate sphere of influence. What is right and wrong for you? That is what matters.

Ultimately it is up to you what path you let your morality lead you down during the collapse that is coming for society. One thing for sure is that those who are willing to accept the new reality and do some things that they normally would not, they are the ones who will have a much better chance of surviving long enough for anything like community and social cohesion to re-emerge in the world. On the flip side, there are some people out there who would rather die than do some things they consider wrong.

To each their own.

During war, or a collapse, things are going to be abandoned, probably entire cities, and it is just a simple fact that once it has gotten to that point, there is no way that your deciding to hold back from scavenging is going to be good for anyone except all the others that are going to come along and scavenge what you did not.

That being said, moral awareness is still a key factor. The consequences of your actions could directly or indirectly lead to the reduction of someone else’s chances of survival, and while you must put the needs of your few ahead of the unnamed many, you have to take care not to lose your humanity in the process. Morals will be the only standard of right and wrong that remains in the world. In regular local or even regional disasters, it doesn’t really matter how much shit hits the fan, because as bad as it may be it is only temporary. Collapse is different. It is not a situation that will return to normal at some future date, with things getting repaired and people going back to their lives. It is quite literally the end of all of that. For the rest of your lifetime, and perhaps very far beyond. The moral standards of your group need to be clarified long before it happens, and the exceptions to them weighed and measured.

Looting is an ignorant decision that, during a normal disaster, works against the common good by compromising society’s ability to recover and repair. This compromise of social cohesion leads to a fractured community and increases the overall damage and disruption of the disaster upon it. Scavenging, on the other hand, doesn’t affect social cohesion. There is no social cohesion anymore because society itself is long gone.

Post-Collapse Scavenge Planning

The first thing you must remember is that this is not a temporary survival situation. When you go on a scavenging run, you are not collecting a few things to survive in the short term. The types of things that catch preppers off guard are more likely to destroy them than things that they are prepared for. If you are doing things right, you will have all of your needs covered long before the collapse of civilization actually begins, and you will be able to ride out the initial “food riots” and looting phase far away and well stocked. But inevitably, there will come a time when you no longer have enough. Or you will realize that you should have had certain things but failed to get them before the collapse kicked off in full. One way or the other, eventually, you are going to have to go out and look for new things to supplement what you already have.

A scavenging run starts with strategic planning. Questions have to be considered when planning what you are scavenging for. You are not just going out to find whatever you can, there has to be a direction, a specific objective, and a plan. What are you going out for? Where can you find it? How are you going to transport it? What dangers or threats could interfere? In addition, you have to consider the long-range needs of yourself and your group, not just short-term things. Looking for food is great, but you are not just out to solve the problems of this week, you are looking to solve the problem…period. So, that scavenging mission should involve not just food, but seeds and hunting or farming equipment.

Scavengers in the wasteland should not just be going out hoping to find food at some ruined grocery store, or tools at the local burned-out Home Depot. Those places will be long since cleaned out and picked over. Instead, when planning where to go, consider the journey those items take from origin to disposal.

Take food for example. If you think of the path our food takes going from farmer to processor, retailer to customer, you will think of all sorts of places that you could target for a scavenging run. This is one of those times when your local and regional knowledge comes into play, especially things you will have recorded on your collapse maps. Some prime scavenger resource spots would be things like industrial farming operations, distribution centers, processing facilities, and so on. These are things that can be found well outside the primary urban centers where everything has already been looted, and so they are more likely to still have some things worth salvaging.

You also have to think unconventionally about what you are going to scavenge for. Take seeds, for example. When a collapse event goes down in urban areas, if there are any seeds on the shelf in the first place, most people are not going to see them as something they want to grab right away. Twinkies and bags of chips are going to disappear pretty fast, but seeds will be left by the wayside for a time. While some people in urban areas grow gardens and such, for the most part, it will not be until the collapse is obvious that most people will realize how growing food has become a part of their new reality. Even if you are not in a position to grow food right away, there may be a time when those seeds can make a big difference to your future survival.

There is a long list of things I am sure you can think of, from water purification chemicals to shoes. The idea is to concentrate on those things which you cannot easily make for yourself, and those things which will not be able to be replaced through other means in the future. Clothing, tools, weapons, ammunition, batteries…the list goes on.

Staying Safe on A Run

In any place where there are things still available to scavenge, there will also be a lot of desperate people or groups running around after the same things. You need to be very careful, safety always has to be your number one consideration. After societal collapse has progressed to a certain degree, there will be less and less stuff around to scavenge. Some places will become very unsafe, especially the ruins of large urban areas. The places that are harder to get to and were more isolated before collapse will be the places that will be safer to scavenge and search through, as opposed to other places that had a high concentration of people originally. There are a few things to remember and some rules to follow if you want to stay safe.

One of them is that, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Using something desirable for bait is an old trick in the playbook. If you are out exploring and see something very useful that has not been available or easy to get for a long time, you really need to take a second look. Scan for things that are out of place or any signs of recent activity, or even movement on the outside perimeters. In cities and towns, any building that looks down on where those coveted items are located could easily conceal a person or group that wishes to ambush you and take what you have. You have to be on your toes with your head on a swivel at all times. Booby traps are going to be a post-collapse reality. Sometimes, people just like you, have things cached somewhere or they are living in a place and don’t want to be disturbed. Look for any sort of item that looks like it was purposely placed. While people often take extra care to make it look like there is nothing like this, sometimes small things get overlooked. Tripwires are a common booby trap method. Lines can be hard to spot, but certainly not impossible. Just remember that every place you go that is not your home camp is a dangerous place and treat it as such.

Another thing to be conscious of is the structural integrity of the buildings you enter. Buildings will become structurally unsound very fast once civilization has collapsed and all maintenance and repairs have stopped. The process of such decay is sped up considerably with buildings that have experienced damage from an impact, earthquake, explosion, and so forth. A lot of people do not realize just how fast a structure can fall into decay and become unsafe. Scavenging will be taking you into some bad places, and while dealing with all the other dangers of the new world the last thing you want to do is to fall through a floor or have a wall collapse on top of you.

Injury must be avoided at all costs, and this becomes much more critical post-collapse as there will be a distinct lack of medical care. Simple infections from minor injuries can, and did, kill people without modern medical treatment. Stepping on a nail is no longer a quick trip to get a tetanus shot, it is a potential death sentence.