The most pentiful resource of the post-poc, used for lots of things.
Scrap is obtained by scavenging the remains of the world, and can be used by various people to build, improve, maintain, or support. It serves as both a vital resource and trading goods, with most settlements happily exchanging it.
As a general rule, Tier 1 Scrap is the baseline, with Tier 2 Scrap being better or more pure examples of it. Higher tier Scrap can be converted instantly to a lower tier at a rate of 1:5. One Lab-Grade Chem Scrap can become five Home-Grade Chem Scrap, etc. This cannot be done in reverse to produce higher quality Scrap.
Higher quality Scrap always sells for more, and some unusual devices even specifically need high quality inputs, but you can easily dip into the supply if you need to.
A simple name for a staggeringly vast assortment of metal, wood, plastic, and other material components. Due to the high variety of rubbish that can be found across the post-poc, it’s split into Low-Grade, Work-Grade, and High-Grade.
Low-Grade Scrap is jagged metal, shards of wood, glass bottles, and other such nearly worthless things. It’s not very helpful when making things on the fly – even for a Scrapper – but any suitably equipped town would be willing to buy it in bulk for repurposing.
Work-Grade Scrap is sheet metal, sturdy wood, maybe even a swatch of Kevlar or the like. The bread and butter of a Scrapper, with most parts able to be repurposed with ease. Most merchants will happily buy this.
High-Grade Scrap is the best stuff that you can’t use; rare alloys, fine-toothed gears, and other delicate bits and bobs. Worth it’s weight in gold to a Scrapper, let alone a town, most people would fall over themselves to take this off your hands.
A much rarer kind of scrap that serves very little practical function for even Scrappers, but is often highly prized in towns for specialist production, attempts to overhaul currency, or just good old-fashioned avarice. Silver, platinum, palladium, and even gold can all be recovered from such scrap. Precious Scrap comes in Tarnished and Pristine forms.
Tarnished Precious Scrap is things like shards of plated computer components, fragments of inlaid furniture, mangled capacitors, and other dilapidated parts. As only minute quantities of precious material can be salvaged from these, they’re only recognised as useful by settlements with the means to extract it; to everyone else it’s basically Low-Grade Scrap.
Pristine Precious Scrap is clearly valuable. Rows of gold pins, silver embedded into wood, platinum candlesticks, and more; even in the resource-short times of the pre-poc, there was still room for opulence... Even small-time traders will see the worth of these things and either sell them on or take the time to reclaim what they can.
Similar to ordinary scrap, except it’s chemicals stored in some kind of sealed container. As ‘Low-Grade’ Chem Scrap is closer to a hazard than a help, it’s split into Home-Grade and Lab-Grade.
Home-Grade Chem Scrap is bottles of isopropyl alcohol, bleach and other cleaning supplies, non-expired medication, and other similar chemical substances that could be found in the average person’s home pre-poc. Handy enough for Chemists to get some use out of, but a lot of towns would probably be interested.
Lab-Grade Chem Scrap is the top-shelf stuff; virulent acids, powerful reagents, and the purest form of chemistry-waiting-to-happen. Able to fill the gaps in most travelling Chemists’ collections, and highly prized in any half-decent settlement, a small amount is valuable. A full drum of any Lab-Grade Chem Scrap is definitely worth the effort to haul.
Similar to ordinary scrap, except comprised of either parts of broken down electronics, or the pieces need to build new ones.
Recycled E-Scrap is shards of circuit boards, bent fans, frayed wires, and other incomplete pieces of electrical or electronic devices. A skilled technician could find workable parts among this, and settlements like to keep a quantity on hand, but it’s not great stuff.
Commercial E-Scrap is comprised of quality electronics. Pristine circuit boards, functional spare parts, and even whole devices that serve little to no use these days, but are full of components ready to be repurposed. Very valuable to anyone who knows their way around machinery.