Sorry to kick the corpse again, but another little factoid came up recently as I was doing more of my digging that I think is quite interesting. In a normal military situation, especially one with limited resources, it is a well followed and unwritten law that if an enemy goes down, you
strip the body of anything valuable including ammo, food, guns, etc. That's been an unwritten rule of warfare for ages. In a disaster survival situation exactly the same rule would apply. Especially if you're short on supplies. If you get attacked and drop the guy, frisk him and take anything valuable. If you find an abandoned house, search it for resources. Even if it's already been ransacked, someone might have left something behind that was of no use to them, but is to you.
Yet the odd thing is, I don't see many (actually, I only know of two books, and a few movies) books or movies where that's covered. They did it a little bit in Battlefield LA when they rallied at the busted up Marine base, and I know of one book off the top of my head where the guys were knocking down baddies and ransacking the corpses for ammo and supplies. In situations like that, the more you can salvage or scavenge, the better off your changes are.
Anywho, that came up recently so I wanted to toss that out there. On a side thought, it would be interesting if a real situation like that came up to see how many people actually did that, and what kinds of things they might find. For example, you run onto a dead person and all they have is a half full lighter. To the average person that looks like junk. To me it looks like an additional way to start a fire for cooking and warmth. (well, assuming it still works. lol.)
Yes, I admit that the thought of what you'd be doing is a bit morbid, and there's almost certainly some moral issues you'd have to deal with, but if it's a choice between ransacking a dead body in order to acquire supplies, or adding yourself to the body count, option one is always the best choice.
