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Scavenging VS Looting

Photo: zombieresearchsociety

We talk a lot about scavenging after a SHTF event and we do so with vigor.  We also talk about staying safe from looters and marauders. If you follow the letter of the law, scavenging is looting, and both are stealing. This post will discuss 3 opinions on the subject.

Academics who have studied the looting phenomenon have layered it into 3 moral categories. Read about them linked just below from the New York Times

The Moral Ambiguity of Looting 

Then there are those that consider survival scavenging as ethical looting and that it is the making of hero’s during a SHTF event. See that opinion linked here from the NRP.

Heroes And Not Criminals: The Ethics Of Looting

Last but not least there is the prepper’s view of the difference between looting and scavenging. I can say with certainty that in the event of a major SHTF I will scavenge. Which I consider something completely different than looting. Partly because of the length of the event will be a determining factor for me. Under the assumption that if it is a long-term event, what I scavenge will no longer be of use to its absent owners and a necessity to my own and my family or groups survival. I won’t be grabbing any big screen televisions out of store windows during a riot! I have supplies, so I won’t be scavenging during an event that can be expected to end in the near future.  Nor will I be taking something from another prepper without his/her consent with violence. But I will strongly resist by whatever force may be required to prevent another from taking what survival supplies I do have. If someone wants to share in my supplies, they will earn them.  My personal moral compass rates that as looting which I see just as wrong as price gouging during a disaster

See another prepper’s view of the distinction between scavenging and looting from The Survival Mom linked below

How are Looting and Scavenging Different?

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