Junkyard Contents

Whats some stuff you could find sitting around in a modern junkyard/dump? Not just discarded food, but items. Stuff that could be salvaged and made into something. Assume there's laws about what gets dumped there.

Assume there's NO laws about what gets dumped there.

Fuck.

Piles and pile and piles of dead appliances, shipping containers of televisions. Unending piles of 'miscellaneous' junk that smells weird and shifts weirdly underfoot. Anything valuable probably goes to a 'recycling' centre that strips it for raw materials and sends it to fucking china for sale. Entirely too many kids and hobos. I spent five minutes carefully stalking a manniquin that was moving very slightly in the wind because I thought it was a person.

>I spent five minutes carefully stalking a manniquin that was moving very slightly in the wind because I thought it was a person

Why were you stalking what you thought was a person?

Work as a seccy. Just finished up nearly a decade as a bouncer, was doing my rounds and saw what I thought was an intruder. So, you know, chance to impress the new bosses and never have to go back to the old job.

Why do hobos hang out in a junkyard? Scavenging things?

And how does a junkyard turn a profit anyways? Do they just charge people to dump stuff? Or do they actively salvage it?

Depends, there's a few different types. Cars and plant tend to get ripped apart for parts pretty quick, or repaired if possible and immediately resold. Raw metal tends to get shipped overseas here, usually china. Sometimes they just send the junk and it's processed in a factory, but if you can get straight metal the price is better, apparently (Which is why junkies like to steal copper).

A lot of garbage dumps here are council operated. They charge by weight - you go in, tell them what you're dumping, they give you a price, you pay, go in, and they compare the weigh in from your in and out times and see if you've been under or overcharged. Many have attached 'recycling' and 'reclamation' centres for processing junk, if it isn't sent overseas (which is mostly what happens with private yards).

>Assume there's NO laws about what gets dumped there.
if such is the case then Anything.

Used to go dumpster diving at the local junkyard as a kid. This was a coastal town, so sometimes the stench from the massive piles of fish skeletons was overwhelming.
The coolest thing I ever found was an early 20th century computing machine. The mechanical kind, with a crank. Still worked, too.

Car parts. Not necessarily for use as car parts, but the materials they're made out of are good stuff.

Discarded diapers. There's your bioweapon ammunition.

Horrific slurries of chemicals. Mostly leaking battery acid, but you'd be stupid not to prepare for worse.

Appliances and Computers can be nearly completely fine, with only one section broken.

Rubber is good shit, used right.

you'd be surprised at the number of books that show up

Shards of broken glass. Shards of sharp metal (often rusty). Shards of broken plastics.

Have you run into a junkyard in a game? They're pretty interesting places to set a fight or something.

used diapers, furniture, all sorts of old or defunct electronics, dead (usually) pets, toys, clothes, books, occasionally travel luggage with intact contents, rarely weapons

The junkyard near where I grew up had a designated asbestos dumping ground.

People throw their dead pets in the dumpster?! Is burying a shoe box in the garden too expensive?

Followup question: what would you find in a junkyard in an urban fantasy type setting? Feels like such places would inevitably spawn some kind of toxic elementals or junk goblins sooner or later.

Not everyone has a garden.
Not everyone is disposing of pet they owned / liked.

Depends. I mean, what is the "spirit" of a junkyard?

I'm thinking along the lines of Japanese folklore, where discarded household items, clothes etc tend to turn into vengeful monsters and spirits. Anything from old umbrellas and prayer bells to sandals and teapots show up as monsters in Japanese folklore.
Which kinda makes sense, since those stories encourage people to take better care other belongings.

>Pipes for creation of pipe bombs and flamethrowers
>Wrenches, crowbars, wirecutters, ect.
>Rusty but still functional sidearms
>Ammunition up the wazoo
>Half-full tanks of fuel
>Charcoal, paper, and other flammables
>Rusted cars and engines
>Food in various degrees of staleness and decay
>Trash cans
>Toilets and various other plumbing
>Rusted pieces of metal
>Aluminum and Tin cans
>Rusting knives, swords, and axes
>Appliances in various states of disrepair
>Bottles
>Springs, cogs, and other pieces of scrap metal

If the team has a mechanic it could become even more interesting if you allow weapon building. Go nuts.

There's all kinds of amazing crap at junkyards, I sneak in to go trash diving all the time. Mostly I see a lot of paper and plastic and wood, but there's all sorts of cool stuff like old furniture and even clothes.

Unforunately the really good stuff, like electronics, are usually in a separate area that is more closely watched.