I have been cruising past 31 miles of massive debris piles on Goat Island and Bolivar Peninsula, just east of Galveston, Tx. I have seen several boats, large and small, beached upright and upside down, capsized, and 1 even planted in the mud at it's stern, so that it's bow points to the heavens. I have seen some of the best lumber and timbers, seasoned and treated, plastic barrels, boxes, campers, 1 house (looked like Dorothy's house/Wizard of Oz after landing), several armed (shotguns) cadaver dog teams (yes, they are still searching the rubble), and many, many other useful items to someone in a survival situation.

That brings up the question, where are the best places to look for manmade items that would be useful to someone in a survival situation.

Water being more powerful than wind, I tend to look along creeks, streams, rivers, and lakes. Many things go over a waterfall to run aground just below the waterfall along the edge of the bowl. These items, among others seem to be common: large and small line, fishing line (with equipment attached), 5 gal plastic buckets, lumber, garden hose, life jackets and rings, and old cars, to name a few.

A motorcycle riding friend of mine, driving down old farm roads once came across an old southern style mansion, abandoned and vandalized. After looking over the house, he noticed a garbage pile in the backyard. Being a bottle collector, he started digging in the pile, searching,,,,until he came up against a door. The door led to a Fallout Shelter that was stocked with canned water, C-Rats, and boxes upon boxes of legal type records (land deeds and who knows what else).

What places would you tend to seek out to find materials in the mountains, snow covered hills up north, out on the plains, etc???

One might look around telecom sites (antenna farms and shelters or repeater shelters). Some are stocked with minimal supplies (rarely) and usually climate controlled. There is also a land line for the tech's to contact the network ops center during maintenance. You will have to break in though and they are alarmed. At least if lost with no comm's you would be found. (If you want to be.)

I often find interesting stuff along the railroad tracks, abandonned oil wells, and forsaken homesteads. Rivers and creek offer the the best, most consistant scavenging for useful things like rope, tarps, bottles, etc...

Oh yeah, I also find knives, cell phones, tools, shopes, etc by bumpy sections of ATV/4-wheeler tracks.

-Blast

1 thing I forgot to mention,,,,,,

Santa is actually only 3 foot tall and made of plastic. I know this because he's stretched out on the Goat Island Beach, on top of a sheet of plywood.

It just goes to prove that even Christmas decorations are available to the everyday lost-in-the-woods Outdoorsman/lady!!

On west coast beaches:
Miles of rope and fish nets, japanese fishing floats. Odd assortments of flotsam and jetsam and a surprising amount of heavier metal objects that wash in (God knows how because they certainly didn't float there.) Plus seafood if you understand how to fish and forage for it.

Northern forests:
Anything near a town, even a small town is likely vandalized or picked over too bad to help you much, but that means you are fairly close to town and help.
The problem is that with skidoos the kids can get 50 or 60 miles into the woods in the winter to wreck stuff like line shacks, construction and logging camps, rail sidings and their Jeep sheds.

Old mine camps. (be very careful because there might be open mine shafts in the area. If you fall down one you might not come out)

I have seen fairly recent mining camps that were simply abandoned when the mine ceased operations. They just shut the doors and walked away because they were not worth hauling out.
One included a fully equipped kitchen with pots, pans and the silverware. You would have been able to move right into the place if you needed shelter.
Older places are likely to have sheet metal, nails, wire, iron bars or pipes even if the buildings are gone.
Containers are common in their dumps. Tin and plastic was likely burned or is rusted and decayed to bad to be useful. You will find glass jars if the antique hunters did not beat you to it.

Old rail lines had tool sheds and often they simply left everything when they abandoned the line. There quite a few smaller rail spurs years ago. They are sometimes still marked on the topos.

Many of these mine, construction, rail and logging camps are noted on your topographic maps, but not all were. Keep an eye out for old roads.
Mines are all supposed to be noted on the geological and claims maps, but a lot of the older ones were never recorded. Again, watch out for old mine shafts and don't step into one. The worst are vent shafts because they are small enough for the bushes and moss to hide, but they might be hundreds of feet deep.
Think of falling down an abandoned well, same idea.

Portage points. Often you find useful stuff at the start or end of a portage trail. It was likely left there to help you, or the old trapper who used to travel that line, get over the portage.
Trappers often stashed canoes at the end of a portage to save themselves carrying it over the portage again. He would land his canoe and carry his stuff to the canoe at the other end of the portage, then paddle to the next portage and repeat. Reverse direction on the way back out.

Dam sites. There was likely a camp for it and a portage around it.

I am not suggesting you deliberately go out of your way to seek these types of places out just for scavenging.
If you have to travel it is much easier to walk down an old rail line or road than be breaking your own trail. You might be lucky enough to have an old road going your way.
That might be better than the materials you might find.
These places are often the reason those roads are there.

I concur with Blast- I grew up "walking the tracks", amazing what was left behind, plus was a good, flat, elevated way to walk between several wooded areas quickly.

But in the spirit of the original post, I would look in garages and barns. People stow things away (in fact, I think I'm guilty of that!), thinkin', "I'm gonna need that some day".

There is a local semi-rural road here named "Powderhouse". Named so because back in the days that what is now a nuke missile base used to be a cavalry fort and they had an underground cache of rifles and powder in the area. Over the course of time the exact location was forgotten. One of these days someone will be digging a foundation for a house or ditches for water lines and find it. As the story goes it contains the "treasure" of rifles and kegs of black powder.

A friends family bought property south of Laramie Wyoming in the 80s and found an intact "dugout" style house on the property after they had it about 5 years. There were still plates sitting on the table, clothes on the beds and the pantry stocked with cans and jars, the most recent label read 1903. No records in the county seat of anyone ever living on the property or any structures being built.

One thing I'd hit in a search for useable stuff is an auto junk yard. Being a "car guy" take my word for it, you can run into some handy stuff. Cars get totalled in accidents and towed off, often the owners forget what was in the trunk etc and never bother to reclaim it. I've seen blankets, clothes, tools, knives, even a rusty old gun on one occasion.

In walks the voice of caution.....

In this day and age of illicit "farming and cooking" operations, please remember that the abandoned shack and the field it is in may be in use.

In the days of old one of my jobs in the National Guard (after active duty) was to help clear the pot fields of booby traps before the troops came in to cut the field. I have found rusted fish hooks hung at eye level, punji stake pits, home made shotguns using a rat trap & trip wire and even one honest to God claymore mine. The person who set the claymore had some serious skill too. SOB almost killed me with it. If I had tripped that mine I would have been mush in a bag. (he had enough skill to turn a command det mine into a trip mine with it's own power for the cap)

Next on the list is the chemicals used in the making of crystal meth. None of them are good and you don't want to be near them. No way do you want to be around the folks using/cooking.

Then you have your property owners. Some states (Texas [castle doctrine]) will let you pop a trespasser and then if he lives ask him what he wanted.

Yeah, I know all gloom and doom but please be cautious out there.

While dangerous as hell, and illegal in lots of places, the shoulders of interstate highways. Folks have a flat at night, unload the trunk, put on the spare, throw the flat into the trunk, and often forget to reload their stuff in the trunk before they drive off. I have found bag phones (back when they were in style), wrapped Christmas presents, lots and lots of tools, you name it. (and yes, I turned the stuff in, or at least most of it, per departmental policy)...

Old foundations are fun to poke around, amazing what you find in or near them. I've found bottle worth some reasonable money buried near old foundations and trash heaps in the woods