Trouble in Paradise

Resources for things like houses were easy enough to obtain. Anything outside of that was a bit more difficult. The main group felt that metal supplies should be used for only listed items -nails and garden implements mostly- and couldn't see the point of anything else. There were even a few extremely conservative groups that thought any excess metals not immediately needed by the majority should be dumped in the 'garbage faults' that had opened in the earth.

A few enterprising souls raided the collection points that had been setup before an official decision would be reached. They sorted and melt down the various finds and stored them in bars at a not entirely public location.

It wasn't that the were against the majority, but rather that they didn't want to see other people's short-sightedness make things more difficult than they needed to be. The official decision was that it was something along the lines of 'out of sight, out of mind'. If it was the conservative group that dumped the metals and they were gone – there was nothing that could be done. On the other hand, if it was salvaged, there was an appeal that materials be made available to the public if there was determined to be a need for them.

The majority of people simply did without, as long as their basic needs were met, they didn't see it as a pressing issue. They seemed convinced that things buried in the earth were done so for a reason and settled for materials that were more readily available. Officially that was the stance of the ruling organization. Unofficially they knew where the resources were, and relied on the salvage teams whenever a need arose.

Those inclined to the sciences were eager to get back to where humans had been technologically before the cataclysm. They found that working openly spurned a lot of pointless debate, so they were generally a bit secretive about their work.

As it became harder to hide what they were doing, the officially word wrote a long overdue piece on the re-discovered technology, and suddenly it was acceptable, as it was officially sanctioned.