Russian Space Junk Scavengers

From the Department of Space Exploration

There's this cluster of ten villages in remote northwest Russia where space debris falls from the sky. I just found out about this and thought it was so cool. They scavenge it for materials to either repurpose the material (like building a reindeer skin lined sled made out of titanium alloy sheets from rocket boosters) or cut it up and sell to buyers.

This is so niche post-apocalyptic-core I thought these were AI images at first. But I found several articles from 6 or 7 years ago that tell the story of these people. You can read those here: LINK and LINK

It’s not all fun and games though. Apparently, with space debris you get fuel toxins in your soil and water and a lot of these communities suffer from strange medical conditions. The Russian gov denies it's from their spent rockets. *eye-roll*

I think this is some solid inspiration for a cool sci-fi story. It practically writes itself.

-Jake