"The planet's name: Koppai. Due to a booming population, booming appetites, and a basic lack of planning, Koppai's inhabitants have all but exhausted their food supply. Their only hope is to find another planet with edible matter."
— Pikmin 3 opening narration
Living beings have needs, and the key to survival revolves around managing to satisfy them. In the case of humans, particularly from the 20th century onwards, those needs can be summarized into three categories: water, food, and energy. Water and food are crucial to nourishing the body, and the former is also important for secondary activities like washing, taking a shower, and nourishing plants, while energy (especially electric) makes life easier. So when something starts depleting, it becomes a major problem. The town (or even planet) might approach The Famine, a shortage of fuel or energy, and/or a (literal) drought.
To prevent that outcome, one or more characters embark on a quest to solve the problem.
If it's just a town or nation that is struggling, then it only takes going to a different place to perform the search. The character might try an investment or negotiation if the place is inhabited, or simply extract the necessary resource from its natural whereabouts if it isn't, to succeed. However, in the case of a planet-wide scarcity, resupplying won't be an easy task, because doing so will require extending the search to other planets. Either way, the character will be driven by the motivation of securing a future for their homeland as well as their beloved ones.
Since Tropes Are Flexible, it also counts if the scarcity is deliberately caused by a villainous faction in order to cause harm to, or even kill, those who are supplied with it. Also, depending on the case, not all characters will resort to altruistic means to find the resources, as some may consider doing so at the expense of another faction or society needing them as well. In the worst-case scenario, one faction may resort to seizing or stealing another one's resources.
Note that, despite its name, Resource-Gathering Mission is rarely intertwined with this trope, as it revolves instead around an objective in Strategy Games to gather material resources to perform a construction, improve or expand your army, or weaken that of the enemy factions. However, combining both tropes is still possible, usually coming in the form of Item Farming.
This trope can be the lifesaving mission for a Terminally Dependent Society (which revolves around an explicit dependence on an Applied Phlebotinum or MacGuffin to thrive, or even exist at all), or for a world living a Post-Peak Oil period or an Overpopulation Crisis. Closely related to No Blood for Phlebotinum, which is about armed conflicts over goods and resources (though often more due to profit potential than shortages).
Super-Trope to Cold Equation, which revolves around killing expendable people to reduce the depletion rate of resources, instead of replenishing the resources themselves and/or increasing their production rate.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Dragon Ball: One of the characters Goku faces during the 21st Tenkaichi Budokai is Nam, a young warrior who hails from a village that suffers from a severe drought and wants to win the tournament to buy the necessary water with the prize money. Goku defeats him, but Roshi (while under the Jackie Chun persona) gives him a special capsule that can store water, allowing him to get some from the rich sources around the area where the tournament takes place. Later in the story, it's revealed that the drought in the village is caused by Merry-Go-Round Gum from Giran (another contestant of the tournament) blocking a dam and thus obstructing the flow of water. Goku destroys the gum and ends the drought for good.
- Fist of the North Star sees Kenshiro meet an old man who gathered a bag full of rice seeds in the hopes of helping his village's food shortage by growing rice as a renewable food source. When accosted by bandits, he tries to get them to understand that the seeds are for the future, and that they could also benefit if they let him plant the seeds and grow the crops, as he was willing to share the harvest. Unfortunately, the bandits don't listen and proceed to kill the old man and his fellow villagers. For a mercy, Kenshiro made sure the bandits got their due, and planted the seeds on the old man's grave as a sign of respect.
- Magic Knight Rayearth: This trope is the reason why the emissary commanding the battleship of Autozam, Eagle Vision, is leading that planet's invasion of Cephiro in the second season. Autozam is a City Planet that has thrived in the field of technology and weaponry thanks to the mental energy of its inhabitants. However, due to the resulting worldwide pollution, people's wills have debilitated, and therefore the collective mental energy has begun to dwindle. With the pillar of Cephiro (which has been vacant since the death of Princess Emeraude). Autozam can get a fresh source of energy, and Eagle Vision is willing to be its new guardian despite Hikaru's warning about him potentially suffering the same fate that doomed the aforementioned Emeraude. As the story progresses, a more personal reason for Eagle to take over the pillar is revealed, showing a more intricate layer of his morality.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: One episode of the original series revolves around the crew of the White Base running low on salt for their food, a vital nutrient, forcing them to change course to a nearby salt lake to restock. Complications arise when it turns out the lake changes locations every so often, so their first detour finds only a dry lakebed, and Zeon forces take advantage of their wandering to stage an ambush.
- Sand Land: The titular desert has long suffered a severe drought for years, leading Rao to seek out the Phantom Lake/Legendary Spring to bring hope to the people, recruiting the Fiend Prince Beelzebub and his retainer Thief to his cause. While the spring doesn't quite work out because it's already inhabited by the surviving Picchi, and the heroes decide humanity has already screwed the Picchi over enough, it's later revealed that the kingdom of Sand Land had actually built a dam over one of the major rivers in the region. The heroes soon destroy the dam to release the water. While this is not a perfect solution, since Sand Land is, well, still a desert, it brings much-needed relief to the inhabitants and a fighting chance to survive.
Audio Plays
- The Sojourn: The main plot of the series is that the Tantalus Cluster, an isolated star cluster where human civilization resides, is rapidly running out of exploitable resources and experiencing famines and political instabilities as a result. The Avalon Expedition is a desperate mission to colonize a (relatively) nearby nebula to secure resources that will halt the collapse before it becomes irreversible.
Fanfiction
- A Ghost in a Strange Land: As Chaldea discusses in London, as powerful as the Demon God Pillars are, even they can't make something out of nothing. The events of London, even Septem, had them taking their time to build their forces and supplies so that when they launched their campaign, they'd be ready.
- Fire Emblem Three Houses Quest: After Tristain becomes King Reagent, the Four Sages promptly destroy Morfis' Food Production Hub in a bid to destabilize his reign. He manages to fix things by doing two very important things: throwing a whole bunch of cash at the problem, and passing an emergency decree that allows mages of all stripes to make food once they have passed a competency test.
- Welcome to Night City, Mr. House!: House explains in plain Enlightened Self-Interest terms what is it that he wants from the Night City characters: his world created amazing technology, but is no longer capable of making more of it and maintenance is becoming harder as knowledge is lost. Population took a nosedive in the nuclear war and recovery is intolerably slow. On the other hand, they have abundant natural resources and a mostly-recovered world. On its end, Night City suffers from tremendous overpopulation, resource scarcity and endemic corporate greed, but they have a vast pool of skilled labor, a technology tree capable of massively improving the already impressive Fallout tech, and a vast market that desperately needs resources and the ideas House brings. House hopes to have both sides come to an understanding to mutually solve their problems.
Film — Animated
- The Land Before Time:
- The first movie follows Littlefoot and his friends as they search for The Great Valley, where plants and water are plentiful, when their old lands finally run dry.
- The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving: When a meteor crashes into the Mysterious Beyond, it inadvertently cuts off the Great Valley's water supply. As the drought causes the situation to break down between the adults, it's left up to Littlefoot and the others to go into the Mysterious Beyond and find the source of the problem and somehow fix it so water can return to their homeland.
- The Lion King (1994): Defied by Scar. After the Time Skip following the Big Bad's usurpation of the throne in Pride Rock, it is shown that there are barely any preys left for the lionesses to hunt and thus feed themselves and the hyenas with, and Pride Lands as a whole became a dry, precarious wasteland. At first, only the leading hyena trio files this complaint in front of Scar, who simply says it's up to the lionesses to find food. But shortly before the movie's climax, Sarabi files the same complaint to him on behalf of the entire kingdom, and suggests to him the idea of moving elsewhere. Scar stubbornly refuses, even accusing her and the lionesses of not trying hard enough to find food. The situation only improves after Scar gets killed and Simba is sworn king as always intended.
- Monsters, Inc. 1: Monstropolis is powered by the screams of human children, but modern kids have been Conditioned to Accept Horror and are harder to scare, leading to increasing power shortages. The Big Bad plans to fix this by abducting human children and forcibly extracting their screams via machine. Sully and Mike, in the process of stopping them, accidentally discover a way to circumvent the problem entirely: just use human laughter, which is ten times more powerful.
- Rango: The eponymous main character reaches Dirt, a small town in a desert that has stopped receiving water, and the only source available is from the town's mayor who tries to curate it while the drought is ongoing. Rango is given the task to discover why water stopped coming, and at one point pursues a team of bandits that appear to be transporting a stolen bottle of water as contraband, only to discover that it's empty. He later discovers that it was the mayor himself who blocked the pass of water so he could get rid of the town in favor of a more advanced modern city. After the revealed Big Bad is defeated (and taken to parts unknown by Rattlesnake Jake for a vengeful murder), water is brought back to town.
Film — Live-Action
- Daybreakers: Prior to the events of the movie, the vampires have failed to account for the remaining human population when the rate of blood consumption became too high (as a result of vampires drastically outnumbering them) to keep it as a sustainable source of nourishment. Different solutions are considered: The main character aims to develop some sort of synthetic blood to (literally) satiate the population's needs, another character aims to find a cure for vampirism (so they don't have to rely on drinking it anymore to survive), and yet another wishes to simply look for a substitute meal. At any rate, the vampires are now a Terminally Dependent Society, and it's estimated that their existence will collapse in ten years if the issue isn't resolved by then.
- Avengers: Infinity War: This is Thanos' reason for gathering the infinity stones, making him a Reality Warper: He's decided that since resources is finite, life needs to be culled in order to avoid the Overpopulation Crisis that unchecked growth brings. Thus he intends to fix the resource scarcity by using his Reality Warper powers to kill half the universe. If you see the obvious, and less omnicidal, solution of simply using the same Reality Warper powers to create infinite resources instead, then congratulations, you have more creativity and foresight than Thanos.
- Interstellar: Humanity is on the brink of extinction due to a blight that has eliminated many harvests; only corn remains, and even it will eventually be terminally affected by the blight. NASA, now operating undercover, has performed missions in search of habitable worlds for humans to migrate to before The Famine kicks in. During the movie's story, Cooper and other astronauts are given the mission to travel beyond Earth to reach planets that were previously probed as possible candidates for human migration. By the end of the story, the most suitable planet is the one probed by late astronaut Edmunds, though thanks to Cooper's and TARS' gathering of data from a black hole humans already manage to survive by moving to special stations orbiting Saturn.
- The Marvels (2023): The Kree leader Dar-Benn's Evil Plan is to steal water, air, and other natural resources from other planets to restore Hala's water supply. She specifically targets planets inhabited by friends of Captain Marvel, traveling to them under the guise of "peace talks" because she's a jerk.
- Spaceballs: Planet Spaceball is running out of fresh air, so their solution is to steal the entire atmosphere from the planet Druidia using a giant space-station-sized vacuum cleaner.
President Skroob: Ah, planet Druidia and ten thousand years of fresh air!
Dark Helmet: [aside to Colonel Sandurz] The way he runs things, it won't last a hundred. - In Super Mario Bros. (1993), Koopa's motivation for invading Earth is to plunder our world's resources, as his dictatorship mismanaged Dinohattan so terribly their world is running out of food, clean air, and water. Once he's defeated, Princess Daisy stays behind with her father to help restore the world.
Literature
- American Girls: Kit: Mild. When Kit's family takes in boarders (in order to make ends meet and keep their house with her father out of work) and so many people are now living at the house, Kit's mother Margaret has to find creative ways to stretch the food so that it lasts as the boarders are paying both for a room and meals. This includes practical methods such as cutting toast in triangles to make it look like there's more and topping the oatmeal with peach slices to distract the boarders from noticing that they've been served it for breakfast four times in one week.
- Kris Longknife: In the third act of Daring, the survivors of the Voyage of Discovery have fled deep into uncharted space by the time they escape the Planet Looters, and have to make a dangerous attempt to refuel the ship from a nearby gas giant before they can make their way back to human space. This results in several members of the crew being killed when they fly into a sudden storm front.
- "The Martian Way": Played with. A Joseph McCarthy Expy demagogue is accusing spaceflight of wasting Earth's water by using it as a propellant. The amounts used are nowhere near enough to put a dent in the oceans, but the demagogue proves popular enough that there is a threat of cutting off the water exports to Mars. So the Martian colony starts harvesting ice from the rings of Saturn, and even offers to sell some to Earth, what with them being so worried about not having enough water.
- Starry River of the Sky: In the story, all of China is going through a drought, and Rendi wonders if it has to do with the missing moon and the cries he's been hearing from the night sky. When the moon is returned to the sky, the rains come back.
- Warrior Cats: In "The Fourth Apprentice", the Clans are suffering from a drought, during which their river dried up and their lake shrunk significantly. The Clans ultimately decide to send two warriors from each Clan to figure out the problem and restore the water, with Firestar sending Lionblaze and Dovepaw. The warriors discover a beaver dam blocking their side of the river and must battle the beavers in order to destroy the dam and restore the water. While a warrior dies in this fight, the water is restored, and the group returns as heroes, with even the notoriously abrasive Blackstar offering them food when they reach ShadowClan territory.
- The Way Things Work: In the chapter on nuclear power, the author describes being snowbound in a town that has completely exhausted its fuel supply. A huge concrete mammoth mysteriously appears, with a note saying it is a gift from a friend, which will give all the heat, in the form of steam, the town would ever need; all it needs in return is plenty of water, and an occasional pellet from a bag provided. When these instructions are followed, it does indeed provide the steam from the mammoth's trunk, which is piped to every house. At the bottom of the note is a reminder to bury in sealed containers all the waste dispensed from the back of the mammoth, which the townspeople do at first, but become less inclined to do so as time goes on, leading to radioactive pollution.
- X-Wing Series:
- The second half of the Rogue Squadron quadrilogy revolves in large part around a shortage of bacta created artificially by Imperial dictator Ysanne Isard in a Batman Gambit to make the New Republic destroy itself: she released a Synthetic Plague on Coruscant that kills nonhumans, which is only treatable through large amounts of bacta, which the Imperial planet Thyferra has a monopoly on and first forces the New Republic to buy bacta at extortionate prices before cutting off the supply altogether. In a subplot in The Krytos Trap, the New Republic works to develop an alternative treatment for the Krytos virus and starts raiding Thyferran convoys, while in The Bacta War, Rogue Squadron launches a private guerrilla war to liberate Thyferra from the Empire.
- Starfighters of Adumar: Adumar's large arms industry for its internal wars makes it a valuable prize for both the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant: Wedge Antilles has pushed for years for the New Republic Defense Force to increase production of missiles for fighters, and converting Adumar's factories to produce modern munitions would be a lot cheaper than building new ones.
Live-Action TV
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): Resource shortages are a recurrent problem throughout the series since the fleet represents the last survivors of humanity fleeing for their lives after the Cylons nuked the twelve colonies in a massive surprise attack. This was mandated by showrunner Ronald D. Moore, in a reaction to the relative paucity of such plots on his previous series Star Trek: Voyager.
- "Miniseries, Part 2": The Galactica leads the fleet to an abandoned military supply hub to stock up on munitions and supplies ahead of the initial attempt to escape the Cylons.
- "Water": Cylon sabotage causes 60% of Galactica's water reserves to be lost into space, forcing them to send scouts out to find fresh water for replenishment.
- "Scar": The fleet has stopped in a system to mine tylium to refuel their jumpdrives, only to come under attack by a lone Cylon Raider that keeps killing New Meat pilots escorting the miners in hit and run attacks.
- "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2": After the Time Skip, Starbuck's new husband Sam Anders has caught pneumonia, but the Galactica has run out of antibiotics to treat it, so she goes hunting across the colony and the remaining manned ships to find any that may have been stashed.
- "Occupation": When the episode picks up after a Time Skip from "Lay Down Your Burdens", Starbuck is shown to have become the plaything of a Number Two in exchange for the Cylons providing medicine for Sam's pneumonia.
- The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead deal with a lot of this, since society has completely collapsed due to the Zombie Apocalypse and nothing is being made any more.
- Food, water, medicine, ammunition, and fuel are frequent concerns in both shows. Virtually every long-lasting survivor camp/outpost/town has its own vegetable garden at minimum, and when seasons aren't kind to it or other reasons destroy it, supply expeditions and hunting become a matter of life or death.
- In late season 3 of Fear, it is revealed that a years-long drought and a much larger refugee population than expected have depleted the natural reservoir at the Broke Jaw Ranch. A quest to obtain water from a nearby dam becomes a major plotline.
- In Fear, as fuel for cars, trucks, and generators is both running out and breaking down, starting in season 5 it becomes a major source of conflict. Several groups fight for possession of "Tank Town," a functioning oil well with a makeshift refinery.
- In Star Trek: Discovery season 3, the crew of the titular Discovery arrive in the 32nd Century, where space travel is completely hampered after an event called "The Burn" not only destroyed numerous ships but rendered most dilithium, which is needed for Faster Than Light travel, inert. They end up discovering not only a planet that is completely rich in dilithium, but they also discover the source of "The Burn".
- Star Trek: Voyager: Multiple plots are motivated by the fact that USS Voyager had originally planned for a short-range mission near Deep Space 9, and so wasn't crewed or supplied for the unscheduled sojourn in the Delta Quadrant that makes up the Myth Arc, even before the damage and casualties they incurred when the Caretaker kidnapped them. One of the common criticisms of the series is that resource shortages weren't acknowledged as a problem more frequently, given the aforementioned setup.
- "The Cloud": Voyager enters a nebula to collect Unobtainium to fuel the Matter Replicators—joking that it's because Captain Janeway Must Have Caffeine and they've run out of coffee—only to discover that the "nebula" is actually a Starfish Alien which they accidentally seriously injure. They end up using up more energy fixing the damage than they got back, and end the episode headed for a nearby inhabited system to buy what they need.
- "Demon": Voyager runs seriously short of deuterium to fuel the fusion reactors, and makes a landing on a Class Y Death World hoping to refuel. And then the deuterium they find turns out to be alive.
Mythology and Religion
- The Bible: According to The Four Gospels, one of the miracles performed by Jesus consists of nourishing a population of 5,000 people who were starving and didn't have enough food around to satiate the hunger (the scarcity began shortly after the murder of John the Baptist). He feeds them with the only food remaining at that moment: Five loaves of bread and two fish. In two of the Gospels (Mark and Matthew), a second miracle is mentioned where Jesus fed 4,000 people with seven loaves and an unspecified (but still low) number of fish.
Puppet Shows
- Fraggle Rock:
- In "Born to Wander", the Storyteller remembers Uncle Matt's first exploit, telling the Fraggle Five how, when she was young, the Fraggles were suffering a famine of mushrooms. Uncle Gobo tried to find more, until Matt accidentally caused rocks to fall on him, giving him a twisted ankle. Matt then took it upon himself to find more mushrooms.
- In "The Cavern of Lost Dreams", it's revealed that before the famine, the ancient Doozers used to build their constructions out of mushrooms. The relief detachment then went to look for more, leaving two old Doozers, Crusty and Yeaster, to guard the ancient Doozer city.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: Resource scarcities are a common thing in the setting, especially during the Succession Wars. Many planetary invasions are motivated by capturing tech, food, and even "water raids" are noted as being common in some parts of the Periphery.
- Exalted: The setting of Autochthonia is so hostile to human life that nearly any quest can be justified by "the PCs' city is running out of water/oil/food slurry, go out and find a new source of it". In lore, several governments are working on unlocking the door out of Autochthonia (a surprisingly difficult feat) because the soil and animals beyond it are the only things that can save their people from starvation.
- Iron Kingdoms: Several of the conflicts within the setting are due to different factions trying to solve their own version of this trope:
- The Elven gods all mysteriously vanished and/or died a few millennia prior to the setting's beginning. This meant that Ayisla, the Goddess responsible for returning elven souls to their bodies in the cycle of reincarnation, wasn't around to do her job, leading to an epidemic of soulless elves being born. Ghyrrshyyld, as well as Retribution of Scyrah, are just some of the elves who set out (with their own plans) to attempt to curb this epidemic, though so far they all failed. At the climax of the setting's Myth Arc Ghyrrshyyld almost found a way to replace the Elven gods with himself, though the Elven Dawnguard killed him for heresy before he could ascend to godhood. This process inadvertently "solved" part of the problem at least by creating the Empire of Eternal Dusk, who at the very least no longer have to worry about their race going extinct by dying of old age. Unfortunately, Soulless children are still being born to this new society, so the problem isn't fully solved.
- Convergence of Cyriss faced a problem similar to the Elves, in that their worship of Cyriss, a god who was not present on Caen but instead lightyears away living as a sentient galaxy, meant that when they died and their souls went to the afterlife of Urcaen, they would be unprotected, forced to wander the wastelands of Urcaen forever until they inevitably were captured and turned into Grymkin by the Defiers. Seeking a way to avoid this problem, they spent a few centuries trying to develop a means of extracting their souls from their bodies, but preserving them on Caen. Eventually, one of their members hit upon the idea of reverse engineering the Iron Lich technology of Cryx, which allowed a servant of the Dragonfather to remain permanently tethered to a machine body. This turned out to be the necessary key to their quest, allowing them to develop the Soul Transferrence and turn almost their entire society into The Needless.
- Convergence are also currently on a quest to solve the other problem of their religion (i.e. the lack of Cyriss being on Caen) by placing special machinery along leylines of the planet itself to turn Caen into a portal that would allow Cyriss to bring herself to the planet and suffuse it with her essence. The climax of the setting's Myth Arc would see them reverse this Grand Machine, instead of bringing Cyriss to Caen, they would bring millions of souls as refugees from Caen to Cyriss herself, to protect them from the encroaching infernal hordes trying to claim their souls.
- The Skorne also suffer from a lack of gods and the impact this has on their souls in-universe (souls are really important as a resource in the setting). Because they've never had any gods (nor do they have a creation myth, they just consider themselves to have always existed) their souls don't even properly cross over to Urcaen upon death, instead getting caught in the Void, the barrier between Caen and Urcaen. Because the Void is a paradoxical unreality, their souls are near-instantly driven to bloodthirsty madness, creating Void Spirits. The Skorne who first discovered this fact never developed a way to counteract it, but over the next few centuries (with millions of Skorne dying and getting trapped in the Void in that time), the Skorne eventually developed the means to trap their souls upon death in specially crafted stones. Because they're all a Proud Warrior Race Guy and their society is obsessed with pain and suffering (to the point they use it as a source of Mana), they've not adopted this universally, instead choosing only to spare their most "exalted" souls from the fate of becoming Void Spirits. These Exalted live as souls-in-stones, which the Skorne then sculpt into stone bodies for the Exalted to pilot.
- Cryx themselves only exist because the Dragonfather Toruk naturally emanates a blighting field that causes all living tissue to mutate and decay, making it impossible for him to get his desired armies of servants. His original method of forming servants to tend his whims relied on splitting his Athanc heart crystal to create lesser slaves, but all this did was create countless duplicates of himself that were all just as arrogant and selfish as he was. Instead, he turned to developing magic to keep souls tethered to Caen, and technology to allow flesh to continue functioning or be replaced without loss of function, creating the Nightmare Empire of Cryx.
- The Trollbloods have been evicted from all their historical lands by the Iron Kingdoms, and now seek a safe place away from the numerous wars of the setting where they can set up industry, shops, farms, and all the other means they need to rebuild their society in peace. Notably, the United Kriels have had to abandon basically all of their ancestral resources for this process, including all the shrines, farms, towns, and rituals they once tended, in hopes they can find a complete replacement for every resource their (numerous and distinct) cultures have depended on for millennia. The Time Skip would see them succeed, with the United Kriels heading south to Alchierre and forming the Southern Kriels. Finally having access to both a safe place to grow and live, as well as set up industry, means they also have revolutionized their defenses with the Kithguard, a cohesive and professional army of soldiers armed with the latest equipment and weapons. While Alchierre is far hotter and more humid than basically any Trollbloods are used to, they've at least been able to adapt to its conditions to thrive in the decade between the end of the setting's first Myth Arc and the Time Skip.
Toys
- Aquazone: According to 1998 Shop At Home catalogs, Hydrolator Crystals have become very scarce following the activities of the Aquanauts, Aquasharks, and Aquaraiders. This forces the Hydronauts to search for a new supply of crystals in the deepest depths of the Aquazone in order to continue surviving underwater.
Video Games
- Chrono Trigger: In the Post-Apocalypse 2300 A.D. section of the game, Crono and his friends are asked to investigate rumors of a cache of food in order to help some hungry refugees (they have access to a machine that keeps them at full health, but does nothing against the sensation of hunger). They don't find any actual food as it's all rotted away, but they find a stash of seeds which the refugees use to establish agriculture.
- Drawn to Life: At the beginning of the game, the village has been subjected to a dark, hungry, and snowy time thanks to Wilfre's destruction of the Book of Life. The sun won't come out, the food won't grow, it won't rain, and even the Eternal Flame won't burn anymore. The player's job is to go out into the levels to retrieve pages from the book to restore these resources, starting with necessities like the Eternal Flame, the sun, the rain, the night sky, and food.
- Fallout:
- Fallout 1: The Vault Dweller's first main quest is to go into the wasteland and find a replacement water purification control chip, after their own Vault's chip breaks down, leaving the residents with dwindling supplies of drinkable water.
- Fallout: New Vegas: In the quest "Hard Luck Blues", the player is tasked with investigating why a sharecropper farm is producing poor quality crops, and their investigation leads them to conclude that the water used on the crops is contaminated with radiation from a damaged nuclear reactor in a nearby vault. Upon reaching the reactor's control terminal, they're then faced with a Sadistic Choice, as there are vault dwellers trapped in an unreachable part of the vault - shutting down the reactor cleans up the water but leaves the vault dwellers trapped, while rerouting power to the vault dwellers allows them to escape but dooms the sharecropper farm's harvest to failure.
- The Fermi Paradox: For any players of the demo, this will be the biggest problem they have for the Human race as there is only a few centuries left before resources on Earth become scarce, and on top of that the first Development Event is a Consumption Event which would almost guarantee a Scarcity Crisis. It is possible to overcome this, but it requires some hard sacrifices.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy XIV: In the Eden raid quest line in Shadowbringers, the Warrior of Darkness, Urianger, Thancred, Ryne, and, later on, Gaia seek to restore the elemental aether that was undone by the Flood of Light using the titular Eden, the first Sin Eater, and summoning variations of the Primals that appeared on the Source. However, their plan is hampered by an Ascian who was trapped in Eden and is seeking to reunite with Gaia, who is the reincarnation of another Ascian who was partners with them.
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles 1: The premise driving the story is that the world is covered in a deadly miasma that is toxic to most sentient beings and can only be repelled with magic crystals that project a barrier around them. Crystals that are big enough to support towns and settlements lose their power over time, so they need to constantly send out caravans of adventurers to gather Myrrh, a magical liquid that can keep the crystals at full power. The Player Character is part of one such caravan for their home village.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Prior to the events of the game, after Darunia refused to hand over the Spiritual Stone of Fire to Ganondorf, the latter blocked the entrance to Dodongo's Cavern with a huge boulder and also infested the area with many Dodongos. As a result, Gorons have begun to starve, since the rocks they eat are located inside that cavern. After Link blows up the boulder with a Bomb Flower, he ventures through the dungeon to eliminate the threat. The Goron tribe is saved and Darunia gives him the aforementioned Spiritual Stone as thanks.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Shortly after the return of Ganondorf, several anomalous phenomena start occurring across Hyrule. In the case of the Hebra and Tabantha regions, the weather has caused temperatures to drop drastically, resulting in a severe drought of food which forces many Rito to look for it elsewhere. Realizing that the weather will only get worse, Link and Tulin perform a Journey to the Sky to reach the Wind Temple, where they restore the eolic generators and then defeat the monster that corrupted the whole place (Colgera). Rito Village becomes warm once again and its inhabitants manage to resupply themselves and thrive.
- Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee: Inverted. The eponymous Abe means to prevent his Slave Race from becoming the solution to his slavemasters' self-inflicted problem (namely, as a result of profits dwindling due to livestock sources reaching extinction, the Glukkons decide that the way to drive profits up is to chop up the Mudokon slaves they have cleaning the factories).
- Pikmin 3: Due to widespread gluttony, the inhabitants of planet Koppai are on the verge of facing The Famine. Several astronauts were given the mission to search for food in other worlds, and only one (PNF-404, the homeworld of the Pikmin) is capable of providing it. Alph, Brittany, and Charlie are sent there to gather fruits so their seeds can be harvested in Koppai. Unfortunately, due to a meteor impact, their spaceship crashes, and the characters are now stranded. Now, on top of gathering fruits to save their planet, they have to retrieve the Cosmic Drive Key to escape the one they're trapped in. Fortunately, both objectives are made possible thanks to the Pikmin. This plot point is also referenced in Pikmin 4 (not because the crisis relapsed, but because that game is a Continuity Reboot where most, but not all, events from the original trilogy are happening again).
- Shantae: Half-Genie Hero has a villainous case. Techno Baron was running a business based on hunting mermaids to sell them to monsters as food. But the demand grew considerably and the population of mermaids was dwindling. So he began kidnapping human girls and combining them with fish to sell them as fake mermaids and cope with the high demand. Shantae's first mission after the game's prologue is to rescue these girls, as well as free the few living true mermaids remaining (including their Queen who, due to the rage resulting from this incident, instinctively attacks Shantae despite the latter trying to free her).
- Spring-a-majig: This is your goal multiple times.
- At the power station, you have to Springify the ice and snow to restore the flow of water. Presumably, it runs on hydropower.
- You have to Springify the garden or the farm won't have food to sell to the market.
- Terra Memoria: One of the party's objectives is to investigate what happened with crystal supply. As it turns out, someone strip-mined the entirety of the Crystal Fields, leaving nothing, as crystals take a long time to grow. That someone is revealed to be Archmage Jady, who, foreseeing the end of the "Crystal Age" due to Eternal Recurrence, decided to speed it up a bit, and seize power for herself while at it, by destroying the crystal supply and making the world depend on Selfless Mages, who answer to her.
- Unlimited Saga: Armic's quest revolves around collecting a list of specific items for the Chapa to cast a rain-making ritual to prevent an impending drought.
- Warcraft III: During the early missions of the Orcish Horde portion of the main campaign, the Bloodhoof Tauren are forced to migrate their tribe to the northern grasslands of Mulgore because their enemies, the centaurs, have driven all the game animals away from their current homeland and their chieftain Cairn fears starvation if they stay.
- Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? (1997):
- In the English level, ACME agents sneak out of a besieged castle to obtain bread, swords, and feathers (for fletching arrows).
- In the Mali level, V.I.L.E sabotages Mansa Musa's pilgrimage through the desert by stealing his salt supplies. Since salt is vital for desert travel (you lose a lot of it by sweating out heat), Musa sends the player and their Good Guide to trade for it. He even gives them his gold Staff of Authority as bartering material- that's how important salt is to him.
- Xenoblade Chronicles X:
- The Reveal that occurs at the end of Chapter 5 is an inversion. The main artificial settlement of humans in planet Mira, New Los Angeles, is rich with food and energy. However, the Lifehold Core that is remotely keeping active the mimeosomes used by the humans as temporary bodies is gradually running out of energy, and if it reaches zero the mimeosomes will deactivate and all humans will die. Thus, the objective is to find the Lifehold Core in order to recharge it and do so before the Ganglions do (as they want to Kill All Humans).
- There's a sidequest you can unlock after completing Chapter 5. Due to the arrival of the Ma-non aliens to New Los Angeles, there has been a shortage of water supplies. To remedy this, engineer Ajoa leads a project to create a water purification plant next to Biahno Lake in order to resupply New Los Angeles; problem is, there have been monsters around which make construction difficult. The player character can opt to either defeat the monsters so members of the purification plant's construction can proceed, or find certain missing construction materials for them. Either choice will complete the mission successfully, but maintaining the plant won't be easy and more shenanigans will occur in the future, making up for a Sidequest Sidestory.
Webcomics
- Mau Makan Apa?: Gix's activities end with him going back in time to retrieve the lost recipe for tempe which ends the food crisis.
Western Animation
- Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century: The plot is triggered by the world's supply of Illudium Phosdex, the shaving cream atom, being dangerously low, and Dodgers needs to find and claim Planet X which is the only remaining source.
- Futurama:
- In the Season 1 episode "Fear of a Bot Planet", this turns out to be why Planet Express is making a delivery to a planet full of human-hating robots in the first place: the planet has a "crippling lugnut shortage", and the package they're delivering (presumably ordered by one of the inhabitants) contains lugnuts to alleviate the shortage.
- The Season 4 episode "Crimes of the Hot" establishes that 31st-century society has "solved" global warming (read: papered over the cracks) by regularly dumping ice mined from Halley's Comet into the ocean. The ice has melted away and the planet is heating up again, so Planet Express is hired to go and fetch some more. Then Halley's Comet turns out to be out of ice as well, necessitating a different solution.
- In the Jingaroo episode "The Water Tree" Jingaroo and friends are thirsty but there's no water to be found, so they journey across the Outback to the Water Tree to convince him to share his water.
- Samurai Jack: Subverted in one episode where Jack gets a water-producing jewel. The jewel ends up in the hands of gangsters who sell the water at exorbitant rates.
- The Transformers: Energon, the resource that Cybertronians needed for basically everything but most importantly as a food source, had become vanishingly rare on Cybertron thanks to the Forever War between the Autobots and Decepticons. This motivated the Autobots to flee Cybertron in the first episode, leading to the crash-landing on Earth where both sides would devote much of their time and effort to finding or making new Energon.
Real Life
- One of the most famous historical examples involved the creation of the Haber-Bosch process, which is agreed to have saved humanity. Back in the 19th century, bird poop (guano) was plentiful in the islands of Navassa (Caribbean Sea) and Chincha (Chile). This excrement was discovered to be very useful thanks to being rich in nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, chemical elements that were crucial for fertilization and thus food production. The demand for guano was rampant due to the increasing human population, to the point that there were countries wanting to claim custody of the islands and rebellions ensued. When the natural reserves of guano began to deplete due to exploitation, the world as it was known back then was in danger. Fortunately, German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch created a process that would help synthesize ammonia from atmospheric nitrogennote , which helped the agricultural business supersede guano with the aforementioned compound since it was much easier to produce. The two scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing this important process (interestingly, they were awarded separately: Haber in 1918 and Bosch in 1931).