Rescue comprises responsive operations that usually involve the saving of life, or the urgent treatment of injuries after an accident or a dangerous situation.

Tools used might include search and rescue dogs, mounted search and rescue horses, helicopters, the "jaws of life", and other hydraulic cutting and spreading tools used to extricate individuals from wrecked vehicles. Rescue operations are sometimes supported by rescue vehicles operated by rescue squads.

Rescue is a potent theme in human psychology, both from mortal perils and moral perils, and is often treated in fiction, with the rescue of a damsel in distress being a notable trope. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud introduced the concept of "rescue fantasies" by men pursuing "fallen women" in his 1910 work "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men"; Freud's insight into this aspect of male psychology might retain merit, though his proposed Oedipus complex used to frame this concept is no longer in vogue. Within the practice of psychoanalysis, the term has taken on the additional sense concerning therapists' desire to 'rescue' their clients.

Historically, rescue could refer to an act of property seizure in service of an unpaid debt. For example, there is record of a countryman living in the vicinity of present-day Wythenshawe being prosecuted in a local court for "making rescue" of a pig which had been seized as a distress for non-payment of money owed.