So this is the second time in the last month that my project has disappeared from Scrivener (when I open the program, I get the “Project file not found” error message. The first time, I was easily able to find the .scriv file and reopen it, making it appear again the recent projects menu. This morning, however, it happened again. And when I go to the .scriv file for that project, it’s over ten days old, meaning all the work I’ve done in those days isn’t present. I found the backup zip file in the local app section of my hard drive, but the most recent backup from this morning (1/14) shows nothing. No words, no characters, none of the descriptions on the notecards, nothing. However, the chapter folders are all labeled correctly, and each text within those folders still shows the first handful of words that I’d typed on those texts as of last night. But there’s nothing there. I’ve attached a file as to how the files and texts are showing. Oh I pray someone can help me here, I’m just sick about losing all those words.
The same thing happened to me. I send an email to support nothing. 
If you haven’t already, email tech support, as described in the following page. Allow a few days for response, as they are likely still working through a backlog resulting from NaNoWriMo and Christmas related break and influx of new users. literatureandlatte.com/support.php
They’ll need to know where your Scrivener projects are located (drive letter and full folder path), what kind of media that is (internal hard drive or solid state drive, external drive, USB thumb flash drive, …) whether you have any cloud sync and/or backup software running, possibly what antivirus you use, etc. If you wish, post that info here and it may enable someone on here to offer a suggestion.
You may want to at least review/skim titles and text of articles available on the Knowledge Base page, especially “Using Scrivener with Cloud-Sync Services”. scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb
Terminology wise, a Scrivener project is a project… which contains many documents and other items.
Be aware that in terms of the Windows physical file system (and Mac’s OS X also, though tends to be hidden), Scrivener projects are more like databases than single physical files like Word document files. That is, each project, even though it presents as a single conceptual thing within Scrivener, in the physical file system is actually a folder (name ending in .scriv) containing an project index file (name ending in .scrivx), subfolders, and many files down in the subfolders. The .scrivx file is what one actually opens/launches (Scrivener then opens and deals with the rest as needed). When copying or backing up Scrivener projects at the Windows level (rather than inside Scrivener), one must remember to deal with the entire .scriv folder and its contents, not just the .scrivx file.
That collection of folders and files, and the simultaneous access to many of them that Scrivener employs, like other databases, is more susceptible to interference and corruption by cloud syncing, backup software and other software than single physical files like Word document files.
Hope that is of some assistance.
Thank you, SpringfieldMH, that does help. I ended up finding a blog post about this issue with cloud based storage systems (which I do not use), and was able to delve into the Docs folders within my Scrivener backups. I manually went through every .rtf file that I found in each one. Unfortunately, I still can’t find the 7k words from my last ten days of work, and the backup that happened prior to me receiving the message that the file path had changed is the empty one that I pictured above. There is nothing inside the .scriv folder at all, which still makes me feel a little ill to look at.
That’s what’s so strange about this to me. I didn’t shut down my computer, nor did it have any updates happen that night, so I don’t know what caused it to have the error. In retrospect, of course I wish I had taken a picture of the message that popped up on my screen, but it said the file path had changed, so (like an idiot), I clicked okay, thinking it would take me back to my project. Only it took me back the menu where you start a new one, and that the Project could not be found.
Maybe it’s a stupid question, but since Scrivener is set to save after 2 seconds of inactivity, where does that save if the project isn’t backing up?