Moving to a rural area and realizing how fucking hard it is.
The hill I will die on: rugged individualism as strength in a post-disaster world is a lie that is sold to appeal to ego in an individualistic society, and also to prevent the formation of community.
That doesn’t apply to many existing rural communities, who of course know better.
What? You mean prepping isn’t just another form of participatory consumerism?
That too! Why not also make money from it?
It is an unfortunate truth for introverted autistic loners like me that Community really is key to survival.
Hello fellow introverted autistic loner. I hope you find a community that suits you and what level of engagement you are able to have. It may not surprise you to know there are plenty of autistic rural people lol 😅
I like enough of the civilized world that I’m still willing to participate in it, despite being relatively removed from a lot of it.
Also, living in the woods in a lot more work than people think it is and I’m lazy.
There are fewer than 10,000 people who, if they just like weren’t around anymore, would inprove everyone’s quality of life like ten fold. I cling to the hope that one day enough of us will realize that and save the world.
You realize that’s entirely cope right.
Some dead rich people just means their money will go to their kids/family, it’s not going to you in any way ever other than through changes in tax law and enforcement. And well, if you’re already middle class, you won’t really see any benefit because you already generate more taxes than you consume.
Further dead rich people and more tax money won’t fix the massive inequalities and inefficiencies and corruption that makes government and social policy so limited and ineffective in many places.
The idea is that watching what happens to those 10,000 discourages replacements. But of course it’s cope. Fortunately, I don’t live in the US so am at least insulated somewhat. I’ll be dead before things get too gnarly. And no kids. Good Lord, no kids.
Fortunately, I don’t live in the US so am at least insulated somewhat.
The rise in authoritarianism and surveillance is worldwide, the US is just where the people funding it live. You’re barely insulated now, and will be much less so if they succeed.
i don’t think you understand how people work.
Ticks. Also, probably, my wife and progeny.
Mostly that I like the civilized world.
Like don’t get me wrong: Nature hikes? Camping? All great. National parks are a treasure. But I will freely admit I rather enjoy little comforts of modernity like “clean water just comes out of the tap when I turn it on”, “fresh food is a 15-minute walk to the grocery store away”, and “the spinny machine makes my clothes clean while I do other stuff.”
I complain about the modern world petty often, but damn some of it is nice. The other day, the dishwasher was running, the washing machine and dryer were going, the robot vacuum was doing its thing, the litter box was cleaning itself, and I was just sitting there with a beer and a good book.
Living in the woods alone without food input from civilization is incredibly hard if not impossible.
Realistically you’d need like 10-20 people to help out, livestock, a field to grow cereals, large garden and a vegetable field, just to keep everyone surviving.
It is impossible to gather food for yourself. We don’t live in pre-civilization or even the wild west. Everything is owned by someone, regulated, etc.
How do you expect to feed yourself? Not like you can just gather all day and get lucky hunting.
It is objectively harder to ‘live on the land’ then it was centuries ago. Borderline impossible, especially if you want to… you know live and interact with people.
I have a wife and cat to look out for, hard to do that when I can’t pay rent.
Volunteering at the native plant garden in the park. Just enough of a hit to keep me going.
I’ve given it some thought.
There isn’t enough empty land in temperate climates for someone to survive unmolested outside of civilization, and I don’t have the multitude of skills required to make it in less hospitable climates. If I could find a good source of food I might make it past the first couple weeks, but I’m not hopeful. I’ve never harvested an animal, so that’s a big barrier.
If I had a good solar system and a house on several hundred or thousand acres to get me started it might work out. Better yet if I have some seed and starter food.
Have you actually tried doing that? It can be challenging to say the least.
I do it for fun sometimes, but I do it fully provisioned and knowing I can always decide to bail, hike out, and go home to my nice warm bed, clean hot and cold running water (people don’t realize how huge this is), a fridge full of food that I don’t have to carry with me, devices to make the food within minutes on a whim, no bugs or potentially dangerous wild animals, etc.
Indoor plumbing. Seriously. Go without for a couple of weeks and tell me how you feel about hot showers and flush toilets.
Also, people really underestimate how difficult it would be to just fuck off into the woods. You’d need a good amount of planning and knowledge to do it. What’s edible within what time range. Where the animals are at what time of year. And if you’re up north you always gotta be laying in firewood.
Also civilization has taken over most of the good hunter gatherer/ subsistence farming spots. River valleys, estuaries, anywhere with good fertile soil. Most of the places with good desolate wilderness to fuck off into was left desolate because it’s fucking desolate.
It’s hard. Really, really, hard.
Yeah, modern life could be improved. There’s a lot of ways society could be better. But you think it’s tough now? Wait until literally every comfort you have is gone and you get nothing that you didn’t grow, hunt, build, or craft yourself. And that’s assuming you even have the skills to do it.
One wrong step and a twisted ankle is a death sentence. In the wild when you stop running, you die.
Without antibiotics any cut is potentially life threatening.
I have a chronic illness, while it’s not that serious, I need my meds.
Civilized world has it’s perks. Water closets, supermarkets, social media.
social media
I’d argue that’s a reason to leave civilization 🤣
Infrastructure = stability
I highly recommend watching the Fall of Civilizations series: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/
…and then think about each civilization as a group of people trying to stay alive in the wilderness.
Most of them collapsed because something went wrong with the water and/or food supply, and they weren’t able to recover because they were dependent on a single source. Some event overextends the resources and there aren’t enough backups.
This happened to many other smaller groups over the millennia, which never made it long enough to be labelled as civilizations. Most of them we don’t have records on.
As human technology has improved and civilization has grown more complex, we’ve built more redundancies into our system. Drought in an area no longer means the people living there have to leave or die. Famine can be overcome with modern farming technology and logistics. We can even mitigate the impact of diseases that are so contagious they spread around the entire planet in less than a year.
Benefiting from the redundancies of the system requires being attached to the system. Disconnecting might seem freeing on the face of it, but the reality is that it makes you a slave to your basic needs. Infrastructure provides the escape from that slavery, but you can’t build or maintain infrastructure by yourself.
