by Rural man » Tue 22 Jun 2004, 13:28:38
Food is my biggest concern.
Back in the early 1980's, after having lived the first 40 years of our lives in cities, my wife and I moved to a 117 acre abandoned farm in the Missouri Ozarks. We had no trouble with heating as the farm was 1/3 woods and the wood cook stove and the wood heater worked just fine. We had no trouble with cooling because the summer nights were not too hot. We had plenty of water from both a well and we had a spring fed pond and a stream available even if the well were not available. As for security, this part of the country is fairly sparsly populated, but even better, everyone knows everyone else and an intruder sticks out like a sore thumb, plus everyone has a variety of rifles, shotguns and pistols plus stores of ammunition to go with them, and being practiced hunters can easily place shots within 2 inches of the aim point at 200 yards.
The thing we had the most difficulty with was raising our own food. We had a small herd of cattle which was fairly easy to maintain, but we were dependent on rainfall for growing hay and pasture growth and that could be a serious problem in dry times. We struggled with a sizeable garden and often lost to insects, lack of rain, rabbits, and just lack of knowledge. The complexity of getting things to grow, saving seeds, canning excess, all without some practice would be very difficult for someone without many years of practice. Identifying wild edibles would also be difficult without practice. Hunting, even if you could find somewhere to hunt (if you didn't own your land), would be a hugh hurdle. As often as not, a hunter comes home emptyhanded, and in a major breakdown, hunting would reduce available prey from overhunting.
So for most people not already out in the countryside, in advance, experienced with food getting, already known and accepted by the locals, this door would be difficult, if not impossible to open.
As for health matters, that will be difficult. The best is to choose a healthy lifestyle and avoid disease as much as possible, but in a future lived without a lot of modern medicines, the death rate from injury and disease will certainly be on the increase.