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How would he be completely self sufficient? He needs water and food at least. How do you dig a 200 foot well by yourself? Farming at the level actually needed

How would he be completely self sufficient? He needs water and food at least. How do you dig a 200 foot well by yourself? Farming at the level actually needed to sustain someone year round is going to take more technology than my backyard garden. Is paying someone to come dig a well really that different than buying water? What if he was hypothetically able to purchase and store the amount of water that would be required to live the rest of his life? What happens when the well dries up? He gets someone that is on the grid to drill a new one? Doesn't that put him by proxy back on the grid?

icebraining 11y ago
How do you dig a 200 foot well by yourself? You don't - you just live in a place where you don't need to dig one. For example, in my family's village in northern Spain, you have springs with reasonably clean water all year long; it's just a matter of walking a couple of miles with a jug. (Yes, I realize this is not realistic for the majority of the population. That doesn't mean "self-sufficiency" should lose its meaning)
mike-cardwell 11y ago
I never said anything about living off the grid having a requirement that you had to build everything yourself in the process of leading up to you living off the grid. How you get to the point in time where you start living off the grid is irrelevant when the question is, am I living off the grid. Q.) Is paying someone to come dig a well really that different than buying water? Yes. One leaves you being self sufficient. One doesn't. Q.) What if he was hypothetically able to purchase and store the amount of water that would be required to live the rest of his life? Then he would be self sufficient and living off the grid. Q.) What happens when the well dries up? He finds another source of water, or dies. Perhaps he would have to rejoin civilisation to prevent death. Q.) He gets someone that is on the grid to drill a new one? Doesn't that put him by proxy back on the grid? If he does it that way. Then yes. Temporarily.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Well, with this line of reasoning I do live completely off the grid already. I could build a water turbine or even a hand crank, but buying power from utilities is cheaper. I could start a farm, but going to grocery store every other day is cheaper as well. I could move far from civilization, but living in a 1M city is much more fun.
Glide 11y ago
I think it's just a level of self sufficiency as well as what other projects you may know of that would color that expectation. A former co-worker of mine had a side project that was a farm in the middle of nowhere. It was off the grid. Meaning zero electricity from outside. It was generating power via solar. It had internet (he has children, so netflix when it got late). Granted he didn't grow all of his own food, but he made excursions out every weekend so that wouldn't have been feasible to do either. But should he have built his own solar panels and mined for his own rare earths to build batteries? Most of the time living off-grid is some everyday level of self reliance most of first world is not at.

icebraining 11y ago

How do you dig a 200 foot well by yourself? You don't - you just live in a place where you don't need to dig one. For example, in my family's village in northern Spain, you have springs with reasonably clean water all year long; it's just a matter of walking a couple of miles with a jug. (Yes, I realize this is not realistic for the majority of the population. That doesn't mean "self-sufficiency" should lose its meaning)

mike-cardwell 11y ago

I never said anything about living off the grid having a requirement that you had to build everything yourself in the process of leading up to you living off the grid. How you get to the point in time where you start living off the grid is irrelevant when the question is, am I living off the grid. Q.) Is paying someone to come dig a well really that different than buying water? Yes. One leaves you being self sufficient. One doesn't. Q.) What if he was hypothetically able to purchase and store the amount of water that would be required to live the rest of his life? Then he would be self sufficient and living off the grid. Q.) What happens when the well dries up? He finds another source of water, or dies. Perhaps he would have to rejoin civilisation to prevent death. Q.) He gets someone that is on the grid to drill a new one? Doesn't that put him by proxy back on the grid? If he does it that way. Then yes. Temporarily.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Well, with this line of reasoning I do live completely off the grid already. I could build a water turbine or even a hand crank, but buying power from utilities is cheaper. I could start a farm, but going to grocery store every other day is cheaper as well. I could move far from civilization, but living in a 1M city is much more fun.

Glide 11y ago

I think it's just a level of self sufficiency as well as what other projects you may know of that would color that expectation. A former co-worker of mine had a side project that was a farm in the middle of nowhere. It was off the grid. Meaning zero electricity from outside. It was generating power via solar. It had internet (he has children, so netflix when it got late). Granted he didn't grow all of his own food, but he made excursions out every weekend so that wouldn't have been feasible to do either. But should he have built his own solar panels and mined for his own rare earths to build batteries? Most of the time living off-grid is some everyday level of self reliance most of first world is not at.