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In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's

In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. As a result, people have to learn to repair things, make things, use a gun, do first aid, lay shingles, hang drywall, pour concrete, solder pipe, weld, change oil, replace an alternator, lay PVC pipe, etc. People in the community learn emergency medicine and how to manage a structure or brush fire by volunteering with the local volunteer fire/EMS, because that's the only show in town. Roads wash out in the rainy season, so 4x4 is an absolute necessity. People learn to gauge sand you can drive through in 2x4, sand you can drive through in 4x4 and sand you just can't drive through by eyeballing it. I grew up in a very remote part of the California desert and everyone was like that. It's just what you have to do to get by because you keep finding yourself in situations where you need to call on these types of skills, and if you're living out there you have a lot of free time without interruption or distraction to learn the skills. Lots of people moved out from the city, and over the years they picked up a lot of those skills and became extremely self-sufficient.

pnathan 6y ago
> In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. That's pretty far out; I think that's pretty extreme. At least in Idaho/WA IMO (different geography and settlement pattern, prolly). But your point is still valid for the bulk of rural US - you just gotta know how to deal, because the cavalry is a ways out and expensive.
- halbritt 6y ago
  I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains for a while and had a tolerable commute into San Jose. A 911 call would yield a response no sooner than 30 minutes. So, not very far out at all, but definitely a set of circumstances that encouraged self-reliance.
- lostphilosopher 6y ago
  Another important factor is not just distance geography, but the population density's impact on taxes and funding for Police/EMS/Fire. Maybe from a geo perspective someone can get there faster, but if there are only a couple "someones" and they are already dealing with something else... Statistically, less people, fewer emergencies, but that's not much comfort when you're the one having a statistically unlikely emergency!
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    1,000% this. I worked on ambulances in a fairly urban area, and even there the number of times we were at 'level zero,' or no available units for dispatch was unsettling to say the least.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  I'm thinking California East of the Sierras. Mono County, Inyo County, San Bernardino County, slivers of Riverside County, and Imperial County. If you're in Amargosa, Shoshone, Tecopa, Wonder Valley, Lanfair Valley, Kelso, Amboy, Cadiz, Fenner, etc., it's a long way off from anything. Pop open Gooogle maps and try to find the nearest dispatch location for an ambulance to Fenner, and then put that into perspective with the amount of traffic on the I-40 corridor. CHP can call an airship, but I've seen burn patients sit dying for an hour while waiting for a helicopter to become available for dispatch.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  We have a homestead in NE WA we are developing, a few weeks ago, for the first time ever, I called 911 because of a potentially dangerous laceration. We have a full first aid kit with plenty of "stop the bleed" stuff but I didn't want to take any chances. So because the bleeding was controlled we waited for the EMTs. It took 25 minutes for the EMTs to arrive. But that is because the nearest EMT team was not on another call. Otherwise, it could have take 45-60 minutes to get a team from the next nearest town/county. Later that day on the way home to Seattle we stopped at an urgent care to get stitches for $175. Though, I am seriously thinking about getting an AED to keep out there.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    One of the posters above mentioned Wilderness First Aid, which is a great course. Wilderness First Responder goes more above-and-beyond and includes things like relocating a dislocated kneecap or shoulder, splinting, bandaging, administering injections, wound care, clearing a spine, identifying brain swelling from a head injury, etc. You can do it in a week, living on-site. Edit: There's also a component on helicopter operations, such as laying out a landing site for when things get really spicy.
  - pnathan 6y ago
    Yeah, that's one of those remoter areas! No doubt about it. If you need an AED, definitely get it.
- bluejellybean 6y ago
  I invite you to visit Northern Michigan! This world exists only 7 hours, by car, north of Chicago, a metro area with something like 9.5 million people. Hardly 'pretty far out' in my opinion. Growing up I had to call EMS a few times for various things, if you're not directly in town or on a tourist road, one can expect some seriously long waits. Washed out 2 track during a light rain isn't exactly something an ambulance move quickly on. People adapt to their environments, if you have to fix your car in the country, you learn to fix your car. If you have to fix your car in the city, you learn to schmooze the repair guy into giving you a better deal.
mbostleman 6y ago
Last night I was on my way home on a relatively remote stretch in eastern Idaho that's 30 minutes from the nearest EMS and came upon a head on collision that just happened. Several others not involved surrounded the scene pretty quickly and started assessing the injured. I literally finished my Wilderness First Aid certification Saturday afternoon.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> 30 minutes from the nearest EMS In even the most developed inner cities of the US, a 30-minute response time is not unusual. A car crash with injuries, blood on the street, would certainly be top of the 911 priority list other factors like traffic often mean delays. "In July 2019, it took the NYPD more than 20 minutes on average to respond to all of its 911 calls. This July, it was about 18 minutes." https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/08/25/nypd-response-times-climb-this-summer https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/08/25/nypd-re...
  - mbostleman 6y ago
    Yes for sure. Not that it makes a difference, but this is due to 30 minutes of travel at 60ish mph. No traffic delays.
  - mbostleman 6y ago
    Also, for what it's worth, we have really good helicopter support in this region too. Both medical transport as well as short haul / wilderness extraction. So response can be a lot faster if necessary.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Helicopters are tricky things. They move very quickly but from call to helicopter taking off can often be a long time. Even in the military/coast guard context, the process of authorizing a flight, turning a helicopter on, and actually getting the thing in the air can easily take 30+ minutes.
hanniabu 6y ago
There's a town in Alaska where you need to have your appendix removed in order to live there because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away. https://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20180810-villas-las-estrellas-antarctica-base-residents-surgery https://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20180810-villas-las-estre...
- btilly 6y ago
  You mean Antarctica. But it is a fascinating story, thank you for bringing it up!
- nickff 6y ago
  >" There's a town in Alaska where you need to have your appendix removed in order to live there because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away." Your link talks about Antarctica, not Alaska.
- abstrakraft 6y ago
  The linked article is about a town in Antarctica, not Alaska.
- DenisM 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure you can learn to remove your own appendix, how hard can it be?
  - szidev 6y ago
    I know you're joking, but someone has actually done that: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/antarctica-1961-a-soviet-surgeon-has-to-remove-his-own-appendix/72445/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/antar...
  - dmerks 6y ago
    If memory serves, the policy mandating the removal of the appendix before travel to Antarctica was born after the sole physician living there had no other choice than to perform an appendectomy on himself. Wikipedia: The operation started at 02:00 local time on 1 May with the help of a driver and meteorologist, who provided instruments and held a mirror so Rogozov could observe areas not directly visible. Rogozov lay in a semi-reclining position, half-turned to his left side. A solution of 0.5% novocaine was used for local anesthesia of the abdominal wall. Rogozov made a 10–12 cm incision of the abdominal wall, but while opening the peritoneum he accidentally cut the cecum and had to suture it. Then he exposed the appendix. According to his report, the appendix was found to have a dark stain at its base, and Rogozov estimated it would have burst within a day. The appendix was resected and antibiotics were applied directly into the peritoneal cavity. General weakness and nausea developed about 30–40 minutes after the start of the operation so that short pauses for rest were repeatedly needed after that. By about 04:00 the operation was complete.
2Xheadpalm 6y ago
Although the story and your account are United States centric, I live pretty remote British Columbia, Canada and the same mentality, personalty types exists here as well. As the crow flies, I am less then 300KM to downtown Vancouver yet a trip to the closest town center for supplies is a 10 hour round trip in the truck and that is on a good day. I do not leave the house without chainsaw, firearm and various other sundry gear and items as i may have to sleep in the wilderness overnight or repair my truck on the side of a dirt road. I do all our property maintenance and repairs etc., even if I could convince a 'professional' to come out this way, the expense would be anywhere from 3X to 10X for the same job in town. Self reliance and self-sufficiency are not new, trendy traits, it is a necessity for survival that has always been that way and it will probably never change for the people living in this part of the world.
- kilroy123 6y ago
  How do you use the internet? Do you have a phone signal?
  - cjones26 6y ago
    I was wondering the same thing.
  - subsubzero 6y ago
    My guess and not to answer for OP, but hughesnet or some type of satellite based internet. I know people who live far from broadband and cable and they all use hughesnet or something similar.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    I would guess satellite. I've lived in remote places before (but it was only 20 minutes to a big city mall, so not nearly as remote as described) and that is what I used. It was okay for most things, but the 600ms ping time to anything else sometimes was noticeable.
  - clord 6y ago
    I live in a similar way in Canada, and I run long range ubiquiti radios (~12km) to nearest small town. get 150-200mbps and since I have battery backup + generator, usually the only reason it goes down is if the ISP router dies. I get ~1 bar of LTE that flickers to 3g, but with wifi calling it's not an issue. In addition to changing my own alternator, I run a small ISP for my neighbours :)
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
The funny thing is that I grew up in London, then lived in Cambridge, Heidelberg, Seattle and Philadelphia - 55+ years of thoroughly urban living. 18 months ago I moved to a place where your opening sentence applies broadly. Yet somehow, I still learned how to do most of the things you list in your second paragraph before I got here. And I have neighbors here who are completely clueless about most of those things. They survive, in some cases, by cultivating long term relationships with the right people. I think you have to be careful with the correlation/causatio n issue when making points like this.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  Pretty much the same, I can re-wire a house (factory actually though it's been a long time since I trained as an industrial sparks), plaster, do basic joinery, plumbing, tiling, engine/motorcycle maintenance (I do my motorcycle and rebuilt scramblers when I was a kid), weld (not done it for a long time but it'd come back), sheet metal work etc all to a reasonable or better standard. I've never lived out in the country, always in or on the edges of towns, 80% of anything is been willing to give it a go, the other 20% is been willing to learn from fucking it up the first time. I genuinely don't understand people who aren't willing to learn this stuff even if they pay someone else to do it down the line (which makes sense sometimes). I know people my age who can't rewire a plug which is frankly embarrassing. > A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. (Time enough for Love - Heinlein)
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    >80% of anything is been willing to give it a go, the other 20% is been willing to learn from fucking it up the first time. Them's the old rules. New rules: 45% of it is being willing to give it a go, 65% of it is knowing how to find the right YouTube video to watch so you don't fuck it up. :)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Johnny555 6y ago
My nephew lives in a very isolated rural area on the east coast and I think you're overselling the "people in the community learn emergency medicine" part - he has no idea how to handle much more than stopping bleeding for a cut (his answer to any size cut is to slather it with antibiotic ointment, which the doctors then have to scrub out before they can suture) or maybe stabilizing a broken leg enough to move someone to the pickup truck. Likewise, while he does repair things, I wouldn't say they are done well -- his electrical panel is a mess, I spent a couple weekends trying to help bring things up to code (and I'm not even an electrician), like replacing taped hand-twisted wire splices with junction boxes - the tape was melted on one of them from overheating. He does own an impressive set of guns, but his car has a hole in it after accidentally shooting it while cleaning a loaded gun, so gun safety is not his strong suit. He has a 4WD, but it's been a 2WD for the past couple years because he can't afford the parts needed to fix it, he cruises junkyards when he can to try to find what he needs. His closest neighbor is a half mile away and lives in a glorified shed where the water comes in on a hose and electricity comes from a generator when he can afford to fuel it. I can believe that there are well trained survival handymen out there who are well equipped to survive on their own, but I doubt that most isolated rural people are that well trained.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  He did romanticize the whole situation. The situation he's talking about could easily be the rural south or Appalachia. As someone from one of those areas, let me assure you, the "ruggedness" isn't beautiful, it's because there is a lack of service. And the ruggedness shows on the people and their homes.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zak 6y ago
    I grew up in Alaska, and I think I disagree in a philosophical sense. There's a lot of stuff hacked together in ways experts in the relevant fields would certainly not find beautiful. Expanding foam is probably not in the toolkit of very many master architects; most people have never read an electrical code (and in many places, there's no entity imposing one); many boats, snowmobiles, and other vehicles have been adapted in ways that would make the engineers who designed them want a drink or three. Most of it works though, like that shell script you hacked together as a teenager from random mailing list archives to automate some task that still needs automating 15 years later. It works and it enables people to do things they could not otherwise do (the economics to support the relevant professional services wouldn't work). I see a beauty in that.
microtherion 6y ago
> In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. And not necessarily only rural parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNK0VspQ0M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNK0VspQ0M

pnathan 6y ago

> In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. That's pretty far out; I think that's pretty extreme. At least in Idaho/WA IMO (different geography and settlement pattern, prolly). But your point is still valid for the bulk of rural US - you just gotta know how to deal, because the cavalry is a ways out and expensive.

halbritt 6y ago
I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains for a while and had a tolerable commute into San Jose. A 911 call would yield a response no sooner than 30 minutes. So, not very far out at all, but definitely a set of circumstances that encouraged self-reliance.
lostphilosopher 6y ago
Another important factor is not just distance geography, but the population density's impact on taxes and funding for Police/EMS/Fire. Maybe from a geo perspective someone can get there faster, but if there are only a couple "someones" and they are already dealing with something else... Statistically, less people, fewer emergencies, but that's not much comfort when you're the one having a statistically unlikely emergency!
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  1,000% this. I worked on ambulances in a fairly urban area, and even there the number of times we were at 'level zero,' or no available units for dispatch was unsettling to say the least.
phobosanomaly 6y ago
I'm thinking California East of the Sierras. Mono County, Inyo County, San Bernardino County, slivers of Riverside County, and Imperial County. If you're in Amargosa, Shoshone, Tecopa, Wonder Valley, Lanfair Valley, Kelso, Amboy, Cadiz, Fenner, etc., it's a long way off from anything. Pop open Gooogle maps and try to find the nearest dispatch location for an ambulance to Fenner, and then put that into perspective with the amount of traffic on the I-40 corridor. CHP can call an airship, but I've seen burn patients sit dying for an hour while waiting for a helicopter to become available for dispatch.
pnw_hazor 6y ago
We have a homestead in NE WA we are developing, a few weeks ago, for the first time ever, I called 911 because of a potentially dangerous laceration. We have a full first aid kit with plenty of "stop the bleed" stuff but I didn't want to take any chances. So because the bleeding was controlled we waited for the EMTs. It took 25 minutes for the EMTs to arrive. But that is because the nearest EMT team was not on another call. Otherwise, it could have take 45-60 minutes to get a team from the next nearest town/county. Later that day on the way home to Seattle we stopped at an urgent care to get stitches for $175. Though, I am seriously thinking about getting an AED to keep out there.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  One of the posters above mentioned Wilderness First Aid, which is a great course. Wilderness First Responder goes more above-and-beyond and includes things like relocating a dislocated kneecap or shoulder, splinting, bandaging, administering injections, wound care, clearing a spine, identifying brain swelling from a head injury, etc. You can do it in a week, living on-site. Edit: There's also a component on helicopter operations, such as laying out a landing site for when things get really spicy.
- pnathan 6y ago
  Yeah, that's one of those remoter areas! No doubt about it. If you need an AED, definitely get it.
bluejellybean 6y ago
I invite you to visit Northern Michigan! This world exists only 7 hours, by car, north of Chicago, a metro area with something like 9.5 million people. Hardly 'pretty far out' in my opinion. Growing up I had to call EMS a few times for various things, if you're not directly in town or on a tourist road, one can expect some seriously long waits. Washed out 2 track during a light rain isn't exactly something an ambulance move quickly on. People adapt to their environments, if you have to fix your car in the country, you learn to fix your car. If you have to fix your car in the city, you learn to schmooze the repair guy into giving you a better deal.

mbostleman 6y ago

Last night I was on my way home on a relatively remote stretch in eastern Idaho that's 30 minutes from the nearest EMS and came upon a head on collision that just happened. Several others not involved surrounded the scene pretty quickly and started assessing the injured. I literally finished my Wilderness First Aid certification Saturday afternoon.

sandworm101 6y ago
>> 30 minutes from the nearest EMS In even the most developed inner cities of the US, a 30-minute response time is not unusual. A car crash with injuries, blood on the street, would certainly be top of the 911 priority list other factors like traffic often mean delays. "In July 2019, it took the NYPD more than 20 minutes on average to respond to all of its 911 calls. This July, it was about 18 minutes." https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/08/25/nypd-response-times-climb-this-summer https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/08/25/nypd-re...
- mbostleman 6y ago
  Yes for sure. Not that it makes a difference, but this is due to 30 minutes of travel at 60ish mph. No traffic delays.
- mbostleman 6y ago
  Also, for what it's worth, we have really good helicopter support in this region too. Both medical transport as well as short haul / wilderness extraction. So response can be a lot faster if necessary.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Helicopters are tricky things. They move very quickly but from call to helicopter taking off can often be a long time. Even in the military/coast guard context, the process of authorizing a flight, turning a helicopter on, and actually getting the thing in the air can easily take 30+ minutes.

hanniabu 6y ago

There's a town in Alaska where you need to have your appendix removed in order to live there because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away. https://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20180810-villas-las-estrellas-antarctica-base-residents-surgery https://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20180810-villas-las-estre...

btilly 6y ago
You mean Antarctica. But it is a fascinating story, thank you for bringing it up!
nickff 6y ago
>" There's a town in Alaska where you need to have your appendix removed in order to live there because the nearest hospital is 625 miles away." Your link talks about Antarctica, not Alaska.
abstrakraft 6y ago
The linked article is about a town in Antarctica, not Alaska.
DenisM 6y ago
I'm pretty sure you can learn to remove your own appendix, how hard can it be?
- szidev 6y ago
  I know you're joking, but someone has actually done that: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/antarctica-1961-a-soviet-surgeon-has-to-remove-his-own-appendix/72445/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/antar...
- dmerks 6y ago
  If memory serves, the policy mandating the removal of the appendix before travel to Antarctica was born after the sole physician living there had no other choice than to perform an appendectomy on himself. Wikipedia: The operation started at 02:00 local time on 1 May with the help of a driver and meteorologist, who provided instruments and held a mirror so Rogozov could observe areas not directly visible. Rogozov lay in a semi-reclining position, half-turned to his left side. A solution of 0.5% novocaine was used for local anesthesia of the abdominal wall. Rogozov made a 10–12 cm incision of the abdominal wall, but while opening the peritoneum he accidentally cut the cecum and had to suture it. Then he exposed the appendix. According to his report, the appendix was found to have a dark stain at its base, and Rogozov estimated it would have burst within a day. The appendix was resected and antibiotics were applied directly into the peritoneal cavity. General weakness and nausea developed about 30–40 minutes after the start of the operation so that short pauses for rest were repeatedly needed after that. By about 04:00 the operation was complete.

2Xheadpalm 6y ago

Although the story and your account are United States centric, I live pretty remote British Columbia, Canada and the same mentality, personalty types exists here as well. As the crow flies, I am less then 300KM to downtown Vancouver yet a trip to the closest town center for supplies is a 10 hour round trip in the truck and that is on a good day. I do not leave the house without chainsaw, firearm and various other sundry gear and items as i may have to sleep in the wilderness overnight or repair my truck on the side of a dirt road. I do all our property maintenance and repairs etc., even if I could convince a 'professional' to come out this way, the expense would be anywhere from 3X to 10X for the same job in town. Self reliance and self-sufficiency are not new, trendy traits, it is a necessity for survival that has always been that way and it will probably never change for the people living in this part of the world.

kilroy123 6y ago
How do you use the internet? Do you have a phone signal?
- cjones26 6y ago
  I was wondering the same thing.
- subsubzero 6y ago
  My guess and not to answer for OP, but hughesnet or some type of satellite based internet. I know people who live far from broadband and cable and they all use hughesnet or something similar.
- bluGill 6y ago
  I would guess satellite. I've lived in remote places before (but it was only 20 minutes to a big city mall, so not nearly as remote as described) and that is what I used. It was okay for most things, but the 600ms ping time to anything else sometimes was noticeable.
- clord 6y ago
  I live in a similar way in Canada, and I run long range ubiquiti radios (~12km) to nearest small town. get 150-200mbps and since I have battery backup + generator, usually the only reason it goes down is if the ISP router dies. I get ~1 bar of LTE that flickers to 3g, but with wifi calling it's not an issue. In addition to changing my own alternator, I run a small ISP for my neighbours :)

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

The funny thing is that I grew up in London, then lived in Cambridge, Heidelberg, Seattle and Philadelphia - 55+ years of thoroughly urban living. 18 months ago I moved to a place where your opening sentence applies broadly. Yet somehow, I still learned how to do most of the things you list in your second paragraph before I got here. And I have neighbors here who are completely clueless about most of those things. They survive, in some cases, by cultivating long term relationships with the right people. I think you have to be careful with the correlation/causatio n issue when making points like this.

noir_lord 6y ago
Pretty much the same, I can re-wire a house (factory actually though it's been a long time since I trained as an industrial sparks), plaster, do basic joinery, plumbing, tiling, engine/motorcycle maintenance (I do my motorcycle and rebuilt scramblers when I was a kid), weld (not done it for a long time but it'd come back), sheet metal work etc all to a reasonable or better standard. I've never lived out in the country, always in or on the edges of towns, 80% of anything is been willing to give it a go, the other 20% is been willing to learn from fucking it up the first time. I genuinely don't understand people who aren't willing to learn this stuff even if they pay someone else to do it down the line (which makes sense sometimes). I know people my age who can't rewire a plug which is frankly embarrassing. > A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. (Time enough for Love - Heinlein)
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  >80% of anything is been willing to give it a go, the other 20% is been willing to learn from fucking it up the first time. Them's the old rules. New rules: 45% of it is being willing to give it a go, 65% of it is knowing how to find the right YouTube video to watch so you don't fuck it up. :)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Johnny555 6y ago

My nephew lives in a very isolated rural area on the east coast and I think you're overselling the "people in the community learn emergency medicine" part - he has no idea how to handle much more than stopping bleeding for a cut (his answer to any size cut is to slather it with antibiotic ointment, which the doctors then have to scrub out before they can suture) or maybe stabilizing a broken leg enough to move someone to the pickup truck. Likewise, while he does repair things, I wouldn't say they are done well -- his electrical panel is a mess, I spent a couple weekends trying to help bring things up to code (and I'm not even an electrician), like replacing taped hand-twisted wire splices with junction boxes - the tape was melted on one of them from overheating. He does own an impressive set of guns, but his car has a hole in it after accidentally shooting it while cleaning a loaded gun, so gun safety is not his strong suit. He has a 4WD, but it's been a 2WD for the past couple years because he can't afford the parts needed to fix it, he cruises junkyards when he can to try to find what he needs. His closest neighbor is a half mile away and lives in a glorified shed where the water comes in on a hose and electricity comes from a generator when he can afford to fuel it. I can believe that there are well trained survival handymen out there who are well equipped to survive on their own, but I doubt that most isolated rural people are that well trained.

x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
He did romanticize the whole situation. The situation he's talking about could easily be the rural south or Appalachia. As someone from one of those areas, let me assure you, the "ruggedness" isn't beautiful, it's because there is a lack of service. And the ruggedness shows on the people and their homes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Zak 6y ago
  I grew up in Alaska, and I think I disagree in a philosophical sense. There's a lot of stuff hacked together in ways experts in the relevant fields would certainly not find beautiful. Expanding foam is probably not in the toolkit of very many master architects; most people have never read an electrical code (and in many places, there's no entity imposing one); many boats, snowmobiles, and other vehicles have been adapted in ways that would make the engineers who designed them want a drink or three. Most of it works though, like that shell script you hacked together as a teenager from random mailing list archives to automate some task that still needs automating 15 years later. It works and it enables people to do things they could not otherwise do (the economics to support the relevant professional services wouldn't work). I see a beauty in that.

microtherion 6y ago

> In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. And not necessarily only rural parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNK0VspQ0M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNK0VspQ0M