I don’t want to sound disparaging but I think a lot of the criticisms and naysaying comes from people who are naive. They are used to living within environment

I don’t want to sound disparaging but I think a lot of the criticisms and naysaying comes from people who are naive. They are used to living within environments with all the modern conveniences. They can’t imagine anything different, when in fact your average farmer and his family have stuff like outhouses, manual wells, self-made tools and MacGyver fixes and hacks. While they’re not “truly” off grid, they’re effectively partially off grid and would totally do fine. As a white collar knowledge worker I try to soak in their blue collar skills and wisdom whenever I can. And in turn try to evolve my white collar skills into something that would be useful to them (eg being competent with a variety of radios and other stuff) if the SHTF. Conversely, I live 20 minutes outside of town. I work in town, but just on the edge of town, so I'll go months without having to go into town. It’s weird and neat when I go into “downtown” and I’m overwhelmed with the noise and activity and new modernities (the latest being these new electric scooters people rent and ride around and then just leave wherever. Before that was Uber. I knew these existed but it was weird to see them in person. Though I’ve still never used Uber myself.)