Some people are called to a romantic memory of the frontier. Self-sufficiency sounds great when you're getting tired of thirteen subscription services and five

Some people are called to a romantic memory of the frontier. Self-sufficiency sounds great when you're getting tired of thirteen subscription services and five to ten things that need to be plugged in to recharge every other day or so. There are plenty of jokes about the fragility of our tech stack, but I don't think many people appreciate how fragile knowledge networks are. Some core ideas, like conservation of energy and elementary quantum mechanics will be pretty robust, but the subtle voodoo that makes modern society actually tick? There won't be people who can replace existing devices, much less design and build improved ones. You can make your bug-out bag, but remember that you won't be an MRI in your future. Your batteries will decay and your memory chips will fail. In a few short decades you'll be back in the early-mid 1800's, if you're lucky to be in a place with a cooperating climate.