[...] thinking back to the early-American homesteading days when a man could venture into uncharted territory and make a simple life for himself [...] Edit: Sev

[...] thinking back to the early-American homesteading days when a man could venture into uncharted territory and make a simple life for himself [...] Edit: Several users have pointed out that homesteading was incredibly difficult, and we’d all likely die trying to live so simply. Let’s assume the person is relatively capable of sustaining life using whichever resources might be provided by the particular environment — forest, desert, famous Bay Area city[...] Someone did the reasonable thing and pointed out the 'romantic fallacy' on part of the OP. With what little gardening I have done in my life I can say with confidence that I will fail by a large margin to harvest more than a tiny fraction of what I need to survive even if I were given a plot of land and all the gardening and farming tools you'd need. Even then it would be potatoes day in day out and not much of anything else. I was even able to harvest 2800 grams of potatoes from my balcony this year and could multiply that number if I wanted, but that is still a tiny fraction of only the potatoes I eat in a year's time, not to speak of what I consume apart from potatoes.