That infrastructure only lasts few years without maintenance (unless built by romans from rocks)
Copper, steel etc get taken and sold for pennies
Waterpipes just break or burst first winter
Sewage gets clogged and filled with roots
Houses without heating decay in 2-3 years and you'll never get humidity and mildew smell out.
Agreed.
I never said it would be easy and I'm not promising anything for free. What I am saying is that given a choice between recovering existing infrastructure/housing and hacking it whole cloth out of the countryside, then I choose the former. If you have to demo the inside of a house and gut it to the wall studs, then new Tyvek insulation, hang new sheetrock and put in new floors, then that is still preferable to building from scratch.
It's the materials. The bones of the structures are superior - the materials are simply better. This old house of mine, there isn't a stick of shit peanut butter soft yellawood in it. It's all hardwood. Even the wide moldings and plinth blocks are poplar. White oak floors. They looked like hell when we bought the place. I pulled 47 nails out of these walls that were leftovers - because when you take a picture down, it is easier to hammer a nail flush and paint over it than pull it out and redress the wall and paint it.
Horsehair and plaster over lath. No sheetrock. I had to teach myself how to plaster. The floor joists are 3" x 12" and poplar. Like walking on the Rock of Gibraltar.
When we had new shingles and tarpaper put on the house, the roofing crew was frustrated - they could not hammer nails into the roof. They were bending them. Because the roof isn't plywood or OSB - the roof itself is White Oak planks, about 18" wide and about 2 inches thick, the length of the house. Like trying to hammer nails into stone.
NB I would accept as a viable alternative having two crews running to recover building materials - one crew would carefully demo a structure, while the second crew would take those materials and render them suitable for use in another structure you are building. That would work and it would save time, effort and money.
Example: There is a house that burned a few miles from us. Big old place - Victorian. It was gutted. Damn shame. But the walls and chimney still stand and it is being overgrown with weeds. I was thinking about making an offer on what's left because those old clay-fired bricks would make an awesome patio and driveway for us - and nobody is making clay fired bricks anymore. Push the walls over, collect up the bricks, drive them back here and lay out a driveway.
For a person to "escape" city life, just move to suburban or a bit rural area. The offgrid life is mostly marketing and it is perhaps doable from ages 15-50.
After you get old you just worry how close shops and hospitals are. Any serious injury at remote location is a death sentence.
Agreed.
The shoulder replacement surgery I mentioned earlier - stupid accident. I fell, and dislocated my right shoulder. Totally preventable and needless, but it happened. There was nobody around and so I had to relocate my own shoulder, then drive myself to the hospital for film. My daily is a 5 speed. I made it work.
Fast forward 5 years and my ortho doc tells me I got "end stage arthritis" in my right shoulder (at my age - ha! Like I'm some aged boomer) and it's about half useless - I need replacement parts. Fair enough. Get it done and keep going. Because at the end of the day, what are my choices?
If situation turns militarized, the best solution is to just not be in the vicinity.
A two edged sword, and the thought has crossed my mind more than once. You don't live in some benighted urban shithole hellscape populated with orcs, trolls, demons and nurglings - which is the entire point - but you also are isolated if they decide to come to you.
Which is the situation in many places like South Africa. So, you take steps. It is counter-productive to do things like installing good entry doors and windows that can resist attack, and then leave your garden shed unlocked and filled with shit like crowbars, axes and chainsaws. Why not put a ladder out there too so they can access your 2nd floor? Retards.
Reason why towns empty is because people that can move out do so and those who cannot perish away over time.
Schrödinger's Economy. The War on Coal devastated the entire region - the entire economy got rugpulled. The economic conditions that caused those towns to be abandoned still exist - yet people are quite literally
moving in next door to these abandoned towns on tiny plots of land in a new subdivision.
If the economy could not sustain a tiny town and it was abandoned, then what makes them think that same economy will sustain their new subdivision knocked together with brown invader slave labor?
Makes no sense. I live in one of those abandoned towns - an unincorporated area - we have about 400 people in this community. And I like it just fine.