Thinking of bugging out to the country? Think again.

Unless you grew up here to begin with, you just don't have the mindset to truly make it. You have very little concept of how subsidized, pampered and protected your lifestyle is. You can't just pop out for any given need when you inhabit the boonies. Cops and ambulances can take hours to respond. Heat in the form of wood is dirty and dangerous from the point of felling to combustion, especially if you don't grasp the difference between soft and hard woods. Say goodbye to clean clothes, daily chores are not forgiving. Food? Hah! You have no idea how cheap your food is. You will spend more time raising crops and livestock than you ever did pushing pixels, and for not profit, but just to cover a per person 2000Kcal/day diet.

Speaking of which, how are you going to pay taxes and licenses? Your opportunity to earn in the sticks is severely limited, and you will be in competition from natives for what jobs exist; not something you want to bring on yourself. You think you hate immigrants? Flatlanders are not welcomed with open arms, even if you are white as the driven snow.

Why? Because of the attitudes you bring. I own over a 100 acres. However, the town now has a health ordinance making it illegal for me to own more than 20 pigs. This was shoved through by transplants. Now I do not use pigs as an income source, and have never kept more than one breeding pair, but just who do you think you are telling me what I can and can not keep in terms of livestock? It hasn't stopped there. There are now laws limiting the use of outdoor boilers to between October and April, and you can't just have any old boiler, it has to be the most complex one. Bullshit. It can take decades for the locals to trust you if ever, all because of the previous high minded urban refugees.

Life is not easy out here. Unless you are used to hard physical labor for much of the day, you don't stand a chance out here. Some make it. More than that have come and gone within a year or two. The bucolic country side looks mighty appealing from the outside, but unless you are ready for the commitment of your life to provide as much as you can for yourself, and do without, you are in for a rude awakening. Forget about discretionary spending on new fangled gadgets. Your budget will predominately be chewed up by the insatiable appetite of your implements and inputs for plantings and livestock.

Then there is the land. Few have any clue as to how many acres it takes to support livestock and crops. Realistically, the bare minimum to start a self sufficient holding for a family is 10-15 acres per person. Livestock need huge amounts of pasture in the summer and grain for the winter. You will also need a wood lot and crop land.

It is great to carp and dream, but get a clue; bugging out to the country is not all milk and honey. In the end you probably are better off lumping up with the rest of the urbanites in the coming fedghettos.