Ask Lemmy

My guy. That was the precise thing most of our ancestors struggled their whole lives to get out of.

I nearly did, but didn't for two main reasons:

1. Women. I'm not a monk, and it's really hard to find a woman who wants to live in the woods, especially when you live in the woods.

2. Empathy for the rest of humanity. Can't make the world a better place from the woods.

I'm in the woods right now, waiting for you to come help cut firewood and get next year's garlic and potatoes in. December-Febuary I'm gonna go be homeless somewhere warmer though. For real, if you want a taste of woods life and are able to pitch in hmu. "Other people" are kinda the main thing missing from the equation atm

The only woods where I could do that in my country are part of the Amazon , and the uncontacted tribes living there are not exactly friendly

If you want to see what it’s like to live without modern conveniences, go to a really poor country and observe the lower-class civilians. Having been to Honduras where poor people live in the mountains (with amazing vistas) with dirt floor huts and no clean drinking water, I can tell you that it is a terrible existence. Half their children die before they make it to 10, because of parasites from the dirt which get in their feet, and contaminated water that they have to hike down and up the mountain for every day. I feel like everyone should see this at some point to reset their perspective.

Clean water really.

With solar and battery tech, self-sufficient electricity isn't some impossible thing anymore. But getting clean water is the real trick. All my life I've just had to walk a few steps and turn a faucet. I took this for granted for so long until I actually looked into what it would realistically be like living off grid in the woods.

Sure you can collect rainwater, but what happens during a drought? You have iodine tablets? Where did you get them? I doubt you made them yourself in the woods lol. You'd have to live next to some freshwater stream or luck out with some kind of artesian well on the property.

Sure food could be an issue too, but you die from thirst long before you die of starvation. Idk but I guess I'm at the point of appreciating tap water lol.

A mortgage and a family.

Mostly getting shit delivered. My current ideal spot is far enough outside town that I'm still able to get pizza delivered and have good internet... but not deal with JW's.

Moving to a rural area and realizing how fucking hard it is.

The hill I will die on: rugged individualism as strength in a post-disaster world is a lie that is sold to appeal to ego in an individualistic society, and also to prevent the formation of community.

That doesn't apply to many existing rural communities, who of course know better.

I had enough with where this society is going and I no longer want to be part of it. But I like:

• fine spirits
• good food
• cooking nice steaks
• eating in restaurants
• drinking in bars
• traveling to places that are exotic or interesting to me
• traveling to places where it’s just nice to wind down
• swimming in tropical waters
• hiking snowy mountains
• driving
• listening to hi fi music
• reading books
• doing video calls with friends and family
• being able to follow my curiosity and learning new things
• playing video games
• being able to take my dog to the vet
• providing my kid with good education
• keeping my kid safe from injuries and diseases
• seeing a doctor when I get sick
• access to a dentist, a pediatrician, a barber, an ER when necessary
• taking a shower
• hot tubs
• having a washing machine, a dishwasher and a refrigerator in my house
• having heating and air conditioning

And probably a bunch more stuff because of which, while I truly enjoy being in nature, I keep choosing living in a city and going to work instead. The common thing with all these items that you need money for each. The only ethical way I know of for making money is working hard and building a career relentlessly for decades. if you’re lucky. There are no guarantees.

I’m not sure if it’s worth it, but I do know for sure I couldn’t give all of the above up, as long as I have a choice.

It is impossible to gather food for yourself. We don't live in pre-civilization or even the wild west. Everything is owned by someone, regulated, etc.

How do you expect to feed yourself? Not like you can just gather all day and get lucky hunting.

It is objectively harder to 'live on the land' then it was centuries ago. Borderline impossible, especially if you want to... you know live and interact with people.

I have a wife and cat to look out for, hard to do that when I can't pay rent.

I like enough of the civilized world that I'm still willing to participate in it, despite being relatively removed from a lot of it.

Also, living in the woods in a lot more work than people think it is and I'm lazy.

Indoor plumbing. Seriously. Go without for a couple of weeks and tell me how you feel about hot showers and flush toilets.

Also, people really underestimate how difficult it would be to just fuck off into the woods. You'd need a good amount of planning and knowledge to do it. What's edible within what time range. Where the animals are at what time of year. And if you're up north you always gotta be laying in firewood.

Also civilization has taken over most of the good hunter gatherer/ subsistence farming spots. River valleys, estuaries, anywhere with good fertile soil. Most of the places with good desolate wilderness to fuck off into was left desolate because it's fucking desolate.

There are fewer than 10,000 people who, if they just like weren’t around anymore, would inprove everyone’s quality of life like ten fold. I cling to the hope that one day enough of us will realize that and save the world.

Living in the woods alone without food input from civilization is incredibly hard if not impossible.

Realistically you'd need like 10-20 people to help out, livestock, a field to grow cereals, large garden and a vegetable field, just to keep everyone surviving.

Ticks. Also, probably, my wife and progeny.

not having to shit in a hole in the ground

Mostly that I like the civilized world.

Like don't get me wrong: Nature hikes? Camping? All great. National parks are a treasure. But I will freely admit I rather enjoy little comforts of modernity like "clean water just comes out of the tap when I turn it on", "fresh food is a 15-minute walk to the grocery store away", and "the spinny machine makes my clothes clean while I do other stuff."

Convenience. The people I could do without, but I’m a creature of habit.

I can live without internet. without computers. heck even without electricity. But I like indoor plumbing with hot and cold running water and temperature controlled shelter. Also I would still prefer to have electricity and refrigeration/freezer. and to be honest its nice to be able to access some media. Lets face it a lot of video games are pretty cool and came out not to long ago.

Volunteering at the native plant garden in the park. Just enough of a hit to keep me going.

Have you actually tried doing that? It can be challenging to say the least.

I do it for fun sometimes, but I do it fully provisioned and knowing I can always decide to bail, hike out, and go home to my nice warm bed, clean hot and cold running water (people don't realize how huge this is), a fridge full of food that I don't have to carry with me, devices to make the food within minutes on a whim, no bugs or potentially dangerous wild animals, etc.

I’ve given it some thought.

There isn’t enough empty land in temperate climates for someone to survive unmolested outside of civilization, and I don’t have the multitude of skills required to make it in less hospitable climates. If I could find a good source of food I might make it past the first couple weeks, but I’m not hopeful. I’ve never harvested an animal, so that’s a big barrier.

If I had a good solar system and a house on several hundred or thousand acres to get me started it might work out. Better yet if I have some seed and starter food.

Lack of survival skills

About $30K-35K for the proper rolling solar punk set up, and family health issues meaning I'd be the lone survivor guaranteed after the first winter.

It's hard. Really, really, hard.

Yeah, modern life could be improved. There's a lot of ways society could be better. But you think it's tough now? Wait until literally every comfort you have is gone and you get nothing that you didn't grow, hunt, build, or craft yourself. And that's assuming you even have the skills to do it.

One wrong step and a twisted ankle is a death sentence. In the wild when you stop running, you die.

Chronic medical conditions that require medication.

I have a chronic illness, while it's not that serious, I need my meds.

I'd rather be dead than have to live without civilization.

Civilized world has it's perks. Water closets, supermarkets, social media.

Living in the woods needs a LOT of money

Infrastructure = stability

I highly recommend watching the Fall of Civilizations series: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/

...and then think about each civilization as a group of people trying to stay alive in the wilderness.

Most of them collapsed because something went wrong with the water and/or food supply, and they weren't able to recover because they were dependent on a single source. Some event overextends the resources and there aren't enough backups.

This happened to many other smaller groups over the millennia, which never made it long enough to be labelled as civilizations. Most of them we don't have records on.

As human technology has improved and civilization has grown more complex, we've built more redundancies into our system. Drought in an area no longer means the people living there have to leave or die. Famine can be overcome with modern farming technology and logistics. We can even mitigate the impact of diseases that are so contagious they spread around the entire planet in less than a year.

Benefiting from the redundancies of the system requires being attached to the system. Disconnecting might seem freeing on the face of it, but the reality is that it makes you a slave to your basic needs. Infrastructure provides the escape from that slavery, but you can't build or maintain infrastructure by yourself.

The fact that living like that is miserable, expensive, and exhausting and I don't want to die from a basic injury.

Fucking cold winters and the effort of growing enough potato, hunting and fishing, gathering firewood all with hand tools is way too much work.

I've done it, it's okay. I'm back in the civilized world now. More than anything, it's lonely out there.

The VAST majority of people simply could not cut living in the wilderness, cutting themselves off from society completely. It is an extremely difficult life. Most people wouldn't know so many critical skills you would need to even begin to think of pulling it off. Even when you look at "successful" instances of this, you find they still return to civilization to make up for shortfalls, like making sure there is enough food, using gas, complex machinery like power tools, vehicles, and generators, etc.

We have a cabin in the woods so I do it in the summer. I wouldn't want to do it longterm in the winter. (Canada) A couple of days and I'm ready for civilization.