27. Off-Grid

One option is to find a rural property, build or fix up a simple house, grow a garden, install solar and Starlink. Live a low profile life. Work just enough hours to buy what you can’t produce yourself. The hardware and knowledge is easy to get nowadays. Try for a mild climate with lots of water by rain or a shallow well. Take your remote job with you, sell your skills or barter.

Her’e a reality check:

One retrospective estimate from the 1970s back-to-the-land movement suggests that only a very small percentage (around 2–3%) of people achieved subsistence living solely through agriculture and barter, with most others not sustaining that lifestyle long-term and returning to mainstream work or society.

There’s no systematic tracking of individuals who set out to live fully off-grid and later “fail” or go back. Instead, most available information is anecdotal, from personal blogs, movement histories, or small surveys that don’t measure return rates in a statistically meaningful way.

Many online communities of homesteaders/off-gridders report that a large proportion eventually scale back or integrate with conventional society (e.g., by taking jobs, accessing services, or moving back to towns) because of challenges like income, healthcare, schooling, aging, isolation, climate extremes, or legal/zoning issues. These are not scientific figures, but trends mentioned in many firsthand accounts.

Success in off-grid living normally requires:

*Significant skills in farming, construction, and resource management
*Financial resources for land and equipment
*Good planning for food, water, power, and income
*Resilience against weather, illness, and isolation

Many people underestimate these challenges, which is part of why so many either give up or transition to a mixed lifestyle (off-grid in some ways but still connected to society in others).

Listen. If you are lazy, have no practical skills, are entitled, lack ambition and not self-reliant you will suffer and die a miserable lonely life out there. If you qualify you can create a wonderful life far away from social unrest, the surveillance state and the revenuers.