Nature Commune Living: The Modern Pipe Dream

reply to post by bsbray11


LOL at going native and the ignorance you display! Of course I never said electricity was a nessesity but it sure is handy. So go do it and let us know how it works out for you.

I am interested in more then just surviving. Plane crash survivors can survive in the mountains by eating each other, that doesn't mean it is desirable or sustainable as a permanent lifestyle.

I lived out of my truck once for several months with nothing but a canvas camper shell. I survived but it was no fun and not something I wanted to do permanently. I have survived in the woods hunting and fishing and again not something I want to do as a permanent lifestyle.

Yeah people can survive lots of things but it's a very hard life especially when it's not necassary to "just survive". I like to enjoy the wild too not just wonder if or when my next meal is coming.

Planning and preparation can make for a nice life away from the trappings of modern civilization but it's not for everyone much less going "native" as you suggest, especially those who have romantic unrealistic ideas of what it takes and what it's like.

Good luck with your conduit dome hope you have lots of food stored up for the winter cause it will take about 20-40 cords of wood at least to keep it heated with a fire pit. And make sure those tarps don't melt or catch fire LOL.

You remind me of the kid who moves out of his Mommy and Daddies house and then wonders why the tooth paste and toilet paper ran out and the water got turned off.

Good luck to you.

reply to post by hawkiye


That's a nice rant but yet again you don't have to invest $100k just to know when your next meal is going to be.

I'll just wait for the OP to explain all these expenses he's talking about in explicit detail, so we can see how much is actually necessary and how much is just luxury padding.

I have no doubts people don't want to live without many of their modern conveniences. It's just when people confuse conveniences and luxuries with necessities of living that they start to forget where they came from and go numb-skulled.

reply to post by bsbray11


Well, I’m at work, but this is what I can calculate off the top of my head:

3 years worth of foodstuffs (can be mitigated by hunting/gathering)
$100 * 20 (people) * 12 (months) = $12000 * 3 (years) = $36000

Tools for construction, agriculture, maintenance, etc. (can be mitigated by buying aftermarket)
$10,000 including spares and parts during 3 year period. (The amount and variety of tools you will need to be successful at this is staggering, although the cost can be mitigated somewhat by improvising using existing tools.)

Land taxes and permits
$4000 (once) + ($1500-$2000 (annually) * 3) = $8500-$9000

Seeds for agriculture / permaculture
$500-$1500 (annually) * 3 (years) = $1500 - $4500
Note, this number is annually in case of failed harvests or a lack of significant germination

Power, water, and septic systems for community
$10,000 - $20,000 for components, assembly and installation done by community.

So far we are up to $79,500. This is not including costs for all the sundry components you will need to build the housing (Cob/earthbag/strawbale) for these people. Not including the cost of transportation of components. Not including a thousand different factors that can’t be thought of off the top of your head, and won’t be seen until you spend a few years building a comprehensive list, and even then you’ll forget something and have to go buy it.

Really, it’s a great concept, but when you get down to the details of the costs associated with building an entirely self-sustainable community from the ground up, it gets expensive fast. And as I mentioned in my opening post, the community will ALWAYS be hemorrhaging money to the outside world to purchase materials and components it cannot manufacture within the community, so the community will also need something niche it can provide to the outside world to guarantee income that will fill the coffers.

And before you say something about that defying the purpose of going off grid and back it up with some silly nonsense about native societies and ancient man, ponder this: Humans have always needed each other, that dependence growing in direct correlation to the level of civilization maintained. Native communities traded and interacted with each other to obtain resources that one needed and the other had. Every society has, no matter how primitive.

The only groups that remain entirely autonomous closed groups are cavemen and isolated Amazonian tribals, and even the latter still has SOME form of interaction with their neighbors! It is foolhardy to try and cut oneself off entirely, and that is NOT the purpose most sustainable communities are striving for. The intention is a community that can remain autonomous from the poisons, climate, and corrupting psychology of mainstream society, while maintaining a level of civilization not that far removed from it. Modern Sustainable Communities are intended to be a throwback to a simpler time, without the numerous, uncountable detriments that existed as little as a hundred years ago.


[edit on 18-3-2010 by D.E.M.]

Originally posted by D.E.M.
3 years worth of foodstuffs (can be mitigated by hunting/gathering)
$100 * 20 (people) * 12 (months) = $12000 * 3 (years) = $36000

You could spend $36,000 or even $1,000,000 on food to store, but it's also possible to reduce this to $0 if there is constant gathering, hunting, trapping, fishing, and even agriculture, which should be the main task and priority of anyone living indefinitely in the wilderness. It's work, yes. It requires storing lots of food and preserving it for the winter, yes (actually it doesn't REQUIRE that, but otherwise you'd be eating mostly pine needles, dandelion roots, wild onions, sumac berries, tree cambrium and not much else is available during winter). But for a community sufficiently knowledgeable and willing to work at this every day, not only is it possible to reduce to $0 but it's actually fun gathering, trapping, and fishing during the summer when you get into the groove of it, and since this is the only real work that needs to be considered every day year round.

Tools for construction, agriculture, maintenance, etc. (can be mitigated by buying aftermarket)
$10,000 including spares and parts during 3 year period. (The amount and variety of tools you will need to be successful at this is staggering, although the cost can be mitigated somewhat by improvising using existing tools.)

Can you elaborate on exactly what tools you're spending $10,000 dollars on? If you are going to use an exact number like $10,000, I hope you have an exact list to match it.

Land taxes and permits
$4000 (once) + ($1500-$2000 (annually) * 3) = $8500-$9000

No comment. Except that this is not applicable to me.

Seeds for agriculture / permaculture
$500-$1500 (annually) * 3 (years) = $1500 - $4500
Note, this number is annually in case of failed harvests or a lack of significant germination

$500 or especially $1500 worth of seeds is trying to grow a massive amount of food, especially when supplemented by gathering, trapping and fishing. Obviously more than for one person. So you should at least divide the cost by the number of people this is going to feed. It also isn't a necessity to do this. Acquiring food is another thing that offers an infinite number of possibilities and it's possible to get through the year without growing anything of your own, at least in the region where I live. Not only do you have an entire spectrum from growing nothing to growing a massive amount of food to work with, but what you're growing also offers a wide range of possibilities. Tomato seeds are about $5 for a pack of 10. Other vegetables and fruits are much cheaper and can be propagated further without seeds once the plants have developed.

Most people do not realize that many/most plants in shrubby areas are not only edible but nutritious. Dandelion leaves are edible, delicious when young, and are also known as "poor man's salad" and often made up salads during the Great Depression. Nettles are edible, common plantain is edible (not the plantain you see at stores, ie not the fruit), milkweed is edible, wild onions, blackberry and raspberry shoots and bushes before they even develop fruit, and as spring turns to summer there is an increasingly enormous number of wild food sources available. Thick books are filled with all the edible species. Not only is it enough to survive day-by-day during the warmer months without growing additional food, you could also stockpile and preserve extra food every day for colder months in a variety of ways, by drying out and grinding things into flour, canning (for which you'd need mason jars), rolling pemmican if you have animal lard, etc. This is all part and parcel of the daily chore of making sure you have food to eat if you live in wilderness.

Power, water, and septic systems for community
$10,000 - $20,000 for components, assembly and installation done by community.

This also is not a necessity and you could knock this down to nothing but manual labor if you develop alternative plans for "septic systems" and water sources. The trick is just to set up near fresh running water. Which at least in the area I live is a matter of picking a mountain spring, which is clean groundwater and generations of my family have drank it straight out of the spring and to my knowledge no one ever got sick or died from it, and my grandpa and grandma came from families of 14 and 12 children respectively that used these sources. You could always boil it if it makes you feel better, and it won't have as many chemicals in it as tap water.

Septic system? Hole in the ground. Out house. Put it in a lower elevation, ditch, etc., close enough to get to in a hurry but far enough to be out of peoples' way. Installing a septic system is another luxury of technology, not necessity. Most people still don't even have septic systems in many of the nations that produce our clothing and food.

Power? As in electricity? Not a necessity at all. Another pure luxury.

So basically this is another expense that could be $0. If you want to actually build an out house as opposed to just a deep hole in the ground, you might have to buy lumber but that's your call and again not a necessity.

This is not including costs for all the sundry components you will need to build the housing (Cob/earthbag/strawbale) for these people.

Do you have a specific reason the

Wow...good thing hubby and I didn't know it was so expensive to live like that. We'd have never even tried. But, we didn't read it and we did it. We live in the woods, in tents at first, with children. We never felt deprived, my sons grew up with the whole outdoors as a yard and playground. We eventually did acquire all of the luxuries of modern times, but it wasn't until all the children were grown that we got running water.

People lived without all of that trap for centuries, most of today's necessities are actually luxuries. My husband did odd jobs for neighbors to meet any monetary needs that came up, tools (there are not many you truly need), clothing (I can make those if necessary), and things the boys needed when they attended public school. Quite a few years were spent in home school where they learned things most modern schools have done away with, such as animal husbandry, the use of common sense, and the truth of economics in a home.

Today all of the boys live good lives and work hard to have "things", but they all know how to live without all of that too. None of them regret how they grew up and they laugh when they hear things like this on how much it costs to live outside the norm, it makes me smile too

Oh yea, since the boys are all moved away now hubby and I are considering letting all the excess go and getting back to the basics once more. It really isn't that hard to do. We have considered solar power for the well pump, we sorta like not having to tote water anymore...

[edit on 4-4-2010 by SheaWolf]

Originally posted by D.E.M.
Oh my dear, dear poster. Trust me, once you've considered the costs of the tools and material needed to construct a habitable standard of living with no connection to society for more than 1 person, the costs are higher than that.

$100k plus, per person? I'd like your insights into this at various scales. Seriosuly interested.

I know that down here in FLorida there are prime semi-disconnected areas (but with roads) where you can get 5 acres on riverfront near the gulf for $35k. How useful any land will be has factors besides the land itself. I'm sure up there you have no shortage of lakes and ponds. In certain geographic locations you can even add shallow ponds to raise watercrops and crayfish in. Perhaps even algae for biodiesel if you're really enterprising.

Anyways, for a $100k you could get the 5 acres, build a decent set of structure on it strategically that includes methods for energy etc. But I mean really stocked for $100k. Of course trying to scale this up has its own technicalities starting with the land issue, but in general there has to be a decline in moolah at some point as you scale it up.

And dont count out resourcefulness. But obviously it might be a challenge to get lots of resourceful people. But with enough resourceful people pre-emptive allocation of funds and efforts could be done well.

One thing is for sure, I wouldn't ever want to try to do it from up there in BC. I'm from Michigan, and I have some insight into the nightmare that would be. But down here or perhaps Texas I could see decent potential if you had the right people.

On another thought, The amount to shell per scale could be dependent on what the revenue is to be. For instance, the equipment to make biodiesel (which should be inherently part of the whole idea anyways) wouldn't cost the same the same per head as you add them. Biodiesel can offer funds and confort. But with funds in mind you might want a flatbed truck outfitted with 275 gallon totes powered by biodiesel to drive to town to get the spent oil to make it with. But once oyu have the truck you dont need another one unless you intend to scale up the operation an order of magnitude.

[edit on 5-4-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Please delete, I dony knwo why it double-posted.

[edit on 5-4-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

reply to post by D.E.M.


D.E.M.,

Thank you for this thread. You point out a lot of things that practically need to be looked upon before ever trying to think that something like this could work out.

I personally don't think it is impossible, and I don't think that you do either, but it takes a lot more than people have.. and it would take that from every part of the community. I live as minimal as I can, and I have no doubt that I could take care of myself on my own, but many people fail to realize how much they depend on society.

star and flag for you!

Originally posted by D.E.M.
3 years worth of foodstuffs (can be mitigated by hunting/gathering)
$100 * 20 (people) * 12 (months) = $12000 * 3 (years) = $36000

Seeds for agriculture / permaculture
$500-$1500 (annually) * 3 (years) = $1500 - $4500
Note, this number is annually in case of failed harvests or a lack of significant germination

The cost should be rounded to how much does each person have to pay / how much do you need to be ready to enter. With the right variables and preparation all anyone would perhaps need is their own weight in rice as far as initial (long term) food stores go.

And you can buy 100 lbs. bags of dried beans for about $45, all of which are planatable seeds.

The cost of seeds would be a safe thing to factor in, but you can save seeds from each crop. For far far below $500 I've amassed about 350 different kinds of seeds in one year. 33 different kinds of heirloom tomatoes for instance. I'm really curious why bsbray would pay $5 for 10 tomato seeds (especially more than once)?

The thing that is really relevant year to year is the costs of pesticides / fungicides & soil amendments that you cant make yourself.

Tools for construction, agriculture, maintenance, etc. (can be mitigated by buying aftermarket)
$10,000 including spares and parts during 3 year period. (The amount and variety of tools you will need to be successful at this is staggering, although the cost can be mitigated somewhat by improvising using existing tools.)

A lot of this seems to assume people have nothing to start with, like heres the cost if we want to grab a homeless person off the street and pay their way there. Highly capable people are likely to already have lots of tools and useful things. I for one have about 80 fresnel lenses yanked from big screen tv's, for instance. I've actually managed to profit from the process of gathering all the tv's (for free), last year, without selling any lenses. Large fresnel lenses are like gold down here in FL under mad max conditions.

Power, water, and septic systems for community
$10,000 - $20,000 for components, assembly and installation done by community.

This is where the money gets going in my scenario. Mainly energy. One well can water several people, and wind mills can pump the water up into gravity tanks. But solar panels will be high per person. The costs have actually gone down substantially the past year, but a whole system is money. The good thing is you can hook wind turbines or other inventions into the same equipment for the panels. You can also have smaller mini-panels or mini turbines that charge specific devices meaning you dont have to depend on hooking your total system wide electrical things into the same source (large invertors are what really take your money).

And adding biodiesel into the scenario also has dramatic effects on the ability and profitablity of the project as whole.

I'm really trying to figure out your math, I mean in terms of how many people this $100K+ represents. I would expect 20 people would expect to have $5k or so each in useful assets to join in.

[edit on 5-4-2010 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss]

Originally posted by D.E.M.
reply to post by bsbray11

 

Oh my dear, dear poster. Trust me, once you've considered the costs of the tools and material needed to construct a habitable standard of living with no connection to society for more than 1 person, the costs are higher than that.

Sure, you could go live like a caveman, but you would DIE.

I believe the approximately 90 billion people who lived before industrial civilization would make the argument you wouldn't die if you knew how to provide for yourself from your environment. This doesn't mean living like a caveman, but simply. People willing to live like Dick Proenneke and Ray Mears will never want for anything.

I agree with Bsbray, maybe he is a LITTLE naive, but he's not as naive as those who believe living off the modern grid and outside of Western culture is just a "pipe dream".

Great thread guys - Reading through the argument really epitomises both ends of the spectrum in terms of having low, medium and high priorities on various aspects of living off the grid and putting it into a heated debate gets one thinking.

My input.

The low tech native approach would be cheap and easy to get off the ground but would not survive a generation because trying to attract people to the effort would be difficult. This empire would only last as long as you can which might sound ok now but if you run into one ounce of trouble or even get old, then you are going to face some pretty tough choices or even die as OP suggested - if this is a risk you can accept then go for it.

As time goes on, you can build better infrastructure in orer to satisfy the basic requirements of any potential newcomers who will add value or provide a needed skill or resource. This is very similar to what the early pioneers did in the new world (Britain would only send criminals to Australia who has a useable skill) . if you have no intention of inviting anyone into your venture then this is probably the biggest risk in my opinion because in simply put, people need people in some shape or another at some point in their lives, be it for practical, emotional or emergency support. You may be an eternal optomist and very lucky to to live without incident but lesser men have dies ignoring this warning. It's almost like living in a survivorman type scenario permanently and even he will admit that it's extreeme and unsustainable due to just small factors that compound into sometimes, big problems.

An interesting documentary I watched about survivorman, Les Stroud, (link below) taking his family to live off the grid and all the implications regrding energy, water, shelter and remoteness including some views from his kids and challenges he faced - forseen and unforseen.. It's a great insight into someone that did it for real - and someone who knows about living in the extreeme. Even he likes his creature comforts that some people here are calling 'luxuries'. Although he mainly goes into the startup effort - which took a year he doesn't dwell too much upon the food aspect - just the basic infrastructure, energy, water, transport, shelter and family.

Survivorman - Living off the grid

I'd just like to point out that subsequent readers seem to have missed the overarching concept that I was trying to get across here:

Moving from a civilized, modern way of living to one equivalent with several hundred or several thousand years ago is unrealistic and a pipe dream without significant preparation. People do not have the wealth of knowledge and instinct that was passed down from birth in those days.

So yes, if you jumped the shark, sold your possessions, and went out to live like a caveman tomorrow:

You. Would. Die.

Don't believe me? Go ask Treadwell or McCandless.

[edit on 21-4-2010 by D.E.M.]

Originally posted by D.E.M.
Moving from a civilized, modern way of living to one equivalent with several hundred or several thousand years ago is unrealistic and a pipe dream without significant preparation. People do not have the wealth of knowledge and instinct that was passed down from birth in those days.
...
You. Would. Die.

This is complete projection and nonsense. You only say this because you personally are completely unprepared to do it. These are people all over the world who still live exactly the way you claim is now impossible. You should go mother a baby instead of other grown adults.

reply to post by bsbray11


Did they Move directly from a Modern, Civilized lifestyle to their current one?

Frankly I find your continued insistence that such things are viable and easy to be offensive and highly misleading to the readers here. It is hard, dangerous, and deadly (At least the path that many of the modern back-to-the-landers are supporting is).

As for myself, as I have had to state before you have no conception of my background or qualifications. As someone who has actually lived in a number of attempts at off-grid, subsistence style communities, as well as having studied the topic intensely for more than 4 years, I am more than qualified to state the information I have.

Why should mothering a baby be an insult? The fact that you see the raising of young to be a derogatory throwback shows again that you have no grasp of the realities of real, natural, life.

Good day, sir.

Originally posted by bsbray11
I can't believe you seriously think living in nature would cost $100k or more. That's not "nature living," that's rebuilding civilization in the woods.

You city people have no roots left to your past at all.

Sweet Jesus, something you and I can finally agree upon!!!

I think hell froze over

Originally posted by D.E.M.
reply to post by bsbray11

 

Did they Move directly from a Modern, Civilized lifestyle to their current one?

Frankly I find your continued insistence that such things are viable and easy to be offensive and highly misleading to the readers here. It is hard, dangerous, and deadly (At least the path that many of the modern back-to-the-landers are supporting is).

As for myself, as I have had to state before you have no conception of my background or qualifications. As someone who has actually lived in a number of attempts at off-grid, subsistence style communities, as well as having studied the topic intensely for more than 4 years, I am more than qualified to state the information I have.

Why should mothering a baby be an insult? The fact that you see the raising of young to be a derogatory throwback shows again that you have no grasp of the realities of real, natural, life.

Good day, sir.

You seem to have forgotten that our species has only lived the way we do now for less than a thousand years at most. Depending on how far back you want to consider 'modern'. Should we become time travel police and put our ancestors from 12,000 years ago in jail for "child abuse"? LMFAO! You folks are a riot, I love you!

Originally posted by D.E.M.
I'd just like to point out that subsequent readers seem to have missed the overarching concept that I was trying to get across here:

Moving from a civilized, modern way of living to one equivalent with several hundred or several thousand years ago is unrealistic and a pipe dream without significant preparation. People do not have the wealth of knowledge and instinct that was passed down from birth in those days.

So yes, if you jumped the shark, sold your possessions, and went out to live like a caveman tomorrow:

You. Would. Die.

Don't believe me? Go ask Treadwell or McCandless.

[edit on 21-4-2010 by D.E.M.]

That's a half truth. If you knew what you were doing and how to survive...

You. Would. Not. Die

Don't make it out to sound like humans can't live without the magic of civilization. Your just sounding like a silly ill prepared little shell of a man trying to peddle that garbage.

This is complete projection and nonsense. You only say this because you personally are completely unprepared to do it. These are people all over the world who still live exactly the way you claim is now impossible. You should go mother a baby instead of other grown adults.

In fairness, he did say that most westerners are unprepared for yesteryear living. There are a minority that will find no issues because they have done the prep work.

Most people today live in a financially controlled world where money is the main factor that decides if you prosper or not. It would seem natural to someone who has lived this life of money orientated living to transpose this way of living to setting up a new community like OP says.

On the contrary, someone who has come from a background whereby everything is not about money and the material possessions it can buy would be most suited to going down the "abandon money" route since they have already experienced and would certainly have developed a sense of resourcefulness over the average westerner. Of course, being self sustaining in food, water, shelter would have to be a prerequisite.

In short, the monetary value to set up a sustainable living/eco village/ bug out den is directly related to the skills one has already.

less skills, experience and coming from a city means you need more money to set up and make the transition easily.
More skills, experience and coming from a humble/rural/ homeless / survivalist situation means you need less money to set up and make the transition easily.

In principle, both routes have the same outcome in terms of emotional, practical, and financial cost.

Here’s why.
Emotional cost is the stress level of giving up the status quo and taking up another life. the more closer you are to it anyway and have relevant skills (cooking, growing, building, fixing, making etc.) to practically cope means you will be less emotionally stressed and require little cost to make the transition.

Conversely, if you are a city dweller with a nice place, littel experience of eco living you need to spend considerably more money in order to make the transition so that it does emotionally cost. The same with practicalities and skills. You need to spend time learning to grow, learn fieldcraft, cook , husbandry or establish a store etc - and you will need money to sustain you until you become self sufficient - which will take years.

The goal (independence from society) and reasons (sick of society) maybe the same but the routes taken (poor mans route & richmans route) are different. However, the "relative costs" (monetary and non monetary) are exactly the same in both instances.

Think about this.








edit to correct horrendous typos as a result of general lack of interest at school.

[edit on 21-4-2010 by Magzoid]

Originally posted by D.E.M.
Why should mothering a baby be an insult? The fact that you see the raising of young to be a derogatory throwback shows again that you have no grasp of the realities of real, natural, life.

I said you should mother babies, instead of grown adults. Want to take another stab at a response to that since you screwed this one up?

Living "off-grid" (you never clarified what that means; generating your own electricity? ) doesn't give you any right to tell people what is and isn't impossible like you would be some kind of authority on it. The issue as I see it is you have taken it upon yourself to play the role of some kind of expert but you're also too afraid to actually leave modern convenience behind (like electricity, which earlier in the thread was considered a "necessity"). You can keep your opinions, no problem. But you don't have to get all whiny and offended when people say, no, you don't need $100k, as many different people on this thread have already told you. Well, maybe YOU would need $100k. But not everyone else, thank god!