There was an interesting thread on reddit about coal towns in (I think) Virginia, and the mindset of people there and the situation they were in. It was stated that there was a large pool of money in the state available to people for retraining (coal to trucking or solar development, etc) and something like less than 25% of the money was even used.
A woman I know got a simple laser cutter and designed a site around doing craft projects with it. In under a year she has thousands of followers and is making thousands a month doing it. I mean, hell, just get you and your friends together and say, "ok, we need to get out of here, lets all live together as cheaply as possible, until we have enough money, then rent some place in a better location, and live there, pooling resources, until we all get better jobs."
There are options, now more than ever with the Internet existing and the mind numbing amount of resources it brings.