I do all our property maintenance and repairs etc., even if I could convince a 'professional' to come out this way, the expense would be anywhere from 3X to 10X for the same job in town.

Self reliance and self-sufficiency are not new, trendy traits, it is a necessity for survival that has always been that way and it will probably never change for the people living in this part of the world.

There's a reason all of the HFT folks are using microwaves.

[1]: http://wndw.net/book.html

[1]The voltmeter is for quick feedback on the signal level as you aim. Many high-capacity wireless radios have a connection point on the back that will adjust voltage to match the current receive signal level (measured in dBm). That's usually the fastest way to watch the signal level as you aim, especially if you're hanging off a tower while you do it.

  For us, Williams Lake is the closest town with supplies. We travel in a generally northerly direction via various 'tracks' to we turn onto Chilko Lake Road, which ends up on Tatlayoko Lake road, which will in turn lead to Hwy 20. From there, it is all paved to Williams Lake.  

  Distance wise is not obscene but the 'tracks' i refer to can be a pain to maintain due to wash out and tree blow down etc. If that is the case it can significantly add to travel times. Winter can be good and bad depending on amount of snow or icy conditions etc. Typically, up until about January, winter driving is actually easier IMHO, as all the potholes/ditches are filled out.  We use heavy duty chains on the tires if it gets too slippery and/or too much snow, this can make for a really long drive due to having to travel much slower with chains on.

There is no cell reception, we have satellite, the ISP here in Canada is called Xplornet, which I believe uses Hughesnet. Download speed is pretty good, streaming services typically work fine with SD, voice comms. can be a bit of pain with the 700ms latency. Since covid-19 with many more people working from home etc. I have noticed a significant drop in bandwidth and how spikey latency can get at times

Likewise, while he does repair things, I wouldn't say they are done well -- his electrical panel is a mess, I spent a couple weekends trying to help bring things up to code (and I'm not even an electrician), like replacing taped hand-twisted wire splices with junction boxes - the tape was melted on one of them from overheating.

He does own an impressive set of guns, but his car has a hole in it after accidentally shooting it while cleaning a loaded gun, so gun safety is not his strong suit.

He has a 4WD, but it's been a 2WD for the past couple years because he can't afford the parts needed to fix it, he cruises junkyards when he can to try to find what he needs.

His closest neighbor is a half mile away and lives in a glorified shed where the water comes in on a hose and electricity comes from a generator when he can afford to fuel it.

I can believe that there are well trained survival handymen out there who are well equipped to survive on their own, but I doubt that most isolated rural people are that well trained.

There's a lot of stuff hacked together in ways experts in the relevant fields would certainly not find beautiful. Expanding foam is probably not in the toolkit of very many master architects; most people have never read an electrical code (and in many places, there's no entity imposing one); many boats, snowmobiles, and other vehicles have been adapted in ways that would make the engineers who designed them want a drink or three.

Most of it works though, like that shell script you hacked together as a teenager from random mailing list archives to automate some task that still needs automating 15 years later. It works and it enables people to do things they could not otherwise do (the economics to support the relevant professional services wouldn't work). I see a beauty in that.

Yet somehow, I still learned how to do most of the things you list in your second paragraph before I got here.

And I have neighbors here who are completely clueless about most of those things. They survive, in some cases, by cultivating long term relationships with the right people.

I think you have to be careful with the correlation/causatio n issue when making points like this.

I've never lived out in the country, always in or on the edges of towns, 80% of anything is been willing to give it a go, the other 20% is been willing to learn from fucking it up the first time.

I genuinely don't understand people who aren't willing to learn this stuff even if they pay someone else to do it down the line (which makes sense sometimes).

I know people my age who can't rewire a plug which is frankly embarrassing.

> A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. (Time enough for Love - Heinlein)

As a rich guy I knew used to say, do what you do best, and give away all the rest.

I spent my 30s doing all the things you mentioned and more. There was some joy in it, I will admit, but I am vastly less wealthy than if I had focused on my consulting business and learned how to negotiate and supervise the outsourcing of those tasks.

I know a lot of 'do it yourself' types and none of them are wealthy. I know a lot of wealthy people and none of them are 'do it yourself' types. It sucks to admit it, because there is a lot of 'manliness' associated with self-reliance, but it is often a foolish pursuit. Comparative advantage is real and you can use it to get ahead in life.

Exactly this.

Money is a way to get other people to do things for you.

If you are happier doing the things yourself, the money doesn't have much use.

At a certain point, gaining more wealth just doesn't matter.

The only way you can liberate yourself from this is by getting your hands dirty yourself.

You can take pride in the work you get paid for and the work you do outside of work just the same.

Wealth should not be sneered at. Wealth buys a new well for your farm. Wealth buys you tools to expand your capabilities. Wealth allows you to exploit the capabilities of society to accomplish things beyond yourself. Do you want to preserve gun or property rights so you can continue to live a self-reliant lifestyle? That takes wealth(or you can cop-out and let other people do it for you).

I am well aware of the saying "sell your time to buy the time that other people sold", but that cynically omits the benefits of comparative advantage. Most HN readers time is far more valuable than a plumber or carpenter.

Are you sure about that? A good plumber, here in Seattle, can cost $300/hour.

I think it was Penn Jillette who basically said we should most value those who we’d want around in the apocalypse. Farmers, doctors, mechanics would all be worth more than a financier. Maybe the irony is that in the coming decades they will have their comeuppance if their jobs are least likely to be automated away

On the other end of the spectrum, they gamble on tulips. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

There's everything in-between. Factor in the universal human tendency for self-delusion, and you got tulip pushers who think they are moving the pillars of world.

The respectful position is "this isn't my speciality, it's yours, tell me what you need and I'll get out of the way."

"The time it would take me to acquire your skills is more valuable than what you'd charge to fix my problem" is acknowledging the plumber's value, not diminishing it.

You seem to be protecting a lot into a simple price comparison.

You have to do the math on this carefully though.

A lot of people think like this. I get paid $200 an hour, my electrician gets paid $100 an hour, therefore I should pay my electrician $100 and use the time I saved to make $200. But plenty of those jobs don't actually take an hour, even though that's the minimum billing time. So when they take ten minutes, you've got to pay the electrician $600 before you save enough time to make $200 yourself.

Then you've got a transaction costs problem. You called the plumber, but now you've got to let them in, explain the problem, review the invoice, submit payment. It could take the same amount of time as doing it yourself. It could take longer.

Then you've got a knowledge problem. If you take the time to understand how things work then you see warning signs, so you fix things while they're still a $5 problem instead of not understanding that it will turn into a $5000 problem. Or in reverse, not realizing that the person you're paying for services is charging you $5000 for something that could still be fixed for $5.

Then you've got a tax problem. You thought you were "making" $200, but actually half of that is going to taxes, whereas 100% of the money you're spending is actually getting spent.

The result is that the person who works more and pays for everything instead of doing it themselves has a higher annual income on paper, but less actual disposable income because they lose more than that to taxes and costs, and less free time because they're actually working more in reality.

The flaw of course is that $200 is not opportunity cost. Your time is only worth money if you’d otherwise be working. So when I get home from my 9-5 job where I make a fixed salary, and fix my faucet, that job just got done for free. There was no opportunity cost because I don’t get paid hourly and was already done with work for the day.

I’m a rather extreme DIYer, and I can confidently say I would not live the lifestyle I do if I paid people to repair my car, build my furniture, cook my food, mow my lawn, do all my home improvements, plumbing, electrical work, fix my electronics. All that labor adds up, especially in the expensive Bay Area. If you take what you’d otherwise spend on all that, starting say age 20, and instead put it into your retirement account you could probably retire 5-10 years early.

Wealth is worth far more than fancy cars and fine clothing. I couldn't give a shit about expensive material possessions but I think that only an utter fool would disavow themselves of wealth. Don't be conned into thinking wealth is synonymous with frivolous, ostentatious displays and vanity.

That freedom of time is all that money can ultimately provide in the best sense. However, amassing wealth by moving away from that is definitely counter-productive. Wealth is just a means to an end; if the end is already at hand it provides little to no marginal utility.

Them's the old rules. New rules: 45% of it is being willing to give it a go, 65% of it is knowing how to find the right YouTube video to watch so you don't fuck it up.

:)

Electricity I understand and how to work safely with it, water is the same (and the outcome isn't likely to kill you) but gas, gas will blow out the walls.

It's remarkable how safe we made it actually when you think about it but all of those lessons where often learnt in blood and strife.

Honestly though YouTube and the patient people who set out to show you how to do something is great (particulary the creators), it is an amazing resource for that.

That's why it takes 110% of the time.

I can change a wall outlet or a light switch, but if I'm rewiring my house, I'm calling my brother-in-law, the electrician, just like he calls me when he wants a trumpet player. (And if he wants a guitar player, he calls my brother, not me.)

Specialization is for people in communities, which we all are whether we want to admit it or not.

Eh, I've only got so many hours on the planet, I've got a lot more spare money than spare time. I'd really rather just pay someone to fix it and spend my time doing something more fun.

I’m sure there’s a country / culture factor there, but that’s rather condescending. I’m in my thirties, and there isn’t a single place I’ve lived in as an adult where it would have been OK for me to mess with the electricity, plumbing, or even paint the walls.

I guess I'm a double embarrassment then!

Rewiring a plug is an extremely rare need..2

This is also a survival skill. There's no necessity to cultivate this in a middle-class urban environment when you can just call somebody.

In even the most developed inner cities of the US, a 30-minute response time is not unusual. A car crash with injuries, blood on the street, would certainly be top of the 911 priority list other factors like traffic often mean delays.

"In July 2019, it took the NYPD more than 20 minutes on average to respond to all of its 911 calls. This July, it was about 18 minutes."

https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2020/08/25/nypd-re...

The nearest hospital in rural areas is guaranteed to not be even a level II trauma center. So it takes 30 minutes for an ambulance to get on-scene, then maybe it's an hour drive to a trauma center (optimistic), or they're going to need to get a helicopter, which can easily be another 40 minutes of waiting.

That urban EMS crew might be shooting to load-and-go with the patient inside of ten minutes. That means even with 20-min response time they can deliver the patient to a trauma center within an hour. Out in the boondocks, the golden hour is laughable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hour_(medicine)

In the province in Ontario, where we have a few density populated communities often surrounded by large stretches of wilderness, folks are transported by helicopter in emergencies:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ambulance

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_medical_services

* https://sunnybrook.ca/content/?page=rooftop-helipad

If you look at the list of heliports in the province, you'll see quite a number of them are at hospitals:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Heliports_in_Ontario

Including ones, like St. Mike's and Sick Kids, in high density areas where they're often at the top of high-rise towers:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OtDwkg-jGI

There are also non-emergency patient transportation services:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornge

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-the-flig...

Of course the point of all the above is call 911 (or the local emergency number) ASAP, the faster you can get experts involved the better.

"Dr. Mark Forrest knew he had to act fast to save the life of a man he watched go into cardiac arrest after a motorcycle accident — so he opened up the man's chest right there on the road and brought him back from the dead."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/doctor-who-s...

That's from the moment you finish dialing 911 until the point where the fire truck/ambulance arrives, and includes the time that you spend talking to the 911 operator etc.

1. Call time - at 9am Joe calls 911 and reports their cat has fell out of a tree.

2. Dispatch Queue Time - ideally, at 905am or quickly after the call to 911 time, Dispatcher puts this call into the stack for the police officer that works on Joes beat (let’s say normally that is Officer111). This is accompanied by a call out over the radio to Officer111 to see what he’s doing.

3. Officer acknowledge time - usually along with the radio call-out from dispatch, 905am, the event record for Joe and his cat appear on the screen for all the officers in the district. Let’s say Officer111 is at a car crash, and cannot respond. The event record is still on all Officer screens, and Dispatch asks one of the district officers to go help Joe and his fallen cat. Nearby Officer112 “accepts” the call (via radio and on their laptop). It is 906am when Officer112 accepts the task. He is are now enroute (at 906am)

4. Arrival time - it takes Officer112 14 minutes to get to the scene because it is not his beat and he was in traffic. He pulls up at 920am.

5. Clear time - at 930am, the cat is taken off in an ambulance, and Officer112 tells dispatch over the radio to clear him off the fallen cat call.

Dispatch delay - diff between call recieved and being put into the queue

Response time - time from Officer acknowledgement in the queue to arrival time. In some cases it will be recorded with a timestamp when Officer says enroute.

Cleared time - arrival to clear.

My point is the response time is often tricker than it seems. May be straightforward in this case, but mainly wanted to point it out for other readers.

So you have to be able to control arterial bleeds and take care of lots of stuff that in the city you may not need to worry about because an ambulance will be there in 30 minutes.

https://readysf.com/course/wilderness-first-responder/

My memory is that there are classes with two all-day weekends and evenings during week. But I can't find the detailed schedule. So ~10 days.

Pretty normal stuff out in the sticks.

https://www.bbc.com/future/gallery/20180810-villas-las-estre...

Your link talks about Antarctica, not Alaska.

Wikipedia: The operation started at 02:00 local time on 1 May with the help of a driver and meteorologist, who provided instruments and held a mirror so Rogozov could observe areas not directly visible. Rogozov lay in a semi-reclining position, half-turned to his left side. A solution of 0.5% novocaine was used for local anesthesia of the abdominal wall. Rogozov made a 10–12 cm incision of the abdominal wall, but while opening the peritoneum he accidentally cut the cecum and had to suture it. Then he exposed the appendix. According to his report, the appendix was found to have a dark stain at its base, and Rogozov estimated it would have burst within a day. The appendix was resected and antibiotics were applied directly into the peritoneal cavity. General weakness and nausea developed about 30–40 minutes after the start of the operation so that short pauses for rest were repeatedly needed after that. By about 04:00 the operation was complete.

But it is a fascinating story, thank you for bringing it up!

That's pretty far out; I think that's pretty extreme. At least in Idaho/WA IMO (different geography and settlement pattern, prolly). But your point is still valid for the bulk of rural US - you just gotta know how to deal, because the cavalry is a ways out and expensive.

If you're in Amargosa, Shoshone, Tecopa, Wonder Valley, Lanfair Valley, Kelso, Amboy, Cadiz, Fenner, etc., it's a long way off from anything.

Pop open Gooogle maps and try to find the nearest dispatch location for an ambulance to Fenner, and then put that into perspective with the amount of traffic on the I-40 corridor. CHP can call an airship, but I've seen burn patients sit dying for an hour while waiting for a helicopter to become available for dispatch.

People adapt to their environments, if you have to fix your car in the country, you learn to fix your car. If you have to fix your car in the city, you learn to schmooze the repair guy into giving you a better deal.

It took 25 minutes for the EMTs to arrive. But that is because the nearest EMT team was not on another call. Otherwise, it could have take 45-60 minutes to get a team from the next nearest town/county.

Later that day on the way home to Seattle we stopped at an urgent care to get stitches for $175.

Though, I am seriously thinking about getting an AED to keep out there.

You can do it in a week, living on-site.

Edit: There's also a component on helicopter operations, such as laying out a landing site for when things get really spicy.

Statistically, less people, fewer emergencies, but that's not much comfort when you're the one having a statistically unlikely emergency!

And not necessarily only rural parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPNK0VspQ0M