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'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

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Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#211

Post by ramchip »

noir_lord wrote: post #132
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that I grew up in London, then lived in Cambridge, Heidelberg, Seattle and Philadelphia - 55+ years of thoroughly urban living. 18 months ago I moved to a place where your opening sentence applies broadly. 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. Th…

Pretty much the same, I can re-wire a house (factory actually though it's been a long time since I trained as an industrial sparks), plaster, do basic joinery, plumbing, tiling, engine/motorcycle maintenance (I do my motorcycle and rebuilt scramblers when I was a kid), weld (not done it for a long time but it'd come back), sheet metal work etc all to a reasonable or better standard. I've never lived out in the countr…

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

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.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#212

Post by derefr »

war1025 wrote: post #189
cycloptic wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are conflating things. The idea I see behind most self-reliance is that it significantly reduces the amount of wealth needed to accomplish everyday tasks. Following that, you wouldn't see much of a need for those do-it-yourself types to accumulate wealth just for the sake of doing so.

> you wouldn't see much of a need for those do-it-yourself types to accumulate wealth just for the sake of doing so. 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.

Some things have economies of scale. I could in theory dig minerals out of the ground, refine and distill them, and do the chemistry required to turn them into antibiotics... but that'd be about a million times more expensive (in bootstrapping monetary cost and labor) than just getting together with a bunch of people to found an oil refinery and a drug factory.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#213

Post by TallGuyShort »

kilroy123 wrote: post #116
2Xheadpalm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although the story and your account are United States centric, I live pretty remote British Columbia, Canada and the same mentality, personalty types exists here as well. As the crow flies, I am less then 300KM to downtown Vancouver yet a trip to the closest town center for supplies is a 10 hour round trip in the truck and that is on a good day. I do not leave the house without chainsaw, firearm and various other sun…

How do you use the internet? Do you have a phone signal?

I spend a lot of downtime in what I thought was a very remote area of the Rockies. I learned many neighbors have been doing satellite Internet for years, though. Recently I started getting very good cell phone service, too. No other utilities, hardly accessible during the winter - but I can still check Hacker News.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#214

Post by PeterisP »

noir_lord wrote: post #156
bluGill wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first 10% is knowing what is dangerous enough that you need to look up how to do is safely first. I've worked on high voltage electronics - I'm still here because I knew to figure out safety first.

Same with gas (not petrol), it's the one thing in my house I absolutely would not under any circumstances touch. 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.

Gas is crazy. The only time I needed to have gas pipes rerouted, it needed a change before the meter and the shut-off valve. So the gas company guys started the work ... by cutting a live gas pipe, intentionally lighting the leaking gas on fire, and welding a connection while the not-yet-welded hole was acting as a small flamethrower. Apparently that's considered safe to do with low-pressure small diameter pipes, but it seemed absolutely, totally insane.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#215

Post by s5300 »

01100011 wrote: post #206
cycloptic wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are conflating things. The idea I see behind most self-reliance is that it significantly reduces the amount of wealth needed to accomplish everyday tasks. Following that, you wouldn't see much of a need for those do-it-yourself types to accumulate wealth just for the sake of doing so.

If only we didn't live in a world of property taxes... 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 ot…

"Most HN readers time is far more valuable than a plumber or carpenter."

I think, in the words of today's youth, the response to this is something along the lines of "Big Yikes"

That's quite a staunch outlook on society. Do you like playing around in literal shit so that literal shit doesn't back up in your house? Have you automated a system to be able to do this robotically? If not, I'd suggest valuing your plumbers a bit more. Maybe somebody should be showing them these lines of thoughts so they jack up their prices for techies and extract their "value"...

Jeez. I'm being snarky. But man, you're being a dick lmao.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#216

Post by ed25519FUUU »

chrisco255 wrote: post #186
clord wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a similar way in Canada, and I run long range ubiquiti radios (~12km) to nearest small town. get 150-200mbps and since I have battery backup + generator, usually the only reason it goes down is if the ISP router dies. I get ~1 bar of LTE that flickers to 3g, but with wifi calling it's not an issue. In addition to changing my own alternator, I run a small ISP for my neighbours :)

Wow I didn't even know about these radios and how reasonably priced they are for the range!

You might also be surprised to know that microwave is faster than fiber. Not necessarily more reliable, mind you, but faster.

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

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#217

Post by voxl »

zajio1am wrote: post #148
chmod600 wrote: post #5

This reads like the scientific version of a stereotype. Maybe kind of interesting, but extremely prone to misinterpetation, over-generalization, and potentially prejudice.

Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology: http://www.spsp.org/news-center/blog/stereotype-accuracy-res...

The issue with stereotypes is the same issue with comparing IQs between subsets of the population: averages do not work when its one individual applying it to another individual. Variance is very high with humans, and the idea that your Uncle Joe thinks his black friend has a big dick because of the stereotype is idiotic.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#218

Post by ed25519FUUU »

mercurialshark wrote: post #198
clord wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a similar way in Canada, and I run long range ubiquiti radios (~12km) to nearest small town. get 150-200mbps and since I have battery backup + generator, usually the only reason it goes down is if the ISP router dies. I get ~1 bar of LTE that flickers to 3g, but with wifi calling it's not an issue. In addition to changing my own alternator, I run a small ISP for my neighbours :)

Where can I learn more specifics about configuring/deploying a similar setup? Thanks.

Also very curious also. At ~12km I would think it would require some specialized microwave testing equipment to get the alignment right.

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#219

Post by Rebelgecko »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #161
throw0101a wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, part of that is that even when an ambulance gets there, what happens next? […] Out in the boondocks, the golden hour is laughable. 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 * h…

We have air ambulances in the US. With it being the US and the community being largely rural and poor, it's more economic to die than be flown to help. Most families can't swing a $40,000 cost for a life flight, and insurance in some cases won't cover it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-the-flig...

Weird, the article talks about air ambulances being billed as out of network. I thought that after Obamacare passed insurance companies were required to treat all emergency care as if it were in-network. Does that not apply to transportation? Or are helicopters being used in situations that insurance doesn't think are emergencies?

Re: 'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions

#220

Post by pnathan »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #93
pnathan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. That's pretty far out; I think that's pretty extreme. At least in Idaho/WA IMO (different geography and settlement pat…

We have a homestead in NE WA we are developing, a few weeks ago, for the first time ever, I called 911 because of a potentially dangerous laceration. We have a full first aid kit with plenty of "stop the bleed" stuff but I didn't want to take any chances. So because the bleeding was controlled we waited for the EMTs. It took 25 minutes for the EMTs to arrive. But that is because the nearest EMT team was not on anothe…

Yeah, that's one of those remoter areas! No doubt about it. If you need an AED, definitely get it.
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