An addendum:

This is not meant to be self sufficiency or prepper territory. You don’t wanna be so far away from people that you don’t have neighbors or avoid the community around you and you can’t survive on your own.

Make friends with the people around you. If you find you have too many bags of flour or something from the latest shopping trip, take a stroll down the driveway and offer it to your neighbors. Bake some kind of cake to give out on holidays. When you make a huge batch of blackberry jam, save some jars back for everyone around you. If you feel safe doing it, help people by the side of the road.

Go to church. Or mosque or temple or whatever. It’s where people meet up and talk and you can make connections and just be normal there. You’re not the first person to treat Sunday like a social club and you won’t be the last. If you need to avoid the holier of the rollers, Methodists are pretty bland.

Try not to be a weirdo.

If you’re doing your own oil changes (or doing changes for the block), a waste oil heater can keep your garage or shed warm for possibly free.

Places to look for this type of zone: older, hillier mountain ranges, the Catskills and appalachians.