With respect to smack dab in the middle of nowhere, I think this is a matter of relative scale. For reference, I grew up six miles outside of Conrad Montana, which isn't all that "close" to anything. However, my cousins thought nothing of hopping in the car to drive to the middle of Utah to check out a dog that someone was giving away. Or take a little further east to the town of Jordan, Montana where there is no railroad and the biggest events are the high school football games. My friend works at the University in Missoula, and complains that in driving back east, after an 8 hour drive he is still in Montana.

And Montana isn't even the biggest state. There are counties in Texas that are too small to have courthouses, so they share them with neighbors. That are not really walking distance. Check out the book "Miles from Nowhere". It tells of two census takers who ran out of gas and were lost for days in a county in populous Oregon.

My definition of remote is likely different from yours. I would define it as no internet access other than satellite, no roads connecting the rest of the country, no waterway access. I would be hard pressed to find somewhere in Europe that is smack dab in the middle of nowhere.