A Woman Who Lives 200k Years in the Past

Fond memories reading about them beating Roman soldiers!:)

I seem to remember there are places with little or no property taxes as well. Nevada, Florida?

If you are interested there is already a culture of doing this in Alaska. The search term you are looking for is "dry cabin".

How hard is this if you want land that is road accessible (so that I don't have to trespass in order to reach it), and has a source of water like a creek?

ya hes right you can do this in the US without much money

Absolutely. I know someone who bought 5 (I think, it might have been a bit more) acres of land about 90 miles north of Minneapolis for $15,000 back around 2009. It went cheap because it's too rocky for farming and would cost too much to get utilities put in.

I also know some other people who bought cheap land in the same area. They have a trailer home up there for a weekend getaway.

It wasn't that long ago that you could homestead in Alaska (end in the 80s). Go out, parcel out a piece of land, improve it and give the gov't $100 and it's yours.

Nope. I spent the last year looking to do this and it’s not as simple as you say. If you buy a plot in the middle of Arizona or something, you might be responsible for road upkeep or charged for other things. And you still have to pay taxes every year as well as follow building codes. And there are hidden problems. You have no privacy, you will be in a wash and get flooded, you will probably get robbed, an industrial farm might move in nearby and spray fecal matter upwind of you. You’ll need an off-road vehicle just to get there and you’re going to have to off-road truck all your building supplies to the site. Oh and you want water? Good luck. And you have to pay tens of thousands at least to get the land. By the end, it’s not even close to being cost effective. Back in the day you could buy land in Texas with no zoning or building codes and get a huge area for almost no money. That just doesn’t exist anymore.

And plus, you are at the mercy of the county. If they want to raise taxes or make your life hell with some kind of development like a highway or something, it’s them vs little old you. And guess who’s gonna win. Oh and if you have a small medical problem you are 100% dead.

If you want to get out of the rat race, you should move to a midwestern city. You can find houses for less than 50k in safe neighborhoods by California standards. For 50k you get low property taxes, decent neighborhood, reliable internet, nearby hospital, Costco, cheap gas and cheap electricity. And plus, when the county wants to fuck people over with taxes or developments, they have to deal with half a million angry people rather than just you. That’s crucially important. I’ve been researching this intensely for a year and casually for almost a decade.

And you can live cheaper than you think. If you live in your house and aren’t selling in the next two years, you can perform almost any alteration to your house yourself. You don’t have to hire an electrician or plumber as long as you pull permits yourself and follow code. You could build a whole house yourself in most places — just need an engineer to draw plans. People have no clue about this, they just assume you have to pay thousands to do anything. You can live quite well outside the rat race if you are smart.

I hope you have been saving because the next 6 months will probably be the best time to do this in the last decade. I bought a cheap house just like this a month ago and while I still paid very little, I am kicking myself.

Woodland is relatively cheap in the UK. Certainly for what you pay, you can get an unmanageably large amount of land. You can get a few acres for 10-20k, up to hundreds of acres for < 200k. Prices have gone up quite a lot recently. You pay more for things like ancient/hardwoods, features like river frontage/streams (which may have fishing rights) and occasionally some come with outbuildings.

For example: https://www.woods4sale.co.uk/woodlands/scotland/1488.htm

The catch is that you are extremely unlikely to get planning permission (hence cheap) for a building and you can legally only stay there for a certain period of time each year. On the other hand, you can put up a small cabin if it's for "forestry activities" and if appropriate you can make a profit out of the land (e.g. lumber, forest crops, charcoal). There's also a reasonable chance there will be public access routes through your land.

Big benefits though. It's yours, freehold, and it's convenient for tax purposes (no inheritance tax). You can camp on it, or have a caravan, and it's essentially your playground. You are liable for some maintenance like boundary fencing, but aside from that its' really up to you what you do with it.

In Scotland it's a bit different, you can build a hut (technical term) and the only real constraint is that it must be removable without leaving a trace - so you can't put in permanent plumbing, for example. It also can't be your main residence.

See: https://072b35b7-8c60-4122-84b1-63e1d24587e4.filesusr.com/ug...

https://www.thousandhuts.org/

> You could also probably do that in large swaths of American and no one would ever find you

Even if they were looking for you:

Cop Out https://www.npr.org/2015/05/08/405191537/cop-out

I'm in NJ, which is the most densely populated state, and you could get away with this in many places. Your biggest problem would be having someone detect your fires.

> Of course, all the desirable land is taken and expensive because you'll have to convince someone else to give up its use to you.

This is also crucial to the point I'm trying to make. Everything is already owned by somebody. Some of this "owned" land hasn't had anything done to it yet and likely won't for another hundred years, but you still can't use it, because it's "owned".

> Most of California has no building codes.

Can you expand on that? My understanding was quite the opposite. https://www.dgs.ca.gov/BSC/Codes

What country is that if I might ask?

I expected something similar because the US is so large, but afaict you're limited to 2 weeks in one location and no permanent structures.

Where is that? I'd say in Europe forests are so well utilized that you will be discovered by a professional forester in no time - and likely asked to leave.

Taxes also pay for things that people rarely think about, like police. And yes, I know some people have guns in their house, and live in places where police take ages to get there. But I'm not aware of anyone in America that has to stress over a local warlord.

Compared with 200,000 years ago, the colonial era could also be considered modern times.

correct, as long as you move camp at least 5 miles every 16 days.

I live in Washington and my uncle was a state inspector for years. I assure you, there are places in certain areas of the state where you can build whatever you want as long as you keep a low profile. Officials are afraid to drive their official vehicles, let alone attempt to flex their influence or rules.

>Look at Ted Kaczynski

He went berserk, and started murdering people, because one day he went to his favorite, most remote, unsullied spot of nature that he could possibly find - a symbol of his ability to escape a toxic civilization - and found that it had been razed and there was now a logging road through it.

I don't think that example quite supports the point you were trying to make.

In the US, that generally requires being in obvious, continuing residence AND paying the property taxes for the entire lot.

A friend of mine did this, in the legal way, with his wife and children. The police brutally beat him and he later died of complications associated with the beating.

I'll google the incident and post links, edit forthcoming.

Definitely not as indiscriminately. Interestingly a large number of these people went down this path initially because of chronic health problems, e.g. autoimmune issues; things that our modern medical system is not great at diagnosing or treating but sometimes radical diet changes or the like can alleviate symptoms. For most run-of-the-mill things they'll just use natural remedies which, if you have no experience with them, can be surprisingly effective. Aspirin was derived from willow bark, chewing that bark gets rid of a headache just as well.

With that said when things get serious and/or acute, the people I know do still use modern medicine as a backstop. If someone were to break their leg and have a piece of bone sticking out of their skin, I'm certain they would go to a hospital. Or for instance if they couldn't breath because they caught covid-19, I'm sure they'd go to a hospital and use a ventilator. There are probably diehards who wouldn't, but those exist in cities too ;)

> Do they use modern medicine as indiscriminately as one of us would?

As someone who pays ridiculous money for a too-high-deductible insurance plan, going to the doctor is a "someone is pretty badly sick or injured" event.

I have friends with a roughly zero deductible plan they get super cheap from their employer. Seems like they are at the doctor every other week. Have a tickle in your throat? Might as well go have a doctor look at it.

The American health system is so vastly unequal even among the fairly well-to-do that it's honestly depressing.

And that's when there isn't a global pandemic going on.

Yes.

The one guy i know that lives like this... his feet! oh god, do they smell. So much so, you don't notice the rest so much. You'd think being barefoot so much would air them out.

> Are members of the primitive community living in villages, solo, or small groups?

Mostly in/near small towns like Twisp. Some live in nomadic groups, often matriarchal which is interesting. The only people I know who live solo are young men "on the trail", most shepherd herds of livestock and are alone much of the year but these people are rare.

> Do they follow hunting laws (tags and license)?

Some do, some don't. I would say that they are slightly more inclined to break hunting laws than your normal rural resident. That is to say, both groups are pretty comfortable breaking the law when no rangers are around though the primitive community a) is only ever hunting for food and b) is much more interested in preserving herd health. They also very routinely eat roadkill or dumpster dive.

> Do they live on public or private land, if public do they try to grow crops?

Mix of both, depends on how settled they are. Those that are nomadic often spend some time on public land, those people obviously don't grow crops since they move throughout the year but gathering wild food is a staple for sure. Often this wild food is formerly cultivated land, e.g. former fruit orchards that are now feral.

We invented huge anonymous cities where either tight surveillance or gang wars flourish, extermination camps, total war and many other wonders. Let's explain to any tribe that we, 'people', painfully devised and realized ways to massively and indiscriminately kill very remote civilians using dedicated complex machinery (ICBMs), then discuss about who is 'people' for who.

Comparing the 'costs' of nearly-constant but limited tribal violence to our own 'civilized' violence isn't easy.

Just meaning that if you didn't conform to the tribe's rules, you would be exiled... and exile meant death.

Being part of the community mattered way more in tribal society than modern society.

That also means the tribe was close knit, and would take care of sick and disabled members... as long as you followed the rules.

I guess I read somewhere Scandinavians used to leave the weak/disabled kids out in wild and if they can survive on their own, they were accepted in the tribe if not then it helped eliminate weakness.

Yes it's the myth of the Noble Savage all over again

Agreed. Most of these ancient societies would be completely alien to us. Even pre-US Civil War would be different enough to make the average USA-ian uncomfortable.

But, those animals are trained to stay away from humans. You won't see them out in the wilderness, at least not for long. And, you won't be able to catch up to one in the brushes where there's thorns, bushes, and all kinds of stuff that can stick you.

I think you need to think some more. Search how many people there are in North America. 1 deer might feed one person for 1 week so basically that’s enough food to Feed everyone for a day?

Or the rifle she uses to hunt sometimes.

no matter where they hide or what they do in america, nowhere/nothing is safe from just calling them colonizer/cultural appropriator

I guess what I think is absent is a recognition that Lynx is able to do what she does in part because she is a beneficiary of a history which specifically prevented others from living on the land. "Appropriation" of skills from traditional practices to me reads as a distinct harm from the very physical appropriation of actual territory.

The amish don't make any particular effort or have any particular desire to live a 19th century lifestyle. They simply avoid technology that they consider to have more downsides than upsides.

The Amish are more opposed to greed than technology. The two often go hand in hand but not always - individual congregations decide for themselves.

To be fair, we got those nasty bugs from domesticating herd animals who lived in herds big enough to support them

Hunting gatherers didn't have to worry about most of those diseases either.

Darwin also suffered from chronic health problems for his entire adult life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_of_Charles_Darwin

"For over forty years Darwin suffered intermittently from various combinations of symptoms such as: malaise, vertigo, dizziness, muscle spasms and tremors, vomiting, cramps and colics, bloating and nocturnal intestinal gas, headaches, alterations of vision, severe tiredness, nervous exhaustion, dyspnea, skin problems such as blisters all over the scalp and eczema, crying, anxiety, sensation of impending death and loss of consciousness, fainting, tachycardia, insomnia, tinnitus, and depression."

The time integral of his suffering must be enormous. I'm a little horrified that a man so famous can suffer so much, and yet almost no one knows about it. They remember him for his achievements; but the countless days he spent in pain are forgotten.

> But the thing about Darwin is he articulated just how cruel nature can be while being a victim himself.

Nature isn't cruel. It's indifferent which can seem cruel at times.

Sure, but we objectively have a lot longer lifespan now than we did pre-antibiotics. Obesity is bad, but unchecked bacteria is worse.

The majority of the world not living 200k years in the past won't die to obesity, either.

My guess would be that they wear and wash reusable pads. There are modern versions of these, too! Thinx is the big name brand.

Either that or they don’t use anything. Not to get too personal, but it’s not always necessary to use something aside from regular undergarments.

They could just take birth control.

One traditional solution is cattail fluff.

Both he and President McKinley had their wounds probed excessively, under not too sanitary conditions.

With modern medical procedures, both would have likely survived.

Actually in several cases bullets are not removed as removing them may cause further damage: https://www.carenade.com/blog/bullet-time/

> But interestingly, they think if he wasn't well to do he would have survived. Many poor people who fought in the civil war walked away with bullets still inside them

Many of those poor soldiers died - including from infections.

> When penicillin was first isolated in 1928, there was so little demand for it that it took over a decade before anyone even bothered working on a way to commercialize it.

That's false. Penicillin was discovered in 1928. It took until 1940 for researchers to show it could cure infections. It was put to use in a human the next year, and Fleming won the Nobel Prize in 1945.

Infections that could be cured by penicillin (staph and strep) were on their own never a leading cause of death, and so you wouldn't expect penicillin on its own to drive big life expectancy improvements.

This is a good point.

We might have antibiotics to fight serious infections but the modern way of living is still slowly killing us in many other ways.

I see. In my part of the world, an expat is someone who took a job in another country. This country where they are currently resident isn't their home; they are merely there for the duration of their contract.

If that family could manage to acquire the resources needed to heal. More likely, they would just die after a long and painful death and their family would mourn and hope they could birth another baby to take your place.

> Insisting that people be consistent and that everything always be fair a regressive trait.

On the contrary, peddling injustice, no matter how small, is the first step in unraveling society.

Actually, you would be surprised.

In New York City, there are thousands of "street homeless", despite there being tens of thousands of bed available in shelters.

Materially it almost doesn’t matter, but as a matter of principle it undermines their whole choice.

Or maybe he was always a drain. Hard to say with no data.

> Do trust-fundies bug you the same way? Granted, someone put up capital that came from somewhere to seed their lifestyle, but they're quite literally living off others' labor, too.

No, because they're supposed to be living off of daddy and mummy's labor, not mine. You see, trust fund kids have a trust fund, but the people who provided that money (mom and dad) typically have a lot of say in how its used. It's the same principle here. If a trust fundie went to a public soup kitchen, then yes I want a say, because that's my money.

Otherwise, no I don't really care that someone gave someone else money. Not my business. If the 'wild' guy in the comment found an independent patron to provide him everything he needed, I'd say go for it -- that's a great business to be in honestl.

> Putting that aside, a lot of folks seems far more attuned to 'cheating' at the very bottom of society than the (much more damaging) cheating elsewhere.

That's not true at all. You just haven't made a proper comparison. Trust fund kids aren't stealing anything from me. That money is not mine. It was their ancestor's and now it's theirs. If they were taking my money then that would be unfair.

> Is someone eating almost-expired grocery store waste a bigger imposition on others than fraud?

I have no idea how this relates

> Tax evasion?

Tax evasion -- not paying taxes that are owed -- is against the law, and ought to be prosecuted, including with jail time. I don't think that my country (America) typically goes easy on those who flout tax law, but in general, I support law enforcement universally, and I would support cracking down on those breaking tax law and building more jails to house them.

They bother me, but less because the person they are living off of gave their specific consent for that money to be used that way.

...whereas no one ever asked us if we should fund the lifestyle of those who are voluntarily homeless.

There is a world of difference between giving your nest egg to your kids when you die, and living off of the state.

That the state spends money to help the destitute and that some of those might be not-quite-destitute and therefore by some logic defrauding the state really seems to irk people in ways that always surprise me. As you say, why focus on the pennies involved when waste in the military (at least in the US) and other fraud against the government (such as Medicare fraud) is magnitudes more?

The main defender of this point would've been better off taking the money earned during the time writing his comment, donating it to a shelter (because a lot of charity is not government funded), and never thinking about the issue again. Yet you can just see how it gets under his skin.