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Comment by cjbgkagh | Hacker News Reader

You can still trade with people when living outside of a city. I don’t expect complete civilizational collapse, there will still be roads and internet, I just like living remote.

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If we need to grow our own food, gasoline is a problem for most American ideas of remote homesteading.

With some modifications you can run cars on ammonia which can be made, albeit inefficiently at small scales, from solar power. Perhaps some new catalyst or meta-material would enable a more efficient process.

You can also put a horse in front of your car. It works, but is a bit inefficient. You can feed your horse with grass which you can grow with solar power.

Perhaps some new catalyst or meta-material would enable a more efficient horse.

The current processes are not that inefficient, it’s currently commercially inefficient because the margins are small, but if there were issues in obtaining alternative fuels the margins would increase to make micro scale ammonia generation economically viable. There are supposedly already catalysts that exist to make small scale ammonia production competitive even at current margins and there is some interest in using this for solar power energy storage. For me this technology is still in the category of I’ll believe it when I see it. Most people who need ammonia today need a whole lot of it so small scale production wouldn’t make sense even if it was just as efficient. The other issues with ammonia are that it’s rather toxic and pretty easy to make into explosives. Eventually I’m planning on having an excess supply renewable energy so dumping that into ammonia production is a no brainer.

> [...] I just like living remote.

That's good, and enough justification for your lifestyle. No need to come up with stories of imminent global collapse (unless that kind of roleplay enhances your enjoyment of your lifestyle, I guess?)

My sincere apologies, I’ll be sure to check with you next time.

Sure, feel free. I can't guarantee any response times, though.

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