@sickburnbro @jb @monsterislandcolonizer The country at its most bare is subsistence farming.

The number of people who can be a blacksmith, a civil engineer, a doctor, an architect, a large animal vet, a chemical engineer, a teacher, a geoengineer, a musician, a craftsman, a miner, a carpenter and a farmer is so small you can fit them in a church van.

Western NC should be a wakeup call. Those hillfolk are quite self-sufficient and very canny, but even they need help after a disaster. When you are a civilization of one family out on a homestead, the size of the disaster it takes to wipe you out shrinks proportionally.