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How do I become a self-sufficient old man in a shack?
58 points by mman on Sept 10, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 84 comments
Let's say i have $10000. Is it possible to build the following existence (for one person's lifetime)?

- Food/water (or equivalent), shelter from elements and predators, comfortable temperature, ability to stay clean and free from disease.

- Upper limit for time spent on daily involuntary tasks (say 1hr/day) with definite certainty on ability to maintain existence. Assuming no outstanding terrestrial occurences, there should never be any stress from fluctuation of shelter or resource availability

- Visibility at night; fire/candles ok, i guess

- Bed, chair/desk, say 10 sheets of paper a day, writing utensil to fill 10 sheets a day

- Internet access, say 100 hours lifetime total, accessable at some definite rate, say at least once a month for an hour at a time max (Richard Stallman style is ok)

- Ability to receive shipment of goods whose requirement cannot be predetermined (such as books), with finite extra funds set aside for purchasing of said goods

- Ability to escape the system as i see fit




More parameters are needed, in my opinion. What you want is possible, but not with only $10k. That, or give up some requirements (internet, unless you want to walk to a public library) and be prepared to squat on someone else's property.

I live close to your desired existence. I own my humble hermit's cabin outright, have no debt at all, and a few grand in savings. I grow some of my own food, hunt some more, but I still need supplies. I could conceivably coast through a few years without any external income, but it would be a very Thoreau-like existence (which isn't a bad thing, just too primitive for me). I own my car and home, but still forced to pay insurance and yearly registration/taxes (cheap, as the car and home are old and of very low value, but they're non-negotiable and will surely rise over the years and are unavoidable). I still pay for power and internet, which could be trimmed (but what's the fun in that?).

If someone mailed me a check for $100k today, I'd never need to work again, and I'm under 40. I'm that set up and frugal. As it stands, I pimp myself out as a remote admin and local PC support dude, with minor hopes that I can realize a small web site that will bring in a few kilobucks a year.

For $10k you can buy an acre on Hawaii ("the big island" -- subdivisions near the lava flows), fly out there, and start gardening year-round while you live in a tent. Water falls from the sky daily and you can raise some meat to supplement the fruit and veggies you can grow. You'd have enough cash to pay for a few years of taxes, too.

Property taxes will get you every time, though, unless you squat. There's some dude who lives in a cave in southern Utah on public land. He eats bugs and scavenges food from nearby towns. Interesting experiment, but he'd be hosed (likely) if the majority of people weren't wasteful and he lacked stuff to scavenge.

Anyway, it's possible, but you'd either need more money up front, to have everything owned outright when you begin, or have enough passive income/savings to cover taxes and minimal supplies. Like I said before, more information on your current situation and your goals/plans are required for a more realistic analysis.


Hm, it looks like property taxes are amazing in louisiana. Does anyone know the net cost of getting set up with a crappy katrina cottage?


there are vaguely habitable houses available in my neighborhood (seventh ward new orleans) for 50k or even less


So is $100k and whatever you already own the minimum you would say this it's possible to do this with?


The minimum for me. I want in-home internet access for the rest of my days, and of course cover taxes and some other minor luxuries like coffee and ammo.

Again, it all depends on what you require and how you want to live.

Even if I started out with nothing, with $100k I could probably buy a place outright (a truly run-down shack, mind you) and still have enough to bootstrap myself into life-long self-sufficiency(excepting maybe the internet requirement). There are very cheap properties (some rural, some urban) in many states (even Hawaii!), so it all depends if you want 1 undeveloped acre on a tropical island or 5 acres in the mountains of West Virginia with some 100-year-old moonshiner's cabin already built.


Public internet ok, no coffee, no ammo. Cookies sometimes but not all the time. And milk for the cookies.


ammo?


I hunt as well as dispatch livestock for slaughter. Varmint control is a sometimes necessary. Home defense is a side benefit, but not a primary motivator and I hope I'll never need it.

Nothing fancy, just a .22 rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun with a good supply of rounds for each, two of the most humble and versatile firearms one can own.


Are you in the US? Which state?


Utah.


Where you will run into problems is food. B/c you only want to spend 1 hour a day on involuntary tasks, you'll have to buy food. Regardless of how efficiently you buy, your 10k wont last very long that way.

If you are a little skilled and live in the right area, you can get food from hunting/trapping but you're still looking at significantly more than 1 hour a day. Farming is right out.

To live that life you really have to be willing to work a little harder or spend a little more. No Minority Report ending, sorry.


If you are willing to live on rice it's about $200 a year for 2000 kcal per day. This is at supermarket prices, if you were willing to buy by the tonne I'm sure it's much less, just buy a futures contract and bring your truck to the delivery point.


Serious question, not joking - wouldn't you die, literally die, without any protein, fat, or micronutrients?


Yes, he would suffer serious malnutrition. However, he could supplement with one or two other cheap bulk crops (whole wheat, corn, and/or beans). Still, it would be efficient to raise small grass-eating animals for food, such as rabbit or even guinea pigs. Grass and weeds are abundant and free, far cheaper than meat.

Trace elements and minerals are fairly easy to get. Many of those same weeds you can feed to rabbits are chock-full of all kinds of good nutrition. A book on edible plants is recommended reading. Lichens and wild mushrooms (tread carefully!) are great sources of such nutrients.

For $10, you can buy a 50-pound bag of mineral supplement for livestock (chelated, highly bioavailble raw minerals -- pretty much mined from old lake/ocean beds and ground to a powder) that should last one person most of a lifetime. Much cheaper than a case of One A Day or Centrum tablets.


using animal mineral supplement is interesting , But what about minimal and maximal concentrations needed for humans , vs animals ? do you of an animal mineral product, with mineral levels that are proportionate to human minerals ? do you know someone who uses this idea ?


http://www.redmondnatural.com/redmond-natural-conditioner.ht...

We use this stuff for our animals. On occasion, I will fill a couple of gel caps with the stuff and take some myself.

I take the glowing testimonials with a grain of salt (ha!), but the stuff seems to have a good reputation. Most ranchers tend to neglect their herds (likely more out of ignorance than malice), so I'm not surprised to hear that adding this supplement would yield huge improvement. Anecdotal accounts on various forums have been positive.

For all I know, this stuff could kill me in the long run, so don't come blaming me if it kills you should you try it. Consult your physician, dietitian, lawyer and all that standard disclaimer stuff.


Is it true that a supplement of eggs would be enough to cover all nutritional requirements?


I don't know what the long-term health effects of it would be, but I have it on good authority that dry dog food is capable of sustaining human life, if eaten as a "breakfast cereal" with powder-based milk.

Supposedly the cheapest stuff tastes best, since it doesn't have the flavoring or meat byproducts in it that dogs find palatable. It's basically just raw carbohydrates, fat, and protein; I think corn and soy based, mostly.


As a kid I often ate both wet and dry dog food, it's basically tasteless if, as you say, it's not the premium brands. I'd go with the dry stuff if I had to do it again.

The premium bands seems to want to make it smell acceptable to humans but it just tastes horrible. I suspect it's the smell that makes it taste so bad.

BTW I didn't need to eat the dog food, I just did it. I also ate quite a lot of mud from the back garden. I had a great childhood :)


Is there enough nutrition in (brown, i assume) rice to do this?


No, brown rice isn't a complete protein, you need to add beans or tofu and maybe some micronutrients from greens that grow pretty easily. Consider reading a book on nutrition for vegetarians--malnutrition can creep up on you and cause some bad long term health problems.


A thought - you might want to try this out for a month in a dry run before spending time building it. I spent about two months learning how to track, trap, and otherwise survive in the Southern Utah desert, which was an amazing experience that taught me a lot, but not as romantic as you might imagine. Before investing time, dreams, and resources learning about and trying to build this, why not go rent a remote cabin for a month and see how it suits you?


Again, I'm sorry as the title is a little misleading. I don't really care about being isolated or roughing it in the wilderness. I'd rather not spend time learning any survival skills whatsoever, or even how to farm. I want to minimize involuntary tasks. It could be in the middle of NYC for all i care. But no roaches or bedbugs are allowed.


Okay, I understand better now.

Why not do a kind of work you find really enjoyable, and sell/trade that work with people whose company you enjoy? This is generally my philosophy to entrepreneurship anyways - there's a bit of involuntary time involved (taxes, accounting, errands), but I think you could get it down to less than one hour per day. If you didn't care about having extremely nice material comforts/status symbols, I bet you could make a decent life doing a skill/craft you like and enjoy being immersed in with minimum admin/involuntary time. Some kind of focused writing, craft, skill, or technology work maybe?


Yes, this all stems from realizing the only reason i want to "get rich" is basically so i can live the life described. I want to do only the things that i want to do all the time. And the things that i want to do are extremely simple. But i am willing to give up some time to do other things. Yes, I would consider trading and selling involuntary activities.

The only voluntary activities are reading, writing, thinking, and communicating. I guess eating, sex, and shitting can all go in the voluntary slot, too.


Another angle is to try living this ideal life for a month or so. It might be difficult to pretend, because you can't 100% relax into it, but it might alert you to things you need you hadn't realized (eg. social); or, contrariness, give you a boost of motivation to do whatever it takes to secure it (eg work to save a little more money; research etc.)

It's just that idea of starting small, as a way to get started and get more information, more confidence (from having some progress), and get the blood flowing through acting on your vision.

BTW: lutsp is in the thread, who's actually done this (see his link to his shack.)


If you've figured out a way to make eating and shitting voluntary, you should just write about that. The sales will be enough to ensure you never have to work again.


I had to +1 your comment, made me 'ROFL'


Great question. I think more passive income is required for food etc. eg. my rule of thumb $1,000 invested will bring in about $1-2 per week; or, some businesses you own can (theoretically) provide passive income, but in practice it's not totally passive (1 hour per day is quite reasonable though.) But both sources will require more work to setup in the first place, to create the "asset". Another option is part-time consulting work; if you charge $100 per hour, that's $500 per week. Of course, you probably can't get that literally one hour per day; it would be bursty: (say) full-time for a few weeks, then don't work for a year. That's a popular hacker route. But again, you'd have some setup cost, in having the technical skills (and keeping them up to date) + (more importantly) having the business skills to keep getting the work, year after year (and the social temperament.) It's sounding more reliable to work for a whole year, and invest that.

Though my personal experience is that I really missed being productive for other people, and have decided to expend effort doing useful things for others (create the value that I want to create, on my own timetable and terms - largely an intersection of benefiting both others and myself.) It took me 2-3 years of not working to come to that decision, and it seems typical of people who retire. But even knowing that, I still had to see for myself. I expect you too. Of course, it's quite possible to just do that in the first place (I didn't.)


My contribution would be my research, if it ends up being any good. But i don't want to be a slave to researching just so i can receive funding and continue my studies, I want to be self-sufficient and research exactly what i feel like, independent of others.


Commit a felony and go to jail. That will meet most of your requirements. You will probably be paroled early, so commit additional felonies as required.


Oh, by "escape the system" i meant escape the system we create here, as in keep my freedom, not be incarcerated, not be prevented from having sex or children for the rest of my life, etc.


This lifestyle will almost assuredly prevent you from having sex. Your budget will not buy you much of it either.


I just mean that i can't be a celibate monk unless i can also stop being a celibate monk when i feel like it.


But, Peter, they have conjugal visits in prison.


The sex you want, you can't get.

The sex you get, you don't want.


People laugh when I tell them that my dream job is to tend a lighthouse (which are all largely automated now), but it's for reasons very similar to what you've outlined here: lots of free time for me to read and study what I'm interested in. So another possible solution is to identify a job that's based predominantly on the criteria of having a human present. A fire lookout comes to mind. The one hour of work/day would probably need relaxed to two to three hours per day, but you'd also be supplied room & board. The Internet access might be possible via cell technology.

Please let us know how this works out for you.


Jack Kerouac did this in the fifties


Pilom is right. Your life would become revolved around food.

You should check out the following three things:

Emergency by Neil Strauss in which Neil detail his experiences in trying to become more self sufficient and gaining the abilities to escape from the system

Island to Oneself by Tom Neale for a first hand account of trying to survive on a deserted island for 16 years.

And Survivalistboards.com, which is full of conspiracy nuts but has lots of information about becoming more self sufficient.


I did this, years ago:

http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...

I started this phase out wanting to be left alone and live on $40/month, but reality interfered and it turned out to be a way to completely change my life.

I think it can still be done. There is a steep learning curve.


Welcome, cool to have you! Did you know you've been featured here? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=905377

If you don't mind, I wanted to ask you: did you own the land for your shack, or rent it? The latter is cheaper, but not independent. I recall Thoreau didn't own his shack.


I owned the land outright. During my previous time with a NASA subcontractor in Silicon Valley, I realized that rent was a key problem and if I didn't own the land, the entire idea would collapse.

Then I bought materials in cash and built a little cabin, which meant it was also paid for. I was entirely debt-free, which I regarded as essential (and still do).

I started a little garden and had lots of free time to think. The rest, as they say, is history. :)


Thanks! It makes such a difference speaking to someone who's actually done it. Not theoretical.

I guess you must have been relatively near civilization - at least a town. Can I ask how much money it took... and how much you think it would take today?

I think it depends a lot on the land, which seems relatively expensive here in Australia; if you want water, electricity and sewage utilities. I get the impression there's very cheap land in some places in the States.


I want to start by saying this was 35 years ago. I chose a part of the country where land was relatively cheap (Oregon), and bought 5 acres for about $3000.

I built a small cabin at first -- 12x24 feet -- and this is where I wrote Apple Writer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer), while relying on a very long extension cord for power.

Later on I bought more land and built a larger house, but still with the idea of living cheaply firmly guiding my actions. Then my income went over a million dollars a year and I decided to do something completely different -- so I bought a sailboat and sailed solo around the world (http://arachnoid.com/sailbook).

> if you want water, electricity and sewage utilities ...

I chose Oregon because it rains a bit, and I had previously built a cabin in Colorado where it is very dry -- I decided that was a mistake. In Oregon, for water I walked up the hill behind my cabin and dropped a hose in a creek. If you choose the right altitude difference, you can duplicate normal household water pressure. For sewage, I built an outhouse.

It really was quite primitive. But it freed me from having to pay rent or needing much money, which meant I could think about anything I wanted. Then I acquired an Apple II, which ironically enough I probably wouldn't have done while working for NASA a few years before. I had this fantasy that I would write some cool programs and people would buy them, and I could just live in the country and people would mail me money.

The weird thing is that this is exactly what happened.


Oh man, it's such an awesome story. Thanks so much for replying. Good to hear the shack wasn't the first iteration (nor the last). Did it take some experience to be able to build a stable, long-lasting shack (perhaps just woodwork in general?)

How far were you from a town, for food, construction materials, etc and a PO (I guess biking distance)? I guess you had a friendly nearby neighbour for the extension lead? [I've been thinking solar, which I actually used for a hp200lx, using 4 rechargeable AAs, but today's netbooks need a gruntier, more elaborate setup: large solar panel, lead-acid battery, transformer etc. Seems error-prone. Maybe a kindle-like ARM+OLED/e-ink/LCD will change this.]

I'd like internet - either wired or mobile (we have rural mobile coverage, and the govt just reelected campaigned for more) - instead of a PO, but I'd still need a local town for food etc. It scares me a bit to be too far away - but that's where the peace/silence is that I want/need.

Just to collect figures and conversions for reference: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%243000+1975

    $3,000 for 5 acres = $12,000 today 
    $40 per month      = $   160 today
      @ 10%            = $20,000 invested
    1200' ext lead = 365m
    Oregon 44N; Tasmania 42S
If these figures are applicable today, here in Australia, I could do this... now.


I checked online real estate; the cheapest land I saw was $45,000 for 2 acres - with services available, but not connected, and with road access. I expect an unserviced, with no road, on the "edge of wilderness" bush block would be cheaper, esp if a private sale and if not online. I've tried looking in the past, with no luck; don't know how to find out about it.

Another conversion:

    5 acres = 20,234 m^s


> while relying on a very long extension cord for power

er...how's that? What did you connect to?


I called the power company and asked for a "construction box." This is a very common request, rarely turned down, for a "temporary" power hookup for construction purposes.

The "temporary" box was located near the road, about 1/4 mile from my cabin, so I simply ran a very long extension cord through the woods. This arrangement lasted for years.


I also have aspirations of independence and have concluded that "getting rich" is not The Answer. Some things that are working for me:

For health reasons, I have given up all furniture. I sleep on the floor with zero bedding. I had to get healthier in order to be able to do that. Being cold was really about being sick. It was a gradual process of using less bedding, getting healthier, and generally changing our lifestyle to need fewer things to meet our basic needs.

I have a netbook and a small folding shelf it sits on to keep it off the floor. The little shelf has folding legs, so I can change its position. I also have a prepaid cell phone as the cheapest phone access and have cancelled my landline. No furniture means less housework. It also means fewer bugs in the house. When we first moved to this apartment, there were a lot of bugs. I thought it was just that without furniture they were visible. Over time, with getting healthier and getting the apartment cleaner and reducing our possessions further, we have fewer bugs.

At the moment, we own one deep frying pan. We cook a lot from scratch, but they are simple one dish meals. The medical condition I and my oldest son have is high maintenance. So rearranging our lives so we have less to do in terms of cooking, cleaning, etc is essential in order for us to be healthy and still have time and energy to get a life (which we are basically working on now, after having spent about a decade working on getting well).

We live without a car. That substantially cut our expenses and has turned out to not be as challenging as I expected. Since we don't own furniture, we don't need to haul that much crap home. We regularly buy food and clothes (because clothes gets thrown out routinely around here....long story) and we bought a netbook earlier this summer. But I just don't need the kind of hauling capacity I needed when I lived more conventionally.

I have internet access via my netbook and could also have it via cellphone if I wanted it. I guess the internet access my cell phone would offer would be more limited. I'm reasonably content with the situation at the moment, though there are three people sharing one netbook and the plan is to buy one or two more netbooks when there is money for that and eventually add some (probably handheld) gaming systems.

Anyway, that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Just start reducing your needs now. Have a yard sale. Start living with less stuff. Step by step, you can move towards this and as you make changes it will make other changes possible that you wouldn't have imagined.

Good luck.


It's an interesting question. but if you are an old hacker in the US or probably anywhere else in the developed world you qualify for a retirement income. At age 70 it would be something on the order of $2500/month. If you had an unmarried old lady, you would have something on the order of $60K per year plus reasonable health benefits in a few years.

The real problem is shelter. It is probably very difficult to build your shack anywhere near civilization, because of building code restrictions. The minimum, cost is probably some kind of used RV. You could theoretically avoid the code restrictions, because you could drive to a waste pumping station, etc. However if you blend in to a rural community sufficiently to be considered an asset rather than a nuisance, say by continually improving you property, you might get along quite nicely.


Sorry, there is a catch: I'm not actually an old man, i just want to live the life of an old man in a shack. What i really want is to maximize the hours per day dedicated to sleep and whatever else i want to do, which currently is only reading and writing. I had a relatively bad undergrad GPA and basically want to live the life of a professor without having to worry about grad school, then phd, tenure, teaching if i don't want to, meeting with people i don't like, etc.


If I remember correctly, Joseph Campbell waited out the Depression this way. I don't know how he supported himself (probably borrowed the cabin from family), but he basically read books for 5 years.


And what he discovered during those 5 years was really grand. Do you have a reference for his auto/biography ? I know he ran track at Columbia, manage to visit Europe and learned sanskrit.


Yes, but the $10000 or whatever amount of money becomes redundant. And, I do not recommend this path, as it is not for everyone because dropping out is instant "boot camp" rewarding in ways only you know, but boot camp. It's difficult work. Let go of one thing that you intuit you no longer need in your life, and watch what happens. Be gentle with yourself.


I learned long ago that effort should be expended on expanding one's ability to produce and create, rather than on trying to reduce one's burn rate down to nothing.

But its a great idea to have a very simple place you can spend some time at when you desire. I want one too.

Consider http://tinyhouseblog.com. It has some great information.


Doug Fine has partially done this. He moved to New Mexico. Installed solar panels for electricity. Shepherd 2 goats for milk. Grow his own vegetables. Converted his car to run on cooking oil.

http://www.dougfine.com/farewell-my-subaru/


His prior book, Not Really An Alaskan Mountain Man, which coincidentally I just finished last night, is about working toward a subsistence lifestyle in Alaska. He never even gets close, but it's an entertaining read.


That is possum living there is a book for you http://www.possumliving.net/ There are video about it on youTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvn79E40VSc


> Internet access, say 100 hours lifetime total, accessable at some definite rate, say at least once a month for an hour at a time max (Richard Stallman style is ok)

So, what- you've got less than 10 years left? If you want to restrict yourself to 100 hours of internet, that's more like 2 hours per year for the rest of your life, or 10 minutes a month.

> Upper limit for time spent on daily involuntary tasks (say 1hr/day) with definite certainty on ability to maintain existence. Assuming no outstanding terrestrial occurences, there should never be any stress from fluctuation of shelter or resource availability

You fundamentally misunderstand what being a self-sufficient old man in a shack means, don't you.


Read about Tom Neale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Neale

"spent much of his life in the Cook Islands and 16 years in three sessions living alone on the island of Anchorage in the Suwarrow atoll, which was the basis of his popular autobiography."

Very long but totally worth it to read the whole thing: http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/

Makes me want to go to Cook Islands at the least.


Go to India/China/anywhere. A change in culture can be refreshing and living there is really cheap. English is the second official language in India, so there shouldn't be a barrier. I also heard that the people are really really friendly (USA/Europe seem a bit resentful to foreigners).


What about living in a different country?

One of my friends lived on $100 a month in China. Out there your 10k should get you 8 years and 4 months of living in Beijing. You certainly could last much longer in the countryside.

You can supplement your money by teaching English.


also, if you teach English in China, you typically get 16 hours a week of classes. This will typically net you an apartment and between 3500-6000 Yuan per month (about $450 to $800). You may be able to negotiate to work fewer hours in exchange for less pay and achieve your 1 hour a day or so dedicated to "other activities", i.e teaching.


A mentor of mine did this, with $300,000.00 for four years. He bought a plot of land in Wyoming, built and underground cabin, and bought a Backhoe to help himself build it. He lived there for four years before moving on with his life...


I read about this kind of failure all the time in homesteading and survivalist circles. It takes a certain mindset to succeed, which involves adopting a bit of minimalism and humility.

One thing people have trouble wrapping their mind around is this: the more "toys" (tractors, machinery, etc.) that require consumables and maintenance, the less self-sufficient you will be. To be honest, even today's Amish are a far cry from true self-sufficiency.


Is your comment about "toys" exclusive to those that require consumables?

What about, for example, good knives and other various man-made tools?

I've thought about doing this sort of thing, but I'd really miss quality tools if I had to give them up. That, and buzzing around on a motorcycle! But I imagine even if I had a good supply of money for fuel and tires, the high risk of injury when you're alone in the wilderness is unacceptable.


The value of quality, useful tools cannot be overstated. Just be wise in your choices and understand the expenses involved other the life of the tool.

Don't buy cookware with teflon, as it will eventually wear off (nevermind the toxicity), but buy quality heavy duty stuff. I have a set of decent stainless steel cookware and a fair bit of cast iron, where the "non-stick" coating can be renewed (if not maitained) for the life of the item.

Good knives (cookware or otherwise) are a very valuable asset. Invest in a quality set of water stones to maintain them (I prefer Shapton "glass" stones), and you'll have a useful tool for life. I'm still packing a Swiss Army knife and fillet knife I've had since I was a kid.

Tractors and horses can be valuable, if put to good use. However, both require maintenance and fuel. Hand tools and other human-powered devices can accomplish quite a bit and are much cheaper to maintain in the long run.


On a commune I lived on in Kentucky we had a Backhoe and tractor with an assortment of tools and power tools; we had a solar array to meet our electricity needs.

It was well worth having the Backhoe and tractor - for three people, some jobs are much easier when you have a machine to help (such as digging a wide long trench).


Do the Amish accept new members?


I've heard of people moving into their communities and converting, but "the Amish" are not like some hippie commune you can simply "join". Most real estate in Amish areas is prime farmland and not cheap.


All those who venture in caves: return to the world, or go mad from loneliness. Some may seem interesting, but there is a thin line between insane and interesting.


Although i said old man in a shack, being isolated is not a requirement. But for the sake of argument, let's not prohibit it.


You can run some easy calculations that show that candles are vastly more inefficient than electric light. Not surprisingly, they are more expensive too.


Bad news for you buddy:

There is no escaping the system. :)

A relative escape may be possible, but definitely not an absolute and complete escape from 'all' systems.

You go live in a jungle, you have to adapt yourself to the 'system' there.

You may be able to escape the laws of a more civilized country by living with some tribes in Papua New Gunea or the Amazon, but you would have to start living by their laws (formal or informal).


I suggest that you think over opting in for a dentistry/vision/emergency plan. Old man in a shack is definitely going to need it. Probably this should constitute the largest part of your suggested spending whatever your motivation is.


Look at it from a start-up perspective, either you bootstrap with $0 invested or you raise money (more than $10k).

The same project can be had with no money or a lot of money. Once you burn through $10k you will only want more money.


Just go live in a shack and don't deal with other people unless you really need to. No need for $10k.


No. http://www.survivalblog.com


Respect if you do it because you're harmful to society, childish if its because society is harmful to you.


I think it is neither of these. Well, i am somewhat of an asshole, i guess, but I want to study math and physics.


For that, what are the advantages of a cave, comparing to a silent library?

Also, toilets instead of holes and toilet paper instead of leaves.


I have to sleep somewhere that is legal and that doesn't annoy people, and also to not be dependent on others. This means no panhandling, etc.


You just recalled me of a documentary that showed chinese (IIRC) folks sleeping in LAN houses because it was the cheapest thing for them. A nice idea I must say.


Probably Japanese: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_cafe_refugee




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