Taken from Leonard D Neubache's rural living datasheet (2017).
As promised. I'll likely think of other things and add them as they come to mind. And as always I'm open to questions anyone might have.
Rural Living Datasheet.
This guide is going to be directed at men who are planning on leaving the cities and suburbs to live in a rural area. The sole disclaimer is this. Although most country folk around the world are quite similar, no two places in the world are strictly the same. Rural China will obviously have some serious variations from rural Australia. The part of this thread I look forward to myself is learning what those differences are, but the rest of this post will be dedicated to giving fellow RVF members a head start if they decided to escape to the sticks.
Bad spots to pick:
Non working districts. These are towns that exist almost solely on welfare. They’re typically places that served a purpose that no longer exists. Towns built around mining or fishing ventures that became unprofitable for example. These are places to be avoided for many reasons, among which is that economic opportunities are poor and the locals are often hostile and bitter, particularly when dealing with outsiders. Don't think that you can take advantage of the low property prices and simply commute a little further to work. When you get home your front door will be kicked in and your stuff will be gone.
Good spots to pick:
Working districts on the other hand are a fantastic place to live. The residents may be poor by urban standards but they will still have community spirit and will generally not be as immediately hostile to outsiders. Ideally a suitable town will have a post office, a small grocery store, a school and a mechanic, though some businesses may fulfil several of these roles. A local population of 1000 to 2000 is about right. Larger than that and the sense of community begins to drop off sharply. Pick somewhere off of the highway and away from the tourist traps.
Beyond these simple characteristics the rest is mostly personal preference. Cool. Warm. Wet. Dry. These are choices that fall more to individual preference than good planning.
Zooming in to specifics:
Don’t start out buying a 50 acre property when you don’t know the first thing about managing land, cattle or crops. You will only end up looking like an ass and being a burden to others (don’t ask me how I know). Move into the township itself and if you want land to play on then buy it separately as a recreational block.
Community spirit:
Most guys on this forum will never have experienced living in a real community. Perhaps the closest they’ve come to that kind of spirit is by being on a first name basis with a neighbour or two. The real deal is vastly different. To say it’s a bit of a shock to the system is an understatement and if you don’t know what's coming when you move to one of these places then community spirit can actually be somewhat confronting.
Here’s an example. I get in my car and go to the shops. On the way I wave to perhaps 80% of the people I pass by. I know them and they know me. I get to the shop (cafe/grocery store) and they greet me by name, as I do them. They know my typical order. “The usual?” Yes please. Invariably there's someone sitting drinking coffee who I'll talk with about local events and opportunities. I smile and behave pleasantly, even if I’m having a shit day. I go the butcher to pick up meat and again I'm greeted by my name. I ask him about his weekend with genuine interest and he takes the time to ask about mine, with genuine interest. We chat about politics for a few minutes and part. I go to the post office. I’m greeted by name again. Having moved recently I ask if I need to purchase a forwarding address service. The postman laughs. Of course not. He sorts all of the mail anyway and he knows who everyone is. Oh, can I drop off a package to my in-law’s house to save him an extra long trip the next day? Sure. Of course.
There are no strangers in a legitimate community, and no anonymity.
Privacy:
Despite the popular cliché about country life being one of privacy, if you over-value your privacy and don’t like personal contact then country living is not for you. From the time you arrive a brigade of old women will come out of the woodwork to take a borderline intrusive stance about asking who you are, what you do for a living, which house you moved in to, where you’re from, if you’re married, if you have kids, why you moved here specifically, blah blah blah.
Yes, you are being screened for suitability. Yes they will pass this information on to anyone that will listen. Their gossipy natures are not just a character defect. In this regard we can see it as a tribal survival mechanism.
Your privacy is mostly reduced to the four walls that hold up the roof on your house. When you can’t drive anywhere without passing twenty people who know your vehicle and who make an entirely innocent mental note about where you were headed on Thursday morning it becomes clear that you’re part of an unofficial collective. There’s nothing sinister about it. If you reduced your city to a population of 2000 people then you would suddenly be keenly aware of who most people were, what car they drove, what they did for a living, who they were married to and how they typically liked their coffee to be made.
Law and order:
The upside to this is the distinct absence of scumbags. No, they aren’t run out of town or strung from lamp posts, but scumbags hate having their movements tracked and being a scumbag in a small country town is largely an untenable prospect. There are some younger guys that can’t find their way in life, but they mostly move to the cities the first chance they get. That’s why you wont see graffiti or broken windows on abandoned buildings. Out here there’s no endless mass of buildings, streets and other scumbags to blend back into. Everyone is held to account in one way or another.
As for the police, they are typically seen as an annoyance. Like a Roman garrison in a far flung satrap of the empire. Police out here are appreciated for their laziness rather than their zest for policing.
Behaviour:
One of the upshots of this sense of community is that it makes it impossible to be a phoney. When you live in the city you can live different lives when dealing with different groups of people because everyone is so removed from each other. In the country this is not going to be an option. You can fool some of the people most of the time and most of the people some of the time but you can’t fool every one all of the time and inevitably your true colours are going to show.
This might seem confronting but as long as you’re not an idiot then it’s no big deal. Country people accept that nobody is perfect because the fact is that nobody is perfect and nobody is capable of pretending to be so 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Act honourably. Keep you promises. Support the community, even in small ways. Pay respect to the elders. Keep an eye out for the kids. Do all that and you’ll be fine.
The social fabric:
Idiots that pull in different directions to the people of the district don’t last long. Whether they be city folk determined to educate the dirt-people or foreigners who value their own culture over that of the local district, country folk will tend to shut them out socially.
You might think “that doesn’t sound too hostile”.
Imagine rats chew through your power cables and the local electrician decides he doesn’t want to pick up the phone. Imagine your car breaks down and the only mechanic for 50 miles decides that his schedule is too busy to fit you in. Being an idiot out here is not a wise choice. Some idiot do arrive from time to time, and either they lose the attitude problem or they head back the way they came in short order.
Game:
It’s not a place for the determined bachelor. If you remain single for long you will be assumed to be gay. Again, you won’t be strung up or run out of town, but the locals will regard you with some measure of distrust which will make life harder in a thousand small ways that all add up.
Marriage:
If you’ve already acquired the wife then as long as she’s not a bitch you’ll be more readily accepted as a married man than a single one. If she’s a different race to the locals then the screening process for her will run a little longer, suffering the addition of “is she loyal to this country" and "does she accept our culture as her own”.
Assuming you’re not married but looking, game carefully and choose carefully. The local girls are the sisters, daughters and grand-daughters of the local men. Shotgun weddings might be a thing of the past. You’ll also be marked as the kind of person that’s generally not conducive to the common good. This can be hard. A young girl full of hormones can all but throw herself at the fresh meat but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get a pass from the locals if you fornicate with her and put her on plate status or just lose her number. In the country women are correctly seen as being one step above children and one step below men in terms of being accountable for their actions. Muh patriarchy is a double edged sword out here, lads.
Types of women:
Now, country girls can be divided into two categories. Trailer trash and Duchess’. By this I mean girls who come from broken homes and girls that come from traditional unbroken nuclear families.
Trailer trash:
The trailer trash girls are the easier choice and not necessarily as bad an option as you might think. First generation welfare girls can be pilfered from shitty towns around the district and put through a heavy wash cycle before being ironed out and knocked up. It might sound like madness but a country welfare girl is typically not nearly as damaged a rich, progressive whore from the suburbs or city. Country welfare girls are breeders and usually quite capable of running a household. You will need a firm hand and a bit more frame over the life of the relationship. Nobody prefers a “fixer-upper", but running with that prospect is a hundred times more viable in the country than in the city or the suburbs.
The Duchess:
Girls from traditional families with multi-generational links to the region will be a harder prospect. Their parents are more protective of them and will screen you hard, especially if their little girl is a top-shelf stunner. They will be looking for a masculine man that stands his ground, makes good money and spends it wisely, treats their daughter well and isn’t going to wall her off from them the second she gets married.
Ironically I get the sense they prefer an outsider because it allows them to keep the family in tact rather than losing their daughter to another family in the area who will integrate her into their tribe more thoroughly. This option is the best one assuming you choose the particular girl (and family) wisely and in accordance with red-pill philosophy. It gives you the best quality wife as well as access to her family’s contacts in local industry. The disclaimer is that her father MUST be red-pilled and not prone to treating his daughter like a princess. In other words “running home to daddy” must not be a legitimate option for any prospective wife.
Notes:
If you care less about marrying into a large family and more about starting your own legacy then find a girl from a more distant country district, court her and they drag her back to your cave. That way you get the country morals without inhabiting the bottom rung of an existing patriarchal order.
But don't be too quick to rule out marrying into a large family. Instant tribe is a huge blessing, the benefits of which would constitute an entirely separate data sheet.
Age variations:
As a bonus if you keep in good shape for your age then marrying a girl 10 years younger than you will not earn you the same jealous contempt you might get in the city. The husband being 5 years older than the wife is largely seen to be normal and an additional play of 5 years is no serious stretch. Beyond that? Marry outside of the community and be prepared to get a few funny looks until your wife has a couple of kids or the difference in age diminishes on a percentile basis.
Money:
You had better have a location-independent stream of income or an exceptional nose for business. The alternative is a seriously long commute to work or local work which will be a mix of dirty, dangerous and difficult for not much pay. That’s the reality of country life.
Jobs are typically given to family members first, friends second, acquaintances third and strangers last. When trying to get work locally you will have to make your way up that social ladder as quickly as possible and earn a reputation for being a solid performer while you’re at it. This will be twice as hard if you don’t have skills and qualifications suited to the local industries.
Tradesmen are often a welcome addition since most electricians and plumbers go where they can make the most money, and driving a half an hour between jobs is not very profitable so most of them avoid rural areas like the plague resulting in a shortage of those services.
If you’re business savvy then there will often exist the opportunity to set up a small shop or service to cater to the locals, but your customer base and their disposable income is going to be limited to say the least.
Being jobless will not be a stigma if there are no jobs around. Obviously the opposite holds true as well. Avoid government jobs if possible. They are rightly seen as being cushy at the expense of harder working taxpayers. If you can’t find work then do a bit of charity work until paid work becomes available.
Politics and the red pill:
In my local dealings I sometimes bring up a red-pill issues and the people I’m talking to seem to look at me like I’m foolishly stating the bleeding obvious. I’m forced to recall that most country people have no idea how bad things really are outside of their humble rural townships. As such I don’t talk about politics with people most of the time. Many of them regard political junkies like myself as being somewhat obsessive over something that doesn’t really matter. There’s a feeling of disconnect out here from the happenings of the big cities. Most people out here have no idea how fast the ugliness of the cities could spill into the countryside and in that regard I don’t recommend spending all your social capital on playing chicken-little.
Survivalism:
Prudent planning and preparing for local issues like bush/forest fires or roads and power cables being washed out and blown down is simply seen as common sense. However, if you start stringing up razor wire around your fence line then you’re going to be noted as a grade-A kook.
When talking about broader societal collapses you need to have two plans. One is a plan for you and your family alone in case the entire community is caught flat-footed. This would be the “run for the hills” plan. The other plan simply involves convincing pillars of the community that the time to set up armed road-blocks is now. The rest will take care of itself because you’ll be following the orders of guys smarter and better equipped than yourself.
Making friends:
I’m not going to sugar coat this. Getting an inroad with the local men of your age to the point where they invite you to go fishing, dirt biking or hunting is not an easy task and sometimes will just be flat out impossible. Most of these guys went to kindergarten with each other and outsiders are just a dead weight that they neither want nor need.
Of course if you’re a family man or heading that way then you’re going to have little time for those sorts of hobbies anyway, but if you really want to have a group of guys to knock beers back with then take an independent interest in the stuff the local lads like and become as good at it as you possibly can (without any wank factor attached, like getting the most expensive gun or dirt bike that money can buy).
Overview:
Moving to the country offers many advantages and disadvantages. You have to carefully weigh what’s important to you and what’s not. For me, living in an area that promotes a safe, healthy lifestyle for my kids and a suitable environment for a traditional marriage to flourish is what’s important. I will likely never have much money to my name but I also don’t have to live in fear of my life suddenly being upended by a jihad attack or social justice riot. I don’t really have to worry about home invasions but I’m far more likely to be bitten by a venomous snake or crushed by a tree I’ve just cut down for firewood.
Regardless, my opinion is this. In this day and age for a family man the choice of whether to live in the city or the country is really no choice at all.
As promised. I'll likely think of other things and add them as they come to mind. And as always I'm open to questions anyone might have.
Rural Living Datasheet.
This guide is going to be directed at men who are planning on leaving the cities and suburbs to live in a rural area. The sole disclaimer is this. Although most country folk around the world are quite similar, no two places in the world are strictly the same. Rural China will obviously have some serious variations from rural Australia. The part of this thread I look forward to myself is learning what those differences are, but the rest of this post will be dedicated to giving fellow RVF members a head start if they decided to escape to the sticks.
Bad spots to pick:
Non working districts. These are towns that exist almost solely on welfare. They’re typically places that served a purpose that no longer exists. Towns built around mining or fishing ventures that became unprofitable for example. These are places to be avoided for many reasons, among which is that economic opportunities are poor and the locals are often hostile and bitter, particularly when dealing with outsiders. Don't think that you can take advantage of the low property prices and simply commute a little further to work. When you get home your front door will be kicked in and your stuff will be gone.
Good spots to pick:
Working districts on the other hand are a fantastic place to live. The residents may be poor by urban standards but they will still have community spirit and will generally not be as immediately hostile to outsiders. Ideally a suitable town will have a post office, a small grocery store, a school and a mechanic, though some businesses may fulfil several of these roles. A local population of 1000 to 2000 is about right. Larger than that and the sense of community begins to drop off sharply. Pick somewhere off of the highway and away from the tourist traps.
Beyond these simple characteristics the rest is mostly personal preference. Cool. Warm. Wet. Dry. These are choices that fall more to individual preference than good planning.
Zooming in to specifics:
Don’t start out buying a 50 acre property when you don’t know the first thing about managing land, cattle or crops. You will only end up looking like an ass and being a burden to others (don’t ask me how I know). Move into the township itself and if you want land to play on then buy it separately as a recreational block.
Community spirit:
Most guys on this forum will never have experienced living in a real community. Perhaps the closest they’ve come to that kind of spirit is by being on a first name basis with a neighbour or two. The real deal is vastly different. To say it’s a bit of a shock to the system is an understatement and if you don’t know what's coming when you move to one of these places then community spirit can actually be somewhat confronting.
Here’s an example. I get in my car and go to the shops. On the way I wave to perhaps 80% of the people I pass by. I know them and they know me. I get to the shop (cafe/grocery store) and they greet me by name, as I do them. They know my typical order. “The usual?” Yes please. Invariably there's someone sitting drinking coffee who I'll talk with about local events and opportunities. I smile and behave pleasantly, even if I’m having a shit day. I go the butcher to pick up meat and again I'm greeted by my name. I ask him about his weekend with genuine interest and he takes the time to ask about mine, with genuine interest. We chat about politics for a few minutes and part. I go to the post office. I’m greeted by name again. Having moved recently I ask if I need to purchase a forwarding address service. The postman laughs. Of course not. He sorts all of the mail anyway and he knows who everyone is. Oh, can I drop off a package to my in-law’s house to save him an extra long trip the next day? Sure. Of course.
There are no strangers in a legitimate community, and no anonymity.
Privacy:
Despite the popular cliché about country life being one of privacy, if you over-value your privacy and don’t like personal contact then country living is not for you. From the time you arrive a brigade of old women will come out of the woodwork to take a borderline intrusive stance about asking who you are, what you do for a living, which house you moved in to, where you’re from, if you’re married, if you have kids, why you moved here specifically, blah blah blah.
Yes, you are being screened for suitability. Yes they will pass this information on to anyone that will listen. Their gossipy natures are not just a character defect. In this regard we can see it as a tribal survival mechanism.
Your privacy is mostly reduced to the four walls that hold up the roof on your house. When you can’t drive anywhere without passing twenty people who know your vehicle and who make an entirely innocent mental note about where you were headed on Thursday morning it becomes clear that you’re part of an unofficial collective. There’s nothing sinister about it. If you reduced your city to a population of 2000 people then you would suddenly be keenly aware of who most people were, what car they drove, what they did for a living, who they were married to and how they typically liked their coffee to be made.
Law and order:
The upside to this is the distinct absence of scumbags. No, they aren’t run out of town or strung from lamp posts, but scumbags hate having their movements tracked and being a scumbag in a small country town is largely an untenable prospect. There are some younger guys that can’t find their way in life, but they mostly move to the cities the first chance they get. That’s why you wont see graffiti or broken windows on abandoned buildings. Out here there’s no endless mass of buildings, streets and other scumbags to blend back into. Everyone is held to account in one way or another.
As for the police, they are typically seen as an annoyance. Like a Roman garrison in a far flung satrap of the empire. Police out here are appreciated for their laziness rather than their zest for policing.
Behaviour:
One of the upshots of this sense of community is that it makes it impossible to be a phoney. When you live in the city you can live different lives when dealing with different groups of people because everyone is so removed from each other. In the country this is not going to be an option. You can fool some of the people most of the time and most of the people some of the time but you can’t fool every one all of the time and inevitably your true colours are going to show.
This might seem confronting but as long as you’re not an idiot then it’s no big deal. Country people accept that nobody is perfect because the fact is that nobody is perfect and nobody is capable of pretending to be so 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Act honourably. Keep you promises. Support the community, even in small ways. Pay respect to the elders. Keep an eye out for the kids. Do all that and you’ll be fine.
The social fabric:
Idiots that pull in different directions to the people of the district don’t last long. Whether they be city folk determined to educate the dirt-people or foreigners who value their own culture over that of the local district, country folk will tend to shut them out socially.
You might think “that doesn’t sound too hostile”.
Imagine rats chew through your power cables and the local electrician decides he doesn’t want to pick up the phone. Imagine your car breaks down and the only mechanic for 50 miles decides that his schedule is too busy to fit you in. Being an idiot out here is not a wise choice. Some idiot do arrive from time to time, and either they lose the attitude problem or they head back the way they came in short order.
Game:
It’s not a place for the determined bachelor. If you remain single for long you will be assumed to be gay. Again, you won’t be strung up or run out of town, but the locals will regard you with some measure of distrust which will make life harder in a thousand small ways that all add up.
Marriage:
If you’ve already acquired the wife then as long as she’s not a bitch you’ll be more readily accepted as a married man than a single one. If she’s a different race to the locals then the screening process for her will run a little longer, suffering the addition of “is she loyal to this country" and "does she accept our culture as her own”.
Assuming you’re not married but looking, game carefully and choose carefully. The local girls are the sisters, daughters and grand-daughters of the local men. Shotgun weddings might be a thing of the past. You’ll also be marked as the kind of person that’s generally not conducive to the common good. This can be hard. A young girl full of hormones can all but throw herself at the fresh meat but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get a pass from the locals if you fornicate with her and put her on plate status or just lose her number. In the country women are correctly seen as being one step above children and one step below men in terms of being accountable for their actions. Muh patriarchy is a double edged sword out here, lads.
Types of women:
Now, country girls can be divided into two categories. Trailer trash and Duchess’. By this I mean girls who come from broken homes and girls that come from traditional unbroken nuclear families.
Trailer trash:
The trailer trash girls are the easier choice and not necessarily as bad an option as you might think. First generation welfare girls can be pilfered from shitty towns around the district and put through a heavy wash cycle before being ironed out and knocked up. It might sound like madness but a country welfare girl is typically not nearly as damaged a rich, progressive whore from the suburbs or city. Country welfare girls are breeders and usually quite capable of running a household. You will need a firm hand and a bit more frame over the life of the relationship. Nobody prefers a “fixer-upper", but running with that prospect is a hundred times more viable in the country than in the city or the suburbs.
The Duchess:
Girls from traditional families with multi-generational links to the region will be a harder prospect. Their parents are more protective of them and will screen you hard, especially if their little girl is a top-shelf stunner. They will be looking for a masculine man that stands his ground, makes good money and spends it wisely, treats their daughter well and isn’t going to wall her off from them the second she gets married.
Ironically I get the sense they prefer an outsider because it allows them to keep the family in tact rather than losing their daughter to another family in the area who will integrate her into their tribe more thoroughly. This option is the best one assuming you choose the particular girl (and family) wisely and in accordance with red-pill philosophy. It gives you the best quality wife as well as access to her family’s contacts in local industry. The disclaimer is that her father MUST be red-pilled and not prone to treating his daughter like a princess. In other words “running home to daddy” must not be a legitimate option for any prospective wife.
Notes:
If you care less about marrying into a large family and more about starting your own legacy then find a girl from a more distant country district, court her and they drag her back to your cave. That way you get the country morals without inhabiting the bottom rung of an existing patriarchal order.
But don't be too quick to rule out marrying into a large family. Instant tribe is a huge blessing, the benefits of which would constitute an entirely separate data sheet.
Age variations:
As a bonus if you keep in good shape for your age then marrying a girl 10 years younger than you will not earn you the same jealous contempt you might get in the city. The husband being 5 years older than the wife is largely seen to be normal and an additional play of 5 years is no serious stretch. Beyond that? Marry outside of the community and be prepared to get a few funny looks until your wife has a couple of kids or the difference in age diminishes on a percentile basis.
Money:
You had better have a location-independent stream of income or an exceptional nose for business. The alternative is a seriously long commute to work or local work which will be a mix of dirty, dangerous and difficult for not much pay. That’s the reality of country life.
Jobs are typically given to family members first, friends second, acquaintances third and strangers last. When trying to get work locally you will have to make your way up that social ladder as quickly as possible and earn a reputation for being a solid performer while you’re at it. This will be twice as hard if you don’t have skills and qualifications suited to the local industries.
Tradesmen are often a welcome addition since most electricians and plumbers go where they can make the most money, and driving a half an hour between jobs is not very profitable so most of them avoid rural areas like the plague resulting in a shortage of those services.
If you’re business savvy then there will often exist the opportunity to set up a small shop or service to cater to the locals, but your customer base and their disposable income is going to be limited to say the least.
Being jobless will not be a stigma if there are no jobs around. Obviously the opposite holds true as well. Avoid government jobs if possible. They are rightly seen as being cushy at the expense of harder working taxpayers. If you can’t find work then do a bit of charity work until paid work becomes available.
Politics and the red pill:
In my local dealings I sometimes bring up a red-pill issues and the people I’m talking to seem to look at me like I’m foolishly stating the bleeding obvious. I’m forced to recall that most country people have no idea how bad things really are outside of their humble rural townships. As such I don’t talk about politics with people most of the time. Many of them regard political junkies like myself as being somewhat obsessive over something that doesn’t really matter. There’s a feeling of disconnect out here from the happenings of the big cities. Most people out here have no idea how fast the ugliness of the cities could spill into the countryside and in that regard I don’t recommend spending all your social capital on playing chicken-little.
Survivalism:
Prudent planning and preparing for local issues like bush/forest fires or roads and power cables being washed out and blown down is simply seen as common sense. However, if you start stringing up razor wire around your fence line then you’re going to be noted as a grade-A kook.
When talking about broader societal collapses you need to have two plans. One is a plan for you and your family alone in case the entire community is caught flat-footed. This would be the “run for the hills” plan. The other plan simply involves convincing pillars of the community that the time to set up armed road-blocks is now. The rest will take care of itself because you’ll be following the orders of guys smarter and better equipped than yourself.
Making friends:
I’m not going to sugar coat this. Getting an inroad with the local men of your age to the point where they invite you to go fishing, dirt biking or hunting is not an easy task and sometimes will just be flat out impossible. Most of these guys went to kindergarten with each other and outsiders are just a dead weight that they neither want nor need.
Of course if you’re a family man or heading that way then you’re going to have little time for those sorts of hobbies anyway, but if you really want to have a group of guys to knock beers back with then take an independent interest in the stuff the local lads like and become as good at it as you possibly can (without any wank factor attached, like getting the most expensive gun or dirt bike that money can buy).
Overview:
Moving to the country offers many advantages and disadvantages. You have to carefully weigh what’s important to you and what’s not. For me, living in an area that promotes a safe, healthy lifestyle for my kids and a suitable environment for a traditional marriage to flourish is what’s important. I will likely never have much money to my name but I also don’t have to live in fear of my life suddenly being upended by a jihad attack or social justice riot. I don’t really have to worry about home invasions but I’m far more likely to be bitten by a venomous snake or crushed by a tree I’ve just cut down for firewood.
Regardless, my opinion is this. In this day and age for a family man the choice of whether to live in the city or the country is really no choice at all.
Last edited:
