'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions
In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you&#x27;re lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It&#x27;s a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It&#x27;s difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs.<p>As a result, people have to learn to repair things, make things, use a gun, do first aid, lay shingles, hang drywall, pour concrete, solder pipe, weld, change oil, replace an alternator, lay PVC pipe, etc.<p>People in the community learn emergency medicine and how to manage a structure or brush fire by volunteering with the local volunteer fire&#x2F;EMS, because that&#x27;s the only show in town.<p>Roads wash out in the rainy season, so 4x4 is an absolute necessity. People learn to gauge sand you can drive through in 2x4, sand you can drive through in 4x4 and sand you just can&#x27;t drive through by eyeballing it.<p>I grew up in a very remote part of the California desert and everyone was like that. It&#x27;s just what you have to do to get by because you keep finding yourself in situations where you need to call on these types of skills, and if you&#x27;re living out there you have a lot of free time without interruption or distraction to learn the skills. Lots of people moved out from the city, and over the years they picked up a lot of those skills and became extremely self-sufficient.