Hopefully rural does not end up being a compound but sounds like some members are well fortified already.
I wonder how many planning retirement plan to retire in place without moving?
A lot of us grew up, got educated, looked around and there were no jobs paying worth a darn for our education level. It was move to where the jobs were.
So I moved, did my 40, retired, and have now spent 10 years trying to move.
But the darn real estate market is such that the value of my real estate is going up way faster than my costs.
Now many of the educated are finding they can work remotely for most of the day and still be productive and pull down a good paycheck and more important MANAGEMENT is figuring out how to value output without leaning over the workers shoulder.
About 40 years ago at the small Army research lab I worked at they started "flex time" and occasional "remote work". Virtually none of the managers could deal with it.
Now my son, who works at the same lab in a semi-management position goes in for a couple of hours a day at the most, the rest is work from wherever.
Others who have had an hour commute work from home 3 days a week or less.
As this gets more widespread I expect the rural areas will become denser as jobs that don't require a physical presence let people just get the work done.
Writing a research paper or a computer program can often be done remotely. Of course if you fix steam leaks you have to be on site.