Citizen111 asked,
"thc and others in this situation, I would appreciate hearing more from you on your thoughts about security in a rural environment, since you mentioned that as a tradeoff. What are things to watch out for, and how to guard against them?"
My experience and expertise is in the large urban setting. I point to the experience and knowledge of others about security in rural areas, and what I've learned from them is that there are definite security disadvantages. (See Aguirre - Surviving the Economic Collapse, starting at p. 34).
1. Police and fire response is much slower in normal times, and will be even slower in the collapse.
2. Neighbors rarely live close enough to see or hear mischief at your place and either come to help you or call for help.
3. Economic refugees can be expected, and may be desperate and overwhelming. (However horrific our urban problems will be, we likely won't have to deal with an INFLUX of needy people!)
4. Even if you and the neighbors get together to patrol your area (an excellent idea in any crisis in any region), there will be a large amount of land to cover and you can't be everywhere at once.
5. Rural areas in Argentina, Rhodesia and others during their crises experienced some increased crime patterns that are thankfully rare in normal times but quite chilling in their scope and brutality. Home invasion robberies (sometimes conducted/led by men with military and/or police experience), highway checkpoints (robberies, kidnappings, murders), kidnappings for ransom as a career path (think Mexico), and a group of people simply moving into your house while you're at work or vacation and defending it as their own by force of arms (who would/could evict them in a collapse?). If the bad guys know the police won't be coming at all (or any time soon), they're emboldened.
These are some of the reasons rural people with some economic means in those situations live in COMPOUNDS, not homes (defensive walls surrounding the residence, bars on the windows, escape tunnels, bullet proof walls, safe rooms, electronic defenses, plenty of weapons and ammo, and the compound is never left vacant without armed family members or employees to guard it). The worst case scenarios to me were illustrated in Rhodesia where land owners and their employees who refused to allow their land and property to be appropriated by mobs essentially fought small scale military battles (squad/platoon size engagements) trying to save themselves and what was theirs.
The need to fortify your home and property, take up arms and the appropriate training, and form local self-defense relationships seems to me MORE important in rural areas where you're more on your own. Check out the books I mentioned by Aguirre and Morris, and look for my second post at a future date.