The idea of living “off the grid” has wide appeal in America, where “rugged individualism” seems genetically implanted in “the people.” Who doesn’t want to cut the umbilical cord to the oil, gas and electric utility? Who doesn’t want people to just leave them alone? Ah, the joys of being off the grid: No cops, bill or tax collectors, Mormons or Girl Scouts showing up at the door. No neighbors to speak of, or to, and everyone in the general vicinity armed to the teeth. A regular libertarian wet dream, no?

A new book by Nick Rosen, Off the Grid, offers some anecdotal proof that this idea is at least possible and arguably gaining popularity now in America due to the damaged economy. Rosen even offers a few persuasive reasons why, to quote his subtitle, “more space, less government, and true independence” might be worthwhile. A British filmmaker, he spent months traveling the U.S. to places where people are living off the grid on urban houseboats, communes, in tents, yurts and converted shipping containers — in short, places that generate their own power and grow their own food and don’t call the cops about every little hassle.

His case-studies comprise everybody from self-proclaimed “environmentalists” and pot farmers to right-wing survivalists and “business travelers.” Ah, but there’s the rub. For every Mennonite farmer he visits, there’s a self-righteous Unabomber-style crank just down the highway. For every middle class “get out of the rat race” dreamer, there’s an embittered group of men just waiting for the FBI to make their day (and martyrdom). To be fair, the people he meets are, because of Rosen’s engaging prose, interesting to visit on the page, but you wouldn’t want to live there, so to speak. Their allegiance is to an idea of freedom that includes a small circle of like-minded comrades … and nobody else. It is the thinking of end-timers, even if most of the people he meets don’t hold to any apocalyptic biblical beliefs.