Northern WI and UP are prime rural redoubt locations for SHTF, IMO. It’s far enough away from Milwaukee, Madison, and Twin cities. There’s plenty of water, fishing, hunting, timber. Winters are very tough, but at least that makes you a harder target. Growing crops would be a bit of a challenge, but I’d imagine that some of you have greenhouses.
Not far from my home are deep underground coal mines with good hard anthracite. As long as you stay above the water table you could survive forever in a mine. Get below the water table and it gets dangerous as water can come up pretty quick. Other than that, they are not bad.
I got tired of cutting wood so I purchased 50 ton of deep mine solid chunks of coal. Most are between football and basketball size, but a few chunks are the size of wheelbarrows. I figure that will last at least ten years and it doesn’t rot like wood.
The wooses couldn’t survive cold climates. When the shtf, I’d rather be in the north, not the south. Where are the takers going? Not north.