And in this collapse scenario the cities -- incidentally where a lot of wealth and power tend to be concentrated -- simply consent to starve to death? Or are you defending against them too?
The cities are absolutely going to invade the surrounding countryside. Mobs and gangs of hungry people banding together to take what they can from weaker neighbors has been a feature of nearly every instance of state failure.
As a city-dweller, your strategy for surviving this is to join one. As a wealthy suburb dweller, you better hope you have a private security advantage where you can kill the whole mob before it kills you. As a rural dweller, your strategy is to be far enough away, high enough up, and insignificant enough that it's not worth going after you. Gas will be in short supply after a collapse; it's not worth driving 100 miles to take food from a farm that you don't know exists. Most of the towns and small cities in the regions I mentioned are easily that far away from the nearest city.
It's pretty likely that the dominant political organization after a national collapse would be city-states. However, that doesn't mean that it's best for an individual to be within them. We might see 75% depopulation within cities, but people in rural areas can go on about their normal business, if they don't get conquered entirely by the local city. It's a choice between living in privilege in the aftermath of the collapse but having a good chance of not making it there, vs. a higher chance of survival but you'll be a vassal state to the local city.
I'm not sure that the life of a subsistence farmer is necessarily one of privilege, especially if we're imagining there's no gas and presumably the recurrent drought issues in MA aren't getting better. Seems like you might be better off getting in the pod.
