IF YOU WERE IN A CAR with Kunstler or at his SMU speech or at his visit to Rice University, in Houston, two days later—in fact, if you were anyone facing his wrath—you might wonder just what makes the man happy. To answer that question, you'd probably have to visit Saratoga Springs, New York, where he's lived since 1976.

It's one of those classic upstate New York burgs, population 28,000, with a thriving downtown and cultural scene. Sure, it has its strip malls and sprawl. But it's the home of Skidmore College and the leafy Yaddo Foundation for artists, as well as the summer venue of the New York City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra. If you live near the town center, as Kunstler does, you can almost avoid using a car.

Kunstler shops locally most of the time. He walks or rides his bike all the time. When he's not forced to take airplanes to get to his speaking engagements, he works from his home office. There are farmlands nearby, so townsfolk aren't completely beholden to the outside world for food.

But Kunstler hasn't entirely forsaken modern life. He owns what he calls "a station-wagon type of thing" (it's a new Toyota RAV4), which he bought recently after the frame of his 1992 Toyota pickup rotted out. "The American motoring program is mandatory," he says. "I suppose people might say I'm a hypocrite, but I'm still a part of this world—I haven't dropped out. And nobody has built a railroad system that can get me around, so what can I do?"

What can anyone do? What can a suburban family of four do? A family that has to commute every day in order to make their mortgage payment can't exactly shelve it all and start "living locally" at the drop of a hat. The American motoring program is mandatory for them, too.

Kunstler understands this, but he says that he, along with everyone else, will soon be forced to live more locally. Even though he is in the process of signing a two-book deal with his publisher, Grove/Atlantic—one book is a novel about life in a post-oil world, and the other is a journalistic follow-up to The Long Emergency—he believes his future job prospects aren't guaranteed. "I'm making other arrangements," he says. "I'm prepared to start a local newspaper in my hometown if I have to."

He's not building a bomb shelter, or hoarding water and Spam, but he thinks he's positioned himself in the right place to survive a long emergency. And living in the Kunstlerian future—though he doesn't say it outright—might not be such a bad thing. Yes, there will be losers. But after all the social destruction, Kunstler's new world is almost a gauzy-eyed take on Main Street America. It's a return to locally owned stores and trades—and lending a hand to raise a barn. It's about community, interdependence, and knowing your neighbors. It's Mayberry R.F.D.