I agree with you here.... as weird as it sounds, the higher north you get the easier it is to live. Less people, more game, huge forests, lots of lakes, plenty of natural resources.
I have about 8 months worth of food storage right now. I've also been stockpiling ammo, fishing supplies, water purifiers, etc. It's also important to learn skills such as how to grow food or build traps, etc. Mostly i do it cause it's fun to learn survival techniques.
Also i have a diesel truck that's converted to run on used vegetable oil, so after everyone else runs out of gas, i still have about 500 gallons of vegetable oil to run on, mow down chinese invaders or zombies.
My biggest advice is to stockpile some food. It's not very hard to do, not very expensive, and you'd be suprised at the piece of mind it gives you.
You know you can distill garbage and whatever else into ethanol. If you use corn or food to make it then you can drink it too. Its a felony, but once the aliens attack there will be no worries about the government regulating the fuck out of everything. Making a distiller is pretty easy.
Ive been researching "off the grid" living for a while now.