I realize this. But the real problem in the west is political. If there is political will to shut down ISP's there is probably political will to seek and stop mesh nodes.
ISPs have a central office and one guy to coerce. Self-priced meshes such as what Althea envision have no such SPoF. Shutting them down would require occupation _armies_.
If you got some nationstate tech OK. If not, cheap drone strikes, the drone just follows the signal. Take out enough of it, and the question is, how do you replace the bombed hardware?
It is easy enough to wire a mesh together with buried wires, I have seen this done often enough. Someone could sniff and bomb nodes but that would quickly become very unpopular.
Right now you can order it on the internet, but if someone is willing to take down ISPs, they are willing to stop international trade (except what they want of course).
Pirates I have worked nearby over the years number in the thousands. "Stopping international trade" never stops them from getting what they want. "Safe Distance" is necessary.
So my problem has been that you seemed to take this lightly. I have brought up some concerns now, and I think going on would be fruitless. I definitely do not have a crystal ball
I built many small community networks over the years. Those days are behind me now, someone else may carry on that trade. All I can say is that yes it can be done.
I do agree that if communities want to be networked and govt do not want to let them, distributed small hubs is the way to go (and hope govt will not put real effort in against them).
we had good long legs up to 35km, but that took effort. Far better to use short range mesh than depend on long range bottlenecks. Wifi is useful for short-leg mesh.