[Bluto]

From what I am reading you seem to want a location that is more of a stand alone town that is more or less self sufficient when unrest happens in the US. You most likely wont want to be near a major city, and in a place where there is a good growing season. It sounds like you are location independent which means that you don't care whether there are a lot of jobs in the area or not. Your 3K housing payment will likely go far in most of the locations that you are looking at. Obviously a good local real estate agent will give you the details on how far your monthly payment will go. With the cities on the list there are three that I have been to in the past few years:

Knoxville, TN

Charleston, SC

Scottsdale, AZ

Scottsdale should be excluded due to the fact that it is really a suburb of Phoenix. Not only do you have the major city issue, but if the water ever is turned off in Maricopa county, you are totally screwed. I was born in the valley, and I still have family there, but I would never move back there. Flagstaff was mentioned earlier, I would pick that ahead of Scottsdale, and places like Tucson. Staying away from the border is a good idea in general, unless you want to shoot Mexicans. Scottsdale is also one of the few places on the list where your Monthly housing payment wont go far.

Charleston is a relatively large beach town. It is certainly big enough to fit what you are looking for and would be a better choice in my opinion than some on the list. It does get hot down in Charleston, (90 degree weather with high humidity for five months or more) so I would visit in August or July and see if it is worth living there. I would personally pass on this as I am not much of a beach person. If Charleston is not your bag, then I would look at Greenville or Spartanburg in the state. I am not sure on the white population but it seems pretty conservative to me when I have been there.

Knoxville would be on the short list for me. I have been there on more than one occasion, and while it is a college town and has some college town oddities, it is not that outlandish like other college towns.(Looking at you Chapel Hill) There is things like a train hub in town and other heavy industry there, so I am not sure how environmentally clean it is but it seemed like a nice location both with the air and water. It is right at the foot hills of the Appalachian mountains, and while they are not that high near the town, in twenty miles you are definitely in the hills. Other locations that I would look into would be Bristol, TN and Chattanooga, TN. I have no idea whether they meet your criteria, but I guess that they wont be that far off. It is also in the State of Tennessee which means no State Income taxes.

I have been to other locations on the list like Erie, PA, Cedar Rapids, IA, and Wilmington, NC, but I have not been to those locals in quite some time so my information is dated. Wilmington was a nice town, but I am not a beach person which it is in spades, and it is kind of a weird town.(cant explain it any further) Cedar Rapids might work, but it will have bad winters(not as long as MN but still can be bad) and is flat as a pancake. Erie looked nice next to the lake, not sure how clean the lake is these days, and I know that they get quite a winter as well, as in the lakes have frozen over the past few winters. I would imagine that there are better locations than the towns mentioned for you, and I would personally pick other towns for me in NC.

In general there are other places where I would pick than what was mentioned; like Roanoke and Winchester, VA (and anywhere between in the Shenandoah Valley honestly) and I would look in Kentucky personally as well. Different strokes for different folks though.