D12 Reasons Why This Small Town Is Isolated From The Outside World And So Your Merry Band Of Misfits May Go About It Solving Mysteries

About five sessions until the campaign my buddy's running for us finishes - five sessions until I make my pitch for a follow-up/spiritual successor to my Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's campaign (this time with prep).

This is brainstorming for that. It's probably already a TVTropes page but whatever:

1. Paranoid Apocalypticism: As seen in the decent horror film Wormtown. The inhabitants believe the outside world has ended in some fashion, and you're probably a dirty barbarian raider.

2. Amish: Catch-all term for intentionally isolated communities with restricted technology. Might literally be Amish, might be de facto ruled by an anti-government militia, whatever.

3. Natural Disaster: Had a lot of snow for a while this past winter in Ontario. Had a dream like that as a kid - aliens prepping the Earth for invasion by making it snow so much everywhere it became impossible to get anywhere. Could be snow, a landslide, forest fire, flooding, whatever, but the town's now isolated for the next however long.

4. Brainworms: As seen in the manga Tonari no Jii-san. There is some sort of mental influence preventing the wider world, and perhaps most of the inhabitants of the town itself, from realizing anything is amiss - to which you are to some extent immune.

5. Domed: As seen in Under the Dome. You're under a dome now. No getting in or out.

6. Transplant: Whole town's been transported to another time, place, dimension, whatever. Maybe solving whatever's going on will transport it back, maybe it won't. Not my problem.

7. Quarantine: Like The Crazies and probably other things too. Whole town's under quarantine, might be a real disease at play, might be a cover-up.

8. Hostage: Town's being held hostage by terrorists or whatever. Government moving in would set them off, your bumbling band of chucklefucks won't.

9. It's All In Your Head: Kind of like uh From Beyond. Whatever's happening in town is happening out-of-phase with ordinary reality, or in a psychic realm or something, point being you need to be in tune with it to even perceive it, so trying to get the authorities involved would make you seem like a crazy person.
9.5. It's All In Your Head 2: It really is all in your head, but aliens or the government or government aliens are putting it in your head to make you do their bidding or as a joke. As seen in Boku ni Korosarero.

10. Memetic Threat: Talking too much about the unusual stuff going on in the town gets you disappeared.

11. Corruption: The townsfolk don't want authorities coming around and noticing things. Maybe they've falsified the amount of elderly in town so they can keep collecting their pensions. Trying to draw attention to the town makes you enemies.

12. Brandon's Green Agenda: Fuel is too expensive to travel readily, and 15 Minute City regulations prevent a lot of movement anyways.