Most communications and the internet will be down. So just because it is a low population density does not mean that people will connect that to no nukes. They'll also have to likely be on the side of the blasts that ND is since if you are south of a city and didn't get killed then are you going to go into a high radiation area on the chance that ND is doing fine. They'll likely lose their grid to the EMP frying it and most unshielded electronics which means most modern cars might be fucked since they'll have fried computer chips from radiation. Even if your not near a large city you'll likely lose your internet and cable company based phones, no weather reports, no nuke damage reports except maybe shortwave radio.