I'm not sure I understand. As someone else already said: You need to
have a main shutoff for the whole house outside (for the fire
department to kill power to a burning house quickly, without going
in), which has to be within 10' of the meter. So the main breaker

I suspect that you are misunderstanding the reason why the shutoff
has to be close to the meter. Given that in order to get to my panel,
you have to go into the house and down and under the cellar stairs,
it's not going to be so you can get to it quickly. I suspect, rather,
that it's because you don't want to have a 30-70' of number 2
cable running through the length of your house with no shutoff but
the transformer even after you've "shut off" the power in your house.

It'd kind of suck to shut off the mains, and then hit the feeder cable
with your sawsall while cutting down an interior wall....