CHAPTER 2 - ADVANCES IN SCIENCE

The possibility of disasters is nothing new to us in the here and now – every generation all the way back to the beginning of time had possible disasters to keep in mind and prepare for while in the midst of living life. 

We have the luxury of scientific and technological advances that allow us to know how to store food properly, what is essential to store, and the ability to use energy focusing on that because we are not having to hunt and gather our daily food supplies as the early civilization populations did. 

We also know ways to prepare food for storage that allows us to store large quantities with little risk of contamination or spoilage.  In general, early man could only keep food safely for a few days at most depending on environmental factors. 

But we are enjoying progress they made in finding food storage solutions down through time creating “shelf lives” of food that were longer and longer. 

Even the voyages to discover America were also experimenting with ways to transport food on board the ships just to ensure their own survival while traveling. 

Eventually, they also learned how to transport food for the early colonies to use for survival.  The colonists also found the Native American population had excellent knowledge to share concerning food storage. 

Learning the native ways for storing food through the winters and having the seeds necessary to grow crops at winter’s end was essentially emergency food storage and was what allowed the early colonies to survive the threat of starvation.