The dawn of agriculture marked a huge turning point for human civilization. At that point, when we, as a species (for the most part), abandoned the age-old concept of the so-called “Hunter-Gatherer” lifestyle in favor of putting down roots (pun very much intended), there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million people on Earth. It then took us around 10,000 years for that number to reach 1 billion around the turn of the 19th Century. Now, a mere 200 years later, our population has absolutely exploded to the tune of over 7 billion people, and that growth was made possible by one thing: the cheap, plentiful energy provided by fossil fuels, oil chief among them. We’ve talked about Peak Oil Theory many times here on Backwoods Survival Blog ; it remains a future threat, even though the exact nature of that threat has changed over time (more on […]