Hades and food conservation

I recently relistened to Echoes of Honor.
They mention that the prisoners could not stockpile food because it was fresh.

As I am preparing fresh fruit and vegetables for the winter (that will last more than a month) I started to wonder if the reason that the prisoners could not stockpile food is that they did not have the know how.

Granted, they did not have freezers or bottles for canning. However, many vegetables can be dried (and it was certainly sunny and hot enough), including legumes. Dig a deep enough hole, and you get a rootcellar for things like carrots and potatoes.

The only other thing I can think of is that the fruit and vegetables were engineered to go back after a month.

strapakai wrote:I recently relistened to Echoes of Honor.
They mention that the prisoners could not stockpile food because it was fresh.

As I am preparing fresh fruit and vegetables for the winter (that will last more than a month) I started to wonder if the reason that the prisoners could not stockpile food is that they did not have the know how.

Granted, they did not have freezers or bottles for canning. However, many vegetables can be dried (and it was certainly sunny and hot enough), including legumes. Dig a deep enough hole, and you get a rootcellar for things like carrots and potatoes.

The only other thing I can think of is that the fruit and vegetables were engineered to go back after a month.

I hadn't thought about it, but I'd guess that since StateSec considered it a security measure to distributed food that was hard to stockpile that they'd take measures to prevent easy drying or storing.

But that might be much lower tech than bioengineering them to decay after a month.


After all a raw potato can last months; but if you only provide it in a stew or otherwise cut up its shelf life is vastly shorter.

There is also the issue of portability. Raw fruits/veggies are much harder to transport ( they take up much more space ) than canned or otherwise long storage prepared foods.
With the camps spread out as much as they are it would be much harder to travel between them carrying fresh foods.

strapakai wrote:I recently relistened to Echoes of Honor.
They mention that the prisoners could not stockpile food because it was fresh.

As I am preparing fresh fruit and vegetables for the winter (that will last more than a month) I started to wonder if the reason that the prisoners could not stockpile food is that they did not have the know how.

Granted, they did not have freezers or bottles for canning. However, many vegetables can be dried (and it was certainly sunny and hot enough), including legumes. Dig a deep enough hole, and you get a rootcellar for things like carrots and potatoes.

The only other thing I can think of is that the fruit and vegetables were engineered to go back after a month.

exiledtoIA wrote:There is also the issue of portability. Raw fruits/veggies are much harder to transport ( they take up much more space ) than canned or otherwise long storage prepared foods.
With the camps spread out as much as they are it would be much harder to travel between them carrying fresh foods.

Yeah, but strapakai has a point that if you're worried about prisoners stockpiling food you probably want to do more than simply avoid giving them canned food or emergency rations.

You'd also want to be concerned about their ability to dry, can, ferment, or otherwise preserve the fresh food you provided - so also taking steps to make that harder seems prudent.

Drying and storing food depends on a lot. For one, temperature and humidity. Also, preserved food looses nutritional value.

swalke813 wrote:Drying and storing food depends on a lot. For one, temperature and humidity. Also, preserved food looses nutritional value.

And wasn't the humidity in the latitudes used for the camps high enough that the air was just about drinkable?

Dafmeister wrote:

swalke813 wrote:Drying and storing food depends on a lot. For one, temperature and humidity. Also, preserved food looses nutritional value.

And wasn't the humidity in the latitudes used for the camps high enough that the air was just about drinkable?

For where Honor and the rest of the escapees from Tepes first landed, yes. For Camp Inferno, it was much, much drier (as well as hotter). For the other camps (other than the one(s) located on the continent closest to one of the planet's poles) it was definitely hot, but I can't remember how humid they were.

I wonder how many calories, or lack of calories the prisoners received? It would have been easy for the bad PEEPS to provide a diet lacking in some essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Then the necessary vital stuff could be provided or withheld depending upon the prisoners behavior? That is what I would have done to provide just another safety net to control the POW and prisoner populations. Just me. HB of CJ (old coot) Cm.

Another factor is distance, no accurate map or navigation tools, etc. Simply put, aside from emergency rations, there was no point to preserving food. And the only reason for that was if food was cut off. In which case, you're just dead.

swalke813 wrote:Another factor is distance, no accurate map or navigation tools, etc. Simply put, aside from emergency rations, there was no point to preserving food. And the only reason for that was if food was cut off. In which case, you're just dead.

The reason the prisoners could not preserve food is not because they didn't know how but because there was no excess food to preserve. They were provided with only enough to survive between supply runs. There was no excess to preserve. None of the locally available foodstuffs were edible.

That being said, some rations were saved for other possibilities when someone died. Each camp probably had at least some surplus, but with no idea which way to go how do they meet up? And since they could not live off the land, why would they leave the camp?