I stopped in at the store on my way home last night to pick up some orange juice, and when I got to the shelf there was nothing there.

For some reason the entire section was emptied out, and for a few moments I didn't know what to do.

It was late, there was nobody around that department to ask, so I just left and came home. On the way back, I thought about how dependant we are on food retailers to give us what we want without fail.

What would happen if we couldn't get to that store, or worse, if they ran out of food?

Let's say we experience a large earthquake.

Geologists and other experts say we're overdue in this region for a 9.0 or greater quake.

There is a reasonably good chance that, even if the epicenter is a goodly distance away, roads and bridges will be obstructed, emergency services will be seriously hampered and public utilities like water and power will be interrupted for an undetermined time.

What's your plan? Will you take all the stuff out of your freezer and pack it in coolers with whatever ice you can dig out of the icemaker?

That might last for a day or two. How about the fresh food? You can't cook it because the stove doesn't work.

So by day three of the power outage, the batteries in your portable radio are wearing down and you've begun to throw out the stuff in your fridge that smells funny.

You aren't worried about gas too much, since you haven't had to go to work.

No power there either. So now your eyeing the canned food, and you realize that you don't have very much.

Day four comes and your neighbor is already asking if you have any spare food and now it hits you; the situation is serious.

In the days when the earth was much younger and humans foraged for plants and learned to hunt animals, the storing of food wasn't necessary.

Those early humans simply picked more foliage or hunted or fished when they got hungry.

As time passed, our ancestors began the switch from hunter-gatherers to agrarian societies where people lived in communities and taught each other how to grow things and to store them.

By definition, successful food storers survived while the less accomplished humans died off.

As humans progressed and the wonders of modern agriculture and advances in preservation created a cornucopian society, we have become complacent about our food.

Obtaining what we need to survive is as easy as walking into a building and asking someone for a sandwich or a drink.

In this way, we have created a house of cards.

Most retail stores now operate with a system called "just in time" shipping, which uses a computer program of predictive modeling to send each store only what it needs for that week, basing choices on weather or seasonal and holiday buying patterns to maximize sales and minimize overcrowding on the shelf.

Because of this trend, there are fewer large warehouses to dispense staples in a time of need, and this serves to create an infrastructure so fragile that a forecast of snowy weather can send us into the grocery stores to empty the shelves in less than a day.

But if we took the simple steps of collecting a bit of storable food each week, we could prevent a bad situation from quickly getting worse.

Some individuals in our communities are aware of this and have taken steps to protect themselves from the trouble of finding food on short notice.

But for the rest of us, it's a simple project to buy a few extra cans of soup or some boxes of macaroni and cheese each time we go to the store.

It's important too to remember to have some water on hand and while individual plastic bottles are good, large jugs can be better, especially if you fill up a few from your home tap.

Also, it is important to remember to "rotate" your stock so you don't end up throwing out canned products that have reached their expiration date.

You've got home insurance, right? Car insurance, life insurance? Hopefully, you'll never need to use that insurance, but you still pay it.

Having stored food is insurance against being hungry. But do you have any of that insurance?

Earthquakes are terrible events to endure, but there are more reasons to keep your larder up to snuff.

The national economy has looked better, and losing your job is a possibility.

A flu pandemic is a very real threat as well, and the Department of Homeland Security's Terrorist Alert coding system is currently at "Yellow" which means "Elevated" for a national threat to this country.

The American Red Cross suggests having an emergency preparedness kit at the ready as well.

If we have learned anything from events like Hurricane Katrina, the Indonesian tsunami or the terrible earthquakes in Japan and China it is to do what we can to be prepared.

There may be a fine line between sounding the alarm and just being prudent, but if our personal situations at home are stabilized, then we are more inclined to be helpful to others.