All my villagers didn't die because every now and then I exit the game and come back in so I get a recent save game. The only thing that stinks is I lost a lot of tech points because I hadn't exited in a while. And I had a few less people beacause I had some new births.

But I have found, as people have said above, that if you exit everynow and then, your game will be saved.

Just think of it as an "island event" when it crashes! LOL