The keyword “sustainability” has a less commonly known sibling, “resilience”. While Sustainability concerns the ability of a system, community, or person to continue to enjoy a particular behaviour or standard of life long-term, “Resilience” concerns the short-term ability to survive shocks and disruptions.
Resilience is usually evaluated and designed with respect to systems and communities, but not all of us are so blessed, yet. What can an individual do to be more resilient?
A twitter acquaintance asked me today about DIY thyroxine. As this acquaintance is a “collapsonomics” nerd, I took this question to be in the context of “what if the world's supply chains freeze and I/we/my friends die?". The question broadened to include insulin, another critical drug needed daily by those with a common condition, diabetes.
That's a fair question. After all, while one can grow food locally, and purify rainwater (when blessed by rainfall like we are in most of Europe), and tend to many other necessities of life locally in a total infrastructural breakdown scenario, pharmaceuticals are one of the few things that we can't DIY easily.