In a situation that will be characterized by, among other things, gutted pharmacies and unmanned hospitals, the remaining population at TEOTWAWKI will be required to provide their own medical care and to meet their own pharmacologic needs.  While there have been numerous helpful articles outlining the importance of antibiotics in the context of TEOTWAWKI there has been very little addressing the importance of an overall pharmacologic strategy.

Some of you—especially those who take daily prescription medication—have likely considered this problem before.  But perhaps you are young and healthy, unburdened by any medical diagnosis.  There should still be a pharmacologic component to your overall survival strategy.  Even the robustly healthy occasionally encounter the minor health annoyance—a stomach bug, say, a case of diarrhea or constipation, or perhaps a urinary tract infection.  The problem, of course, is that, in the context of TEOTWAWKI, the minor health annoyance can rapidly spiral into something life-threatening.

Consider the title of this article, for example.  Constipation is, for most people, an infrequent and easily remedied problem—a couple of Sennekot and a quart of juice cures 95% of cases.  If worse comes to worse, there are suppositories—or enemas.

But suppose that you have no access to over-the-counter laxatives.  Suppose you are plagued by constipation for several days but because it ranks low on your list of immediate problems, it goes untreated.  By the time you get around to dealing with it, you’ve got a very large, rock-hard ball of stool in the lower rectum, and it isn’t going anywhere.   This what medical folks refer to as a fecal impaction.  Impactions are common among already sick, weakened individuals; the treatment is manual removal.  Without intervention, an impaction can lead to colon perforation, peritonitis, sepsis, and eventually septic shock and death.