Jaycee Woods

In a civil war, vulnerable populations will be subjected to the state of nature without the protection of modernity and capitalism.

Consider diabetics as an example. Due to territorial fracturing and economic retraction, type 1 diabetics will die from a lack of insulin not all at once but over time as insulin becomes scarce; consider the few domestic insulin manufacturers and our dependence on imports from Europe. Meanwhile the type 2 diabetics who survive will be cured by caloric deprivation but will suffer from the vascular damage their diabetes had already done while the country’s medical infrastructure will have collapsed.

I cite diabetics because the price of insulin has become a partisan political punching bag. In a civil war, in some areas insulin will become priceless, unobtainable and unavailable for any price, but then demand will drop to zero as diabetics drop dead or drop weight.

Add to that populations dependent on fragile distribution systems for HIV treatment medication and organ transplant recipients dependent on medication for life to prevent organ rejection.

For the future civil war in my fictional draft novel _Boudica and The Butcher_, I have had to consider how such taken for granted dependencies collapse under the weight of civil war and how that crushes out people’s lives. It doesn’t require much creativity as I just need to research how such issues played out in Yugoslavia, Syria, and Venezuela.