If you have diabetes or are likely to get it or are concerned about someone with diabetes or at risk, then preparation on this issue is probably the single most critical prep you can make in order to survive. You can always scrounge around for food, water, shelter but insulin doesn’t grow on trees and here life and death will be dependent on preparation. Gather your equipment now, before you put away food or ammo. Once you have your equipment then practice and make a few batches EVEN IF YOU DON’T USE THEM. There will be risk in using your home-made insulin, so don’t use it and risk adverse outcomes. The point here is that when you run out of lab insulin and your choice boils down to dying or using home-made insulin, then the risk of the home made insulin is preferable to death. Keep in mind that the operative word here is risk, not certainty of bad, or even sub-optimal, outcome. Modern pharmaceutical practices yield very safe medicine whereas a home brew can’t come up to those standards each and every time you make a batch.
Here’s the original recipe which led to a Nobel Prize:
Best and Scott who are responsible for the preparation of insulin in the Insulin Division of the Connaught Laboratories have tested all the available methods and have appropriated certain details from many of these; several new procedures which have been found advantageous have been introduced by them. The yield of insulin obtained by Best and Scott at the Connaught Laboratories, by a preliminary extraction with dilute sulphuric acid followed by alcohol, is 1,800 to 2,200 units per kg of pancreas.
