What are your thoughts on making persistent Ubuntu that reconnects itself to the lost I/O?

Ubuntu seems to not have a way to reconnect itself if it is disconnected from hard-drive that stores all the operating system's data and binaries. If you ever tried persistent USB you might be already convinced that this is a huge problem, as disconnecting your USB drive leads to a unresponsive system that later needs a restart. What are your thoughts, is there anything can be done to at least partly solve such seemingly complex root problem?