Kernel panic: not syncing: no working init found

Not syncing: No working init found. Try passing init= option to kernel. See Linux Documentatio/init.txt fot guidance.

I updated my system a few weeks ago, using apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, because the GUI updater was not reacting when I clicked upgrade system buttons. The apt-get upgrade failed, because the mkinit… command (can’t recall) was not able to locate busybox. I looked over the script and noticed that the env var BUSYBOXDIR was empty, so I set it (maybe to / or some other path, which allowed it to find busybox). The upgrade finally worked. But now I’ve rebooted and I cannot bring up the machine. I have the disk attached to my qnap nas. What should I do next, to fix this issue?

It was suggested that I add init=/bin/bash. I still had the same kernel panic. This panic occurs before the sda5 partition is decrypted.

Solution offered is re-install