Is there a way to get pulumi to continue on error? For example creating a whole lot of new resources in an account, or destroying them. It stops at the first error, when in fact it could have created or destroyed a lot more if it just continued on

The better way to do this is to set parent/child relationships, or at least depends_on relationships. if you have a, b, and c, with no relationships but c depends on b which depends on a, and you run pulumi up, it'll create a, and fail b, and c. You run it again, it creates b, fails c. With proper dependencies, b won't run until after a is complete, and c won't run until b is complete. It should work properly in reverse on destroys, too.