This reminds me of an article I read about New Orleans right after Katrina. It described an eye-witness account of how certain gangster-look-alikes drove around in their gold-rimmed SUV supplying drinking water to the residents who were in need of it. Meanwhile the authorities, whose job it should have been to do the same, were to busy trying to stop them.
I agree, deep down us humans are quite good at organizing ourselves into functioning communities. It's just a misinformation, spread by those few who are not, that the rest of us aren't either. So as horrible as a disaster may be, it's precisely this misinformation that will crumble first as a result of it.