what disasters proof

The assumption behind much disaster response by  the authorities - and the logic of bombing civilians - is that civilization is a brittle facade, and behind it lies our true nature as monsterous, selfish, chaotic, and violent or as timid, fragile, and helpless. In fact, in most disasters most people are calm, resourceful, altruistic, and creative. And civilian bombing campaigns generally fail to break the will of the poeople, making them a waste as well as a crime against humanity. What startles me about the response to disaster was (...) passionate joy that shined out from accounts by people who had barely survived. The people who had lost everything (...), had found agency, community, immediacy in their work together with other survivors (...), suggested how much we want lives of meanigful engagement, of membership in civil society, and how much societal effort does into withering us away from these fullest, most powerful selves. But people return to those selves, those ways of self-organizing, as if by instinct when the situation demands it. This as disaster is a lot like revolution when it comes to disruption and improvisation, to new roles and an unnerving or exhilarating sense that now anything is possible. 

- Hope in th Dark (Foreword to the 2015 edition), Rebecca Solnit