By Johann Hari
The vast majority of people behave in the aftermath as altruists, saving their fellow human beings and sharing what they have.
Before the Second World War, the Ministry of War confidently predicted what would happen when London was bombed from the air by Nazi planes. There would be, they warned, “a mass outbreak of hysterical neurosis among the civilian population”. For every one person injured, there would be dozens who lose their morals or lose the plot. They would howl and they would loot and they would rape. Humans couldn’t take it. They would break. They would turn on each other.