They way we act in times of stress can show us who we are. The way we act in times of distress define us as a society and species. In the book Odds Against Tomorrow, after the flood, the author Nathaniel Rich described some of the people in New York as if they had lost all of their societal common sense. They were expressed as if they were creatures that did not belong in the bodies that encased their inner beast. It was like they had forgotten that as a people, we need to band together in times of sorrow and pain, not hurt each other.

In class, we talked about how they were painted as savages and how that has been a theme in real life. There are many examples of this, but for the real life examples, the two that come to mind would have to be the Watts Riots in LA in 1965 and the New York Blackouts of 1977. In both cases, problems in society lead to many people looting and causing complications for law enforcement all over the city.

In Watts, racial tensions flared into six days of rioting . In the end, 34 died and nearly 4,000 were arrested. The destruction was immense. Citizens raided shops, destroyed buildings and stole at will. Ultimately, the damaged amounted to over $40 million in repairs. A few years later in New York in 1977, mass power outages compelled citizens to take advantage of the vulnerability of stores and businesses. The Big Apple saw over 3,700 were arrested and $300 million was spent in repairing damages. Both of these examples were where people did not act civilized and went outside of their upbringing to commit crimes.

In class, we also talked about the savagery of humans in times of hardship in movies, but I like to focus on the good in movies. It is a stereotype in many apocalyptic movies that humans lose their minds like they did in the previous real life examples. The list of movies that do this is long, but something that I liked about the article The Civilian Power of Disaster was it focused on the good. The article talked about how people can overcome that stereotype and I think we see that in movies as well. Even though I thought it was not a very good movie, I thought that the movie 2012 was an example of this. While it also is a showing of economic disparity, the characters were open in helping others. In the end, when one of the main characters sees his room in the boat that saved him and he complains that they could have fit much more people in there. It is that kind of attitude that I hope most people have when they look danger of extinction in the face.

If atrocities such as the ones in the book were to happen, we would have to stay together as a species. Hardship is the bottom and we would have to build up and recover. The crime and savagery only slows the process. Banding together and fighting is what makes the difference, so we must learn from the horrors we have already faced; both the good and the bad.