“The notions that disaster survivors inevitably or typically engage in panic, looting, and scapegoating, or become helpless, hysterical, and neurotic simply do not stand the test of critical research scrutiny.” In fact, Fritz claimed, the people in those ruined communities seemed pretty happy. There might even be “therapeutic effects” to disasters, he argued—and from there, his speculations grew even more radical: “As social animals,” he wrote, “people perhaps come closer to fulfilling their basic human needs in the aftermath of disaster than at any other time.”
