One of the most shocking revelations of the diabolvirus pandemic was the discovery of just how fragile some of our largest cities actually are. There had been some awareness of this problem for years, but most simulations had focused on supply-line breakdowns. What would happen when the trucks of food, fuel, and other essentials stopped arriving at stores all around a major metropolitan center?
However, there was another critical element that all of them had overlooked: social trust. All too many of the people doing this modeling had simply presupposed the sort of social trust they were accustomed to in their comfortable suburban and academic communities. They assumed that everyone would feel confident that government agencies could be relied upon to provide services, and to do so impartially.
What we found was that social trust is not evenly distributed throughout the country. Far from it, while some areas were able to carry on through informal arrangements, each neighbor confident that other neighbors would do the right thing without needing to be watched over, others devolved into a brutal and cynical rule by local strongmen who would provide essential services, at the price of self-abasement from those under his protection.
This latter situation should be distinguished from the phenomenon of leaders spontaneously arising from a group in a time of emergency. The latter almost always arise from a general recognition of their abilities in the area of organization, and will cooperate or step aside as soon as normal civil society reasserts itself. By contrast, many of these local strongmen regarded themselves as a replacement for government bodies and officials, and often refused to work with government officials, even going to the point of resisting police agencies who tried to come in to restore order.
—- J. Parkinson. “The Phenomenon of Warlordism in American Inner Cities” in The Diablovirus Pandemic: Social Effects. Carpenter Point: Kennedy University Press, 2038.