Try not to panic and minimize your news and social media intake, and take care of one another. Humans have been through worse. We can get through this together.
More importantly, when we have been through disasters in New York City - 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, the Blackout of ‘03 - we have bonded together and taken care of one another. We didn’t loot en masse. We didn’t take advantage of one another.
And historically, this has also been the case - the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the Halifax Explosion of 1917, the bombing of England in 1940-41. Many died and many more were injured, but people remember the aftermath fondly, as Rebecca Solnit documents in A Paradise Built in Hell. Humans evolved to depend on one another to survive. True existential threats like these bring out these cooperative instincts. That’s more true to who we are than hoarding supplies or Walking Dead / Mad Max dystopian nightmares.
But it’s only if we remember all this that those dystopian nightmares can be avoided. If we think of each other as potential monsters and thieves, we will act in kind, and only bad can come of that.
As the great academic / writer / podcaster Douglas Rushkoff says, “being human is a team sport.” It’s not every person for him or herself.
And remember - you can’t panic around children. They have to know that the grown-ups are in total control, even when we’re not