In every post-apocalyptic movie you ever saw, it didn't take very long for simple human decency to go down the toilet.

Once the basic trappings of civilisation - food, water, fuel - are taken away, it seems that we rapidly de-scend into a horrific existence of Stone Age values where survival of the fittest is all and the meek, rather than inheriting the earth, tend to get trodden down into the mud pretty quickly.

Still, that's just the movies, right? Mad Max and all that. . . surely it wouldn't happen in real life.

Surely we'd all pull together and do the best for each other in that situation.

The events of the past week in New Orleans would, sadly, seem to suggest otherwise. Once the storms of Katrina had done their worst and thousands had been left dead in the devastated region, then the true horror stories emerged.

Those holed up in the Superdome, the makeshift shelter for those who had survived the destruction, have told tales of looting, robbery, rape and murder. The mob mentality seemed to rule; women had to go into the toilets in groups of five for fear of being assaulted, children were attacked, food was taken away from the elderly, those who could bear no more simply leapt to their deaths from the high rafters of the structure that had previously housed sports fans cheering on their team.

Whether we can believe all the tales or not - and though many of them would have spread like Chinese whispers through the cold, hungry and miserable survivors, we probably have to accept that there is a kernel of truth in a lot of the rumours - it does nothing to ease anyone's mind as to what exactly would happen in the event of a nationwide or even global catastrophe that wiped out any form of government, law and order, or authority.

Are we really so bad, deep down? Does the human instinct for survival really mean survival at any cost - even if that means taking rations away from a geriatric?

That the US government took so long to react to the well-warned about disaster is in itself an indictment on George Bush's administration, and no doubt horrified Americans will vote with their feet when the time comes.

But the devastation of Katrina has swept away the conceit that America is the most advanced and civi-lised nation on Earth at a single stroke; America and its people - and by extension, all of us, everywhere - have a heart of darkness that was just waiting for the moment to assert itself.

That many of those who are depicted as the robbers, looters and rapists are apparently black should not be allowed to become fuel for racist fires. More than a quarter of New Orleans is on the poverty line and around 85 per cent of those people are Black Americans.

While the well-off were given the chance to get out of New Orleans before Katrina struck, those on the poverty line had to sit out the storm and wait for help. Help which took a long time coming.

It's a shocking state of affairs that so many people were abandoned to an anarchic situation, and perhaps in many occasions we can possibly sympathise with those who felt they had to loot shops for food, cloth-ing or protection.

But surely, if we are forced to admit that human nature is often found quite wanting in crisis situations, we must make sure that everyone - rich, poor, black, white - is given the same chance of survival when these disasters strike, and that those on the bottom rung of the ladder are not forced to simply fend for themselves and allow the more baser aspects of the fight for survival to take hold while those who can af-ford it get to safety.