What's wrong with these people, you ask. Psychologists call it learned helplessness.
Partly this is learned helplessness, but partly it's also the result of an increasingly high-technology-dependent society. Most people can use the Internet now, but few know how to use a ham radio -- it's only in rare situations that the latter is useful. Cities are very reliant on buildings that are very efficient when there's a power supply, but almost completely non-functional when they're not. People know lots of ways to help themselves, but most of those ways aren't useful or available in this situation, even though they're the most important skills for self-sufficiency under normal and near-normal conditions.