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Governments would be formed at the street level.

First the block.
Second the subdivision or group of common streets.
Then the municipality which might not be at all like the old municipality.

Americans place high trust in others and it will play out to our benefit in times of stress.

I have been in two disasters and everyone cooperated with each other. Others came in from long distances to help. This is how it will happen, as it has happened before because that is part of our self definition of the nature of being “American”.

The new governments would be formed within 30 minutes of understanding the real situation. “Charlie, we need this can you do it?”.”Sure, let me get Tom to give me a hand”.
That is a government.

Governments would be formed at the street level.

First the block.
Second the subdivision or group of common streets.
Then the municipality which might not be at all like the old municipality.

This is exactly what would happen.

We've seen Matt's scenario before. It's called "the fall of the Western Roman Empire."

Remember - the reason the Germanic tribes started coming across the Rhine was not because the Huns were pressing on them, but because the Roman subsidy payments stopped flowing, and that because the western Empire was going broke, due to unfavourable balances of trade, economic stagnation coupled with political tyranny, and the collapse of the value of the currency due to debasement.

Then you started seeing Germans with swords ransacking, raping, and killing everyone they ran into.

Only after a few decades did things finally settle down and did you start seeing local petty kingdoms form, as both Germans and Romans started preserving the little bits of order in their localities, and driving everyone else out.

Two notable differences:

1) Things can happen much quicker now, because of our telecommunications, and because the "civilian" parts of the intruding populations are already here, instead of having to transport themselves by the thousands via wagon and foot.

2) The Roman populace was unarmed, by government order. This is not the case with ours, and will stay that way, regardless of any government orders.