Cruise ship drama: How to survive on an 893-foot life raft

"A 102,000-ton boat the length of three football fields and containing 4,000 passengers, was reduced to Huck Finn’s raft," surmised Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse.

But as Americans were left to only imagine the worsening conditions on the ship, passengers were rewarded for their patience and forbearance. After a generator was delivered to the ship on Thursday, passengers were treated to hot food – including steak – for the first time in days. And as the ship finally entered Mobile, Alabamians lined the harbor and cheered while Mobile businesses and officials gave the tired tourists what one called "the royal treatment."

"There is that positive bright side in human behavior," Scott Schieman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto who studies the connection between stress and health, told the Toronto Globe & Mail last year in a story about how people react to emergencies. "It's an interesting idea: To what extent people are willing to really reach out and help other people."

Academics who have studied human response to emergency situations have often come up surprised at how unselfishly most people respond, writes Amanda Ripley in a Time article about emergency preparation. "All of us, but especially people in charge – of a city, a theater, a business – should recognize that people can be trusted to do their best at the worst of times," she writes.

Some researchers suggest people help each other in emergencies partly for self-preservation – to garner allegiance and earn future favors. But others suggest the instinct to help others, even to one's own discomfort, could also be a simple coping mechanism to get through a long, difficult ordeal.

Humor, of course, also helped in the case of the stranded Carnival Triumph passengers. As the ship approached port, some passengers laid down on the top deck to spell out the word "HELP" with their bodies while one woman waved a sign that said, "I miss my cats."

Meanwhile, Carnival hasn't determined what caused the fire. The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday it has opened an investigation into the cause.

RECOMMENDED: After Costa Concordia disaster: 8 safety tips for cruise ship passengers

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