The Great Labor Day Gas Hoax

Does anyone really know how panic starts? Is it a joking whisper between two friends, that is overheard as something that could happen?
Is this assumption then shared with others until the joke becomes a crisis?
Perhaps this is how the great Texas gas debacle of Labor Day weekend 2017 started.

One day gas was something we all took for granted, the following day there was insanity, people rushed to gas stations, waiting in lines that could be compared to a Star Wars premier. Filling their gas tanks and anything that would hold liquid with gasoline.

The panic spread quickly, overwhelmed by the demand, gas stations began closing putting signs up saying they were out of gas.

People saw the signs and panicked more. Political officials pleaded with the public telling them the gas shortage was a hoax, but people only saw the “out of gas signs.”
People who really needed gas, who were not panicking were left stranded on their way to work and home.
Some in desperation sat next to empty gas pumps, waiting for the gas trucks to come so they could get their “gas fix.”
The world grew darker when Buc-ee’s home of a thousand gas tanks ran out of gas.

We were among the lucky ones, I started that dark Thursday with a full tank of gas, the following day, I came across a gas stations with no line that had gasoline, we topped off our tank, but it was as if people could smell the fresh gasoline that had just been poured into the tanks, within moments the station was filled with cars, we escaped just in time before the place became a madhouse.

How long will the insanity last? How much gas can one city use? Will people be able to overcome, and what will happen to all those bags of gasoline that people so dangerously collected.
Texas just survived one of the costliest natural disaster in recent history, will we really allow a false gas shortage to destroy us?
Quick somebody, go whisper that the library is having a book shortage, if we are going to lose our minds, let us at least educate ourselves, so we can be smarter people.