Phil, having good neighbors you can depend on is a big asset, for sure. You're fortunate to be in that situation, and to have a good police force too. In my county, emergency workers are encouraged to make provisions ahead of time so that they can stay on duty with the confidence that their families have what they need.
So you might find yourself in kind of a "tribal" arrangement with your neighbors, as the book describes. Right at the onset, of course, you'd all be checking on each other and helping out neighbors who needed the immediate basics - food, water, shelter, heat, medical attention. As time goes on, people are going to be trying to check up on their extended families, and it's possible that relatives from harder hit areas will be joining you for a while. If the conditions don't get back to normal pretty quick, you're going to be looking at living without public utilities and services as best you can.
In 1999, when apprehension over Y2K was increasing, my ex-wife and I took some precautions and laid on a little extra preparedness. Once a month, we came home from work on Friday, turned off the power, phone, and water, and basically camped out in our home all weekend. We decided that if anything was going to fail, we wanted to know it beforehand, not when we were depending on it to see us through. So we drained water out of the water heater for drinking and cooking, heated it on the woodstove for laundry and the porta-shower, practiced how to open cans of food with a knife, we tried to think up likely challenges and meet them prior to the moment of truth.
I think the benefits lasted well beyond Y2K (even though nothing happened), and I'd recommend it to anyone making a disaster plan. Practice facing those challenges, and ask each other "What if..."
Parker