Many places around the world will have gone through five or six vastly different governments seated in very different locations over the last century or two and during the transition 1) most of the people stayed 2) most of the people had no part in whatever new group held power and 3) there usually wasn't mass slaughter of the people living there during the transition.
You overestimate the importance of government and underestimate how it very much can just go away... and how distant it can be even when it exists, particularly historically. And how the local warlord equivalent isn't going around to everybody's house and murdering them.
And yeah in those times having food and a means of defense and whatever else is useful as often times very very many people had no option but to stay wherever they were. Famine and revolution are much more common and more mundane than you expect.
You overestimate the importance of government and underestimate how it very much can just go away... and how distant it can be even when it exists, particularly historically. And how the local warlord equivalent isn't going around to everybody's house and murdering them.
And yeah in those times having food and a means of defense and whatever else is useful as often times very very many people had no option but to stay wherever they were. Famine and revolution are much more common and more mundane than you expect.