Maybe it’s just Monday morning talking, but I feel like delving into dark territory. Did you ever daydream about where you’ll be and what you’ll do when it all falls apart? Call it what you will; global economic collapse, Armageddon, the big one, they’re all faces of the same nameless beast that lives in our belly. Coiled inside each of us lies fear that everything we know might someday simply cease to be so. It’s not as if it’s unprecedented—my grandparents lived through the depression, and their tales from those days still haunt me from my comfortable perch in the twenty-first century. At the risk of tempting fate, riffing on the consequences is fertile ground for story ideas.

I’m not prone to committing sci-fi (’scuse me, speculative fiction) or horror stories, so when I think about the immediate aftermath of a systemic collapse, I don’t focus on the whys and wherefores. Instead, my world narrows to the few blocks immediately around my home. Seeing my neighbors walking past with strollers and dogs, I wonder which of them I could count on if the water supplies ran low. Would I let the guy with the two toddlers hole up in my basement with me, or would I count the energy bars and decide there simply wasn’t enough to go around?

Then my mind ranges to the possibility of flight. In the northwest, we live with the daily chance of a catastrophic earthquake. Driving down I-84 through Portland’s east side recently, I was struck by how utterly split the city would be if the bridges spanning the freeway gulch were to fall. The ring road around the city would be impassible as well, piled with rubble every few blocks. And then of course, there’s that wide swath of roiling river cutting through downtown. Mapping it out, I come to the quick realization that I could travel no more than a few blocks in any direction without hitting some sort of major barrier. I don’t know about you, but the thought creeps me out.

There’s another reason why post-apocalyptic fiction is so popular, well beyond the prurient thrill of contemplating disaster. We’re intrigued by the thought of stripping away the veneer of civilization and getting at the gooey core of our animal natures. It’s real and immediate, more visceral than our so-called “normal” lives. It’s the ultimate glass half full/empty game—who would I be without the Internet, without my car, without money? Wait, I know the answer to that last one.

I believe writers get their best ideas by examining life from skewed, off-kilter angles. Try this: go to a window and take in whatever scene you find there. Then ask yourself what would happen if the things you know so well were suddenly upended. How would you feel? What would you do? Who would you trust? Dream. Write. Repeat.