I spend a lot of time thinking about how I will almost definitely be the first one to die in the apocalypse. It’s kinda hard not to think about the end of the world when you live in New York City, considering there’s already a very fine line between order and chaos here, and all it really takes to send us into primitive panic is a delayed subway train, an inch of snow, or a giant ball of glitter falling in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Anybody who’s shopped at the Target in Brooklyn knows there are very few rules keeping New York society from descending into all-out bloodshed; I tried returning a microwave there once, and left with three arrow wounds, a snakebite, and Dutch elm disease, which is technically a disease for trees, but apparently not at Target, because nothing matters at Target, especially not the one in Brooklyn. Trust me when I tell you, if the apocalypse strikes New York, whether by way of aliens, zombies, or pandemic, it would take Manhattan less than one hour to burn itself to the ground. (Everybody in Brooklyn, I assume, would die in the initial invasion.) Give us one sighting of a convincing UFO, and we’d all kill one another in the toilet paper aisle at CVS long before CNN told us it was only a stray Goodyear blimp.

And yes, I know for a fact, I would be the first one to die.

It’s not for lack of preparation. I’ve thought about which of my neighbors’ dogs is likely to be the most nutritious and how many bottles of whiskey I could drag back to my apartment in one liquor haul. I know where my closest nuclear fallout shelter is, and I know exactly which apartments in my neighborhood are the most expensive and most likely to satisfy my dream postapocalyptic life of luxury. But mostly, I think about the fact that I would absolutely not make it long enough for any of that to matter.