A study sent to me this spring about how prepared each state is for a zombie apocalypse ranked Maine No. 2 after Alaska based on population density, access to freshwater and per capita hospitals, airports, military bases and hunting stores (the last being most responsible for our high score).

At the time, I ignored the email, which came from a PR firm hired to boost the Google search results of a Canadian online casino guide, and then did again when it was resent last month as a Halloween story pitch. It’s not that I was above writing about it — the opposite, actually. As someone who has to leave the room when “The Walking Dead” is on TV, I didn’t feel familiar enough with zombie culture, or willing to educate myself about it, in order to analyze the findings.

But as the government shutdown was approaching the one-month mark and Mainers started scrambling to figure out how to keep each other fed, I realized the study was just as applicable when the reanimated corpses were replaced with ineffectual congresspeople allowing society to collapse at their feet. In either case, we’re left to fend for ourselves, and there are reasons to believe we’d be good at it.

The tightness of our communities is one, as demonstrated by part-time Great Cranberry Island resident Janet Hook’s recent op-ed about the island’s Facebook page, where people ask for supplies, post about infrastructure issues and call each other out for not adhering to societal norms, which would help maintain order if the actual police cease to exist.

Right now, a shortage of eggs for a birthday cake, a missing cat and a power outage are the sort of emergencies they’re dealing with, but the same system should work when the stakes are higher. Many Maine communities have a similar social media hub, and while its reliance on the Internet isn’t ideal, they could easily revert to a physical bulletin board. It’s the commitment to sharing information and resources that’s key.

We proved our ability to act quickly in the face of a crisis when it appeared 170,000 low-income Maine families would lose assistance for buying food this month. Mainers gave of their time and money by volunteering at and donating to food pantries. Restaurants started offering free or discounted meals, and a Midcoast charity auctioned a reprint of a T-shirt worn by Taylor Swift. An animal instinct seemed to kick in, driving us to do whatever we could to help our neighbors.

But we’ll need more than soft skills and a pack mentality to survive the downfall of civilization as we know it. Fortunately, a good portion of us are trained in ways that would help. Maine has the fifth-highest percentage of residential construction workers, according to the National Association of Homebuilders, and the third-highest concentration of EMTs and paramedics, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Our hobbies, too, would come in handy, bringing us back to the hunting stores and, more importantly, their customers. Maine ranked sixth in its rate of registered hunters in a compilation of data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and some of them already have been combatting rising food costs by filling their freezers with meat and donating it to people in greater need.

Now would also be a good time to make friends with a fisherman and a farmer, who could keep us not only full but eating well — which would be a bright spot amid the threat of the world’s end. (Consider reading up on curing or canning techniques, so you can bring something to the table.)

There was one factor, however, that the zombie apocalypse study didn’t take into account: Our proximity to population centers. Compared to other states that ranked high in preparedness, including Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming and Hawaii, we’re not far from those that landed at the bottom of the list — New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

So even if there aren’t any zombies involved, we might have to fend off a different type of invasion. But as a tourist destination, we’re prepared for that, too. We can lure them with lobster rolls to the L.L.Bean headquarters and hold them there. As long as they can keep shopping, we might not even need locks.