The chapter aims at stimulating imagination in the aftermath of disasters, a crucial step in developing alternative responses. Extreme events disrupt standard planning systems, forcing local communities to experiment with makeshift survival solutions and infrastructures. On one hand, they expose the failures of current systems; on the other, they open the way for new ideas, policies, and practices. The prevailing approach to disaster preparedness is based on risk management, technocratic solutions, and forecasting. However, critical disaster studies argue that preparedness for extreme events and post-disaster management should extend beyond technical emergency measures to include rethinking and reimagining social and spatial structures within a polycrisis (ecological, social, economic and political) setting, in order not to repeat, exacerbate, or reproduce existing vulnerabilities. Furthermore, instead of viewing disasters as “exceptional”, one-off events, scholars in critical disaster studies encourage us to see them as deeply connected to social, political, and economic frameworks. Extreme events reveal and worsen existing inequalities, often reinforcing marginalisation and neoliberal governance patterns. Therefore, this chapter explores alternative responses to extreme events that consider diverse cultural contexts and approaches, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. These include possibility, hope and care rooted in non-capitalist practices, preparedness, improvisation not just as reactive measures but as political acts, and the broken-world thinking approach.