As for the first part of your comment, for me I've always viewed thoughts like that as the opposite side of the coin of "What if this truck beside me swerves? What's the safest way to ditch", "What if a car cam around this bend too fast and jumped the curb? When would I realize it would happen? Which direction do I go? Do I pick up the kid, or push them and where?", or "What if I was bumped onto the subway tracks? Where can I take cover? What do I need to avoid?".
Sometimes I take it a little far I think at first, like keeping waterproof blankets in the car ("What if we're in an accident in the winter?") or rotating out growlers of tap water ("What if there is a boil water advisory or worse?"). In the end though, those blankets and water havn't been used for their intended purpose, but have come in handy just having around.
Then there are things like running through an airplane crash, as we fly with and without kids a number of times a year, and basically thinking of how to keep calm, where exits are, when to unbuckle the kids, make sure to ask for child life vests if needed, ensure that anything I take out of my bag won't become a projectile and how to secure it properly during normal flight, what is the appropriate way for a toddler to brace for imapact, &c. Obviously they're not great "simulations" as I have no real basis for reality, but in the end I sometimes don't feel like I have a choice in thinking about it -- it just happens. It also leads me down many interesting paths and I've learned quite a bit.
I've told a few close friends that I feel like my "special talent" is to figure out what's wrong with everything (both physical systems and protocols, real and digital) I encounter: How will it break? Where will it fail? The flip side of that is also thinking about how to deal with those problems.
Like you said,"part of the normal what-if and should-i scenarios my mind plays all the time." I guess I never considered that this wasn't normal/common. It's the background music of my life.