Carlos LaCamara could only imagine what would happen after his wife landed a job as executive producer of the new CBS series "Jericho." Working on a series about the aftermath of a nuclear attack on the United States, she'd probably want to build a bomb shelter in the backyard of their Santa Monica home, he told her teasingly.

That hasn't happened, of course. And Carol Barbee, a former Concord resident who wrote for "Providence" and "Judging Amy," has no interest in overplaying the fear factor in the series, which premieres Wednesday.

As she told Jon Turteltaub, an executive producer whose company developed the idea, "I'm not particularly interested in doing a show that creates more fear," Barbee said in a recent telephone interview. "There's enough already there. ['Jericho'] shows people rebuilding our society.

"What's empowering about 'Jericho' is how it shows people's self-sufficiency, characters taking care of one another and fighting off the bad guys. And how when these bombs go off, everybody gets a second chance."

"Jericho" centers on Jake Green, played by Barbee's fellow Concord expatriate Skeet Ulrich, who returns to the Kansas town after the nuclear attack has begun. Jake has a troubled past -- his departure is unexplained -- and in the midst of the grave national circumstance, he has to deal with his father (Gerald McRaney), mother (Pamela Reed) and ex-girlfriend (Ashley Scott).

Jericho was not bombed, but communication is down.

"We will find out from the town, through the eyes of the town, how big it was and who did it," says Barbee, who not only writes for the series but supervises 13 other writers and runs the operation.

"The cool part for me is to watch these modern people from 2006, with the education and technology that we have today, have to go back to the technology of the 1800s. You'll see horses tied up to parking meters outside the Internet cafe -- the Old West devolving into the New Old West."

Live, then write

Barbee, 47, left North Carolina in 1981 and spent a decade as a singer and actress in Los Angeles. She had performed in musicals at Central Cabarrus High School in Concord and studied theater and voice at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. In Los Angeles, she earned her master's in fine arts at UCLA and worked in theater and television.

When her children were small, she enrolled in writing classes at UCLA and wrote a screenplay called "Madonna's in the Field," about a Depression-era photojournalist. It won first place in a competition sponsored by UCLA and DreamWorks Studios, which led to an agent and a writing job for "Providence." When her oldest son was in kindergarten and was asked what his parents did, he responded: "My dad's an actor, and my mother tells actors what to say."

She did it well enough to become head writer and executive producer for "Judging Amy."

"I think I always was meant to be a writer," Barbee says. "When I was a kid and people would ask me what I wanted to be, I'd say a writer. I wanted to go out and have an interesting life first to have something to write about. Being an actor helped me do that."

Home connections

With "Jericho," her star's Concord connection came as a surprise.

Ulrich has racing blood -- his mother, Carolyn Rudd, worked in public relations for Lowe's Motor Speedway in the 1980s; his father D.K. Ulrich is a former professional race car driver who lives in the Bahamas; and his uncle Ricky Rudd is a NASCAR driver. But only after Ulrich had been cast did Barbee find out about his roots.

One day actresses were auditioning, and Ulrich came in to read with them. That's when he heard Barbee's Southern accent.

"I don't have a big one, but it can be heard," Barbee says. "And he asked where I was from. When I said 'Concord,' He said, 'No you're not, you're lying.' That became a running line. He'd try to catch me and ask me things that you could only know from living in Concord. He's say 'Where'd you go to junior high school?' I'd say, 'Harrisburg.' He'd go, 'Odell.' "

Ulrich's route to Jericho led from Concord to New York University, where playwright David Mamet saw the young acting student and invited him to join his Atlantic Theater Company as an apprentice. Director Stacy Cochran spotted him there and gave Ulrich a role in "Boys" opposite Winona Ryder. The Craft," "Last Dance" and "Scream" are among movies that followed, as did a starring role in 2003's short-lived series "Miracles."

Barbee likes having a hometown boy around as she goes about her big job.

"You look over and there's a guy from Concord, and it doesn't feel so scary or strange," she says. It just makes me feel more normal."

And Ulrich's family likes having Barbee in charge. Brother Jeff, a sports marketer who lives in Mooresville, met her on a recent trip to California, where he visited the studio and watched the crews construct the sets.

"She's a great lady," Jeff Ulrich says. "She's got a lot of North Carolina values and is very well-respected. She's the lady in charge."

(The cast of guest stars includes another North Carolinian: Beth Grant, a chameleon of a character actress who has been in dozens of movies and TV shows since graduating from East Carolina University.)

Barbee hopes that viewers who find the apocalyptic genre a turnoff will give "Jericho" a chance. Though based on a nuclear attack, the series is more concerned with how human nature plays out in a crisis and, ultimately, the triumph of the human spirit and the will to survive.

"The show is really about a larger issue that affects us all," Barbee says. "It's an action movie, it's a thrill ride, it's a character drama -- at its core it's a cautionary tale about how we are relating to the rest of the world and how we are relating to one another. How we deal with conflicts and differences. Something that could actually happen, but hopefully it never will.

"There's a strange wish fulfillment to put yourself in the show and play out these scenarios from a safe distance."