(no subject)

[camwyn]

*watches news footage of people trying to get out of Houston*

*counts the number of Hudson and East River crossings*

*compares to number of Manhattanites*

Should the island of Manhattan have to be evacuated, in all likelihood Jersey City would have to go, too. There is no way that the local motor vehicle traffic infrastructure is designed to handle that many people all leaving at once.

On the other hand, all those cars trying to get onto the mainland and away from the city probably wouldn't be able to move very far or very fast. So as long as there was sidewalk available, I could almost certainly get over US 1's truck-route bridge into Newark, because no one would be able to kill me except by opening a car door at the wrong time.

Saddlebags on back wheel, bags mounted on front wheel, basket mounted on handlebars, bungee cords for the rear wheel carrier rack... I could get a respectable amount out of the city on Wanda. Granted, some of the space would be lost to my cats. But still.

Must buy saddlebags, if only for touring purposes. And grocery shopping.

Comments

[dragonwhishes.livejournal.com]

Should you have to leave, feel free to bunk on my couch.

[camwyn]

Thanks, hon. Michigan might take a while to get to, but I'lllet you know if I do.

[dragonwhishes.livejournal.com]

Meh, we'll pick you up!

[zed42.livejournal.com]

would the evacuation plan be different for giant monster than it would be for potential massive flooding?

[camwyn]

Almost certainly. Giant monsters generally arise in the ocean and head for Manhattan. They can really only lay waste to one borough at a time; if there were a New York kaiju incident they would only have to evacuate Manhattan and/or Staten Island depending on the direction the monster came in from. The people of Staten Island could be evacuated into New Jersey with relative ease, as they have the Goethals Bridge, the Outerbridge Crossing, and the Bayonne Bridge to use. Brooklyn would be a bit more difficult as there's only the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge and that's the longest suspension bridge in the States. Manhattan is connected to all the other boroughs save Staten Island by bridges, and has ferries to boot- but that's a matter of volume of population to move. It would be simplest to dump as much of the island's population as possible into the Bronx and New Jersey, shunting the ones on the Upper East Side into Queens and the Lower East Side and Wall Street and points south into Brooklyn. Those boroughs wouldn't have to be evacuated, though.

Massive flooding, on the other hand, would hit all five boroughs. Queens and Brooklyn would probably evacuate to further out on Long Island by highway and to a lesser degree by bus and train. It should be noted as well that New York City's two international airports are located in the borough of Queens, so JFK and LaGuardia would likely become evacuation centers in the event of something truly monstrous. Brooklyn could be problematic given the sheer size of its population (if it ever seceded from NYC it would displace Houston as the fourth largest city in the US). The Bronx is the only borough on the mainland of the US but there are river issues and rain and the like to contend with; if the whole city had to be evacuated there are multiple land routes out of the Bronx. Given that anything big enough to require all of New York to evacuate would almost certainly require several riverside New Jersey cities to empty, too, you're looking at the mother of all traffic nightmares.

A meltdown at the nearest nuclear reactor to the city- I believe that's Indian Point- would mandate that evacuees head south as fast as possible as I believe the plume from the nuke plant would make life very difficult on Long Island (though I have not seen the maps lately and am probably wrong).

Brooklyn alone would have to be evacuated in the event of someone successfully summoning Dread Cthulhu, as it's generally accepted that he could be whistled out of the waters off Coney Island if the stars were right. Best thing to do there: push everyone north, through Queens, and get them into the Bronx, then to Westchester. When Big C comes to town you want away from the water.

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

What about Zombies? The dead start walking, everybody is going to need to leave town all at once.

... Actually, that's one situation where leaving by sea is one of the better options.

[camwyn]

Leave by sea. Get every boat in the city up and running, including the entire Staten Island Ferry fleet. Dynamite the bridges (yeah, C4 is more efficient, but doesn't have the same ring to it). Collapse the entrances to each of the tunnels on both ends. And give some serious consideration to following the procedures laid out in "Miami 2017" and just go ahead and sink the Bronx now before their dead get loose. Brooklyn may have to be destroyed as well, given the size of the graveyards there...

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

Bicycles save lives.

Cats don't.

[camwyn]

I can't carry another person on the bike if I'm evacuating with my stuff. I can spare the cats from drowning. If I've got to evacuate I can carry several days' worth of dry or canned food on my back and stuff other food and clothing items into bike bags, but I"m not leaving the cats to drown or be eaten by feral dogs.

[wal-lace.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not suggesting you actually help other people. Screw them. But if it's a choice between supplies vital to yourself, and your cat, take the stuff that'll actually help you.

... Mind you, you can always eat the cat.

[camwyn]

It's a responsibility issue. I promised to look after them and take care of them; just because I'd be running for my life doesn't absolve me of that. Besides, once I'm thirty or forty miles from the city I can probably find extra supplies for sale.

[eor.livejournal.com]

Check out Cannondale's Overland Pannier. Years ago I had a set of those for the rear and a set of their smaller bags on the front. Pretty stable even when loaded to capacity with groceries because they ride low. The fabric they used was nearly indestructible and pretty waterproof. At the time they sold a quick disconnect system which held the bags on solid but allowed me to pop them off in seconds. Don't know if the product is the same now or not.