Survival Scenario-New York City

[akv]

Folks,

Recent events in Times Square had me pondering a New York City survival scenario. I "searched" the survival threads, EDC threads, etc, and while there were nuggets on urban survival here and there, and a general consensus NYC would be a very bad place to be caught in a survival situation, I don't think I saw this particular scenario posed.

You are in lower Manhattan on business, or as a tourist, at noon, in the month of May. A dirty bomb is set off in Time Square or on Wall Street, and to quote TR "It would appear that a political/economic/societal collapse is imminent." There is no lead time the triggering event has just occurred, you are uninjured and have survived the initial blast, you are not carrying. As after 9/11 a significant portion of the island is covered in dust and people are walking the streets in a daze. No signs of panic yet.

For folks less familiar with NYC, Manhattan Island is about 13 miles long and 2.3 miles wide. The daytime population is about 2.87 million, 1.34 million of which are commuters. The total population of NYC is about 8.5 million. The city is designed on a grid with 12 avenues going north/south, and hundreds of streets going east west, an urban jungle of skyscrapers, stores, and apartment buildings with a large park in the center. Manhattan is bound by the Hudson River to the west, the Harlem River to the north, and East River to the east. There are two major subway systems, four tunnels, eight bridges , and two ferries, one at the southern tip and the other midtown west. Unless you have a helicopter (3 helipads) or can really swim, no other exits.

What is your plan? What do you do? How do you prioritize for this environment? Where do you go? How do you do this? Would you EDC anything extra on your person if ever in NYC?

[Pete]

9-11 and Blackouts give the first hints.

Lots of people walking - it was dark at night (blackouts) - and limited water and food.

If you are a tourist? Its gonna' hurt and hurt bad.

[SkiBumCFO]

AKV - I never go anywhere without an E&E plan and try to never qualify as a true tourist:) As a former resident of the fair city and also the surrounding burbs I have to say most don't worry about it or they would lose their minds. Easy for me to say now that i live in Colorado and I only go to NYC to see investors, etc.. If there is an event it will all depend where you are in the city as they could never coordinate an attack well enough to shut every route down. You just have to be comfortable with the knowing the layout which it seems you do. I think most people in NYC have learned to live with terrorism and dont panic as much as we would expect them to - my daughter basically ignored the chaos the other night and she is pregnant and lives pretty close to Times Square. I guess those early years at Fort Bragg made her mentally tough :)

[ReefBlue]

Oh, my expert category. I'm a Manhattan native, only moved to get into the military.

I'd walk back to the apartment after stopping off for Chinese food, then put the news on.

A dirty bomb is not going to cover the city in a blanket of radioactivity. In fact, if you're more than a block or two away, you're not going to be affected. If you don't hear the explosion, you might not even know anything happened.

There was a great 'dirty bomb' show on PBS years ago. It was kind of dry--it was hosted by physicists and nuclear experts. If a van sized dirty bomb explodes, they said the initial explosion will kill more people than the radioactivity will and that even if you get caught up in the radiation, it will do little more than speed up cancer you may get in your old age--in other words if you were going to die of cancer at 90, you'd now die at 85.

Even mild rush hour traffic causes insane delays, the city cannot possibly evacuate under any circumstances. One person gets a flat tire and that tunnel or bridge is completely screwed.

Add in a swath of blocked off streets as emergency services secures the area, there will be some serious problems with getting around in certain areas.

When 9/11 hit, I went back to the apartment and nothing was any different aside from the only thing on TV was the attack and a lot of unfounded speculation. The only thing that was noticeable was no vehicular traffic allowed south of 14th street aside from emergency vehicles. This did have an effect since the vehicle ban extended to trucks bringing food to the stores.

On 9/13, you could see empty shelves and there weren't newspapers to have. Luckily my mom worked uptown and would bring back newspapers and other things we couldn't get.

But, if I was a tourist or there on business, I'd just go back to the way I got into town (Amtrak, Greyhound, airport) and try to leave the city. Eventually the traffic would clear up.

Though on 9/11 no vehicular traffic was allowed to leave the island, but eventually they opened up the outbound G.W. Bridge, but the line to get out of town must have been insane. Basically only 4 or 6 lanes were carrying outbound traffic, which is about 1/3 of what is normally available to use.


So to sum up, if you live there--just go home. If you're visiting, you are an insignificant dot in a sea of dots. Just leave, no questions asked--you're not needed and simply a burden (as are all tourists in NYC anyhow). Just expect it to take an amazingly frustrating amount of time and realize no one is there to cater to you.

[Dozer523]

I'm hanging with Reef 'til I can go home.
Let's fill the bathtub with water JIC
Question:
Is there anything other then Chinese in your neighborhood?

"Just expect it to take an amazingly frustrating amount of time and realize no one is there to cater to you." But, I'm YOUR GUEST, man!

[ReefBlue]

I'm hanging with Reef 'til I can go home.
Let's fill the bathtub with water JIC
Question:
Is there anything other then Chinese in your neighborhood?

"Just expect it to take an amazingly frustrating amount of time and realize no one is there to cater to you." But, I'm YOUR GUEST, man!

It's Greenwich Village--any kind of food you can think of; we'll get the guy on the rickety bike to deliver. Gimme the whole left side of the menu . . . and the ribs.

[akv]

ReefBlue-Entire Post

I lived at 53rd and 8th in 2001. I was visiting family in TX when 9/11 hit, and didn't fly back until the following week so I missed most of the direct aftermath you described, but your description of conditions seems spot on. I'm not an authority on dirty bombs either, perhaps I should have just described the trigger event as something of magnitude sufficient to cause a significant crisis.

Nothing is easy in NYC, the simple act of getting milk at the store can take a half hour, a taxi strike has significant impact, and as you mentioned just getting to JFK on a Friday afternoon can be an exercise in patience. Ny'ers have an admirable gruff resilience, maybe from the water, but also from living on an island with too many people. I belief most people in NYC don't keep much in the fridge, and order in most nights. The conditions you described, too many people, exits shut off, and the shelves bare in a few days are ripe for disaster for any extended period, especially if the subways were shut down.

As a visitor I would head for a friends place or to a hotel. Expect to walk, on 9/11 my girlfriend walked from Rector Street to the Upper West Side in broken heels. Given the above logistics of the island, after more than a few days it's going to be a real mess anywhere, but I would particularly avoid the area north of 125th. I think you need to try and get off the island as soon as you can, the west side of the island seems less congested. I would prefer to head west into New Jersey over Queens or Brooklyn if possible. Assuming walking is the only means of transport and most folks prefer an open air bridge to an underground tunnel, the Lincoln or Holland tunnel might be a less crowded exit than the bridges, but I can't recall if there are walkways, and in a panic those tunnels could get ugly. There are two bridges in relatively close proximity on the lower east side, Manhattan and Brooklyn, my notion would be to avoid this zoo if possible. There is only one bridge in the central part of the island, the 59th which is also closer to the uppers residential neighborhoods, this will be crowded. I don't think there are any great options but the Williamsburgh bridge is far enough away from the other bridges and the uppers to be viable, the other notion is to head south through the Battery tunnel after a few days. Assuming most people head for their apartments, while a lot of folks work downtown, relatively few live on the southern tip of the island. In any event a rough situation.

Just my .02

[Utah Bob]

I try to stay away from cities. Especially ones where I can't legally carry.