How long does it take to evacuate a city?

[CheertheSecond]

Has anyone done the calculation to see how many days does it take to evacuate all civilians from a big city like (New York, Tokyo, and Shanghai)?

 

[SailusGebel]

Probably a couple days if there is no panic.

 

[Lloyd]

6 minutes

 

[BearlyAlive]

I would guess 3 to 4 days, maybe more depending on the size of the city. Country-sized cities like those in Asia might take a week or two more.

If you want a panicked evacuation, then never. Murricans would just riot and shoot each other even before catastrophe hits, Asians would argue about who had the superiority even to order evac, Europe would try to delegate the catastrophe to death with bureaucracy, Russians would be too drunk to care, and Africa and South America would either shrug and go on with their lives or celebrate since extinction would mean an improvement of their living standards, like Brazil and Argentina.

 

[Lorelliad]

Don't underestimate panic. Trying to evacuate even an entire building rarely ever goes well because people are seldom mentally equipped to handle emergencies.

Once panic spreads to every part of the area chances are it'll slow down to nearly a halt. My bet's on a week.

 

[jrell]

It took 4 months for the USSR to evacuate 115k of the population from Chornobyl. Many people will stay regardless, even if you declare an evacuation for NY. You will need an entire US army to go from apartment to apartment and evacuate people by force, which will take quite a long time.

 

[BernKatstel]

Definitely a week and a half or two, even with full cooperation (this estimate is being generous). Cities of those sizes could never be evacuated in a mere couple days due to a few factors: such as a lack of enough transportation, limited routes, traffic, location of evacuation spots, etc. These are a few of the issues in a perfect world where the people with personal cars are fully ready to go, there is no panic nor any crimes happening due to the news, and where the significant chunk of the population that have difficulties moving do not exist.

 

[LilRora]

That's gonna depend on a lot of things. First, obviously, size, if it's an avereage european city or something much bigger, up to Tokyo or New York aglomerations. Second, what kind of evacuation it is. If it's a regular evacuation, it's gonna take a while before people get all their things. If it's an emergency evacuation though, people dropping everything and getting out as fast as possible, then it's gonna get much shorter - or it should get, but panic and disorganization can cause huge delays.

I'd say it's going to be a full day for smaller cities, up to even over a week for large cities if some factors delay things. If it's not an urgent evacuation though, then it can easily stretch into months.

 

[Tempokai]

Depends on preparedness of the populace. If none, weeks or days maybe, depending on the danger level. If prepared, few days max or maybe hours, depending on population size. Small towns are easy, but over a 100k is potential safety (and refugee) hazard and it will depend on the government not being embodiment of Murphy's Law.

 

[GoodPerson]

It seems like we need one agent from a department to do the job.