Re: Comet impact in the Eastern United States - Feasibility of Evacuation

Matt Browne SFW schrieb:
> Is it possible to evacuate at least 90% of the 100 million people
> living there?

Just thinking aloud about some of the logistics:

The highest throughput achieved by any trans****tation system in the 
world on a single route is about 2.6 million travellers per day, if we 
want to believe Wikipedia (Mumbai Suburban Railway's Western line). This 
goes along well with theoretical estimates, as it means approx. one 
1800-passenger train every minute over 24 hours. An evacuation means 
that all passengers go in one direction and empty trains go back, so the 
capacity is halved to 1.3 million per day. With the kind of schedule 
that is used in wartime, i.e. minimal headways and the same very low top 
speed for all trains, capacity can probably be raised to 2 million per 
day. The question is whether broken-down trains can be shunted out 
quickly and how in the world people are supposed to embark at this kind 
of rate. Most US railways are single-track, you'd have to use separate 
lines for trains moving out and empty trains moving in.
Probably, to evacuate just one million per day, you'd already need a 
total of four to five lines radiating out from the evacuation area and 
about 1500 to 3000 trainsets of ten to 15 cars. It should be possible to 
cobble these together from commuter rail stock and  boxcars.

AFAIK, the best-organised motorway traffic will never reach the 
capacities of rail trans****t; it's unlikely that the 13-second headway 
that was achieved on the Voie sacrée can be much improved on. Probably, 
even on very large motorways, only the two outermost lanes can be used, 
because the inner lanes will quickly be blocked by broken-down vehicles 
that cannot be pushed off the road. Maybe on US highways with large 
medians, the two innermost lanes can be used as well. If we assume 
vehicles loaded with an average of five persons (counting in vans, 
trucks, requisitioned school buses etc.), on four lanes, with 10-second 
headways, about 170.000 people can travel on a single highway in one 
day. There are many more highways than railway lines, but keeping 
traffic going at Red Ball Express rates in an evacuation scenario with 
layman drivers will be nightmarish. Maybe 100.000 people per day per 
route can move out on twenty routes. Maybe.

Aerial trans****t will make a modest contribution at best as even the 
busiest air****ts have trouble handling 200000 passengers a day. Boats 
won't be able to contribute much at all, there not being enough 
passenger vessels to go round, and besides, the next safe destinations 
are rather far away.

Evacuating 90 million people in four weeks requires moving out three 
million all day, every day. I think this can be done, but just barely, 
with millions of personnel, and with lots of luck.

Oh, and of course nobody gets to take along anything but the minimal 
carry-on luggage. Good luck enforcing that.

mawa
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