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 transportation 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 transport; 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 transport will make a modest contribution at best as even the busiest airports 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
--
http://www.prellblog.de
.

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