Photographed by Bek Andersen.Sometimes, art forces us to reevaluate our preparedness for the unexpected. Take Godzilla, for example. A dinosaur attack may not be a likely scenario, but New York City isn't taking any chances. In fact, you might say the Big Apple has something of a "Godzilla Contingency Plan."
The New York Daily News spoke with Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Joseph Bruno, who assured readers that an oversized monster couldn't take our fine city down. “We’d be thinking, ‘What would a Godzilla attack do?’” Bruno told the Daily News. “Clearly, it would cause fire, explosions, casualties, damage, debris, bridges and tunnels being out. Roads being out, power issues, and some slime. Those are issues that we do deal with — except for the slime.” Though, if downtown really did begin to resemble a prehistoric forest, we'd probably all be on slime-cleanup duty.
After 9/11 and hurricanes Irene and Sandy, the city created disaster protocols — such as the Notify NYC program, which sends text messages to NYC residents with evacuation instructions. So, if a Godzilla-like creature attacked the city, residents would be directed to a safer area. Bruno further explained that “in the event of a Godzilla attack, we’d be looking at area evacuations... We have a system that’s a ‘hub and spoke’ approach. We [would] move people to a hub area and then try to move them [to a spoke], for example to the Bronx, which is less likely to be impacted."
Any Godzilla enthusiast knows the best thing to do in the wake of such an attack is to run — the exact advice screenwriter Max Borenstein gave the Daily News. But, now Bruno's got us thinking: What does the city have in store for the possibility of a zombie apocalypse? You know, other than Norman Reedus. (NY Daily News)