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[GreatWyrmGold]

Nothing. Even a known threat which assures certain death will probably end up with 5% of the population staying behind. People are stubborn like that.

Pretty much this. You will always have some percentage that decides they would rather stay with their belongings and wait rather then flee, or decides to stay and help for those who are infected, or is just too busy looting everything left instead of leaving.

Really the only guaranteed way to remove all people from the city would be if the disaster itself removed them, such as aliens beaming everyone up overnight or something like that. But in any city of decent size there isn't really any way to get everyone to flee willingly, regardless of what you do.

95% is good enough.

Slow zombies would trigger mass evacuation. I Think.

Seems more likely that containment would happen first, to stop the chance of zombie 'infection' spreading.  That is after figuring that there is really a zombie outbreak happening in the first place...

Some idiots high on bath salts who try to eat people are referred to as zombies. If they became infectious, the president would probably call them zombies.

Nothing. Even a known threat which assures certain death will probably end up with 5% of the population staying behind. People are stubborn like that.

Always amazes me there's people who stay on Ocracoke and Hatteras when a hurricane is coming.
(For those not familiar, these are two of North Carolina's barrier islands -- basically overgrown sandbars that are 50 miles out in the ocean. With houses on them. And at least a handful of grizzled old coots who refuse to evacuate because their fathers never evacuated, and their fathers' fathers never evacuated, and so forth.)

How'd they live long enough to have children and children's children?

[Flying Dice]

Time to turn to the more important question: How can we make a city evacuate?

[Starver]

I suppose if a coastal town started sinking below sea level at a slow but noticeable rate, people would leave. Well, as long as the sections the levees are built on also continue to sink. Modern-day slow motion Atlantis!

From: The Office of Oceanside City's Planning Department
To: The current occupiers/residents of Seaview Building, Beachside Avenue, Waverly District.

Dear Sirs/Madams,
   Can we please remind all residents that existing planning laws do not allow the erection of glass domes of any size greater than than two metres in diameter, without explicit permission gained through due process.  Certainly, one large enough encompassing an entire apartment block would seem to require an application to be filed before materials were even brought onto your site, or (in your case) atop the neighbouring building, that I understand the current owners have gifted to you in lieu of any other forthcoming purchasers for their property coming forward.

  I shall look forward to hearing from at your earliest convenience, in respect to a possible retrospective planning application, which we shall attempt to look into as favourably as possible.  You should ideally apply directly at the main Planning Office in order to quickly resolve this issue. NB. Especially given the current state of Postal Service deliveries!

The address is:
  The Central Office Of Planning,
   Harbour's Edge Boulevard,
   Shipyard District,
   Oceanside City.
Our opening hours are:
   09:30 to 17:00 Monday to Friday,
   11:30 to 14:00 on Saturdays,
   No office opening on Sundays except by special appointment.
Please consult tide tables for the day of your visit.  We open our doors to the street at every low tide, regardless of day or time of day, and the doors to our balcony at every high tide.  All offices have been moved into the top two floors, if the signs have still not been changed, but please respect the areas marked as our temporary living spaces.
  Please note: if arriving by your own boat for any appointment lasting more than an hour, we've found it best to plan for a full ten to twelve hour stay unless you have other business in the area and good footwear for traversing mud and extensive amounts of shallow water.  Be aware of warning signs regarding the drop off from the levees above the old harbour wall's edge.
  Should you be staying with us for the duration, I'm afraid we can no longer operate our cafeteria, but there is a seafood restaurant barge that beaches itself quite close to us on most days, weather conditions and hours of daylight permitting, that is a surprisingly popular lunch venue for my few remaining colleagues in the building.

Yours faithfully,
 <squiggle>
J. Springfield Fish,
Acting director of Central Planning, Oceanside City.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Time to turn to the more important question: How can we make a city evacuate?

Current suggested options include triggering floods, attracting aliens, or releasing zombies... Don't you DARE release zombies!

[TheBronzePickle]

If only there was some kind of inverse to the neutron bomb: a weapon that could devastate infrastructure but leave the inhabitants unharmed. But, alas, Vash the Stampede is fictional.

[GreatWyrmGold]

That is theoretically impossible, and practically even more so. You can't target non-living things exclusively with anything known, and anyways things like collapsed subways and crumbling buildings would kill lots of people.

[Techhead]

You might be able to make something that destroys one type of thing. If you wanted to destroy infrastructure, I'd probably target either  plastics, concrete, or steel.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Again,

...things like collapsed subways and crumbling buildings would kill lots of people.

[Starver]

A very fast concrete/glass/metal/plastic[1]-eating nanobug, programmed to start from the top-down, disposing of its digestion products in some sort of safe way[2], completely avoids consuming anything biological, or bedrock[3] and leaves the people unharmed.  Well, with some other minor inconveniences (water flowing in, biological waste unhindered, possibly a whole lot of people needing new fillings (as well as eyeglasses) if they didn't keep their mouths shut during the deconstruction phase...)

But, well...  Minor (ahem, NPI!) teething problems aside, it might just work!!!


No, I can't see any problems with this.  I'm not sure why they haven't already done this, in fact.




[1] Remember to wear all natural fibres on Nanobug day!  But feel free to advise anyone else you're not totally repulsed b,y already, that Polyester Is In This Year^TM!

[2] That's the biggy.  What do you send into the atmosphere, what else do you allow to pool?  You could probably fudge the "arches fall once the keystone is eaten!" problem by having the 'consumption foam' be supporting enough of everything it's still in the process of eating that it holds up most structures.

[3] Or just have it range-limited by some form of external radio reference, so that you end up with a flat depression into the landscape, at worst.

[GreatWyrmGold]

For starters, they're probably afraid that it would mutate into something that eats humans.

That, and nanotechnology is still in the embryotic stages. Oh, and it's moronic. What purpose would it have?

[Montague]

War/ impending invasion or a hurricane are the only historical ones I can think of. Especially the former, where the military will be more insistent that civilians leave. With hurricanes, there are always civilians too stubborn to leave, or have duties that require them to ride it out and exempt them from the evacuation, like security guards under contract, nuclear power plant employees, hospital employees perhaps, ect.

A huge chemical accident, with a green cloud of death slowly pouring over the city, or unstoppable fire might have part or most of a city evacuate.

Other disasters might have little time for evacuation, asteroid impacts, nuclear war, volcano eruptions, tsunamis or whatever.

[Akura]

Godzilla?

Been watching the series Ultraman, and based on it, 1960s Japan got attacked by gigantic monsters every other day. They seem to do a good job evacuating places like Osaka(although in that case, they were forewarned), although it seems civilian and Japanese Defense Force casualties are still pretty alarming(yet Science Patrol always seems to walk away from their jets getting destroyed). Plus, nothing rips apart a Japanese residential district like a beatdown between two guys in rubber suits.

[Loud Whispers]

Ultraman

I loved that show!

[GreatWyrmGold]

Godzilla?

Been watching the series Ultraman, and based on it, 1960s Japan got attacked by gigantic monsters every other day. They seem to do a good job evacuating places like Osaka(although in that case, they were forewarned), although it seems civilian and Japanese Defense Force casualties are still pretty alarming(yet Science Patrol always seems to walk away from their jets getting destroyed). Plus, nothing rips apart a Japanese residential district like a beatdown between two guys in rubber suits.

On-topic, Godzilla might give a city sufficient time to evacuate, but would the people do so?

[Karlito]

I guess you'd need to implement some kind of riot police type crowd control weapon over the entire city. Loud noises, really bright flashing lights, make everything smell really bad. Something to make people uncomfortable enough to forget about their homes for the time being without harming them.