A bicycle or small motorbike would certainly be convenient. Maybe B stops a bike messenger or a pizza delivery guy and pays him a wad of cash to take her to the other side of the river.

Thank you!

to add to your characters' mind set... a couple of acronyms

OODA Loop.... observe, orient, decide, act... originally credited to fighter pilots is used to immediately evaluate a threat situation

PACE...Special Forces derived acronym for Primary, Alternative, Contingency, and Emergency... redundancy levels built into an operational plan

never been to NYC, but a small 125cc or so dirt bike, with street tires would be my choice

a 1/10 oz gold coin makes a good bribe in most 3 world nations

realistically ...

i do not believe that New Yorkers would evacuate the whole of Manhattan for a terrorist attack ... unless the attack involved NBC weapons .. possible widespread casualties. otherwise, people believe that the authorities have the ability to cordon off a specific area, and eliminate the threat. whether that's true or not, depends on your story.

a motorcycle would be an excellent way to escape the city, if your character had advance warning.

OODA loops are used for training spec forces personnel. but most normal people have no knowledge of those sophisticated things. the gut reactions of people fall into three categories .... freeze, flee, or fight.

Pete

I think the geographic extent of the power outage is a key aspect. One scenario would be a power outage to Manhattan, or a section of Manhattan. Once out of that area, things would be close to normal, if not totally normal.

A second scenario would be something like the 1965 or 2003 northeast USA (and part of Canada) power outages, affecting 30-50 million people. AFAIK, the areas described in you book were all without power during both of these outages.

I too believe that an evacuation would be extremely improbable. Furthermore, a whole breakdown at this point (this episode happens quite early in the story) would be conterproductive for my plot, as I intend to slowly build a crescendo of tension and danger.



My character is pretty resourceful but doesn't have any specific military training in survival or E&E.

Thank you very much Pete.

The outage will initially affect the entire NYC area (so Manhattan and beyond), but there's the possibility that it will extend to the entire Eastern Seaboard in a matter of hours.
My characters may have an inkling of this, therefore explaining their resolution to bug out immediately and reach a safe place as soon as possible.

Thanks bws48!

Perhaps our locals can mention some local actual spots for setting up rendezvous points.

Municiple dock at Poughkeepsie, NY
Municiple dock at Port Hudson, NY
USCG ANT Saugerties, NY
High Point State Park Ranger Station, NJ

These are spots that I remember from the early 80's.

I read through most of the posts but am limited on time right now. I lived in NYC for 'my life' until about 20 years ago. I worked as a NYC Medic. I can tell you for a fact that there were things NOBODY told the public.... Like the unmarked 'truck' that was hauling unlabeled Hazardous Material (HazMat) and was stopped before getting onto the VZ (Verrazano Narrows Bridge). When the 'team' got done, they found it had been carrying massive amounts of 55 gal. drums of Hydrochloric Acid stacked ON TOP of 55 gal drums of Cyanide. The mix..... Hydrogen Cyanide.... lethal poisonous gas. Some things don't get told. One of my classmates asked how we'd evac Manhattan.... the instructor just laughed. He said the evac would be AFTER it had dissipated. He made it clear that he was referring to evacuating the bodies. Lesson learned......you go early....if you ar even aware of it.

My.02:

The cell network is going to get overloaded shortly after the first incident. The network is only designed fo 10 15 percent peak load. SMS and long distance land lines are going to be the most reliable means of communication. Maybe VOIP plus WiFi.

Select cell towers have battery backups. IIRC, Verizon is the best and AT&T is the worse. You will have between 2 and 8 hours if cell service after lights out.

Forget getting anywhere via car in an evacuation. The roads are going to be jammed untill well out into suburbia. A good plot point would be a pair of walking shoes for commuting, and dress shoes kept at the office. Less likely, but still feasible, are a nearby bike shop and a wad of cash, or membership in a sailing club.

There should be more then one rendezvous point. Places where one party can wait for the other one. Have character A check,the backup locations before circling back to the prearranged one and camping out in their truck.

I keep seeing this (mentioned in the other thread). Land lines are oversubscribed just like cell lines. Land lines are lower profit than cell lines and therefore get less focus. Land lines have not been reliable in years.

My parents live rural, their land line goes down every time the sun does and it takes a month for the phone company to fix it.
In the city our land line would go down all the time. old infrastructure, companies accidentally cutting cables, trees not being pruned, etc.

The backbone between cell tower to cell tower and between local exchange and local exchange is the most reliable. The last mile to your house is the least.