Does this look to you like a thinly disguised view of disaster escape routes from major American cities?

Not really, although I can see how it could be construed to mean that.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how good Atlanta is (in comparison with some other cities). Yay us.

It takes a lot longer than 3 days to starve. I’ve gone that long without eating just for the hell of it. (Once.)
Fresh water might be the biggest problem. However, depending on what the disaster is, it’s not like they’re going to a barren planet. There would get help after they get out of the city.
It would take me us about 15 minutes to get out. That’s about how long it would take to pack and hook up to the camper and go. We only live a couple miles from the country in any direction.

I don’t think so @Jeruba. I would take it at face value ’ Friday afternoon on a perfect summer day’. In the event of some disater the situation would be quite different.

Nope !

Can’t open the link, not enough broadband.

I don’t worry about it. The national freeway systems look like an escape route as well. Or an excellent way to move ground forces around.

With all due respect, my dear @Jeruba, I think your war paranoia, which many of us are feeling to some extent, is dialed a tad too high.

I will say, however, that I do find myself half-expecting every morning to wake up to the headline, US Declares War on NK.

Shortly followed by another headline, Trump Declared Insane. Which for no one in her/his right mind would consider fake news.

I am also seeing the “Friday afternoon on a perfect summer day” thing.
The fact that it’s the Washington Post makes me think that the conversation that sparked this piece may have been disaster oriented, but then turned into a fairly simple discussion of time and distance.

@Dutchess_III When everyone in the entire area tries to leave at the same time, it is not that easy. There was a recent evacuation in a semi-rural area in Northern California. People were told they had 20 minutes to get out before a potential dam failure. Some people reported sitting in traffic on the highway for hours. Lucky for them it was a false alarm.

Well, I don’t think it is an indicator of escape routes but it is certainly an interesting article.

I know that @YARNLADY.

I also don’t see an escape route of any kind in that picture.

Hey GTF out of Dallas and in five hours you can be in San Antonio…....or Houston….. Now that ain’t what I call much of an improvement if you are fleeing an atomic blast (or zombie apocalypse).

I think it’s a light on news Friday afternoon piece.

@Pachy, war paranoia? Did you miss my second paragraph?

—> What is the benefit of getting people all worked up? If there’s a catastrophe, people aren’t going to make it out of the cities with enough to live on for more than about three days. Why worry about it?

By “view of” I didn’t mean “depiction of,” but rather, “opinion of,” in the sense of perspective—i.e., that people might be thinking about various kinds of escape and assuming unrealistically that they could just get in their cars and go.

I asked the question because the timing of this piece struck me as noncoincidental and because I think journalists are scrambling to squeeze every last story they can out of current events. A headline that isn’t about Trump is an eye-catcher in itself.

I don’t think this story is meant to show escape routes. Rather, I think its posting is meant to appeal to or trigger some anxieties in order to generate clicks. This one just seemed a little more subtle than most.

I assumed a natural disaster, not a war, anyway.

The trick is to never get to that point.
But Americans, for what ever reason, are timid about avoiding that crisis.

“Escape” on a Friday in summer means the beach, the mountains, a cabin in the woods.

The story isn’t about catastrophes. Don’t project.

@Jeruba, didn’t mean to offend. My whole comment was written with tongue at least loosely in cheek—t’was really meant to be less of a reply and more a mini-screed to express my personal anxieties about a president I loathe and fear. When will I learn that my particular humor doesn’t work well in print. Sorry.

I don’t think so.

I found some of the cities interesting. NYC stuck out to me.

Do the powers that be know something we don’t? Not gonna sweat it myself, if shit goes down it goes down. Everyday life can cause us worries enough. Think about this. Man has been on this planet in our present form, how many hundreds of thousands of years? And at least a few people here and there, (our ancestors) have survived how many planet wide catastrophes and near extinctions? Some people are bound to survive and muddle through, regardless of how bad things get. Otherwise, neither you, nor I, nor anyone on this board would be around today.

Sorry for the additional comment. It doesn’t show the Keys, and that route is used more often then I like to think about for hurricanes. Not fun for the people living down there. Also, the New Madrid fault line has some emergency forethought that has been put into it, and that’s not acknowledged on the map. Or, are you only thinking man made catastrophe?

Good point. I think most of us realize that in the event of a nation wide catastrophe the horrors that will befall our population centers cannot be exaggerated. Perhaps it will be looked on as “the heartland’s revenge.”

@JLeslie

It’s a study of commute times from cities, using the same data you see when you get traffic reports on the radio or Google maps or wherever.

There is no catastrophe implied or spelled out. It’s just a big traffic report.

The estimates for California are way off. Today it took me 50 minutes to get 10 miles from Berkeley at 4 p.m.

Wow. It takes me 15 minutes to get any where in town…if I’m walking.

@Call_Me_Jay Yes, exactly my point. Catastrophe maps would likely show the route out of the keys.

@zenvelo You expect an average of massive amounts of data collected over a long period to precisely match your drive yesterday?

Statistics describe a collection of data, they don’t predict the next outcome.

I know you know that.

Well, yeah. If I get stopped by a train a 5 minute drive can take 30.

@Call_Me_Jay Friday was “a perfect summer Friday afternoon” with no major traffic incidents. But traffic in the Bay Area has gotten horrendous in the last six years, and the rush hour commute starts at 2 p.m. and goes until after seven.

It reminds me of the fiasco when new houses were being built in a previously uninhabited are of our local area. The ads said the drive to downtown was only 15 minutes, and it was true – UNTIL people moved into the new homes. With the addition of hundreds of cars on the road, it became an hour drive, or more.

Well, you guys could be right. My suspicious mind says that the journalist meant to write a sunny-sounding story featuring the “escape” headline to catch people at a below-conscious level of fear, right at a time when the prospect of nuclear conflict has lurched into sharp focus. Fear sells more news than feelgood. But maybe it is simply about pleasant weekends, and I’m just showing my kneejerk skepticism

What does surprise me, though, is how many are cheerfully willing to take things at face value and not question veiled purposes. How do the conspiracymongers stay in business if everything is as it seems? For that matter, how do any advertisers ply their trade if it’s all WYSIWYG?

What surprises me even more (and not just me, apparently, to judge from what I see in many other threads) is the spillover from question-answering to advice-giving. Did I sound like I needed help? I didn’t, actually, but thanks anyway.

@Jeruba Bear in mind that “escape routes from nuclear war” was one of the selling points of the Interstate Highway System (in addition to being available for troop deployment and defense supply movement).

I don’t see how it qualifies as an escape route at all.