Long Island Escape Artist
Long Island Escape Artist
The Deep End #13
Ah, Long Island, New York. Home of the only two New York City boroughs that matter. It’s got everything: sandy beaches, wine trails, horrifically overpriced homes, Roosevelt Field Mall, and areas so rich you may be shot on sight for trespassing if you aren’t a resident.
Yes indeed, it sure is something.
Each corner of Long Island gives you something different. There are homes nestled in the woods with scenic trails to rocky beaches lining the North Shore, while the South Shore has way too many white fences and strip malls. The city encompasses the western front, and multi-million-dollar homes make up the exclusive Hamptons area on the eastern tip.
The north and south sides are split by the Long Island Expressway. There’s also the Northern and Southern State, the Grand Central, the Belt, and the Cross Island parkways. Dare to embark on any one of these highways between the hours of 5am and 8pm and you’ll be guaranteed to find yourself stuck in a traffic logjam.
Most residents don’t ever feel the need to leave and go somewhere else (except Florida twice a year). Why go anywhere when you have all this at the drop of a hat? I’ll tell you why. You simply can’t go anywhere else—without sacrificing serious daylight sitting in traffic, that is.
On a serious note, though, you really can’t escape. Even if you wanted to. Which brings me to my point.
In order to get to the mainland United States from any point on Long Island you have limited options. There are three options by car and two by ferry. For this exercise we aren’t counting anything that goes through Manhattan—and forget even thinking about Staten Island. (The amount of traffic getting through either Manhattan or Staten Island is so appalling they really are a complete waste of time discussing.)
There’s the Whitestone, Throgs Neck, and RFK bridges for an “expedited” approach to exit, and the Cross-Sound Ferries departing from Port Jefferson and Orient for a more scenic option. In reality the ferries are basically non-options. They have limited space and are really only good for those travelers who like to sightsee (myself included).
That leaves the only real means of exiting the island being the three bridges. Those three bridges are usually stocked to the gills with commuters, which is another reason why Long Islanders don’t typically choose leaving said island.
Did I mention that the island is home to a little over eight million people? Wouldn’t it be funny to imagine if all eight million suckers decided to up and leave at the exact same time? Well, no need to answer that, as I’ve arrived at my much-anticipated point.
If some sort of cataclysmic event were to take place that directly impacted Long Island—everyone would die!
There are a few options for what could happen:
• Bomb strike.
• Shutdown of the power grid.
• Tsunami.
• Zombie apocalypse.
Think about it. If you were notified of a bomb strike happening, how do you think your chances are? There’s way too many people living here for there to even be a remote chance of escape.
Even if you lived in Whitestone with direct access to the bridge, try and stop to collect toiletries or your dog’s food bowl before you leave—now there’s a forty-five-minute wait to get on the bridge. All in a two-mile stretch. In other words, you’d be a sitting duck.
Now how do the options sound the further you get from the bridges? Anyone living in Garden City or Long Beach would be toast. Forget the eastern end of the Island. The only hope of escaping from there is having a boat. Sure, there are some regular people with boats, and maybe they’ll make it. Besides them, there’s a bunch of millionaires and billionaires living in the Hamptons and on the shores with their own yachts. But even for them, there’s no chance of making it when their captains are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in Hewlett trying to escape themselves.
Right about now you may be thinking: a bomb isn’t going to get dropped on NYC. You may say to yourself that a zombie apocalypse is ridiculous. And the power grid won’t go down; allowing that to happen would mean losing too much money than the government would ever be willing to.
Sure. But there’s one other option I listed in the aforementioned list.
TSUNAMI.
Yea, yea. Tsunami. Crazy, right? Maybe, but also maybe not.
Ever heard of the Canary Islands? They’re an archipelago out in the Atlantic Ocean. The islands are an autonomous region of Spain, and 62 miles west of Morocco (that’s in Africa, for anyone still reading).
“Wait!” You say, “Africa is, like, really far.”
“That it is,” I would answer.
“So why would we care about what happens there?” You say again.
“Stop interrupting me so I can explain,” I respond angrily.
Allow me to introduce you to the island of La Palma.
It’s the most northwesterly island of the Canary Islands, and home to Cumbre Vieja—an active volcano on the island.
There is a risk, however small, that an eruption of Cumbre Vieja could cause a landslide on La Palma—causing 500 cubic km of the island to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. If this drop would happen all at once, the magnitude of the landslide would cause a mega-tsunami to hit the east coast of the United States.
That would mean that, technically, Long Island is a ticking time bomb.
There would be some time to prepare for this mega-tsunami before it hit here. A few hours or so. But the chances of escape would be slim to none for most folks. You’d have a couple hours to say goodbye to loved ones or stick it to your high school bully one last time before the entirety of the island would become an oceanic all-you-can-eat buffet for sharks to feast on the remains of all our corpses.
Hold on, there’s hope yet!
As scary as it sounds, it’s a stretch. Everything would need to be completely perfect for this mega-tsunami to occur. The portion of La Palma that’s in danger of falling into the ocean after the eruption would need to basically break off in one clean piece and drop in all at once.
So, in other words, it is possible—just really unlikely. But, like I said, Cumbre Vieja is an active volcano. Its last activity was recorded in 2021. That wasn’t that long ago. How much longer till it comes to blows… get it?
Anyway. That’s the deal. If you’re on Long Island, you’re there. Stuck, and stranded with no hope of escape.
If you’re reading this from the comfort of your own bed tucked away somewhere on the island, know that right now, as you read, something could happen. If it does, you’ll have no choice but to tuck yourself in tighter, because there’s really no hope of escape. Now, get out of the house and get to one of the beautiful shopping malls littered across Long Island. Money isn’t going to spend itself! Happy Sunday.