very simple

So I went down to Union Square to have dinner tonight (Yama, yay!), and as I was leaving and walking over to sixth avenue to catch the bus back home, there were about eight gazillion police cruisers driving in formation across Union Square North.  Half the time, these things are random practice runs, so I didn’t think too much of it (the last time I saw this many cars in a row was after the steam pipe explosion).  But no, it’s not practice, and it’s not our crumbling infrastructure. 

NEW YORK (AP) – Authorities were taking extra counterterrorism precautions Friday in response to what they said was an unsubstantiated radiological threat to the city.

Officials said they had not changed the city’s terror alert status in response to online chatter mentioning a truck packed with radioactive material. But police deployed extra radiological sensors on street, water and air patrols, and were stopping vehicles at checkpoints in lower Manhattan and around the city.

Niiiiice.  And just the other day, after the subway mess, my boss and I were discussing that we were resigned to the fact that we were goners if something ever happened that required a large-scale citywide rapid evacuation.  He was wondering what would happen if the bridges were taken out, since that would obviously slow evacuation from our island, but I noted that in such a scenario, we’d all have to leave, but not necessarily particularly fast.  I could certainly live for some time on the food in my apartment.  What I was worried about was something…well, something more like this most recent scenario. 

Good thing it’s "unsubstantiated", huh?

But I still wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Tags: current events, new york city