Sikorsky makes a nice line of heavy lift helicopters. When you can lift supplies in by the cargotainer it makes it a bit easier to deal with, establish a number of military runand guarded supply depots/distro centers and you are good to go.
Honestly, I don’t know. Just don’t have enough knowledge of that technology to make a statement about it.
However, that take off distance is assuming normal take off weight, that is, a full airplane. The published take off distance for an airplane usually has certain default assumptions, but there is room for improvement on that figure if you know how to go about it. If you used good short/rough field technique and an airplane empty of everything but a pilot and a reasonable minimum of fuel you might well be able to shave that 700 feet off the take off distance, particularly if you could climb out on a path that didn’t encounter any obstacle higher than a small bush for another half mile or so. If it was mid winter with cold, dense air this would be even more likely. I don’t know for sure, though, not being a Caravan pilot. The advantage of a Caravan is that it was designed to be a small cargo plane and carries a large payload in comparison to its weight and size, and can also be equipped with an underbelly cargo pod for additional capacity. (For a short take off you’d probably leave the pod behind on the ground)
I think you overestimate the food stores of single women, which are more plentiful in NY then single men. But I agree about bodegas, groceries and green markets getting trashed.
The stores would be empty within 48 hours. After that, the riots start. Grocery stores in the US operate (like any other big business) on the “Just in time” principle. If the trucks stop hauling food, the shelves go empty real quick.
IME, there will be some kind of delivery every day, but any individual item will be replenished more like every two-three days (produce) to a week (dry goods with medium turnover) or longer for low-turnover dry goods.
We know what the outcome will be, because this actually happened once before. Recovery time was extremely quick, on the order of about a year.
C-17 needs 3,000 feet to land on dry pavement fully-loaded. Not sure about the lateral space necessary-- might be a tight squeeze, but planes have landed in tighter spots.
Also, pallet drops (think “touch-and-go’s”) require a lot less space, and can be just as effective in a crisis.
I have easily two months worth of food, in the fridge, pantry and a small chest freezer. But if the electricity goes out for six hours or so, I’m down to about three days worth in comfort mode, ten days in survival mode.
Remember, a freezer, especially a chest freezer, doesn’t instantly warm up when the power goes out. You might even be able to safely eat out of your freezer for that that first three days, and then go longer with your pantry foods.
A freezer and a fridge will stay cold for a lot longer than 6 hours. A while back, I lost power for 14 hours. The fridge was no longer properly cold, but still quite a bit colder than room temperature. The freezer was still frozen, but things like ice cubes were starting to melt around the edges.
Regarding water, there’s this huge reservoir right in the middle.
Good point. Whoever seizes the reservoir will rule the island!
There was a sci-fi short story where the protagonist and his friends were spending the day relaxing in an officially anarchic park where everything is permitted except violence, and parkgoers are protected by floating cop-robot units. Someone figures out how to disable the cop-robots (and seal the park exits in the process), and the community dissolves into factions as real anarchy arrives. Several young men immediately seize the park’s only fountain and start controlling who gets to drink.
NY bachelor here. I do not have even one day’s food in my apartment, and I lived for 4 years without a refrigerator (mine broke, and I never saw the point of replacing it). I either eat out or pick up that night’s food on the way home from work.
During the blackout some years back, I let a few friends stay with me who were unable to get out of the city. We bought our food supplies from a corner deli whose inventory was nearly wiped out in a matter of hours by like-minded individuals.