History Main / CitywideEvacuation

* ''Film/SaveYourselves'': Through some voicemails and texts, Su and Jack eventually learn that the pouffes' invasion has forced a mass evacuation of New York City.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Frostpunk}}'', in "The Fall of Winterhome" scenario, the final stretch of the scenario involves evacuating the citizens from Winterhome due to a terminally failing generator. For this, you need to pour in a ton of resources to fix up the nearby abandoned [[BaseOnWheels Dreadnaught]], stock it up with food supplies, and transport people to it while avoiding overcrowding before the generator shuts down for good.

* In the [[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E48TheReturn Season 1 finale]] of ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'', upon the arrival of Peridot, Jasper, and Lapis on their hand-shaped spaceship, with the Crystal Gems fighting it to no avail, Steven calls a "political favor" to Mayor Dewey to evacuate everyone in Beach City. Mayor Dewey, facing gratitude during [[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E47PoliticalPower the previous episode]], uses his campaign vehicle to tell the citizens to evacuate to the hills.

* In the English dub of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', after Vegeta and Nappa destroy a city, the translators try to reassure viewers/appease censors by having Vegeta say, "This city may have been evacuated, but I think they got the message." Despite the fact that civilians had been shown in previous scenes.

!!Examples

[[folder:Anime And Manga]]

* In the English dub of ''Anime/DragonBallZ'', after Vegeta and Nappa destroy a city, the translators try to reassure viewers/appease censors by having Vegeta say, "This city may have been evacuated, but I think they got the message." Despite the fact that civilians had been shown in previous scenes.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

* ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'' has the inhabitants of Sugar Rush conduct a mass evacuation of their game when the cy-bugs from Hero's Duty begin to overrun their world.
* In ''WesternAnimation/FrozenII'' after seeing an intense wind rip through Arendelle followed by all the fires going out and all the water disappearing, Elsa realizes that [[FourElementEnsemble Earth]] is next and orders the entire city to evacuate before the earthquake hits.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* An early ''ComicStrip/{{Doonesbury}}'' strip had TheSmartGuy Bernie set up a simulated nuclear war for the Walden students. Playing the Secretary of the Interior, B.D. determines that he hasn't enough National Guardsmen to evacuate both Chicago and Detroit. Bernie urges him to decide quickly, as Soviet missiles are crossing the Bering Strait. With a shrug, B.D. declares, "I'll bag Detroit. It's a ghost town anyway," and focuses his resources on clearing out Chicago.
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* In ''Literature/TheStand'', many of the residents of Boulder, Colorado evacuate over fears of an attack in the area. There are still some bodies to bury, but far less than expected. It may have been connected to Boulder being the Free Zone headquarters in the aftermath, given the supernatural undertones of the story.

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* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Megamind}}'', the titular Megamind disguises himself to train Hal the cameraman, who accidentally ingested Megamind's SuperSerum to be Titan, his new superhero foe to replace the recently deceased [[SupermanSubstitute Metroman]]. When Megamind reveals himself to have been training Hal to be a superhero simply because he was bored of not having an ArchEnemy to fight, [[ThatManIsDead Hal decides that as Titan]] he would use his powers to show everyone he's done being pushed around by everyone, and after Megamind narrowly escapes Titan's murderous wrath, [[BewareTheSuperman Titan starts knocking down buildings in a fit of rage]], and the authorities are seen guiding large crowds of refugees out of the city.

* ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'': Lando issued an evacuation to the people of Cloud City before the Empire could send in more troops so that he, Leia, Chewie, and the droids can easily escape from the city, too.

** ''Film/ShinGodzilla'': When Godzilla comes on land a second time, people start being evacuated from the Tokyo wards. Notably, a few straggling civillians unintentionally cause an attack to be delayed at the last second.
* ''Film/IndependenceDay'': They're not mandatory evacuations, but the President tells the citizens of the US that if they feel compelled to leave a city they should do so immediately and in an orderly fashion. The citizens get the "immediately" part.

* ''Film/TheWarOfTheWorlds1953''. When the Martian war machines approach the city of Los Angeles, the population is evacuated to the nearby San Gabriel hills.
* ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow'': UpToEleven as the climatologist, trying to impress on the government the scale of the ongoing catastrophe, produces a SpreadingDisasterMapGraphic, draws a line through the middle of the United States, and says "Evacuate everyone south of this line." The President reluctantly agrees and in later scenes crowds of people are seen crossing the Rio Grande into Mexico.

* ''[[Literature/DarkShores Dark Skies]]'': When Mudamora is invaded by the armies of enemy Derin, its capital Mudaire becomes a haven for WarRefugees from the surrounding countryside. But then its wells become contaminated and the enemy is approaching, so princess Malahi orders a citywide evacuation. The problem is, the only way to evacuate is by ship and there are very few ships for such a huge number of people.

* Quite a few ''Series/{{Sliders}}'' episodes in the first two seasons had the main cast arrive either in the middle of a mass evacuation of San Francisco (or it's AlternateTimeline equivalent) or ''after'' the evacuation has happened but before the disaster strikes.

* ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheUnwoundFuture'' by the time the finale happens the entire "future London" is evacuated.

* ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'' starts off with one of these, faced with an imminent attack by Scarecrow the citizens of Gotham quickly abandon the city, the only remaining inhabitants either criminals, hostages, the GCPD and members of the Bat family.

* Throughout her history, UsefulNotes/{{London}} is no stranger to this trope concerning crises:

* New York City, as a general rule, and Manhattan in particular, are notoriously difficult to evacuate. On September 11th, an estimated 1,000,000 people were evacuated from lower Manhattan by boat alone (considered to be the largest maritime evacuation in world history at 500,000 - 1,000,000 people in the first 8 hours. Compared to the former record holder, the Dunkirk evacuation, which had just below 340,000 in a total of 9 days.). Many more people evacuated by other means, mostly by walking over bridges.

[[folder:Fanworks]]

* In Season 1 of ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', the Glades needs to be evacuated because of Malcolm Merlyn's earthquake machine. However, this is the largest, most densely populated section of the city where high poverty means many residents have no means of evacuating other than traveling by foot. Several hundred people die as a result.

There is a city full of innocents. Men, women, children; civilians. But danger is coming, and because those civilians live in the city each and every one of them is grave danger. Maybe it's a BigBad hoping to [[RapePillageAndBurn sack]] or [[KillEmAll massacre]] the city, maybe it's an impending natural disaster. Either way, it's too late to prevent what's coming and if people stay there they will die.

So they evacuate. They leave the city behind in order to escape with their lives. The local military or government might be organizing the evacuation (which would count as a PetTheDog moment for them as it shows them extending effort to save civilian lives), or they might be trying to prevent it (either because they [[UnsafeHaven want to prove they can defend their cities]] or because they are what the civilians are fleeing ''from''), or they might just be leaving civilians to their to their fate. Either way, people will still be leaving in a Mass-Exodus.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Dinosaur}}'' has a huge falling meteor strike the island home of Aladar and the lemurs. They narrowly survive the impact blast wave, and swim the channel to the mainland.

* In ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'', King T'Challa orders that the capital city of Wakanda be evacuated so that its citizens will be spared from the damage causes by Thanos's forces.

* ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'': Lando issued an evacuation to the people of Cloud City before the Empire could send in more troops so that he, Leia, Chewie and the droids can easily escape from the city, too.

* ''[[Literature/DarkShores Dark Skies]]'': When Mudamora is invaded by the armies of enemy Derin, its capital Mudaire becomes a haven for WarRefugees from the surrounding countryside. But then its wells become contaminated and the enemy is approaching, so princess Malahi orders citywide evacuation. The problem is, the only way to evacuate is by ship and there are very few ships for such a huge number of people.

* ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}'' naturally features the real life example below.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Frostpunk}}'', in "The Fall of Winterhome" scenario, the final stretch of the scenario involves evacuating the citizens from Winterhome due to a terminally failing generator. For this, you need pour in a ton of resources to fix up the nearby abandoned [[BaseOnWheels Dreadnaught]], stock it up with food supplies, and transport people to it while avoiding overcrowding before the generator shuts down for good.

* In ''VideoGame/MegaMan8BitDeathmatch'', at the climax of the ''VideoGame/MegaManV'' chapter, [[spoiler:the remains of the Evil Robot from ''VideoGame/MegaMan8'' suddenly appears, possesses Sunstar and subsequently assimilates the Wily Star]]. Upon returning to Earth, Dr. Wily proposes a plan to [[spoiler:build a new and improved [[VideoGame/MegaMan3 Gamma]] in collaboration with Dr. Light and Dr. Cossack in order to fight back against the new threat]], and in subsequent playable segment, you witness [[VideoGame/MegaManAndBass King]] coordinating an evacuation with his robots in preparation for the upcoming showdown, complete with a monitor showing most of the Robot Masters of ''Mega Man & Bass'' doing crowd control.

** Back when the the city was called Londinium, the Roman city, as noted by the page quote above, was evacuated during Boudica's Rebellion to prevent its people from suffering the same fate as those in [[DoomedHometown Camulodunum]] (now Colchester).

* New York City, as a general rule, and Manhattan in particular, are notoriously difficult to evacuate. On September 11th, an estimate 1,000,000 people were evacuated from lower Manhattan by boat alone (considered to be the largest maritime evacuation in world history at 500,000 - 1,000,000 people in the first 8 hours. Compared to the former record holder, the Dunkirk evacuation, which had just below 340,000 in a total of 9 day.). Many more people evacuated by other means, mostly by walking over bridges.
* One of the major criticisms leveled at FEMA post-Hurricane Katrina was its failure to evacuate New Orleans; two notable examples include turning down an offer from Amtrak to evacuate several hundred people using trains it was moving out of the city (the trains left the city empty), and not using school buses to evacuate people (with pictures of flooded parking lots full of school buses becoming one of the iconic images of Hurricane Katrina). As a result, emergency shelters in the city quickly became overwhelmed due to the unexpectedly high numbers of people sheltering in them, and doing so for a much longer time than expected.

[[folder: Comic Books]]

[[folder:Film -- Animated]]

[[folder:Film -- Live Action]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* ''VideoGame/StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm'': As Kerrigan prepares to attack Korhal, the best-defended CityPlanet in Dominion space, Valerian asks a reprieve until he can evacuate the civilians. Kerrigan tries to scare him off, but when he holds fast, showing himself a more compassionate man than his father, she relents.

* ''VideoGame/ColossatronMassiveWorldThreat'': General Mustache mentions that all citizens are evacuated prior to Colossatron attacking a country. It’s a good thing, too, since this usually tends to end with the country destroyed.

* ''VideoGame/StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm'': As Kerrigan prepares to attack Korhal, the best-defended CityPlanet in Dominion space, Valerian asks a reprieve until he can evacuate the civilians. Kerrigan tries to scare him off, but when he holds fast, showing himself a more compassionate man than his father, she relents.[[/folder]]

'''Grabbed by Alnair'''; '''No Rogue Launching'''
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