Big rock coming. Would you leave?

I imagine that every big metro has an evac. plan for all sorts of stuff.
However, there are so many variables to consider...how many days or hours before impact? How many high valued assets in the area...for example Hollywood (actors etc.) silicon valley (important smart tech people) New York (wall street, bankers...oh we could only be that lucky)

anyway...If I were the gov. from the moment of discovery:
1) I would get those high valued people and maybe esoteric assets like Art for an example...drop a chopper in at a musuem and load it up with stuff
2) I would send in every train I could and move all the mass transit equipment into the area.
3) I would address the area via radio, tv, whatever and tell people to get on the trains, buses, planes, etc... (of course finding some non scary way of telling the masses about the "concern"
4) I would invite anyone that wants to loot the area to feel free to stay

The big problem is going to be what to do with the people after the area is wiped out...relocation issues, food, and all that.....ahhhh, maybe I would send them all to Hatii to help rebuild or relocate and maybe annex it as the 51st State....while I'm at it...I will annex Mexico too and fix our economy and tell the people it was necessary as a result of this horrible disaster.....kind of like 9/11 making the friggin Patriot Act "necessary"

shoot...gotta go to work so I rushed this quite a bit.

As someone from Texas who didn't evacuate I can tell you that people totally lived to regret it. They just didn't live to describe their regret in detail. I didn't evacuate because the area I was in provided great protection from the wind and possible flooding, and mostly because I had certain family who wouldn't leave. It was a calculated decision. Others didn't leave out of stubborness. Most didn't leave because they couldn't. Most of those who claim "they ain't runnin" really just couldn't leave and its say your just too damn ornery and stubborn to head north or admit that you might die the next day because you just couldn't afford to leave and had no one to take you with them. The cost of gas, food and maybe a hotel if you are lucky is just too much for some fixed income families.

I think a lot of that changes when "danger" becomes "certain death".

A lot of the success with the big evacuation was that while we were worried, we were not that worried. "Big hurricanes come and go and we have always been fine...blah blah blah" Thats the sort of stuff you hear all day long while everyone is buying all the food in the supermarkets. Generally everyone figured they were going to be fine and so everyone acted like they had common sense. If the threat of certain death were to arrise the gas stations would run out of gas within hours and the roads would be hoplessly bogged down.

Unless I somehow got the jump on everyone else I doubt that I could make it anywhere in 48 hours if everyone else truly thought they were going to die.

The last time I was warned to evacuate an area and didn't I got to know a lady by the name of katrina quite well.

SO There'd be no doubt if they said get lost, I sure would....