For many, the highlight of The Avengers came when Earth's Mightiest Heroes finally came together to fight off the Chitauri invasion that was set off by Loki. It was explosive, violent, and full of eye-candy; basically everything we want from a blockbuster. But if such a battle ever happened on the real streets of Manhattan, the cleanup and damages would be nearly incalculable. Until now.
The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Kinetic Analysis Corp., one of the leading disaster-cost prediction and assessment firms in the nation, to find out just how much money this superhero brawl would have cost the city. Spearheaded by Chuck Watson and Sara Jupin, the firm used computer models to estimate that the damage suffered by New York would rack up a total of $160 billion!
The team broke it down into $60-$70 billion for the physical damage alone, and $90 billion for the cleanup and other economic factors. To put this into context, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks cost $83 billion, Hurricane Katrina cost $90 billion, and the tsunami in Japan last year cost about $122 billion. This battle would have easily been the biggest financial disaster in the country's history, and that's not even counting the loss of the little things like transportation and, ya know, the extreme loss of life.
Maybe New York should start looking into getting Asgardian and alien attack insurance. Might be worth it in the long run.
[via The Hollywood Reporter]
