Ah New York; the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps. But there's one title that's less a
nickname and more just factual information: The five boroughs. Named that way because New York
can be divided up into five separate chunks or boroughs, each with their own personality,
from the artsy vibes of Brooklyn to the rich cultural history of the Bronx.
And let me tell you, despite them all being part of the exact same city,
the rivalry between them gets intense. For decades, people have argued about which one
is the best. But now there's Tom Clancy's Division Resurgence, which has entered the
chat and squashed the debate. With only one major sea settlement throughout all the five boroughs,
this game sent a statement: In a survival situation one and only one borough would
be the one to come out on top. But is the game right? Is it wrong? As a former New Yorker myself,
I wasn't going to take this answer lying down. And so today I'm going to settle the debate once
and for all. When caught in an end of the world scenario. Which borough in New York
is going to be the best borough in New York? This? This right here? This is going to be some
crucial life saving information. And don't you forgettaboutit!
Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's always prepared for the end of
the world. And that constant paranoia is going to come in handy because today's
episode is sponsored by Ubisoft and their brand new mobile game Division Resurgence.
Now, if that name doesn't immediately sound familiar to you, it probably should.
It's the latest installment in the iconic Tom Clancy series, which, if you've never played,
is fantastic. These games are set in New York City and not just a version of New York City.
This is a completely accurate recreation of the real world; with streets and landmarks
exactly where you'd expect them to be. And then that's when you realize that
Division Resurgence is a mobile game, which is just that much more impressive. It also means
that I can now revisit my old memories of being a starving actor living in the Upper East Side
whenever and wherever I want. Yippee. However, while it might be an accurate recreation, not
everything is right in the Division's New York. An eco terrorist has created an incredibly potent
virus known as the green poison, which spreads through banknotes. As money switches hands the
viral infection grows. Fortunately, not all hope is lost. To stop the spread,
the government shuts down the city, nothing coming in, and more importantly,
nothing coming out. Resurgence mostly takes place a few weeks after the start of the outbreak,
when the good of humanity is still prevailing. While some people naturally turn to crime and
violence. One group bands together to form the Spring Blossom Settlement,
located in Manhattan down near Chinatown. Here you can rest, gather supplies and take
on missions to help your fellow citizens as a one man operation. But as someone who spent a good
chunk of his early adult life living in New York, I felt old borough rivalries beginning to rise up.
While this in-game settlement feels like a utopia inside of a city of chaos. Of all the boroughs,
did they really make the best call to plop it right here? smack dab in the middle of Manhattan?
Sure, it's the place that everyone knows, but in a survival situation? Yeah, I don't think
that's going to be a big point in its favor. Plus, there are just lots of hidden gems around
the city of New York, which I'm sure most New York locals down in the comments are going to tell you.
I really like the cookies from Levain Bakery, the soup dumplings from Joe’s
Shanghai and the Broadway show Grey House. But it's a valid question. If New York suddenly
shut down, isolating itself from the rest of the world, which borough would be the best borough
for setting up your own personal safety bunker? You know what the song goes. They say that you
won't last too long on Broadway. But, you know, maybe somewhere else could be a bit
more sustainable. And now it's time to figure out where that is. In case you skipped out on
third grade geography, New York is split up into five boroughs: Manhattan, this sliver
right here that most tourists think is just the entirety of New York, the Bronx, up in the north,
known as the birthplace of hip hop and home to the Yankees baseball team, Brooklyn, famous
for its hipsters and not having a 99 precinct, Queens to the east, the largest of the boroughs,
and Staten Island to the south, which… is an island… and ah, has a ferry I guess. Honestly,
I never spent all that much time in Staten Island. Nevertheless, which of these is going to be
our best home for survival? Let's find out. In the first side mission to the game we're
asked to help members of the spring blossom settlements retrieve their missing supplies.
And while the types of supplies can vary from mission to mission. I think we can all agree
on which one is going to be priority number one when it comes to IRL action; food. Fortunately,
when it comes to food supplies, we have ourselves a couple of different options.
One obvious choice would be to raid local grocery stores and restaurants. Since 2017, the City
of New York mayor's office issues a report on nightlife within the city, listing 25,800 total
nightlife establishments, 19,400 of which are restaurants. Of the five boroughs Manhattan leads
the way by far with 8,574 restaurants, which is almost twice Brooklyn's 4,400, and more than ten
times Staten Island's 750. That means that right after things go south like we see it in the game,
Manhattan is going to be teeming with food, which is good, but that food isn't going to
last forever, which is bad. Eventually that food's going to spoil, and then what? The
gray streets and tall buildings of Manhattan aren't exactly bursting with huntable wildlife,
unless you're really into pigeon meat I suppose. Gathering really isn't going to be a strong option
here either. Sure, you might be able to find a few berry bushes or a privately owned apple
tree here or there. But there simply isn't enough wild flora to help support the estimated 4 billion
pounds of fruits and veggies that New Yorkers are consuming in an average year. Nope. Like humans
for thousands of years since the Neolithic revolution, you're going to need to farm.
Funny thing about farming though: Kinda need dirt to grow anything. And New York City ain't
exactly known for its verdant forests. That said, one of the characters that we meet in
Division Resurgence gives us a clue on how they plan to solve the problem. Kevin Zeng informs
us of their rooftop stockpile and greenhouses that have been set up to grow their own food.
Setting one of these up from scratch can be a lot of effort. However, there is a New York bill
currently circulating that aims to turn all public school rooftops into gardens. So for survival
purposes, your best bet is going to be finding a borough with the most public schools so you can
claim all that land for yourself. Staten Island comes in at the low end with 84 public schools.
The Bronx and Queens, meanwhile, are very close to each other, with 365 and 382 respectively.
Brooklyn has a respectable 575 public schools. But in general, nothing comes close to Manhattan again
with a massive 879 public schools. But having the most available rooftop land is only the
start of a sustainable solution here. There's still one key problem that we have to account
for when it comes to food, and that’s size. It takes a whole lot of land to keep a single
person fed for the entirety of a year. Although estimates on this can vary greatly, the general
consensus is that it takes somewhere around half an acre of land to grow enough crops to sustain
a single person for a single year. That's the size of four and a half NBA basketball courts.
So in addition to all those school roofs, we might need to find some additional land. Where else do
we have available to farm these crops? Well, I'm sure that the first thing that jumped to
most of your minds is Central Park, the huge park that’s smack dab in the middle of Manhattan. And
while Central Park is certainly large, larger in area than two whole countries; Vatican City and
Monaco, it is not the largest park in New York. Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx is New York's
largest park at three times the size the Central Park, Greenbelt in Staten Island,
Van Cortland in the Bronx and Flushing Meadows in Queens are also all larger
than Central Park. The point here being that if you want to convert parks to farms, there are
other and better answers than just the obvious. Staten Island, for instance, actually comes out
on top with 7339 acres of park space, including that massive Greenbelt Park. But this one also
has itself a problem. You see a large part of Staten Island's parkland is built on top
of a massive garbage pile. After the people of New York decided that they no longer wanted to look at
massive trash towers, they decided to do the most responsible thing and just bury it all in dirt.
Yeah, really. That is what they actually did. They buried these massive garbage dumps with soil,
then got environmental engineers in to plant grasses and trees to reinforce the soil. Right
now, it's actually doing pretty darn well. But have you attempted to farm all of that
land you would quickly plow out the new soil and root systems. And you would just
be left with a trash layer in no time. But then what about the Bronx? I've seen
plenty of articles recently claiming that the Bronx is the greenest borough in NYC,
with 24% of the total land designated as Parkland. Queens is also representing itself
well with 7,180 acres of land dedicated to parks. But beyond just food, we also probably got to
talk about which borough is going to help you defend yourself the most effectively. While I
don't condone violence in any sort of way here. If you look at what happens in the world of Division
Resurgence, I think it's pretty darn clear that firearms are going to be a necessity in defending
yourself and your rooftop farmland. Of the five boroughs, it's Staten Island that actually has the
highest gun ownership rate, more than doubling the rate of Queens, the next most strapped borough.
But that's just talking about gun ownership rates, not percentage of total guns owned.
And if you take that into account, suddenly these two boroughs swap position. In fact, Staten Island
drops way down on the leaderboard with only 15% of all legally owned firearms in New York. while
Queens has closer to 24%. Now, that may or may not be a good thing. Because while it now
means that we know where those firearms are owned. They're exactly that; they are owned. They can be
used against you. If you're looking for excess ammunition to use for yourself, well, that's
another story. In the game multiple boroughs are completely empty because all government
run facilities have fallen into chaos. In other words, there's no police force. And no police
force means a lot of unused weapon repositories just hanging around, all fair game for us to go
in and scoop up some resources. So which borough has itself the most police precincts? In total,
there are 77. Across New York: Staten Island comes in with only 4, 12 in the Bronx, 16 in Queens,
22 in Manhattan, and finally Brooklyn with 23 total. It's kind of weird, despite there only
being 77 precincts the number actually goes up to the 123rd Precinct. Meanwhile, Brooklyn stops
just shy of that 99 greatness, with its last one being the 94th. But perhaps the biggest and most
important point to mention in any situation like this is population; supply versus demand. During a
citywide lockdown, as I'm sure we can all attest to, the demand for bare essentials skyrockets.
And New York is the most populated city in the U.S. The more people there are,
the thinner the resources are going to be stretched and the more you're going to have
to fight for your own survival. New York currently has a population of over 8.4 million people. And
of the five boroughs, one always stands out as being a little bit different than the others.
Staten Island. Staten Island is far less densely populated than the other four boroughs. Currently,
there are around 475,000 people spread over its 60.9 square mile area, which is
dwarfed by literally every other borough. The Bronx and Manhattan are over three times the
size at 1.5 million and 1.7 million people respectively. Queens is charging in with a
massive 2.4 million people, but above them all is Brooklyn, with a massive 2.7 million people.
That said, sorry Brooklyn, this contest is more like golf; you want the lowest score
to win because at the end of the day, this is all about population density,
and we want it to be as low as possible. Fewer people means fewer competition for resources and
fewer hands that are going to get me infected. Staten Island, unsurprisingly, holds the win in
this category, with 8,618 people per square mile. That seems like a lot when you compare it to the
rest of the U.S., which averages a mere 94 people per square mile. Vast difference
there. But remember, we're talking about New York here. It's only getting worse
from this point. Queens is relatively huge compared to all the other boroughs,
It has itself 109 square miles of land, giving it second place with 22,000 people per square mile.
The Bronx has a reasonable, if you can call any of these numbers a reasonable, 35,000 people in each
of its 42 square miles. And this is where Brooklyn ultimately loses out on its most populated title.
Because, while yes, it has 2.6 million people. It's spread out over a relatively large area of
71 square miles, certainly less spacious than Queens, but a lot more than both the Bronx and
Manhattan combined. In total Brooklyn clocks in at 38,600 people per square mile. And speaking of
that Manhattan number, with only 22.8 square miles to its name, that 1.6 million people suddenly
looks a lot bigger, nearly doubling Brooklyn's population density with 75,000 people per square
mile. That is a lot of humanity in not a lot of space and with very limited resources. If
that's not a recipe for disaster during the post-apocalypse I don't know what is. And so
by totaling up the scores, it becomes very clear that honestly, none of these options
are completely ideal. While places like Staten Island might have themselves more green space
than other boroughs and a smaller population, which means less fighting for resources. The
land isn't exactly fertile. And worse, you would have nothing to defend yourself with.
Manhattan will be an okay place in the short term. There's plenty of food and a decent
supply of weaponry. That said, you're also struggling against massive overpopulation as
well as not enough land to sustain everyone's food needs. In the end, you want to end up in
one of the boroughs with more green space, but hopefully one that can defend itself.
The winner of this race isn't going to be the best in all categories,
but a borough that's pretty strong across all categories. And that winner is. Drum roll, please.
Queens. With its small population density, high amounts of parkland, and decent supply of police
armories and food. This is the one that's going to give you a fighting chance of staying alive.
And while it's solid in all the other categories, there's one final qualifier that sets Queens
completely apart from the rest of the pack: water. If we're going to survive, we're going to need a
constant supply of fresh, clean water. Except that's where things get tricky because all of
New York's water supply is controlled by two main suppliers: the Catskill/Delaware Water
Supply System and the Croton Water Supply System. Both of these systems are located outside of the
five boroughs. While you could siphon a pipe if someone tampers with or pollutes
your supply further up the system, that's going to have some massive repercussions. We even see
this in the fifth mission of the game where the faction known as the cleaners have taken over a
water distribution facility which begins polluting the supply to those downstream.
If we're going to survive, we're going to need our own supply, something that all the other
boroughs aren't going to be able to mess with. And the only borough that has that capability:
Queens. The groundwater supply in southeastern Queens used to provide a small portion of the
borough with fresh water until 2007. Now, it hasn't operated since then, but the
infrastructure is there and if you can get that supply switched on again, you are in the money.
You have yourself water to drink. You can sell it to other survivors for supplies. You
have water for your crops too. And at the very least, it certainly beats taking a swig out of
the Hudson River. So there you have it, Queens, definitively the best New York borough. Within a
very specific set of hypothetical parameters. But hey! Thanks once again to Ubisoft for
sponsoring today's video. It's been fun to dive back into the city that I used to wander
around with Stephanie as I was starting this whole YouTube thing. And now I get to visit it whenever
I want thanks to Tom Clancy's Division Resurgence. I also love the RPG-like system that they put into
the game. Seriously, these guys know me so well. At this point. You get to pick your
specialization, which is essentially your class, but that isn't all. You then can customize
your weapons and gear to really make your specialization unique to you and your playstyle.
The story is also completely unique. This isn't a port. It's not a retelling of a previous game. It
is a standalone and canon story with the first three missions literally putting you into the
hearts of the riots as the green poison breaks out across New York and the city is put into lockdown.
It is a fascinating part of the franchise's story that we've never been able to see before. And now
you can literally experience it whenever you want, wherever you want, because it's on your phone.
So if you want to get in on the action and show everyone that knowledge really is power in a world
of chaos, head on down to the description and click the link to sign up for the open beta today.
And in the meantime, remember, it's all just a theory. A GAME THEORY! Thanks for watching.