Barbare
Before you get into the details of new york, i want to point some things out. Due to the threat of terrorism of the last decades and new york being considered a prime target, the city has a large amount of quick reaction forces in the vacinity. emergency services also had a major overhaul, and the overall presence of emergency responce units the city can muster, national guard forces from nearby included is drastically more than is the norm for most of the country. In essence, despite having more people to govern than most. The amount of people ready to take up the fight in a situation like this, no matter how inconvenienced by the lack of their usual weapons is much higher than the norm. In addition, places like the bronx aren't ones to go down without a fight either, you can expect areas with higher violent crime rates to be more hardy against outside influences, monsterd included... It wouldnt take long for these folks to arm themselves with molotov cocktails, which are so low tech that they would not be considered a weapon as its essentially a flammable drink or substance with a lit rag being thrown. Unless the gods continuously enforce the no other weapons law since the start of the apocalypse, other than conviscating current weapons, then its likely that these are going to be a popular combat multiplier before the official services in place even consider to adopt them in their approach to the situation. I like the story so far, even if i feel theres a bit of confusion about the exact timeline the main characters past follows, but nothing so important to further focus on it as opposed to the current plot. It can always be further fleshed out as a filler chapter to increase bonds between characters. Im not going to chew the whole thing out regarding new york for you, but just keeping these points in mind should atleast assist coming to a more realistic scenario. The only thing nyc wasnt really prepared for was NBC threats like corona, turning it into a near replica of the division for a while before nyc forgot about it, ignored it and focused on the BLM instead and its people stupidly thought mass congregations were a good idea.... Your story however ia a physical threat. The kind the emergency services are actually best prepared for, tough they mostly kept things like the mumbai stuff in mind with roaming gunners and bombers throughout the city.