Past experiences such as the Bhopal incident in India (1985) and the Chernobyl reactor accident in the USSR (April 1986) stress the significance of timely evacuations as a protective measure against accidental releases of radioactivity or toxic material to the atmosphere. While timely evacuation has the potential to save many lives, there is a finite risk associated with the act of evacuation itself. From a detailed questionnaire, data were obtained on 320 past evacuation events that took place in the United States from 1972 to 1985 to quantify risks associated with evacuations. Subsequently, these risks are used to assess the societal impact associated with evacuations of sectors of different radii surrounding a nuclear power plant. It is found that risks associated with evacuation of a 16-km radius to be ∼100 times greater than the risks associated with a 3.2-km radius evacuation. Also, an individual’s fatality risk due to evacuation is found to be equal to the risk attributed to a radiation dose between 110 and 5800 mrem (0.0011 and 0.058 Gy), depending on the dose response model used to assess the radiation risk for a 320-km round-trip evacuation. This concept can be applied to nonnuclear incidents such as rail accidents and other industrial or natural incidents.