u/specchiettoretro

I am here to answer the question everyone is dying to know the answer to. TL;DR at the bottom.

The official state bird of Louisiana is the brown pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis), so I will be using this species for my calculations. The brown pelican has an average wingspan of around 80 inches, with an average weight of around 7.5 pounds. There actually is very little information on the lifting capacity of a flying pelican, so we'll have to do some guesswork by comparing it to another species.
Source for stats: https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/brown-pelican

In order to create a proper comparison, we want to eliminate unnecessarily variables. One variable that greatly contributes to the lift a bird can produce is the surface area of its wings. Therefore, we will compare the brown pelican to a species with a similar wingspan. The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalis) has an average wingspan of approximately 81", and weighs around 10lb. Males and females vary greatly in size, so I am using the average weight and wingspan of the two.

So, we have determined that brown pelican and bald eagles are roughly similar in size. Per Google, bald eagles can carry around 5-6 pounds, so we'll call it 5.5. However, bald eagles are some of the strongest birds in the world, so it wouldn't make sense to assume a pelican of the same size could carry the same amount. Their muscular and skeletal structure is not built for the same kind of speed and power as that of an eagle. However, we must also consider that they are lighter than an eagle of the same wingspan, meaning they have a lower pull of gravity to overcome. So, considering all this information, and through a very scientific method of pulling numbers out of my ass (something this sub is likely familiar with), I will guess that an average pelican can lift roughly 3.247 pounds.

From here on out, the math is simple: Zion's official weight, per NBA.com, is 284 lb. Divide his weight by 3.247 pounds, and we can conclude that it would take around 88 pelicans (87.46 to be more exact, but we have to round to a whole number of pelicans) to air-lift Zion out of New Orleans in the event of a catastrophic flood.

But wait! This is of course ignoring the weight of the cables used to attach him to said 88 pelicans, which is very critical to our calculations. Ignoring such added weight could mean the difference between a safe rescue and sleeping with the fishes.

Even 1/4" steel rope is much too heavy, weighing 0.116 lb/ft. Instead, we will use 1/4" nylon rope, weighing 0.0167 lb/ft. In order to have enough space for the pelicans to adequately fly, I will estimate that we will need around 40 feet of rope per pelican. That equates to 0.668 pounds per pelican. This takes our new max lifting weight per pelican (lb/pel) to 2.579. Re-doing the calculations, we now need 110.12 pelicans, which rounds up to 111. We should probably add in 5 pounds for a secure harness as well to make sure Zion doesn't fall out, plus 2 pounds of clothing to be safe, bringing our total pelican count to 112.83, or 113.

However, there is one more crucial aspect we must consider: factor of safety (FoS). This is an engineering principle that expresses how much stronger a system is than it needs to be for an intended load. This is because calculations are not always perfect, so we need to account for that error and be positive we are creating something safe. Since we are designing a flying apparatus, the usual FoS for aircraft is 1.5. However, due to the inaccurate nature and guesswork of the calculations, and the valuable nature of the asset as an NBA superstar, we will use a FoS of 2. This brings our final total to 225.66, which means we would need 226 pelicans to evacuate Zion Williamson in the event of a flood.

Thank you all for coming to my TED Talk.

TL;DR: 226 pelicans