[dharmab]

Cixin Liu's The Dark Forest explores this idea, mostly to point out that there is no acceptable method to choose who gets evacuated and who stays behind. The author argues through his characters that any attempt at evacuation would create immediate and violent conflict between humans.

[blacksmith_tb]

See also Seveneves[1], where a similar evacuation does indeed have some downsides. It's also a theme in one of my favorite Ted Chiang stories, "Mono no Aware"[2].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves

2: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/mono-no-aware/

[mcrider]

Seveneves and the Dark Forest series are literally the last two (sets of) books I read and they are so wonderful. The last book in the Dark Forest series in particular has some of the most mind-blowing concepts I've encountered in SciFi.

[netcraft]

I havent read Dark Forest but I also enjoyed Seveneves. If you want more mind blowing sci-fi I can't recommend _Diaspora_ by Greg Egan enough.

[mcrider]

Looks great -- putting it on the list!

[thaumasiotes]

Violent conflict hasn't stopped things from happening in the past; it seems overwhelmingly unlikely to stop an evacuation either.