What would happen if "The Big One" hit New York City today? It wouldn't be pretty

Click through to see how the two storms — Sandy and the Norfolk-Long Island — differ and what could happen if "the big one" were to hit the area these days.

Sandy was a unique storm because, as it followed the coastline it turned left toward land, which battered the New Jersey coast and southern New York.

However, the Norfolk Long-Island Hurricane ran parallel to the coast the whole time, picking up speed until it hit New Haven, Conn. The storm's center eventually passed through Middleton, Conn. and Stockbridge, Mass, according to the report.

One thing that most meteorologists agree on is that Sandy, though a unique storm in the way it merged with another storm giving it immense girth that covered nearly the entire Eastern United States, was a relatively weak storm. 

When it hit New Jersey, Sandy's sustained wind speeds topped out at only 80 mph.

Comparatively, the Norfolk-Long Island Hurricane had hurricane-force winds that extended well into Maine, with speeds topping 150 mph in some areas, according to the report.

The damage from a Norfolk-Long Island sized hurricane today would decimate most of Long Island's properties, Swiss Re said.

During Superstorm Sandy, it was the storm surge that did most of the damage in New York City and New Jersey, submerging almost the entire Rockaway peninsula, the lower portion of Brooklyn and the southern tip of Manhattan. It was, and remains, the largest recorded storm surge in American history.

The previous record holder? The Norfolk-Long Island Hurricane, of course, which surged as high as 11 to 13 feet in southern Manhattan, according to the report.

In 1812, the Northeast region of the United States still had the most insured assets, according to Swiss Re's market portfolio.

However, given that the combined populations of Washington D.C. and New York City at the time was only 136,000 people, total property damage from the storm was not nearly as devastating as it could be today. As of 2014, the region has more than $19 trillion in total insured value.

Still, the ground up losses from Hurricane Sandy were significantly smaller than the losses from the Norfolk-Long Island Hurricane, with $15 billion versus $38 billion in losses, respectively.

It's not a question of if, it's a question of when, says Linkin.

Simulated models of the 1812 hurricane were used to estimate what exactly would happen if a similar hurricane hit today.

The result: it ain't pretty, and it certainly won't be cheap.

On average, the storm surge of the simulated hurricanes ranged from 11 feet in the Battery to almost 26 feet in Atlantic City. Storm surges in the models averaged $69 billion in ground up losses, almost $4 billion more than the total cost of Sandy.

Wind damages would result in $38 billion in damages, making this hypothetical hurricane cost over $107 billion, making it the most costly hurricane in world history.

Despite New York and New Jersey's efforts to safeguard the coast, there are still very few resources that have been put in place to insure that future damages won't reach that figure. Currently, the safeguard has been to rely on government resources and FEMA support, which results in wasted time and money, says Linkin.

"Governments have to embrace their own financial resiliency," Linkin tells PC360. "It doesn't mean waiting to bail you out. It took congress four months! Relying on the federal governmentt as a backstop is not resilient. Obviously it's fortifying, but it's also making sure you have money to fall back on."

Linkin says that partnering with insurance companies, which have international expertise in risk management and dealing with catastrophic storm events, can only help in making sure that losses aren't unmanageable if "the big one" were to hit.