this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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This is talking about the cause I think. Panic can worsen the situation, but it almost never is the cause. And the panic is nearly universally justified.
The most recent US based example might be Astroworld. And there 10 people died right in front of the concert stage while the thing kept going on. Entire groups of people yelled “stop the show” and climbed up trees and fences to make space. Someone even made it up the TV operator tower and was pleading the operator to notify the authorities people were dying but was completely ignored.
I generally agree with the idea that "stampede" is usually the wrong concept to describe these events, and probably the wrong approach to understanding them. Even in the Iroquois Theater case, I think if you eliminated the panic component, the death toll would have been significantly lower (maybe zero), but it still wasn't really the same dynamics as a stampede.