From Wikipedia
Stampede events that involve humans are extremely rare and are unlikely to be fatal.[5] According to Keith Still, professor of crowd science at Manchester Metropolitan University, “If you look at the analysis, I’ve not seen any instances of the cause of mass fatalities being a stampede. People don’t die because they panic. They panic because they are dying”.[5]
Paul Torrens, a professor at the Center for Geospatial Information Science at the University of Maryland, remarks that “the idea of the hysterical mass is a myth”.[5] Incidents involving crowds are often reported by media as the results of panic.[16][17] However, the scientific literature has explained how panic is a myth which is used to mislead the attention of the public from the real causes of crowd incidents, such as a crowd crush.[18][19][20] […] [M]ost major crowd disasters can be prevented by simple crowd management strategies.[22] Crushes can be prevented by organization and traffic control, such as barriers. […] Such incidents are invariably the product of organisational failures.[4]
FTA: There is risk of a crush when crowd density exceeds about five people per square meter.[a] For a person in a crowd a signal of danger, and a warning to get out of the crowd if possible, is the sensation of being touched on all four sides. A later, more serious, warning is when one feels shock waves travelling through the crowd, due to people at the back pushing forward against people at the front with nowhere to go.
For those wondering, FTA doesn’t mean “Free Trade Agreement” or “Fuck The Asshole”, but “Forgot To Add”.
I think in this instance it might be “from the article”
Lmao, you’re right. I really tried to find the answer myself rather than asking! Ahaha
I’ve felt the latter at a huge, extremely crowded parade and it was the scariest shit I’ve ever felt. Waves is the right word, because it was like being in a wave pool made of people. Fortunately nothing serious happened, but I have never noped the fuck out of anywhere that fast as soon as we were able to.
Unfortunately at that point if you try to move you can risk a crowd collapse which can be just as deadly. So you should be real careful about knocking people off their balance if you try to move around.
People don’t die because they panic. They panic because they are dying.
Por que no los dos? Crowd crush incidents don’t require panic (see: 2015 Mina “stampede”), but it’s hard to imagine that e.g. the Iroquois Theater Fire wasn’t significantly worsened by the (justifiable) panic of the crowd.
Of course the primary reason in both cases is related to the spaces that the crowds were inhabiting… But the effect of panic pretty clearly multiplies the effect IMO.
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.
Your headline is not saying the same thing the article is saying.
“Describe online news media with one sentence”
Perhaps I should have included this quote from tne article too?
most major crowd disasters can be prevented by simple crowd management strategies.[22] Crushes can be prevented by organization and traffic control, such as barriers.
No, that isn’t the issue. It’s the construction “myths invoked by organisers in order to shift responsibility” which is the editorialization. You wrote it like you discovered this great gotcha or something, but the article uses much more clinical language. Basically rewriting to rage-bait.
Anyway, I’ll be over here meow
Could you suggest a better wording that fits into the word limit? I had great trouble fiting the gist of the point within the character limit (I’ve only got two characters left). And had to remove a “might” and “usually” to be able to fit it all in.
I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything really. Just trying to share something I learnt on wikipedia and help lemmy feel more full. But I’m aware I can never make everyone happy.
TIL: Most “human stampedes” are better categorized as “crowd crushes”. Root cause analysis of these events typically points to organizational failure rather than panic.
Ah okay this is more an error on my quoting the article as opposed to the title. I tried to write my title in relation to the entire wikipedia article but I see I overquoted from the stampede section which makes it seem like it’s only talking about stampedes and not crowd events in general.
One quote from the article that lets me paraphrase in more certain terms than what you provided is in the leading paragraphs “Such incidents are invariably the product of organizational failures, and most major crowd disasters could have been prevented by simple crowd management strategies.[4]”
Okay I worked on my post. I believe everything in the title is backed up by what’s written in the article. I need sleep now, goodnight.
Extra points for taking constructive criticism so well :)
