324
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
324 points (94.5% liked)
Today I Learned (TIL)
6571 readers
1 users here now
You learn something new every day; what did you learn today?
/c/til is a community for any true knowledge that you would like to share, regardless of topic or of source.
Share your knowledge and experience!
Rules
- Information must be true
- Follow site rules
- No, you don't have to have literally learned the fact today
- Posts must be about something you learned
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
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.