Keeping Large Crowds Safe : The New Yorker - 0 views
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James Goodman on 25 Nov 12"In the literature on crowd disasters, there is a striking incongruity between the way these events are depicted in the press and how they actually occur. In popular accounts, they are almost invariably described as "panics." The crowd is portrayed as a single, unified entity, which acts according to "mob psychology"-a set of primitive instincts (fear, followed by flight) that favor self-preservation over the welfare of others, and cause "stampedes" and "tramplings." But most crowd disasters are caused by "crazes"-people are usually moving toward something they want, rather than away from something they fear, and, if you're caught up in a crush, you're just as likely to die on your feet as under the feet of others, squashed by the pressure of bodies smashing into you. (Investigators collecting evidence in the aftermath of crowd disasters have found steel guardrails capable of withstanding a thousand pounds of pressure bent by crowd force.) In disasters not involving fire, panic is rarely the cause of fatalities, and even when fire is involved, such as in the 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire, in Southgate, Kentucky, research has shown that people continue to help one another, even at the cost of their own lives."