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from the every-man-before-he-die-should-strive-to-learn-what-he-is-running-to-and-from-and-why dept.
Many media outlets referred to what happened as a "mass panic" or a "stampede." But such terms are not appropriate to the situation, according to John Drury, a social psychologist at the University of Sussex.
"People follow others when they perceive these others as relevant, so it is not mindless," Drury says. "The problems come when the others don't take the danger seriously enough. People more often die in emergencies through not evacuating quickly rather than through haste."
Stampeding is a primitive, instinctive behavior of herd animals, and panic implies a rashness or irrationality in response to a real or perceived danger, Drury writes on his academic blog. But crowds shouldn't be compared to unintentional, mindless mobs. Instead Drury refers to these events as progressive crowd collapses.
Shared identity in the crowd (eg. "Cubs fans"), exit design, crowd traffic control, and sight lines are all factors in stampedes. The researchers are modeling different mitigation strategies like precise position monitoring via GPS event bracelets.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Wednesday November 09 2016, @05:02PM
I have to say, I work in schools, so we have regular (scheduled or unscheduled) fire drills and alarms.
It's often a case of more haste, less speed. Sure, I'm sure if the sheer velocity is the primary factor (roof is collapsing in your direction, etc.) then, yes, you want to run.
Otherwise let everyone else run, assess the hazard, while retreating calmly.
You gain perspective, see things others don't, and question the sense of things.
In most fire evacuations, I'm often the first out, even. Not because I run, I deliberately won't with children around, it scares them. But because I don't mess about and go for the exit, the clear route, the way out, and ignore other things.
When I was once in charge of a class of kids and the alarm went off, they were to the door, counted, out the door, counted, through another classroom (which was our exit), counted, out onto the fields, counted. BEFORE THE CLASS WE'D WALKED THROUGH HAD EVEN STOOD UP. Too much faffing and other considerations, but at the same time not enough thought. Get the kids out. Nothing else matters. Why are you collecting things? Why are you not at the door with the kids feeding them towards the exits immediately? Count as you go, because you have perspective if there are all in one direction from you. Check for hazards. Proceed.
In one school I worked, the head liked to demonstrate real reactions. He once got a small child to request to go to the toilet, instructed them to hide in there (they were supervised, so they wouldn't be in danger if something DID happen), and then set off the alarm and walked outside with the rest of the staff. NOBODY NOTICED they were missing. Because it wasn't ordinary procedure for the teachers not to know about drills, so they just forgot about the child who'd gone to the toilet. And the registers were even MARKED as that child being there in the line.
In another instance, he put up fake flames on a corridor. It baffled EVERYONE. You can't use that exit that you would normally. Now what? Some people even dithered and asked questions and the backtracking caused chaos. For what is a quite likely scenario (a fire on your escape route itself). Now imagine the same teacher that was blocking the route wasn't there to represent a fake fire but because there was a gunman that way. How do you communicate that, move them back, change plans, avoid questions?
Breathe. Calm. Think. You're likely to have MINUTES in a fire before it gets out of control if an alarm is going off. Even if you don't, that pause will present new opportunities that might be better for you. Like playing a game and there's a scare-scenario. Of course you just run from the huge influx of aliens. Right into the trap that the level designer put there. After playing games for a while, your mind goes... "Ah... hold on a sec. I know what to do." before you even start.
I can't tell you how many times, when routing cables and things, I've been in the depths of a school and said "But if you punch through here, isn't that the room we just came from?" and people have no idea. I've routed cables through doorways that people had forgotten about. The same thing happens, no matter how familiar you are with a site. "But, doesn't this door lead outside and you can walk AROUND the site rather than through it?", etc.
The most dangerous thing in a panic, if you imagine things like a plane on fire on the stand, is OTHER PEOPLE and their reactions. You will get trampled, crushed, pushed out of the way, stampeded, ignored, fought, etc. I like to steer clear of them when something happens, or at least bring up the rear calmly rather than fight with them to be first.
I've never been in a serious emergency, but we practice lockdown drills and fire drills all the time and I've been in enough "minor" unscheduled incidents (that we didn't know weren't major ones) to know that I'll consider my own way, as I walk calmly to the exit. That moment of pause might well put sense into my head that wouldn't occur if I was just being jostled out of a cramped exit.