Hey there and welcome to BrainStuff.
Welcome, welcome.
I'm Josh Clark, and you're you, and that is
wonderful.
Let's talk about crowd crushes.
Have you ever been standing in a crowd before?
Say you were waiting for Weird Al to come
out from backstage after a show.
And then suddenly he does, and all of a sudden
it seems like all the people around you multiply
exponentially.
And as far as you can see, you're surrounded
by people.
And all of them start to press forward.
And you, against your own will, are propelled
forward.
And you're pushed into the person in front
of you, and you propel them forward.
And you stop and think, "Uh oh!"
Well if you thought that, you were thinking
very clearly.
Because you were in a very dangerous situation:
something called a high density crowd.
A high density crowd is one where there's
6 or more people per square meter.
It can get a lot more packed than that, but
that's the lowest level threshold.
The reason that's the threshold is because,
when you have 6 people per square meter, individuals
in the crowd start to lose their ability to
move on their own accord.
Things get more and more packed, and the crowd
tends to behave a lot like a fluid.
So there's a couple of ways that you can actually
die in a high density crowd.
The first one is called a crowd crush.
When you first start to get to about 6 people
per square meter, the individuals lose their
ability to move around.
The next step is that you lose your ability
to move your arms from your sides.
And as people pack in further and further,
the pressure from all sides keeps your lungs
from inflating and deflating, which means
you lose your ability to breathe.
What's amazing (and horrific) is that people
suffocate in crowds because they're squeezed
so tightly by the people pressing against
them.
That's a crowd crush.
Another way you can die in a crowd is what's
called progressive crowd collapse.
So, say you have a bunch of people crowded
together in a high density crowd.
And one of them falls down.
That creates a hole in this crowd, and the
people who were formerly leaning against this
person who just fell down start to fall down.
And so on and so forth.
A domino effect is created.
People start to pile up and the ones on the
bottom are literally pressed to death by the
humans who have piled up on top them.
So why don't people just get up and go, get
out of the crowd?
Well, the short answer is, they can't.
One mark for humanity is that crowd researchers
have shown that when individuals are given
information - say, something like, "Oh, someone
ahead is being crushed to death" - they respond
positively by, say, backing up and alleviating
the pressure on the crowd in front.
The problem is humans aren't ants.
We don't transmit information through crowds
like ants do.
And so people end up dying in crowd crushes
and progressive crowd collapses because the
people in the back are pushing forward.
Another common misconception are mass panics
and stampedes.
There's this idea that people stampede over
one another and that's how deaths occur in
crowd crushes.
This is really off point.
In fact, if you have enough room to rush out
over your fellow humans to get from Point
A to Point B, there's probably enough room
for those fellow humans to get out of the
way.
So, stampedes really don't cost any lives
whatsoever.
That's not the problem with crowd crushes.
And the same with mass panics.
Very rarely do entire crowds panic and move
in a panicked way.
In fact, you can suffocate in a crowd crush
in a very calm crowd that's just entered a
bottleneck in a narrow corridor, and trying
to get out of an exit.
People just quietly die pinned up against
their fellow human beings who are leaving
the place.
So, crowd researchers are using computers
now to predict high density crowds, and stop
them before they turn fatal.
They're using video feeds fed into artificial
intelligence, which analyze crowds for things
like increases in body heat, or people swaying
from side to side, which is a telltale sign
that they're no longer moving on their own
volition.
What do you do if you find yourself in a crowd?
Well, get out.
That's the best thing you can do.
But, as you're entering a crowd, crowd researchers
suggest that you pay attention, stop talking,
and listen ahead for people calling for help,
or saying "Move back!" or any other indication
that there's a crowd crush going on.
In that case, get back as far as you can.
If you find yourself in a crowd, and it starts
to surge forward, follow the crowd movement,
but move to the side as much as possible.
Just stay out of crowds.
How about that?
Have you ever been in a crowd crush or a crowded
situation where you thought, "Uh oh?"
Let us know in the comments section below.
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