Deconstructing a Crowd Crush
John Seabrook has a chilling piece in this week’s New Yorker detailing the 2008 Black Friday stampede at a Long Island Wal-Mart. You have to subscribe to read it, but it’s worth paying for (abstract is here). I wrote about how to prevent these tragedies for Time back when the Wal-Mart incident happened, but Seabrook follows up on what has happened since. And he gives a nice introduction to the larger science of crowd crushes (which, as I explain in The Unthinkable, are no longer mysterious—and almost always preventable.)
From a Q&A with Seabrook about the story:
“There’s a deep seated fear of crowds that I think you can trace back to the 19th century and the writings of Gustave Le Bon. It was a class based fear that was largely purged in the 20th century, in a political context, but lingered on in the realm of crowd dynamics, and lingers to this day.”
crystal said on March 04, 2011 at 5:09 am
It seems absolutely crazy that a man can loose his life from being crushed at a supermarket. The responsibility ultimately lies with the superstore for not having adequate security and restrictions to prevent such a crowd from gathering. If the store predicted such a rush then a barrier should have been erected some distance from the store and a queuing system formed, not allow a free for all once the doors have opened.
Malcolm said on March 25, 2011 at 4:31 am
When we ran out of sweets to eat, we snitched sugary Flintstones vitamins out of the vibram kso trek medicine cabinet
latest news today said on October 26, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Well I think that the responsibility ultimately lies with the superstore for not having adequate security and restrictions to prevent such a crowd from gathering….