Could you navigate through that crowd?
You might have heard that during the Loveparade 2010 electronic music festival in Duisburg, Germany, on Saturday, July 24, 2010, 19 people lost their lives and another 342 were injured in a deadly stampede. Of course, incidents of this kind are not isolated. There are numerous other cases of deadly stampedes taking place all over the world and while prevention and crowd control are difficult when dealing with very large masses of people, there are things you can do at an individual level to get out of the crowd before it might become dangerous.
Wired.com has a very helpful guide on crowd navigation.
Soccer players know the secret of predicting where to go as they navigate around other humans, but the rest of us are dummies.
At least that seems to be the case with most of the people you’d encounter at Grand Central Station — the universal metaphor for “busy place.” The great room at Grand Central Terminal (as it is more accurately known) is really, really crowded during the morning and evening rush hours. Dozens of platforms and stairways empty out onto a single area. Static lines form at ticket booths and extend deep into space, creating impenetrable walls of humans.
Such places are an Aberdeen Proving Ground for honing your walking-through-a-crowd techniques. If you don’t live in a city with a big transit terminal, you can use these methods at a concert, a festival or during peak hours at the local farmers’ market.
You can read their guide here. And remember, if you’re in a big panicked crowd, do your best to stay calm and rational, and do not fall down.
