Hello Sciforums
Every once in a while I see a news headline on google which reads "such such number of people have been killed in a stampede in some middle east country."

I just don't understand how people get into stampedes. Today for example, there was a news headline which read that a bunch of people leaving some religious gathering got "stampeded" (26 people)

Is humanity really all that animal?

heh heh

Best thread ever.

Yeah, it was about 19 women and 6 children, I just don't get it. Is it merely a large moving croud? Or are they are these people intently running from something? Naturally, the news article didn't say why the stampede happened at all.

You make a bit of a mistaken generalization, of course. Such stampedes are not only witnessed in middle eastern religious events, but also in western sporting events.
It happens all the time.

When dealing with a large amount of people, you move from an individual basis to one of statistical flow.

A huge crowd of people cannot react to sudden changes as fast as an individual can.
The crowd surges forward, something occurs at the front to stop them, but the rear doesn't realize and keeps pushing forward.
There is a large amount of weight involved.
People get crushed.

I don't really understand what's so mysterious here.

Actually, 19 women and children don't sound too bad. They just fell down, most likely. In such large crowds, packed so tightly, you hardly are aware of what's under your feet. You're swept forward in the tight embrace of humanity.
You go down.
You're dead. Simple as that.

Now. What is interesting is the sense of... connection that comes from such an event. To be powerless in the grip of such a gathering. To be a fleck of dust on a stream of humanity.

We are social animals and such things undoubtably trigger deep regions of our psyches.

THe mindless mob.

Some might take it for a religious experience. In the grip of a higher power. We in the west only have the slightest taste of such euphoria as we have so fastened onto our individuality that such experiences usualy provoke claustrophobia rather than religious extasy.

Now. What is interesting is the sense of... connection that comes from such an event. To be powerless in the grip of such a gathering. To be a fleck of dust on a stream of humanity.

Unless you're the one underfoot. Glory looks great when you're not being trampled by a bunch of glory-holes.

Some might take it for a religious experience. In the grip of a higher power. We in the west only have the slightest taste of such euphoria as we have so fastened onto our individuality that such experiences usualy provoke claustrophobia rather than religious extasy.

There's a reason for that. See above.

Geoff