1) Arms Up 2) Go With the Flow
3) Stay Standing 4) Stay Away From Hard Surfaces and Barriers
One of the most obvious ways to survive a Crowd Crush, is to simply stay home and not be in a
Crowd Crush. Thanks so much for watching everyone and take care... In all seriousness though there's a
lot more to crowd crushes and to be honest, crowds in general are personally one of my worst fears
but not from a lack of understanding in fact crowd crushes are widely known to be deadly
and claimed dozens sometimes hundreds more lives year after year they span history from as recently
as the well-known Travis Scott Astroworld incident to the Jewish Roman revolt stampede
dating all the way back to the year 66 a.d when religious pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem, panicked.
And the subsequent crowd surge and massive stampede resulted in an estimated ten thousand deaths
one of the first of the phenomena on record and to this day still one of the deadliest
hey everyone this is Sam with Brick Immortar; home of The COLLAPSE Series, Tragic Tales and more.
If episodes on engineering, structural, man-made feats and failures throughout history interest you
consider checking out more of what the channel has to offer after this video.
Joining me today is Emergency Medicine Physician and Digital Creator Dr J Mack Slaughter to give
the 4 primary tips to remember if you are unfortunately caught in a crowd crush.
But before we get into the dark details of how they so routinely claim
lives and how to increase your chances of survival we need to look at the surprising
amount of situations that can result in a bottlenecked, collapsed or surging crowd.
Historically, crowd crushes and stampedes have extremely high death tolls
but as infrastructure becomes more prolific so too has spaces where even small crowds
can become hazardous, which has increased the frequency of these events dramatically
over the last century. Despite being someone who tries to avoid crowds at all costs i can honestly
say even i am occasionally in these potential situations and sometimes without even realizing it.
When brought up in conversation or seen on the news, initial images come to mind of overcrowded
concerts, religious pilgrimage, massive parades or similar. But there doesn't need to be an
overwhelmingly large or even panicked crowd for this to happen. Just a ratio of people large enough
and determined enough to move in one direction that they overwhelm points of ingress or egress.
In fact, how often do we find ourselves; at the theater, attending school, on the bus, a crowded
workplace, a crowded retail store or public places with an elevator escalator or stairwell?
They have the potential to happen anywhere a group can become bottlenecked or worse;
locked in or trapped. One common misconception is that people get "trampled" anytime there is loss
of life involved. Many news outlets really like this term and tend to apply it in crowd crush
related stories. Although it can happen of course, crowd crush deaths even occur amongst those still
standing. I'm Dr J Mack Slaughter and these are the 4 things you can do to survive a crowd crush:
1) Arms Up: when a crowd of tens of thousands of people are compressing against your chest
your chest wall can't expand and collapse properly and so all of a sudden you can't
exhale carbon dioxide, you can't inhale oxygen. Your carbon dioxide levels start to go through the roof,
you get light-headed, you get euphoric, you may pass out. It's at that time that your oxygen
levels then tank and you start to do permanent damage to your brain and potentially die.
2) Go With the Flow: when you're in a huge amount of people like this
the physics turn into more of liquid dynamics than individual human beings. So movements on the outer
periphery of the mass of people will transmit through the entire crowd like water. You can see
these videos from helicopters and kind of the bird's eye view and the whole crowd is swaying
and moving just like water. What you need to do is go with the flow... you don't have enough strength
in your body to push against the force of tens of thousands of people as it's transmitted through
the crowd. So save your energy you're gonna need it. 3) Stay Standing: imagine you're in a bathtub
and all of a sudden you pull the drain. What happens all the water collapses in to that drain
when one person falls and the force of the crowd continues to push in towards that hole all of
those people start falling on top of that one individual and the person at the bottom
is not going to have an easy time breathing. 4) Stay Away from Hard Surfaces and Barriers:
if you imagine that force being transmitted throughout the entire crowd it gets to you and
then you go to transfer that force directly into a wall that wall is going to push back at you with
an equal and opposite reactive force right. All of that force from the crowd is going to come back
into your chest wall. It's going to break ribs, you could break your spine, you could do damage
to your internal organs of the abdomen. Stay away from these hard surfaces. That's all i have for
you today Sam, hopefully people never have to use this information Dr J Mack Slaughter signing off...
so these situations can be categorized into three major types the crowd surge and crowd collapse as
the doctor mentioned and then the crowd crush the crush is more about density the ratio of people to
that particular point of egress escape route or obstacle or the crush can come as the end result
of a crowd surges pressure wave crushes can suddenly occur when a moving crowd is funneled
into a smaller and smaller space or meets an obstacle like a dead end locked door immovable
barricade or even just a tight corner essentially the crowd crush can be the most difficult to
recognize predict and avoid of the three types they require the least amount of people total
groups of hundreds down to even dozens when occupying a space small enough a relatively small
group can easily begin to exceed the capacity of say hallways enclosed escalators stairwells or
emergency exits stacking then occurs on the floor or upright with many crushes resulting in victims
lost even while still standing if at all possible make an effort to move around any barriers
putting the barriers between you and the crushing crowd like a tiny island in a raging river
the victoria hall disaster of 1883 for example was a crowd surge leading to a
major crushing event where 180 plus children were killed the children being the only ones
in the crush up against such a narrow escape route meant their physical size much smaller
than that of the average adult didn't matter and the crush ensued regardless
know your points of ingress and egress know your escape routes if the crowd seems to be growing
too dense leave early before it's too late keep your belongings on your person dropped items like
backpacks purses or even a loose shoe can become trip hazards and that can trigger crowd collapse
be considerate of those around you displaying these acts of stepping up to help others
can be contagious and if this spreads in the crowd it can quickly create an atmosphere
of people helping people mitigating the effects of individualistic panic
and most importantly do not panic panic is not only what further hinders a crowd from exiting
safely and calmly but it also robs you personally of the precious oxygen that's keeping you alive
in those critical moments and if you aren't solo make sure you and your party discuss ahead of time
how you'll keep track of one another your rally points indoors and outdoors and establish points
of exit early on take yours or your group's limitations seriously and again stay calm
these steps all might sound a bit cheesy to some but in the middle of a panicked crowd the force
of which becomes strong enough to bend steel it's literally life or death and how impressive you are
will be meaningless thanks so much to dr j mack slaughter for helping make this video possible
go check out his tick tock where he's amassed over 40 million views or even his youtube channel dr j
mack is striving to be a voice for more positive vibes and legitimate knowledgeable tips like
these here today he really knows his stuff his links will be in description and pinned comment
and let me know in the comments what you think of crowd crushes would you like to
see episodes covering these events in typical brick and mortar fashion
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top tier supporters jenny cat and alex thanks so much for watching everyone and take care
you