Crowds and stamps of people are often reported in large -scale ceremonies in India, often in religious events, where millions of devotees come together for a special program.
India’s 2025 Maha Kumbh, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in Prayagraj, which was declared a “mega festival”.
It saw many pilgrims and others were injured when it appears, according to initial reports – a growing mob comes out of the region exiting the policy and trampling the bitenders. On January 29, 2025, other reports indicated that the stampede began when tens of million people gathered to take a sacred dip on the most sacredness of the six -week Hindu festival.
In 2024, more than 120 people died in a uniform stampede, ie on a festival in Uttar Pradesh.
But the incidents of thesis are also elsewhere: in 2022, people celebrating Halloween in South Korea found cog in the crowd. And in 2010, Germany saw a devastation “Love Parade” stampede experience.
How does something like this happen?
Are there stamped due to congested or massive nervousness?
There may be some similarities in the situation with the 2010 love parade stamp to crowd the tragedy in Germany a decade ago.
Anna Seben, for Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Psychology at St. Gallon University in Switzerland, has been researching crowd dynamics over the years, including the congestion incident at the festival, which were killed and injured over 600.
Seven research shows that what happened there was not as a result of the “mass panic”, although what can happen after reading about the situation.
Rather, Seben said, people who find themselves in a stampede, often do not realize that anyone is wrong.
Professor Dirk Heling of Computer Social Science in Eth Zurich in Switzerland agreed.
“A comprehensive approach to crowd disasters is that they originate from nervousness,” Helbing said. “It occurs in the form of a state of mind determined by anxiety and fear, which comes with an increased level of adrenaline. As a coniferous, the instinct of flight and fighting is activated, perhaps trampling other people Which is also in their own way.
Helbing said that rather than the psychological state of the mind, physical forces are more likely to cause Stampedes tragedies due to an event called “crowd unrest”.
What is the disturbance of the crowd?
Helbing stated that the disturbance of the crowd occurs when people move to a space, where there is very little space to move and people have a high density, and where people are squeezed in the middle.
This may be the reason that the halling says “broadcast of forces” among the halling bodies.
Heling said, “They connect people with unexpected ways and push people, some distance of several meters. In such situations, it is very difficult to maintain balance and stay on a feet,” Heling said.
After all, someone can stumble and fall, which makes a hole in the crowd. When a hole comes out, there is a lack of a counterforce to fall down in response to people who fall directly next to the person who fell.
It can create the subject, also, Heling said, the capacity “malignant domino effect”.
“Looking at the weight of others at the top, it is difficult to breathe. Therefore, many people can die from aspiqia, as it was ODI’s ODI during Stamped in many places,” Heer said.
But how does it ever feel bad in the crowd?
Seven said that there are three imports that can contribute to an out-of-control stamped position in a crowd.
The first is something clear, but deserves recognition, Seben said: It is a very crowd. Such congestion may occur in response to the miscalcol of the number of people in the organization or the number of people in attendance.
Subsequently, Seben said, stampede incidents can happen when all or most people who already make dense crowds want to go somewhere at the same time.
This can be in emergency – when the fire occurs, for example, and everyone pushes for a safe exit – but it is not necessary that it should be dramatically in any way, he said.
“This can be just a minor impulse to the people,” seven said, as everyone wants to go at once at the same time.
Information goes slow in a crowd
The third factor that can be seen in the situation of congestion is a slow journey of information, seven said – The people of the back do not realize what is going on in front.
When they hear about a stampede situation, on the contrary, people who are part of it may not even know what is happening, they are facing with people lying directly on the ground. .
“Mass panic idea implies that people get information very quickly and then act in the same way, which means that being translated through information,” Saat said. “But I think, on the contrary, a crowd is very silent and does not transport information well.”
Seven said that if you think about your experience in the crowd, it should be made. The crowds are normal and people may not often look beyond the back of the people in front of them. Was that experience ever?
“You have front people who cannot go anywhere because it is blocked, and they are pushed against the wall or deposited – some super dangerous – but like two or three mater [6.6 to 9.8 feet] Far away, not even realizing, “he said.
The people of the back may think that the push they are feeling is normal and can even push even a little stop. But many people who push a little at the same time can make a dynamic that is very dangerous from the front, Seben said.
“No thesis people want to hurt anyone, I mean, they are to party,” he said. “And I think they are very nervous, not inseparable, perhaps the moment they are in a threatening position they were.”
What if I find myself in a similar situation?
The incidents of stampede are rare, and as seven said, it is often difficult to understand that you are part of one until it is too late. However, he said, there is a sign that can potentially predict the onset of a stampede occurrence or the ability to one: uncontrollable shape in all directions.
This can be a sign of high pressure in the crowd, Siben said.
If you find yourself in the state of this nature, or what you feel, it is encountered from the beginning of a crush event, then seven said that it is imports to hear itself and find a safe way to find a safe way Trys
Sometimes people will sometimes remain silent in a state of crush until it is too late because they do not want to scream on a large scale by shouting for help, but he said, but quickly the information about the crush quickly in the entire crowd Can be rapidly transmitted.
“Everyone is focusing in the same direction, and sometimes – never – always – they may not feel that there is a path, or a low crowd position on the back or the edge of the crowd,” seven said .
Even when exit exit is available, people often do not think to see them that they have become hyper-fixed when they move forward.
Edited by: Zulfikar Abni.
The article original was published on 3 November 2022. It was last updated on 29 January 2025.
