[HN Gopher] Seoul: At least 146 killed in crowd crush during Hal...
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Seoul: At least 146 killed in crowd crush during Halloween
festivities
Author : tosh
Score : 30 points
Date : 2022-10-29 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| koyanisqatsi wrote:
| Pure insanity.
| rektide wrote:
| Sanity is a local phenomenon. Being aware of the influence of
| your actions at a place beyond your immediate perception
| requires faculties beyond a rational mind.
|
| It's awful & absurd. But... crowd dynamics are hard, our
| impacts are extremely hard to judge, only tall people get any
| info, & i respect that, those absurd difficulties of knowing
| wtf is going on, even though the aftermath is so obviously
| horrific. Being sensitive & thoughtful is the best humanity,
| but it is hard.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Crushes like this are especially hearbreaking because they are
| the result of people at the back of the crowd not knowing those
| at the front are being asphyxiated. We should teach more about
| this phenomenon in schools and have a universally understood
| protocol so crowds can alert themselves to a crush. We could have
| a code-word or gesture that can be spread quickly person to
| person and is understood to mean "everyone turn around, people
| are being killed." Combined with better overall awareness of
| situations that lead to crushes, it should be within our
| capabilities to collectively prevent these tragedies.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| In a monocultural society like South Korea, it's a good idea
| that probably could work very well and would have saved lives.
| I'm afraid here in the west it would quickly be abused by
| morons wanting to amuse themselves at gatherings and quickly be
| ignored, making it useless.
| yongjik wrote:
| There were videos of people drinking and dancing right next
| to a dozen flashing ambulances. I don't think that kind of
| protocol would work, even in Korea.
|
| (Also most people grossly underestimate this kind of danger -
| by the time someone in the center realizes they're in
| trouble, it would be too late.)
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Right, that's why people keep pulling fire alarms for funsies
| too. Oh, wait...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is sarcasm or not. People definitely
| do keep pulling fire alarms "for funsies", and that's
| probably a lot easier to prosecute than "who falsely
| initiated the 'crowd crush' protocol".
| null0pointer wrote:
| It definitely reads as sarcasm to me. It's easier to
| prosecute a false fire alarm than a false crowd-crush
| signal but the cost of a false fire alarm is also far
| greater.
|
| In a false fire alarm you have the emergency services
| responding, possibly pulling them away from real
| emergencies, possibly fire suppression systems engaged
| adding property damage and cleanup, and everyone
| evacuating the premises wasting peoples time.
|
| For a crowd-crush protocol I'm imagining something like
| this. If you see someone being crushed or fallen down and
| trampled you raise your hand. Possibly with some hand
| signal like a fist with an extended pinkie finger to
| disambiguate other reasons to raise a hand (like dancing
| at a concert for example). If you see someone giving the
| crowd-crush signal you also give the crowd-crush signal,
| this way it propagates throughout the crowd. In addition
| to giving the signal you will also stop moving and stand
| in place until the issue has resolved. At most a protocol
| like this would waste a few minutes of peoples time in a
| false positive.
| popcalc wrote:
| Never attended a public high school in America?
| null0pointer wrote:
| Nope.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This is probably not the right reaction (and may well be
| unpopular), but it makes me angry. I know no one is trying to
| kill anyone, but it feels like people disregarding others'
| safety just to get a little bit closer to some amusement.
| Ideally people would just relax and accept that there isn't
| room for them nearer the stage/etc.
|
| > everyone turn around, people are being killed
|
| I wonder if this would worsen the danger as people push to get
| away from the crush while others are still pushing from the
| back (as they haven't been made aware of the situation). But
| the fact that people are in the back pushing in the first place
| still sickens me.
| tkgally wrote:
| Six or seven years ago, I happened to get caught up in an
| extremely tight Halloween crowd in Tokyo. I had finished work
| around seven p.m., and I decided to walk home through Shibuya to
| check out the people and costumes. (I'm in my sixties now, and I
| haven't done Halloween myself since childhood.)
|
| The crowds started getting thick as I started down the narrow
| Center-gai street heading toward the station. Maybe half the
| people were in costume, and I took pictures of some of the more
| amusing getups. The mood was cheerful and relaxed, and people
| were not noticeably drunk. The average age was probably around
| eighteen.
|
| Before I realized it, the crowd became so tight that it was
| difficult to move. Our bodies were pressed against each other.
| People in Tokyo are used to such intense crowding on rush-hour
| trains, but this was the first time I had ever experienced it on
| an open street.
|
| Fortunately everyone remained calm and I was able to gradually
| push my way to the station in about an hour--the walk would
| normally have taken only five minutes. But I was keenly aware
| that, through no fault of any individual, the crush could have
| easily turned into a nightmare.
|
| My condolences to the people in Seoul.
| [deleted]
| willio58 wrote:
| I've been to a couple music festivals this year and I experienced
| the crowd at one of the main stages compressing. One thing that's
| not talked about as much is the heat caused by surges. If you're
| shorter, I could easily see getting cooked alive compressed by
| bodies unable to gasp for fresh air.
|
| I'm much taller than most which helps with getting air but I was
| shocked to experience how hard it was to get out of the crowd,
| you essentially have to shove your way to the back. People will
| yell at you but you have to just think about yourself to get out
| of a surge.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Where?
|
| Music festivals in Europe (at least 5 countries in familiar
| with) build barricades to prevent surges at festivals.
|
| This shows there's a barricade part way back from the main
| stage at Roskilde Festival in Denmark:
|
| https://www.etnow.com/news/2016/3/mojo-barriers-secures-thre...
| willio58 wrote:
| Outside lands in SF. The rap shows always get the craziest
| and I will say after reading more about crowd crushing and
| crowd collapses I'll be staying further back from now on.
| Truly one of those situations where I was thinking "huh,
| interesting I chose to put myself in this situation after
| hearing about astroworld".
|
| I think I saw barricades like that at Coachella, definitely a
| good way to limit this.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| I was a victim of crowd crush one summer at an open-air Cure
| concert. Dinosaur JR was opening, and I was eager to get up-
| close. I was kind of rattled by frat boys actually bellowing,
| "kill the weak!" but when the music started I was caught up and
| crushed up against the stage.
|
| Thankfully there were vigilant security guards to pull me to
| safety.
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