Emergency planning long assumed that crowds panic.
Field studies of real found the opposite pattern with striking consistency.
People move slowly, look for information and help strangers before they help themselves.
The delay that kills is not panic but the time spent deciding whether the situation is real.
A crowd that has been told nothing waits for somebody else to act.
The practical consequence reverses the standard advice.
Withholding information to prevent panic produces exactly the delay that planners feared.
Announcements that name the and give a specific instruction empty a building fastest.
without words perform worst, because they carry no information about what to do.
Crowd , which are often reported as panic, are usually a problem instead.
Above a certain number of people per square metre, movement becomes .
Individuals are pushed by waves they cannot see and cannot resist, whatever their intentions.
The responsibility therefore sits with whoever designed the space and issued the tickets.
Blaming the crowd has survived because it is administratively convenient.
Every serious of the last thirty years has reached the same conclusion and changed remarkably little.