Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

Afternoon all. flying visit between work and allotment.

I have no love for the late Baroness but I agree with pineapple that it is highly-disrespectful to even contemplate disrupting a funeral, even the funeral of someone who stirred strong and sometimes hostile emotions. Funerals are for the family and friends, a form of working towards closure, and should be seen as such. If you can't understand that, and just stay away, then you're a pretty poor character. IMO, anyway.

My feelings about crowds have been shaped by a personal experience 20 odd years ago when I spent 40 mins in an extremely-dangerous crowd crush at an outdoor music event. Three men died in that same crowd and I saw several injured.

What has always struck me, from that day to this, is how quickly the crowd went from normal to packed solid, and how dangerous it became (about 20 seconds to turn to a crisis). My immediate crowd neighbours formed an amoeba-like entitity within the crowd. We were so jam-packed that if you had your arms lowered when the crowd coalesced, there they were stuck, arms raised, they were stuck in that position.

My 'amoeba' made a collective decision to turn around 180 degrees and head towards the back of the field. With our arms useless, and our bodies wedged together, we were effectively a many-legged creature operating as one. The other parts of the crowd coalesced into other 'amoebas'; my male companion who had been standing beside me was borne off at right angles as part of another group - I found him 5 hours later.

Although people had been drinking, no one was hopelessly drunk (it was early afternoon). No one panicked or flailed. We co-operated with these strangers and got ourselves out inch by painful inch, until we were clear enough to separate and go our separate ways. I did see a pile of people collapse in a neighbouring 'amoeba' and they were immediately grabbed up by strangers.

One of the people near the top of the pile was a youngish man who had gone into utter hysteria from fear. The last up from that particular pile was a slender young woman, grimacing with pain, who had had several large men collapse into a pile on top of her. She must have been really hurt, but her group was borne off in another direction and I do know that those who died were all men.

If people had succumbed to panic, if there had been an outside driver of the crush such as a bomb, or gunshots etc, it would have been incalcuably worse. Although three deaths is ghastly, there were tens of thousands in that crowd. And the darling meeja announced news of the deaths that evening, before the concert had even finished. Pre-mobiles, and many of us would have been 24 + hours away from getting back to our homes as people came from all across the UK to this place. One of the dead men wasn't ID'd until the middle of the following week.

As a result of this scary experience, I ended up with a quirk of not being able to be in dense crowds without starting to get into a panic attack. I even have problems with close quarters in buildings etc. I was never a claustrophobe beforehand.

Soooo, my reaction to the sight of a crowd is that I want to be elsewhere PDQ. I even get horribly stressed out in the shopping streets at Crimble.

VJsmum

Oh GQ, you have brought back a memory. I was at a U2 concert many years ago - outdoor event, rain turned the field to mud, a variety of support acts. We had fought our way to the front for one of our favourite acts who was on fairly early, following our band was a punk based band whose fans then flocked in barging us out of the way and the crowd surged.

Loads of people moving one way and us trying to get out the opposite way + rain + mud made it treacherous. We, too, formed an "amoeba" (though I hadn't ever thought of it like that till you just said) and linked arms and inched our way out though the pogo-ing crowd. If we'd gone down, we would have been trampled.

Strangely though, we found it exhilarating and funny - but we were drunk :beer::o though afterwards we realised how serious it might have become.

I am glad today passed off with no incident - for the family's sake.

D&DD

Off out the garden for a quick tootles more potting on to do

Ginny my trees are looking fab :j

I confess I'm an exit checker..what to do in case of *insert whatever* card checker and a crowd avoider too I'm not neurotic honest

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

What has always struck me, from that day to this, is how quickly the crowd went from normal to packed solid, and how dangerous it became (about 20 seconds to turn to a crisis). My immediate crowd neighbours formed an amoeba-like entitity within the crowd. We were so jam-packed that if you had your arms lowered when the crowd coalesced, there they were stuck, arms raised, they were stuck in that position.
...

Soooo, my reaction to the sight of a crowd is that I want to be elsewhere PDQ. I even get horribly stressed out in the shopping streets at Crimble.

Crowds are immensely powerful even without any element of panic. This was brought home to me a few years back. I was Christmas shopping one Christmas Eve (masochist that I am, I used to enjoy it) when I got caught in the crowd and deposited 400 yards away in the wrong direction - I'm a fairly hefty bloke, 5'11" and at the time weighed about 18 stone (in those days a fit martial artist), my feet barely scrapped the ground for the whole distance.
These days I stay as close to the buildings as possible if crowds start to build and get out of the area ASAP.

GreyQueen

VJsmum wrote: »

Oh GQ, you have brought back a memory. I was at a U2 concert many years ago - outdoor event, rain turned the field to mud, a variety of support acts. We had fought our way to the front for one of our favourite acts who was on fairly early, following our band was a punk based band whose fans then flocked in barging us out of the way and the crowd surged.

Loads of people moving one way and us trying to get out the opposite way + rain + mud made it treacherous. We, too, formed an "amoeba" (though I hadn't ever thought of it like that till you just said) and linked arms and inched our way out though the pogo-ing crowd. If we'd gone down, we would have been trampled.

Strangely though, we found it exhilarating and funny - but we were drunk :beer::o though afterwards we realised how serious it might have become.

I am glad today passed off with no incident - for the family's sake.

Very similar experience; a light rain having made a sloping grassy field on clay-ey subsoil, very slippery, a very popular act on at the front, fans weaving their way from the back of the crowd past others standing in approximate rows about a meter apart.

We were about 100m back from the stage, what I considered a prudent distance, and I recall looking at these numpties who were going towards the front thinking Where the hell do they think they're going to go?!

Nowhere, as it happened; they compacted onto the crowd already at the front and started crushing the people there and then the whole first 200 m of the crowd went solid. What struck me was the cellular nature of the crowd movement and how inexorable the movement of each 'amoeba'. My companion was standing at my left shoulder but he ended up in another 'amoeba' and was borne off at right-angles to my lot. We were packed solid, though; linking arms wasn't an option because no one could even move their bliddy arms.

Someone just yelled something like Right, we're going back! and we all squirmed to about-face and started slithering off towards the rear of the crowd. Because you were glued to each other from hip to shoulder, you had no control of your own balance. You slipped when other people slipped, and struggled to make any headway. It seemed a lifetime but took about 40 mins to get back to where the crowd was spaced out, then we went our separate ways.

People were coming out into the less-dense crowd flushed scarlet from being compressed and shaking. People at the back of the crowd looked bemused because they couldn't see what had happened, and had no idea how serious it had been.

I guess I was flushed, too; I know I was trembling from head to foot with exhaustion and adrenaline. I thought I probably wouldn't find the feller again until we met at the coach to go back to the train station, but after 4-5 hours, I spotted him and we watched a couple more acts before going back to the coach before the headliner. I wasn't up for any more shoving.

ETA, nuatha, I'm 5' 11", the feller was 6' 2" and we were both fit martial artists at the time. It doesn't make a blind bit of difference in a crowd surge.

Paul_Varjak

Just logged into Youtube and the featured was this...

http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/video/xyxk4k_interview-with-a-zombie_shortfilms

A Zombie that eats brains, albeit not human brains!

[Deleted User]

Can't do crowds myself, I hate crowded escalators, don't like lifts, packed in or otherwise, cant bear rush hour trains or busses and hate shops that don't have discernable walkways to exits, M & S are particularly bad in this respect since they had a rearrange in most of thier stores last summer, randomly places displays and in our local one only one entrance/exit at the front of the store. I hate it!!! The news this morning was saying thier profits are 50% down on last year, I wonder if the store layouts have had anything to do with that? I get really stressed if there are big crowds in the shopping malls too and have to exit PDQ.

GreyQueen

I think you could be onto something about M & S. Ours did a rearrangement last year and it wasn't just the stock displays, it was the floors, the doors, the escalators/ lifts etc etc.

It turned it from a medium-complicated environment which I didn't much care for, but considered navigable, to panic attack central. I've been in there twice since and on both occasions started to go a bit mental and left in a hurry with stuff unbought. The exits are so unclear that I wonder the place hasn't been reported as a fire hazard.

:mad: I ain't gonna go in there again in a hurry; clothes are carp and the layout is beyond dire. Wonder if any of the top brass at M&S pay attention to the OS board?

There's a local mall which has obviously been designed to keep you turned around once you're inside it. I detest malls, hate being away from natural light and air. I treat this mall as a warren which I will venture into very occasionally, heading straight to a known destination, and straight out again. ughh.

Today I had to go to a Meeting. Being as I am seriously small fry, I don't often get to go to meetings. Unfortunately, there was nowt exciting and no refreshments, but I had a quandry when I entered the room; the only seats were back to the window or back to the door. Decided I'd spend the whole hour with my shoulderblades creeping if I had the door right behind me so chose the window.

I was one of the last arrivals and it was interesting to see that the dozen or so people already present had chosen to avoid those two spots. Probably instinctual as I don't think many of my colleagues are as wacko as I am.........but who can tell?!

This aft, I collected most of a shed from a lottie pal and dragged it to my lottie. Muscles are still a-tremble and I've even had a bath to try to smooth them out. My most-of-a-shed needs some remedial surgery where is has rotted a bit, plus a roof and a floor, but I am very pleased with it. Even though it will cost a bit to fix up (great excuse for a trip to the salvage yard, methinks ) I am still dead chuffed.

GQ, a woman whose entire life is either pre-loved or bought on a yellow label.........and I'm a happy little bunny. Life with more money would feel so strange.:rotfl:

Goldiegirl

That's a point about M&S, our local one always sets up displays in the door way. So people start milling in the door way and it all looks terribly crowded and busy and completely uninviting. To get me into a shop I like to see wide open spaces, to give the impression I can relax and browse with ease. I'm not getting that from m&S.

GQ, meeting seating is a minefield. Many years ago, at my previous job there was a new procedure with legal ramifications, so they had to have a load of training sessions for staff at branch and senior level. I was on holiday while all our training was going on, so I had to go to Croydon for my training. When I arrived, there were two tables, one was packed with people, the other only had a few people. My instinct was to go with the pack, but there was no room so I sat at the less crowded table. I then found out that all the senior people from that area were sitting there, so no body else wanted to sit with them. I then had to help all the senior people with their sums and calculations!

I'm so glad that I rarely have meetings these days

herbily

Agree with everyone about M&S, our local one has such a crowded entrance you more or less have to force your way in - you have to be really really sure you want to go in there, and mostly I'm not.

On the subject of staying fit and healthy, I found this site:
http://www.thesurvivaldoctor.com/

Full of useful advice, even though some of it's "Go see a doctor". I found it because I was googling an ailment (always a risky move, I'm now much more worried than before I looked!)I've got a septic finger, and it's unbelievably painful - doctor's given me antibiotics that aren't working, but at least we're still at a stage where we have doctors and antibiotics...