Module 2, lesson 5 · 30 minutes
Stampede, panic, trampling: words that mislead
“Stampede” and “panic” place the cause of a crowd disaster in the minds of its victims. The evidence places it in density, design and management, and the words should follow the evidence.
You’ll be able to
- explain why “stampede”, “panic” and “trampling” misattribute the cause of crowd deaths;
- summarise Haghani and colleagues’ 2019 review of “panic”, “irrationality” and “herding”;
- use accurate terms (crowd crush, progressive collapse, surge, compressive asphyxia) in your own writing.
Introduction
Within hours of most crowd disasters, a headline somewhere uses the word “stampede”. It is so common that even reference works adopt it: the encyclopedia article this course cites for the 2015 Mina death toll is titled “2015 Mina stampede”
You now know enough to see what is wrong with it. A stampede is a herd running. The previous four lessons described people who could not run, could barely move, and died standing up or under the weight of others, from forces that came through the bodies around them. The word does not just describe the event badly. It assigns a cause, and the cause it assigns is the crowd.
What “stampede” and “panic” imply
“Stampede” suggests a mass of people running, heedless, over anyone in their way. “Panic” suggests that fear made them irrational and dangerous. Put together, the story is that the victims caused their own deaths by losing their heads. Researchers who have studied the evidence reject every part of it.
“There are no ‘stampedes’ in cases like these, no one is running.”
In the same interview Still made the point about cause: “It’s not to do with the numbers of people, it’s due to the exposure of high density”
Fruin, thirty years earlier, said much the same about panic: “Frequently mislabelled a panic, closer investigation usually shows that flight was a reasonable group reaction”
A word that blames the crowd points an inquiry at the crowd. Hillsborough is the clearest example. The inquests’ determinations in 2016 found that errors by the police, the ambulance service and the club, together with the stadium’s design and certification, caused or contributed to the deaths, and that supporters’ behaviour did not
Trampling: the passive and the active
People do sometimes end up under others’ feet, after they have fallen in a collapse. So is “trampling” fair? Helbing and Mukerji draw the line precisely: “while the passive verb ‘being trampled’ is correct, the active form ‘trampling’ is misleading”
The active form gives the people on top agency they did not have. In a progressive collapse, the people stepping on the fallen are themselves being pushed, often from metres away, by people who cannot see what is happening. And trampling is rarely what kills: in Fruin’s words, “Virtually all crowd deaths are due to compressive asphyxia and not the ‘trampling’ reported by the news media”
Rewrite this headline so that it is accurate and does not blame the crowd: “Stampede at festival: panicking fans trample dozens to death.”
For example: “Dozens die in crowd crush at festival” or “Dozens killed as crowd collapses at overcrowded festival entrance”. The rewrite drops “stampede” (nobody could run), “panicking” (an unsupported claim about state of mind, offered as cause) and the active “trample” (people were pushed onto the fallen; most deaths are from compression). If the facts are known, it names the setting where force built up: the entrance, the ramp, the front of the stage.
The view from science: three ambiguous terms
The problem is not only in newspapers. In 2019 Haghani, Cristiani, Bode, Boltes and Corbetta reviewed how researchers use three words: panic, irrationality and herding
- “there is no consensus on the definition for the terms panic and irrationality”;
- herding “lacks adequate nuance and accuracy for describing the role of ‘social influence’”;
- a sharp divide between social-science and physical-science studies in how the terms are used;
- and, bluntly, that “the use of these three terms in the scientific literature does not contribute constructively to extending the knowledge”.
You will meet that divide in Module 4. A central paper there, Helbing, Farkas and Vicsek’s 2000 article in Nature, is titled “Simulating dynamical features of escape panic”
A style guide for the rest of the course
The course follows these conventions from here on. They are also a reasonable guide for anyone writing about crowd incidents.
| Instead of | Write | Why |
|---|---|---|
| stampede | crowd crush; progressive crowd collapse; stairway fall-pile | Names the mechanism (lesson 2). Nobody needs to be running. |
| panic (as the cause) | what people did and why: “people tried to leave”, “the crowd at the back could not see the front” | Panic has no agreed definition and is rarely what the evidence shows |
| trampled to death | died of compressive asphyxia; were crushed | The cause of death, not an implied act by others |
| herding, herd behaviour | following others; social influence | “Herding” lacks nuance |
| mob | crowd | A loaded word that assumes the crowd’s intent. |
| the crowd surged (and stop there) | a surge, with what caused it: “a surge as the gates opened” | “Surge” describes movement; it is fine when its cause is given. Still uses it in that sense |
| human error by the fans | the specific failure: capacity exceeded, inflow not controlled, exit locked | “The crowd is rarely the cause” |
An eyewitness quoted in a report says, “Everyone panicked and started pushing.” Should you remove the word “panicked” from the quotation? How would you report it?
No. Quotations stay verbatim, and the witness’s experience is evidence. What you should not do is adopt their word as your own explanation of cause. Report the quotation, then describe what the evidence shows: for example, that people pushed forward as density rose and they were unable to breathe, which is a reasonable reaction to being crushed, as Fruin and Still both note.
- “Stampede is just a convenient word.” It assigns a cause, the crowd, that the evidence rarely supports
. - “Panic explains why people pushed.” Pushing to escape a crush is usually a reasonable reaction, not a loss of reason
. And panic has no agreed scientific definition . - “Nobody is ever trampled.” People can be trampled after they fall. The passive “being trampled” is correct; the active “trampling” misleads
.