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Walmart stampede dynamics — 38 Comments

  1. Thank you so much for posting this. I have seen too many posts about “greedy shoppers” to the point of exasperation.

    Anyone who has found themselves in a crowd dynamic being pushed along from behind can understand the tragedy of the incident without making it more political or ethical than necessary. It’s just… a tragedy that could have been avoided with proper control.

    My momma was right: nothing good happens in crowds.

    See also: mosh pits, soccer games, Japanese subway stations.

  2. Neo-neocon, do you know what else I noticed about those pictures you said to study? The majority of those people are black. I find it ironic that the only death that I have heard of comes from a black crowd. I am black myself, but without adequate police protection to help remind them of civilized behavior,I am not surprised that this nearly all black crowd began to surge into a mob. Never underestimate the combined stupidity of a black “community” when there is no force to remind them of civilized behavior.

  3. If we’ve reached the point where a store open for Christmas shoppers should KNOW that they need a police at the entrance, we are in trouble.

    You’d expect that for hungry hordes looking for food after a disaster, maybe, but Christmas shopping?!?

    Do all stores have to figure this into their budgeting from now on?

    I don’t think I want to go shopping where there are armed Police guarding the entrances. And I like police in general.

  4. Sorry, Neo, and Joan of Arghhh. While I agree that better crowd control might have helped the situation, I also think that this is still rooted in the entitlement mentality. The “What I want is more important than anything or anyone. I have a RIGHT to what I want.”

    This somewhat ties in with a recently published survey I saw today. Something like 30% of high school and college students say they have stolen something in the last year. Almost 2/3 said they have cheated on a test. And yet over 90% said they were comfortable with their personal ethics.

  5. Also the sad things is that trial lawyers will be all over this and, because they have the deepest pockets, Wal-Mart will be on the hook. Eventually stores will no longer be able to do these sales. The idiotic things is this was probably all over saving $50.00 on a big screen or X-box.

  6. the move from patriarchy, to matriarchy explains all of this…

    patriarchies were about limited freedom… practical freedom… and so they were about self control…

    matriarchy is about unlimited freedom (at least for women), and so impractical freedom… they are about (today), no self control…

    which implies no responsiblility for ones actions and their outcomes.

    these people are not from cohesive families any more… they are from matriarchal groupings where the children are less related than normal hetero families…. and so no one cares what others think.. the fathers are gone…

    in order to sell a matriarchy to the women, you have to pretend that such embodies no responsibility for outcomes of ones actions or such to others, and end justifies the means thinking is key… (how else justify ruining the lives of many people for a few orgasms?)

    mothers who have been given license that they are not resposible for the outcomes of their actions raise kids that are also not responsible…

    after all.. how can momma with a screwed up life tell me how to be a godo person? dad is gone, and not the best because good men are boring and not fun for those putting off marraige till later in life to reap all the good goodies teh feminists promise.

    basically, these social groups are devolving into primitive masses…

    in the past people wouldnt run because it would be considered crass and tasteless to do so… and that no reward was worth such sullying of ones self. if one couldnt get the projection tv by walking, then one probably wasnt supposed to have it.

    but in a world, where momma exposes herself as fashion, has many children by different men, has no respect or value so gives it away, subjects her children to these bad mates…

    and expects that no one can hold her responsible, or else thats patriarchal oppression..

    creates a matriarchy.

    funny… you take socialism/communism… and its a 100% failed system given time… so give it to your enemies, and you do them in.

    but what about ALSO visiting upon your enemies feminism, and making a matriarchy?

    matriarchies are a 100% failed social system… they bascially lead tothe most primitive social arrangemetns and end justifies the means societies which are awful.

    historically speaking. both lead to 100% X 100% social failure..

    EDITORIAL: LGBT is RIP back in the USSR
    larussophobe.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/editorial-lgbt-is-rip-back-in-the-ussr/

    notice how these changes are not even existent in the countries that the leaders of such say is where they would be home?

    i guess there was a reason why such states visitied such politics on us… while they refuse to drink the almond flavored liquor.

    basically by doing this we get population decline, cultural failure, devolving population, soft people who cant function in a real world (need artifice to function), and so on.

    what happened at walmart is just one of thosuands of symptoms we ignore..

  7. Joan of Argghh! is right. This is a “madness of crowds” dynamic and you can forget about anything approaching rationality or sanity in such situations. There’s another madness at work here besides the crowd, though. It’s the madness of elevating shopping to an event, a holiday all its own, with its own name, Black Friday. This is sick, a perversion which retailers gladly encourage. I think I now know the real reason for economic cycles – recessions and depressions help guarantee the survival of the species.

  8. While in college, I spent some time as assistant manager of one of the largest movie theaters in Los Angeles. We had several premieres of first-run movies–popular movies–and were used to dealing with crowds. We never had the tragic “stampede effect” in evidence at Wal-Mart, but I still remember with absolute clarity the crowd rushing to the candy counter for drinks and “eats”. The looks on the faces of the crowd’s vanguard were invariably frightening; eyes wild, mouths open in soundless screams, hands frantically clutching bills ready to be spent. It was plain from the looks on their faces that the ONLY important thing was to be first in line, first at any cost. Had we not had good crowd control, I’m sure the “stampede effect” would have been much more serious.

  9. in the past people wouldnt run because it would be considered crass and tasteless to do so…

    Ah, nostalgia. Nostalgia for a time that considered crassness and tastelessness vices, not virtues. A time before reality shows, a time before every starlet having her sex tape “stolen,” a time when illegitimacy was rare, a time before a myriad of other social pathologies.

    It seems so long ago…

  10. But now with Obama we have a black community hall monitor. So all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

  11. Nothing good happens in crowds because the average intelligence of the crowd is the average intelligence of each individual divided by the number of people in the crowd.

    Past a certain point, that crowd is no longer rational or a thinking organism. It becomes just an animal that reacts on instinct.

  12. A person with a 300 IQ, just to use one common benchmark, added to a group with another person with a 150 IQ, have an average IQ of 450/2 or 225. The IQ of the group of 2, however, is that average IQ divided by the total number of people in the group, which is 112.5. The upper limit is bounded by the 225, of course.

    Now apply that to crowds and you will get an interesting result.

    It is why committees are actually very stupid and why they need very “smart” people on it. It’s all to try to resist this common law.

  13. i get your point yamarskar, but 300 is not an iq benchmark… and common? well, thats ridiculous.

    Maria vos savant has the highest IQ, with 210.

    your pseudoscience on crowds is frightening…

    in its imbicility…

    meanwhile…

    Past a certain point, that crowd is no longer rational or a thinking organism. It becomes just an animal that reacts on instinct.

    why didnt you think of that after seeing an obama rally? and that, like hitler, he was leading you all around?

    crowd mentality is very complex… its not stupidity… what it is is a programmed response… its a way for the crowd to back a leader who can coordinate their actions…

    It is why committees are actually very stupid and why they need very “smart” people on it. It’s all to try to resist this common law.

    this is inane…

    its like watching reality change to make an intellgentisa always be right. sigh.

    committees are very stupid because the people in power today are in power by social promotion, not by merit and experience.

    when they have people of merit and experience, and htey are not playing games like dialoging to consensus, then a committe can be a powerful force.

    however, the reason they are more often stupid is because no one is allowed to upset anyone.

    i remember the old days… when people would get really heated up challenging merits of things.. now it has to be PC… and no one can stand up and have a different answer… and of course with relativism, no such things as right and wrong…

    yamarsker… i wish i could take you in a time machine… take you back 50 years… and you would see some amazing things… and before we left on our trip, you would say they were impossible.

    and just to be nice… here is why a crowd has such poor mentality…

    lines of communication… they can all be nobel prize winners, but a crowd cant coordinate its actions by communication… when communication fails, the crowd then moves by instinct… and instinct is our primitive selves. the self of original sin… we now follow flocking behavior… and for good reasons… (since in primates, the mass crowd effect is generally aganst enemies, or intruders that will end up as food. even among the bonobos).

    early primates that spontaneously did this survived over those that did… its a modified herd behavior… or rather pack behavior…

    also… we naturally know the dynamics of a crowd… we rarely as people are willing to punish the whole crowd!!!!!!!!!!!!

    so a crowd of 100 people can literally tear a person apart (as they did to that poor woman in mexico during the eclipse), and no one can do anything… nor will anyone be punished…

    and so the africans in the US have learned that violent crowd behavior can get them lots of products for free, and a VERY low rate of punishment… (morals dont matter since entitltement, evny, etc are now normalized).

    they knew that no matter what happened, we would not go through the sales slips and punish everyone that was there… we will not sentence 100 people as all being part of a murder…

    africans have learned that acting out gets them things (and they dont realize the negatives they get from it since that is not direct and they can deny it. like no one pikcing them up in cabs, no one trusting them, no one hirign them, etc).

    i remember when the lights went out in ny… the big black out.. i was living in fordham rd tremont area of the bronx… a war zone that never had been bombed.

    i rememver what it was the year before..

    prior to that night… you could go window shoping… couples could walk down the street and look at the windows of the stores… who kept their products out… since people could come in the next day and purchase them.

    indonesia now is like that. you can see stores leave product out in front over night since there isnt enough space… and the next day, nothing is taken…

    the US was like that… then the 60s came… and the new enlightened left way…

    the new matriarchy…

    and crime went through the roof… in fact it was so high, that prior to that they didnt keep stats for it since it was so low.

    people used to leave their houses unlocked… windows open… no bars… no gates… no ugly barbed wire..

    yamarskar… the old people remember something that you cant even dream about… and your hubris will never let you acheive… and your constant knowing when you dont know, will never let you find.

  14. by the way yamarsker… i have emt training..
    one of the interesting things you learn in emt training is that the peole, and crowd are waiting for an authoprity to tell them what to do!

    that the people will literally do anything you want when in the right mode is a good thing… ever see someone come in and take control of a situation?

    thats crowd mentality directed…

    i remember being on scene, and just yelling at som,eone to do it. no doubt. no way out… just order them to do it… and guess what?

    they did…

    which is why a cop can order people aroudn in a situation…

    its a form of mass delegation so that people pull together for advantage, rather than not.

    and if you think of walmart… they pulled together and they got advantage of getting in… the fact that a person not of their tribe, and not of their importance was killed doesnt matter… it only matters if one expands their famikly top the point of ridiculousness to include everyone… (meanwhiel those that do that, generally hate their own families).

    the outcome to the mass in the absence of a state force persuing them, would be benificial to that group..

    if you imagine it to be food stores rather than a projection tv it makes a lot more sense. and in a wealthy state like this when people with two cars, a house, and an acre of property are considered poor, not having a projection tv is starving. after all, homless people have cell phones.

    the thing is that the people in THAT crowd, already has an us against the world mentality… they dont care waht they do… because they belive no one cares about them… (and in a way its true… no one cares enougn any more to conserve the ways of life that would give them good ilfes and not ill lives)

    in a world where that groups top movie is “get rich or die trying”, morals, ethics, and everything good is out of the picture…

    why? because a matriarchy that has morals, ethics, and such is an oppressive patriarchy.

    how can one bastardize their children and call it a social good otherwise?

  15. Where there is enough space a crowd in motion will spread out and injuries will be rare. Where there are injuries you can almost be certain a choke point or hard surface (wall, fence, railing, doors) creating confinement is involved. And so it was in this case.

    I am a bit mystified that the police either couldn’t or simply didn’t arrive on scene in time to confine in the store and subsequently interview (nearly) every member of this crowd, taking names, addresses and statements of narrative of each individual’s part in the event, such as, where were you in the crowd (front, middle, rear), were you pushed or did you push someone else, did you step on the victim, did you shout that a man was down, were you forced not to step on the victim, who were you with, who was next to you in the press of people, etc.

    At least I assume this didn’t happen as I have seen a number of articles about the police studying video tape to try to determine who was in the crowd.

  16. There was an article in the NY Times that said: “All those people were there, lined up in the cold and darkness, because of sophisticated marketing forces that have produced this day now called Black Friday. They were engaging in early-morning shopping as contact sport. American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.”

    What I fail to understand is just exactly what these people held to be so important that they stood outdoors for hours to get in a store at 5 am.

    Did the individuals who trampled the young man intend to do so? I doubt it. But everyone there was in the grip of a disproportionate and unreasonable desire of their own making. Only they can assess if they have a measure of responsibility for his death. Casting the blame on businesses or lack of police control or crowd dynamics glosses over the serious question of the responsibility of each individual.

  17. I grew up in the 50’s and early 60’s in a small town in California. The tallest buildings that could be seen were the spires of the Churches and all commerce closed on Sunday. I don’t ever remember anyone getting trampled while waiting in line to see a big name movie that came to town or waiting to see Santa at the local park. Not everyone went to Church and there were people that in their private lives had anger, hurt and sorrow. However; we all knew that there was a common code of ethics that were to be observed in public. Simply put is was “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you”.
    Now I don’t want to give the idea that I am a Bible thumper or better than anyone. In the mid 60’s I went Berzerk like most everybody else, drugs, sex, rock and roll were the new sacraments and by the early 70’s I had already had a brush with radicalism by hanging around the SDS on the University Campus nearby. I never did buy the socialist dogma, my heros at the time were Jimi Hendrix and Steve McQueen and no bunch of pin heads with Napoleonic complexes were going to tell me how to run my life.
    In Mexico they break Mustangs completely different than the do in the States. They put the horse in the arena and the Gaucho waves a blanket in the air and spooks the horse and makes him run until eventually the horse is exhausted and kneels down. The Gaucho grabs the saddle and calmly walks over and saddles the horse, then sits on him and waits for the horse to regain his strength and it can stand again. The horse gets up and begins to walk with the Gaucho astride him and by the time he has recovered to full strength he is broken to the saddle. That’s pretty much what happened to me. God ran me until I could run no more then slipped the saddle on me. I did fight the bit some but as I look around at the tragedies that are so commonplace today, that as a child I could never imagined taking place, I realize that the loss of that sense of the common good that was not imposed but was accepted by free will cannot be allowed to disappear from the public discourse. The Judeo-Christian ethic is what made us responsible for our neighbors and we have lost that. The tragic death of the youngman at Walmart should make us all ask “Who is my neighbor?”.

  18. the response to this will be all wrong…

    rather than do something that works and preserve the situation, they are of course going to mandate more punitive and potentially violent control.

    for instance… wal mart now has the ability to put in a new door and of course arrange it differently.

    even midevil castle designers knew to put bends in entrances to prevent the force of crowd in a straight line.

    all they have to do is put large heavy obsticals that block the entrance and cause direction changes to be able to enter. put a car in front close to the door, make em walk around it to enter… but an inflatable big thingee in the alcove, so that only so many can fit in the in between area… put large items right in the straight line way of the doors on the inside..

    its really not that hard to make it impossible for enough people to gather in one straight line to be able to provide the force needed for this kind of thing.

    its just that they thought moral momentum was how we are, and so they dont know (as do others) when this taken for granted thing was over…

    there are a lot of things that can be done now that they know… and even more since they have to replace the door way… but big state has to pujnitively control everything…

    20 years in the future, some kids will be shot when the police cant hold back the crowd and one of them shoots into the crowd to stop them…

  19. Try and explain all of this from any academic perspective that you wish. It boils down to simple BAD behavior. Period.

    Ohhh…I forgot, *simple* truth is no longer acceptable. We need to analyze it to complicate it and, thus avoid its simplicity.

  20. Whenever I hear stories in recent years about mob stampedes I cannot help but wonder about the kind of people who would be there to begin with. I’ve been in crowds before, entering and exiting sporting events, and not one of those experiences comes close to a stampede. And so I am left with the question about what kind of people would assent to this kind of behavior.

    I feel nothing but revulsion and contempt for the people who trampled those Walmart employees or even other members of the crowd. I find it disgusting. Extreme selfishness and desensitization is what is happening. The moral fiber of the nation is badly in need of being upgraded. Check out the stats in the article linked below. Not only is the behavior of the kids reprehensible, but the adults seem clueless about it too!

    http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94PGCAO8&show_article=1

  21. Neo, a lot crowd deaths also happen because a legitimate disturbance made people run and push. Pushing people ahead of you to get into a store, this is part of the problem. People wouldn’t just waiting in line and orderly walk into the store.

  22. The accounts I heard in the local (NYC) news said the crowd was positively feral, and that people walked over this dead man’s body with ZERO concern; that they even got mad that the EMTs trying to help him were “in the way.”

    And they bottomed it all out by bitching furiously when the store manager said he would have to close the store because someone had been trampled to death. “We have shopping to do!” they yelled.

    I’ve seen this type of swinish mob in NYC before, always from the rotten neighborhoods. It’s horrifying, but not surprising.

  23. Another article mentions the doors “bowing with the weight of the assault” and then “shattering.” That sounds more involuntary–and more correct. A large crowd pushing from behind can exert an astounding amount of strength.

    But the ones being pushed against the doors probably should have had significant injuries. And the ones next in order would have been pretty well compressed also. People should have gone down to the ground once the doors gave way – falling and tripping – and then received some trampling – at least those in the front layers.

    So I’m guessing the doors were first intentionally broken, then the stampede occurred. I’m also guessing, therefore, that the stampede was in fact voluntary to a significant extent.

    But in any case, security cameras should tell the story. They might even exist in the possibly lighted parking lot. Along with eyewitnesses.

  24. “…American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.”/NYT

    So, Progressivism is in league with Big Business. Who knew? And it’s really all a scam? How true.

    NYT finally gets one right.

  25. I’ll both agree and disagree. I’ve been in the front of “stampedes” in sporting events that are, well scary (anyone that has been at the front of the crowds at a University of Tennessee football game on an upset victory knows what I mean – for those that do not look up the stadium capacity). And yet, i’ve seen that very same crowd give way for real emergencies because, well, they were sane and felt that even though they were only 1/10000 responsible for a death it wasn’t worth killing someone.

    I’m also reminded of a local retail outlet going out of business (linnens and things IIRC) and having a person in a minivan nearly collide with me, zoom around me on the right, and nearly collide with two other vehicles (not to mention a high rate of speed inches from parked cars) in order to get to the sale first (I was going to eat lunch at the place next door – I learned the with a similar experience the next day to wait until their event was over). Turned out my normal lunch time was also when they were opening the doors for the sale prices and a good 20-30% had the “sales at any costs” idea. I;ve had mothers shove occupied strollers in front of my truck, under my feet (and recall that I wieght around 300lbs so I’m not exactly small), and all sorts of crazy things to hold their place in line (even though in each of those cases I had no intention of getting in front of them). Though some at least were embarrassed when I said something.

    I suspect that most would have never individually allowed it but didn’t really have an issue with the crowd doing it (blaming it on everyone else). To a certain extent that is the truth – one amongst the hundreds would have also been trampled so you can only be expected to do so much. However this is because those hundreds each individually put the need to rationalize their behavior above someone else life. Had the over all behavior of the crowd been more towards the human life instead of getting to the sale then it would have been different (note how many continued to shop and were angry they stopped it – after all *they* made it through and were “just part of the crowd” – no need to punished like those that actually trampled the person)).

    When each individual only is responsible for 1/10000 of the death they can forget it even if were they in the exact same mental state of mind only responsible for 1/4 of the death they would stop. Many get to the point where they feel their individual responsibility is low enough they can continue on – yet to many (and I’m betting pretty much anyone getting trampled instead of doing the trampling is in such a state of mind) feel that 1/10000 vs 1/4 doesn’t make any real difference.

  26. Berverly’s got it right. The behavior of the mob was “swinish.” And “feral.” The culture itself keeps being driven down to the lowest common denominator. And it’s not just in the poorest, roughest neighborhoods in NYC, Beverly. Upper middle class people are becoming swinish in their morals too.

    We are in big trouble. We need a serious moral, intellectual, and spiritual revival in this country.

  27. I have heard it said that the store was advertising “limited quantities”. It’s possible that the advertisers think that people who aren’t particularly interested in something will get fired up if the “limited quantity” issue means they might not get it.
    If the advertising was as I heard, it would be part of the explanation–which is to say part of why the animals acted as they did–and the answer would be to advertise unlimited quantities, even if it were not true.

  28. There was an article in the NY Times that said: “All those people were there, lined up in the cold and darkness, because of sophisticated marketing forces that have produced this day now called Black Friday. They were engaging in early-morning shopping as contact sport. American business has long excelled at creating a sense of shortage amid abundance, an anxiety that one must act now or miss out.”

    So how does the NYT handle the stampedes of former employees out of their building? /g

  29. Shopping mobs are hardly a new thing. It’s very likely there’s a Flintsones cartoon featuring one. There is something about shopping that brings out a feminine aggressiveness, and this subject is not studied by academia, but by marketing experts and retailers of all kinds.

    Is shopping the feminine contact sport?

  30. Is shopping the feminine contact sport?

    Careful now, or you might give someone “the vapors”.

  31. The only time I was in a stampede, someone was firing randomly into the crowd and the crowd was funneling into an undergound walkway entrance.

    I was very young — 14 or 15, I think — and when people around me started running in one direction, I started running also. Fortunately my mother was with me and grabbed me, pulling me against the wall of the tall building from atop of which the crowd was being shot at. This had two benefits — taking us out of the line of fire — and taking me out of the stampede. Which was very good since I was wearing pumps and there was no way I could have run far in those.

    The crowd continued running past us, full throttle and since there were thousands of people… We didn’t see anything happen — we didn’t take the underground crossing to get home — but the next day we found that there were three people who died. One, her shoe broke and she was trampled before the stairways leading down, and two fell in the stairs and got trampled. The random shots, meanwhile, didn’t kill anyone.

    I’m not sure what this goes to prove, except that I remember seeing people en mass run towards me and starting to run. There was zero thought involved. If I’d continued running I might very well have either fallen and been trampled or ended up trampling someone out of sheer terror — and the terror wasn’t even of the shots, but of the people around me, all running and shoving. I’ll always be thankful my mother COULD and did think, in those circumstances.

    P.

  32. Good grief, Portia. Where did this happen?

    (Should I sign this “Antonio,” to stay in character in Merchant of Venice?)

  33. Occam,

    Actually the Portia I took the name from is Marcus Junius’ wife. Yeah, I know, but I’m going with the idea that she was a staunch defender of the Republic and all. (Hey, I can dream.)

    I can’t say where it happened, because it’s a small enough country that it’s part of my public identity which I do not wish to reveal.

    Enough to say the people doing the firing were our leftist Lords and Masters and that I was part of an unauthorized demonstration. Which now that I think about it means I was sixteen. In my memory I feel younger, I guess.

    No it wasn’t reported. When I came to the US and told stories of my youth people looked at me like I was crazy. “But nothing like that happened. These people were PEACEFUL.” (Snort.) I found myself in so many discussions where people would prefer to think I was nuts than to believe their press was slanted that I stopped talking about it.

    One of the things we should be grateful to the internet for. Nowadays this stuff would be far more widely reported and the picture better, at least for those reading the new media.

    P.

  34. Neo, my analysis of the stampede is similar to yours.

    Although my sources concerned itself more with berserk barbarian assaults that can’t be halted because the ones in front are forced by the ones in the back to keep moving or be trampled.

    I found myself in so many discussions where people would prefer to think I was nuts than to believe their press was slanted that I stopped talking about it.

    Those people are known as tools, useful idiots, and cannon fodder. Pay them no heed.

  35. the move from patriarchy, to matriarchy explains all of this…

    patriarchies were about limited freedom… practical freedom… and so they were about self control…

    That doesn’t explain how the Shia stampedes killed a lot more.

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