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Whenever I am in a big crowd I have an exit plan, if my exit options diminish to one or two options I get out. I've been in a crush before, it's terrifying, especially being 5'3".

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Incident seems a bit disperse for a crush? Usually would be a choke point like a door instead bodies on the road & the mention of '81 reports of "shortness of breath"'.

Edit: "local media reports earlier said the crush happened after a large number of people rushed to a bar after hearing a celebrity was visiting." https://sg.news.yahoo.com/south-korea-100-injured-people-155...

They happen suddenly, so even if you saw a large crowd moving you might not know what you're looking at. Basically the crowd compacts because people are trying to move at all different directions on the exiting side edge so a massive slowdown occurs. Meanwhile, the farthest edge of the crowd or in a sufficiently large crowd the center mass acts as a force that condenses everything between it and the edge.

There are ways to mitigate this, like having multiple exiting edges and spacing out sets so people don't feel like they're in a hurry or knowing what sets lots of people are going to want to get to and spacing those out.

I go to a pretty large festival. My partner and I talk about a plan to exit for every set we go to and we generally go to the same location in each crowd.

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