Dr. Wright's Crowd Safety Tips

As some of you may know, Storm whistle inventor Dr. Wright and I have a podcast, where we discuss the reasons behind the various phenomena in our daily lives. They're sometimes a bit silly (I get a little carried away with my Microsoft Paint animations...), but we really work hard to research each topic carefully, and to get accurate information out there.

A few weeks ago, we did a video podcast on crowd safety:




This was a pretty chilling podcast for me--through our conversation, I realized that I really had no idea how to act during a dangerous crowd situation. The jist of the podcast is this: if you're in an open area (i.e. a field, a street) in a fast-moving crowd, stay away from the middle. But if you're in an enclosed area in a slow-moving crowd, stay away from the walls--you almost WANT to be in the middle during these circumstances, as you have a better chance of surviving by being crushed against a human body than by being crushed against a unyielding brick wall.

Ugh. This is pretty awful to think about, especially because we were still unresolved as to how to survive a fast-moving crowd in an enclosed area. Pop suggested blowing a Storm whistle to let the people around you know that you were being crushed, which isn't a bad idea...

Ughhhh. It gives me the jeebies just thinking about it.