How Peaceful Crowds Turn Into a Deadly Crush

The more than 150 people who died celebrating Halloween in Itaewon, a dense neighborhood in Seoul, were victims of a crowd crush. The disaster was not a stampede; it wasn’t the result of unruly behavior or people trampling over one another. Instead, it was a tragedy in which the massive number of people packed into an alley turned the crowd itself into a hazard.

Crowds don’t need to surge for the gathering to turn deadly—smaller movements and pushes by those on the outer edges can send currents through the group that grow in strength, creating a domino effect. Eventually, the pressure on people’s bodies turns suffocating. “They’ll not have done

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