I refuse to be in large crowds. I was in a crowd leaving a football game in high school when somebody discharged a tear gas pen into the knot of people leaving by an automobile-wide gate. A tear gas pen cartridge is a ridiculously small amount of gas. We could have all held our breath and walked away. The crowd panicked. People were hurt. That was just thirty or forty people. Imagine two or three thousand. I have seen other crowd panics. For somebody caught in it, it can be fatal. If somebody wants to attend a rock concert or a football event, fine. But they need to know what to do and where to head when the crowd turns into a lethal stampede.
As we head deeper into the century that will define religious conflict, the danger of crowds grows because terrorists can use a crowd to magnify smaller acts into major slaughters. I am not advocating the abolishment of stadiums or concerts. I just refuse to take the chance.
>>I refuse to be in large crowds.
I am pretty averse to large crowds as well - not because I have a fear of them, just intellectually understand how quickly things can go badly in almost any situation, and when you are packed in like sardines it makes an evasive or survival moves pretty hard to do.
I am am not just talking about terror attacks, but also fires, sudden riots etc - having watched people get trampled to death in panic situations really makes you think twice about needlessly putting yourself in those situations - besides, I rather be out in the middle of the forest by myself or with my dog on just about any given day.
One of the scenarios we ran over was a little crop duster simply spraying herbicide droplets on a stadium crowd shortly after 9/11. The stampede would kill thousands.
That’s right, and the trigger is unimportant. A panic stampede is the real killer, especially on stadium upper decks when people are pushed off the edge to drop 100 feet to the bottom deck. Or crushed in the tunnels.
A typical quad rotor drone releasing a harmless stinky mist could do it.
Same thing happened at our HS back in the 70s but, on a grander scale...it was a military teargas canister that spread throughout the entire school. Kids/staff were climbing out windows, banging into walls, gagging, tears and saliva flowing from their faces. scared shitless.
If it had been during a basketball game,in the confines of the gym, there would have been more problems/injuries.