How To Survive Crowd Chaos With Common Sense

A calm crowd can turn dangerous in seconds. We dig into the psychology that makes mobs contagious and share practical, step-by-step moves to help you read exits, beat choke points, and get your family out fast when fear surges. Drawing from hard lessons at Hillsborough, the 1979 Cincinnati concert tragedy, and the 2005 London attacks, we connect the dots between design flaws, human behavior, and the small decisions that determine whether you’re stuck in the crush or sliding to safety.

You’ll learn how conformity and panic signals hijack attention, why the center of the flow becomes a vise, and how to use edges, angles, and body positioning to carve space without fighting the tide. We break down a simple 4-count breathing reset to steady your heart rate, plus field-tested tactics for keeping kids close—belt-loop chains over hand-holding, hands free at chest height, and avoiding dropped items that trigger pileups. If someone falls, we walk through the safest posture, how to protect your airway, and when to surge up and move diagonally to daylight. We also share low-tech tools like glow sticks for nighttime reunions and the habit of choosing two exits and a landmark before any concert, game, or market.

Along the way, we address recent investigative failures that show how confusion spreads when authorities miss early, obvious steps, and we pivot to solutions you can control: spotting outward-swinging doors, reading crowd density before it compresses, picking parking and paths that give you clean egress, and practicing calm cues your family can follow. Plus, a heads-up on Prepper Camp 2026: new venue, more classes, easier access, and on-site options for every budget.

If this guide helps you think a few steps ahead, share it with someone you’d want beside you in a crowd. Subscribe for more practical preparedness, leave a quick review to help others find the show, and tell us: what’s your best tip for moving safely when a crowd shifts?

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Chapters

• 0:00 Cold Open And Case Reaction
• 2:08 Failures In The Investigation
• 4:50 Targeted Motives And Withheld Details
• 7:31 Introducing Crowd Mentality
• 9:21 Psychology: Conformity And Panic Triggers
• 11:51 History’s Deadly Crowd Disasters
• 15:11 Navigating Exits And Flow

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

The National Middle Sunday position is a very thunderstorm in the morning. Welcome. To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_01: 0:41

Everybody, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, December the 20th, 2025. So thank goodness they finally found who was responsible for the murders at Brown University as well as the murder of that MIT professor. Now, the gentleman apparently, suspect apparently killed himself 48 hours prior to law enforcement finding his rental car, a storage unit where he was found dead. A couple things stand out. Actually, a million things stand out, but I'm not gonna waste everybody's time on how inept this investigation was from the start. So the mayor, the university president, the police chief, and all them are doing their self-congratulation tour. Apparently they were at a basketball game today and they got a standing ovation. I'm sure they're having shoulder issues from trying to pat themselves on the back. But regardless, the person who solved it was a brown graduate, a homeless gentleman who graduated from Brown that lives in the basement of the lecture hall where the homicide occurred. Apparently, the suspect went down into the area where this homeless gentleman lives. He confronted him, he followed him outside, and then the homeless gentleman actually put a post on Reddit describing exactly what happened and how law enforcement needs to interview the person that came down into the basement. So eventually they got it straight. Suspect's dead. We'll never really know the true motive. And one thing that upsets me as well, you know, we never heard much about the victims. The MIT professor, we heard a little bit about, but the two students that were killed, we didn't hear about them hardly at all. University officials and law enforcement refused to tell the folks asking at these press conferences if the suspect said anything because the reporters had information that the suspect said something prior to shooting those people in the lecture hall. Initially, they said they were not going to release what he said because it was part of the investigation. They then released that according to the witnesses that they did not interview, and I'll get to that in a second. According to the witness, he was barking like a dog. Now you and I both know that's the biggest load of crap we have ever heard. Like someone is going to come into anywhere, a school, a church, a business, walk down the street and make a barking sound as you shoot somebody. Alec, I'll take things that never happened for 500, please. I have a very good idea of what the person said, and some of you might, and some of you listening might have an idea as well. They did not interview the students and the eyewitnesses in the lecture hall. Up until a day before they found the suspect dead, they had yet to interview the students, the eyewitnesses. So here we are, what, six days later? And I guess they're going to talk to the eyewitnesses. Wouldn't talking to the eyewitnesses be one of the first things? I don't know. I was a cop for 26 years, and I can't tell you how many people I interviewed over my 26 years. And I'll be damned if I ever went to a homicide or a robbery and I waited days to interview the people that might be able to give me a description of the suspect. Now, as I adjust my tinfoil hat, I have a very good idea on why they did not. They did not want to interview the students because, in my opinion, the university officials did not want to confirm what we probably will never be able to figure out. And that was both of these assassinations, both of these murders were targeted. The suspect apparently studied with this MIT professor when they were both in Portugal. Apparently, he was kicked out of the university in Portugal. Then he came to Brown, and then he has bounced around for 25 years. So that murder was targeted. And I believe the murder of the two individuals, specifically the male and female, especially the female, was targeted. But if you don't interview the witnesses, and as time goes by, a witness's recollection goes downhill quickly. Within an hour or two, you're going to get such conflict. And now that the students were not interviewed and they listen to the news reports, they listen to what people were saying. Oh, we have somebody, a person of interest detained, the military officer in the hotel 20 miles away. He doesn't even remotely physically match the description of what ended up being the actual suspect. So everybody involved in the investigation, covering each other's butts, and it's just really pathetic. So that's all I'm gonna say about that. All right, what I want to talk about tonight is crowd mentality. So if you're in a crowd of people, a concert, a subway, a crowded grocery store, a mall, you're leaving a sporting event, all it takes is one hothead, one false alarm, and boom. You could have a potential riot or something very close to a riot as people try to leave the area very quickly. Back in 1895, Gustave LeBron wrote The Crowd. And he said if you put a smart lawyer and a drunk plumber into a riot, they both turn into sheep. Not stupid sheep, but a desperate sheep. The same trick Solomon Ash pulled in the 50s. And I remember this, and I've seen videos of this being recreated. You take a card and you put a bunch of straight lines on the card. In a crowd of people, the first six or seven people are actors. They all point to the same straight line. Let's say it's line five. They all point to the same straight line and say that line is curved. Seven out of ten people that were not actors, seven out of the ten people following what they just saw also point to line five, saying line five is the line that was bent. Basically, they succumbed to peer pressure. They couldn't figure it out, but they're probably saying to themselves, well, geez, if these first six or seven people got it right, I guess they know what they're talking about. I don't want to look stupid, so I'm gonna pick the same line as they did. Mob mentality is very similar. That's why if someone screams, fire, police, he's got a gun, the situation that was relatively calm immediately is turned upside down on its head. Adrenaline slams you first, your heart starts racing, blood pressure goes up, you get a knot in your stomach, you get tunnel vision, cortisol ride shotgun, and suddenly your memory is completely trashed. So if you had previously thought about emergency exits or ways of egress using situational awareness, there's a very strong possibility that cortisol is going to screw everything up. In a real case, in 1989, Hillsboro Stadium, 96 people were killed. They weren't shot, they weren't stabbed, they weren't blown up. It was a stampede out of this particular stadium, and a lot of people died. A lot of people died because they followed the crowd. A bunch of people turned down this blind alley and everybody followed, thinking it was a way out. And ultimately, a lot of these people were crushed to death. Your emergency exit, your side doors. Do they open inward? That's even worse. Because if you get pressed up against an emergency exit and doesn't have a crash bar that pushes out, that opens out, you're in a lot of trouble. 1979, Cincinnati, Ohio, the WHO concert. Before the concert even started, 11 fans were trampled and smashed up against these windows. The authorities and the security guards on the outside didn't really understand what was going on. They just saw a huge crowd around these doors. People were getting pushed because it was festival seating, first come, first served. People were trying to get in there, they were pushing against these doors, and people unfortunately could not get out. And basically they suffocated and they were killed. So the rule of flow: how people follow each other and how crowds walk or run. Crowds always push the hardest dead center. And I'm not sure why. So if you're in a situation like that, you're leaving a stadium, leaving a subway, get over to the left and to the right. Walk sideways, make yourself a little slimmer in a sense. You're kind of shuffling left or right instead of your entire body trying to move forward, put your shoulder, you'll be able to get in between some people. If you're with family, young kids, you take the lead and make sure they are right on your butt. If they need to grab a belt loop, that's fine. Try to keep everybody's hands free as best you can. Here is a breathing drill, and this may sound kind of silly, but here is a breathing drill that I've been doing for quite a long time. You inhale slowly and hold it for four seconds. You exhale slowly, hold that for four. Inhale slowly, hold it for four, and then exhale again. Do that three times, and you would be surprised. It basically resets your heart rate and kind of does a quick reset on your brain. I do that when I have a hard time falling asleep, and you're concentrating on your breathing as opposed to concentrating on whatever happens to be keeping you awake or whatever stressor you happen to be dealing with. Glow sticks. Somebody brought this up when I was doing this research. There's a family, husband, wife, and three kids, when they go out to events, a Christmas market, a concert, 4th of July, everybody has a glow stick in their pocket. In the event they get separated, they crack the glow stick and they can either keep it in their hand or they can put it above their head. If they get lost, everybody can eventually get back together. In the event that you fall, you're in this mass of people moving in one direction. In the event you trip or fall and you cannot immediately get up, do not lay flat because people are going to start falling on top of you. If you are flat and someone falls on top of you, another person's gonna fall. These people are going to keep pushing and you're going to suffocate. The best thing to do is to try to get into the fetal position. Crawl up in a ball, put your hands behind your neck, palms in towards your neck. Try to protect your head and curl up in a ball as best you can. Don't get on your back. Don't get on your belly. Try to curl up. Use your elbows to guard your ribs as best you can. Yell help. It's not gonna hurt. And if people start falling, they're gonna be falling around you as opposed to on top of you. The moment you feel air, the moment you see light, you need to try to get up as quickly as you can. Don't crawl on your hands and knees because end up someone's gonna step it on your leg, stump it on your shoe, and you're gonna end up flat on your stomach. And that's one of the worst positions you can be in. The London bombings in 2005, 13 people were trampled, fleeing the wrong way. There was an alley that a bunch of people ducked down into that basically saved a lot of their lives as they were able to find this alley, unlike a dead end alley, get into this alley, continue around the block, and evacuate the situation. These are people who knew their surroundings. They were situationally aware. Maybe they walk that way to work every day. Maybe they take these buses to work every day. They know where they are, they know their landmarks. So when people start running, they were able to recognize an alley that maybe cuts through to the next block and they were able to escape unscathed. Speaking of crowds, prepper camp 2026, as I said before, the new location and the new dates have been released. August 14th, 15th, and 16th. I believe prepper camp's been going on for 10 years now. This will be the 11th year coming up in 2026. As I said before, there's a new venue. Try on International, T-R-Y-O-N. It's Tryon.com, I believe, is their website. Or just Google Tryon International. It's about 10 or 12 years old, and basically it's a huge conference center. It's a huge equestrian venue. So apparently they have a lot of equestrian events, a huge ring, all sorts of stables. They have several restaurants. There is a like a lodge. There are one room cabins, two room cabins, three-room cabins, five-room cabins if you're rolling in deep with the neighbors and the kids. It's a world-class facility. Nothing wrong with Orchard Lake Campground. That place is fantastic. But where I camped, they're making those into RV spots. So they're not going to have as much room. And that's fine. It's a campground. Prepper Camp is there three or four days a year. They're a business. They need to do what they need to do to continue the business to grow. No harm, no foul there. Try-on is enormous. They have paved parking. There'll be shuttles taking the folks from the parking lot to the event site. According to Rick Austin, they are going to have some additional vendors, some more high-end vendors, I guess you could say. 20 new classes are going to be taught. There'll still be, I believe, 64 classes, and it's going to be a lot of room. There's a lot of room for everybody to spread out. Towards the rear of the property, there is an enormous lake or a large pond, very grassy around it. And apparently that's where the classroom and that's where prepper camp is going to take place on that end of the property. So there's plenty to do. Hiking, easily located off the interstate. You don't have to go up any windy mountain roads. And I think it's going to be a very nice venue for this year and hopefully in the future. Preppercamp.com for your early bird tickets. And if you go to the website, follow the links for the accommodations to get you to the try-on site. There is a discount for accommodations. I forget what it is. I don't want to give you the wrong discount code, but go ahead and look that up. They have like 150 RV spots, full utilities. Really, it's a world-class facility and it's going to be a fantastic time. Everybody, thanks for stopping by. I hope you're enjoying your weekend. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, whatever you got going on. If I don't have a chance to talk to everybody before Christmas. Merry Christmas, everybody. And as always, be careful out there. Take care of one another. And until next time.

SPEAKER_00: 15:25

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