Concert Stampede

Question 1: Do you agree with Johnson's explanation of the concert stampede? Why or why not?

Answer: Johnson’s explanation of “The Who concert stampede” contradicts the media accounts and general opinion about the life-claiming event that occurred at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum on December 3, 1979 where eleven young people were trampled to death. I therefore, disagree with Norris R. Johnson’s explanation of the ugly event.

Contrary to Johnson’s view, the stampede occurred as a result of the participants competing to gain entrance through a limited entry points to the arena of the concert. As evident in much sociological discourse, human being is naturally selfish, ruthless, impatient, self-gratifying, pleasure seeking and aggressive (Giddens, 1970). In the event that led to the stampede, various accounts from media and researchers revealed that the surge to enter the concert arena began when the doors were opened. At this time, the available police report asserted that approximately 25 people had fallen at one of the door points. Those immediately behind the people that fell were then pushed by the surge, of aggressive participants pressing to enter the concert arena before, and at the expense of others, onto the growling pile of the fallen, making them to fall atop those already fallen.

Furthermore, against Johnson’s assumption that the crowds were characterized by a rudimentary social structure, reflecting at least the ties of crowd members with whom they arrived the concert arena, what transpired at “The who concert” was a sort of crowd turbulence i.e. unanticipated and uncontrolled irregular motion of individuals into different directions due to strong and rapidly changing forces in crowds of extreme density (Miller, 1985). This fact conformed with the general definition of panic as the breakdown of ordered, cooperative behavior of individuals due to anxious reactions to a certain event. Often, panic is characterized by attempted escape of many...