How understanding Cascading Networks will help you survive a panicked mob
Large panicked mobs are known for being dangerous and even deadly, but a basic understanding of the cascading will allow you to decrease your chances of injury or death. A mob is basically a large physical network of people who are connected by being near one another. A mob can be created after a commotion when people begin to panic and run and push others. This causes the panicked behavior of running and pushing to cascade through the crowd once the threshold of panic people is exceeded. In turn, the entire crowd panics and runs.
Typical methods of surviving a panicked mob are to either reach cover, find an exit, get to the edges of the crowd, or if you can’t do the previous, keep moving with the crowd. Reaching cover or finding an exit allows one to disconnect themselves from the network which reduces the previous network pressures which force someone to be part of the mob. Similarly, being on the edges of a crowd means that there are fewer connections to the crowd’s network which reduces the effects of the cascading pressures. Finally, if someone is unable to separate from the crowd, they would only have connections to people who are also exhibiting panicked behavior and should move with the crowd because going against the cascading mentality would most likely cause injury or death (due to others moving with and/or past the person).