Space monkeys. Some people wanted to see the space monkey rock before others could see the space monkey rock. Of course, that made the people that believe in different space monkeys feel very superior because their space monkeys didn't make they stampede over people for at least the past ten years. The Space monkey lovers over in India had their head space monkey worshiper say something about it, but not of the space monkeys cared, really, so why would the worshipers of space monkeys? Of course, there was another space monkey that made his followers feel superior to the stampeding space monkeys followers by virtue of a historicity involving a shedding of tradition, thus the new space monkeys spread and multiplied accross the new space monkey continent until no one liked any of any space monkeys anymore, which was likely for the best, but makes a lot of space monkey worshipers angry and sad. the space monkeys don't help them out.

It was a crush.

Good Christian god fearing americans have also done it while trying to escape nightclub fires or some crap, just not on the same scale.

All desperate needs for validation in life that result in feeling it's ok to step on top of others are bad, regardless of origin, literal and figurative.

Hooker - it depends on what you're asking. If you want to know how this particular incident started, then the real answer is: nobody knows, or at least, the journalists reporting on this story don't know yet. Buried in the accompanying text article, there's mention of an investigation by King Salman, as well as one possible factor being the closure of two nearby roads. Unless one of us Poesters was on Hajj the other day, that's all we can say for now!

If you're wondering why more people died here than at Black Friday, I think it's just a matter of scale. On average there's nearly 6,000 people per day going through any given station of the Hajj; jam them together on one small road and spook them for some reason, it's easy to imagine why that would turn deadly.


Aelric - what about "I am going to fall and be crushed to death unless I step on top of someone"? That's perfectly understandable, and if it's still "bad" to do such a thing, then you can worry about atoning for your bad behavior after you survive.

Cavemen with be cavemen. Maybe they saw fire.

It's just too many people and not enough space. At the crowd density of the Hajj, you can do little to move independently, and small stumbles and ebbs and such cascade down the line and the whole thing snowballs.

When this happens, you get caught in the push and there isn't anything you can really do but try to keep your feet under you.

Shout out to Aelric for making this about his personal hangups, though. That's what's really important.

Apparently in 1990 there was a stampede there that killed 1400, and stampedes with triple digit death counts are pretty common. It sounds like the last place on Earth I'd ever want to go.

Maybe they can like... make hajj season 3 months instead of 1?

Allahu Akbar!

Any time there are large groups of people, any panic can kill a huge amount, either from fire or false alarms or anything really. Sometimes even just poorly arranged passages and barriers can funnel people into crushes, doors or gates that open inwards instead of out. Pretty innocuous stuff. Watch the Station Nightclub fire video to see it in action

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=144461

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_stampedes

Religious pilgrimages, concerts, soccer matches- read up on the Hillsborough disaster in the UK - literately nothing happened, no fire, no plane crash, just bad crowd control- people funneled into too many people and 96 died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster

There's a very long (I want to say 12 pages) end note in The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley that has a lot to say about this sort of thing.

Raggamuffin is right though, this stuff is like freeway traffic, it has a lot less to do with human behavior than it does with acoustics and wave propagation.

That's a random choice of location there. Any particular reason for it, just out of curiosity?

Shhhh, Cena, shut up! No-one's supposed to know about Operation Invade Calgary for another six months. I'm guessing you Coasties are training for it right now, but your CO should have warned you: loose lips sink ships! Don't forget why we had to cancel Jade Helm.

The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo/festival in Calgary. In fact the Calgary Stampede is where that infamous MLP Live clip was from.

They have *rodeos* in Canada?

What are they doing? Riding caribou and over-sized beavers?

Alberta is home to more fake cowboys than Texas.

And possibly more real cowboys. Alberta is all beef and oil.

So is my boyfriend!
Bah-dum-dum.

You're dating a hamburger?

But the Albertans can have a stampede without deaths. Also Calgary gave us the Hart family.

No, I'm dating Sly Stallone!

Thank you I'll be here all week!

...oh. A Stampede joke.

Ok, that's embarrassing, that was actually a decent joke, it's just so damn bizarre seeing someone mention my city's name in relation to an international event like this like it actually matters...

The Calgary Stampede sounds awesome. I love Canada. I've been to Montreal, Quebec City, and Whitehorse.

It's not bad. Giant carnival with all the rides and fairgrounds, agricultural exhibitions, the rodeo, country music and assorted other live stage performances, fireworks. And like a million bar specials, free stampede breakfasts at various malls throughout the city, private parties/breakfasts with more liquor than the public ones, and a shitload of corporate events. And window paintings, flags, and murals everywhere

I haven't been down to the Stampede Grounds since I was, like, nine, though.

You just hajj to go there didn't you?

Truly you are one of the five pillars of our site.

Why I allah..

I feel like the comments on this video were directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

You mean M. Night Shawarmaman.

keeps the boys away

Well, actually I misplaced this comment but thanks for making it TOTALLY AWESOME.

Back off, man. Some of my best friends are white.

I don't think people here are racists OR idiots, just a little insensitive from time to time, and in some cases, maybe they're also mad at certain socio-political groups (ahem, Mr SolRo, Israel and the Ukraine).

I bet if this were furries or feminists, GamerGaters or rednecks, Christians or fat people or even (horror of horrors!) white hipsters at Burning Man, we'd s̲t̲i̲l̲l̲ be seeing a lot of jokes at their expense.

A stampede! Like cattle!

Moooooooooooo-ve over, Palestinians!

Don't make fun of my fedora. It makes me look dashing.

I can't believe there is black humor on POETV, of all places.

Now Sol, this just speaks to your godless communist upbringing. It's considered a blessing to die on the Hajj. We should celebrate. Allahu Akbar! (small arms fire from our residence into the air ).

I didn't see any black humor about xtians in any church shooting videos.

so

black humor about those stupid brown muzzies is cool.

black humor about American xtians? HAVE SOME RESPECT MAN! TOO SOON!

Actually, Mr. Wildcat, what you just said is not a joke. The following is pulled from Wikipedia's article on an earlier Hajj stampede:
---------------
On 2 July 1990, a stampede occurred during the Hajj in which 1426 people died. This incident had the highest death toll of any Hajj tragedy in modern times (...) Immediately after the event King Fahd stated that the event was "God's will, which is above everything," adding that "had they not died there, they would have died elsewhere and at the same predestined moment."
---------------

POETV is not a place for black comedy. That's what Tyler Perry films are for.

It's King Fahd's job to self-parody Islam. SolRo's mad that you're stealing his thunder.

Islam could really use an existentialist reformation.
Jesus H Akbar

Yeah, that's pretty rough. I've heard some of people theorizing, a while back, that SA is trying to basically make the Hajj as inaccessible to anyone else as possible, and even enclose it off entirely, doing a shitload of development in the surrounding area in recent years. Even a theory that some of the Princes would like to basically demolish the whole thing.

The most believable explanation was basic xenophobia, not wanting all the dirty unwashed non-SA muslims coming in and stinking up their country, so to speak, but given that it's such an important site to Islam, and SA is still ostensibly Islamic (though they're more of a massive Mammonite sect than anything else)...

The hajj in it's current configuration really isn't sustainable/feasible.

I think the estimate was that 3 million people are going there this year, and that number will only increase.

So 3 million people trying to visit one spot in a city that normally has a population of (if I remember right) 1 million.

Well you know SolRo, all that could be fixed if we took Mecca away from the Muslims and gave it to someone more responsible - like the Jews, perhaps?

What did they expect would happen putting Something Awful in charge of it?

There's a whole lot about Islam that doesn't make any sense outside of a 5th century Arabian peninsula immediate context. Besides the Hajj being the greatest Chamber of Commerce gag in history, the entire concept of Ramadan makes no sense whatsoever in an arctic scenario. Muslims in Barrow, Alaska would just starve to death.

Not to wave my Christian flag too boldly, I'm glad that I'm not obligated to any dietary laws, pilgrimages or sacrificial activity. Seems like Paul and Peter made the right choice there.

No dietary laws in Christianity?

Fucking Lent, my son.

Why can't someone just build a second Kaaba elsewhere to ease the strain? Or a third, or eighth! Just take some chippings off the Black Stone for the new franchises if you need to loophole for legitimacy.

Obviously I don't know the exact letter of the religious law re: the Hajj, but if there's anything resembling a central governing body of the Islamic faith (pref. one divorced from an actual national government), they could probably adjust a few rules without compromising their faith. Islam's over 900 years old now, surely they've earned a little wiggle room for themselves.

Pft, I'm a Protestant. *eats vast amounts of steak during Lent, masturbates all over the place*

Akbar and jeff