Talk:Mina Hajj Tragedy, September 24, 2015

How This Can Happen
Depends on what happened. Looking at the video scene, I can hardly imagine 7-800 at least dying from trampling. But it sounds more like most died of suffocation, untreated injures following burial, dehydration, etc. I'm an American but I cited the 46 degrees celcius figure that was reported, and I know what it means. My reference is "the Western Desert lives and breathes in 45 degrees." That means 46 is pretty darn hot (not record-shattering though by the math I did once) The other problem is how and why the crowd had to push so much for so long, without any reversal or slow-down managed, no alternate exit arranged, etc. People already having a hard time breathing, in a swamp of no-wind-chill heat plus human body heat, not thinking straight to start and then panicking from the unstoppable crush - that might help explain that deadly pressure becoming so unstoppable. --Caustic Logic (talk) 07:02, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know, have to check this out. Interesting topic. I have HUGE respect for what out of control masses of humans can do, not least because of having been at the Love Parade in Duisburg 2010, and if it weren't for a friend that overslept, would have been in the middle of the panic that caused (comparably tiny) 21 dead and 541 injured. --CE (talk) 07:09, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I also know from personal experience that the Saudis looked for German infrastructure experts to combat these panics with better planning in the early millenium. I told one of those experts about the ritual they do running around the Ka'aba and he assessed that it was hopeless to do anything about it and wouldn't get anywhere near the job. So, also from intuition, I don't see how they can reasonably be accused of causing this intentionally, also given that their role as protector of the Islamic rituals is one of their very few "positives" in the minds of the region. --CE (talk) 07:27, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok, read up. The video has hardly 700 persons in it, and even your composite shows the right end of the mass. No dead seen there. This is not the scene of a mass panic with 700 dead. They would destroy the fence in a second if there were those forces involved.
 * Apparently the "intentional" part of the accusation was only between the lines, or maybe in some text of "Islamic Invitation Turkey" which is a site of Turkish (not Lebanese) Hizbullah and should be taken with a huge grain of salt. --CE (talk) 08:02, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * 45 decrees in a crowd could be lethal. Just study how emperor penguin stay alive over winter on an Antarctic ice pack. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 10:53, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not convinced this is the scene either, but it's the only thing anyone shows. How many more are to the left is unclear, but I think a few thousand total is reasonable. I think the panorama shows/represents around 900 people (kids and short people are in there, etc.) Intentional massacre, no but maybe intentionally insensitive / inept management, like they say herding people around to make room for a prince, with the confinement maybe aggravated by anti-Shia or anti-whoever biases - some perfect storm of bad habits of an unaccountable, corrupt, senile and decrepit 300-year-old monarchy. An outside thought; maybe a few key assassinations by suffocation or trampling could also be laundered in, and maybe having a launder pile like that to work with was a motive for some kind of stampede that maybe got out of hand. --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:12, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Act of God?
Oh man... --Caustic Logic (talk) 07:02, 27 September 2015 (UTC)