what puzzles me in this kind of situation is this: there were 600 people against one gunman. if all of them attacked this guy, he wouldn't have killed 90 people. obviously there'd be a lot of dead people, but far less than 90. what makes us run away then? it is clearly better for overall good to attack the gunman, yet something makes us try to run and save our own lives. in terms of utility function then we don't reach global minimum, and as a whole we're worse off when running away.

I have been thinking about this quite a bit today.The initial element of surprise is very powerful and that combined with status (an attacker who is perceived to be an authority figure, in this case a police officer) leads to passivity, or a flight rather than fight response.Further, it seems that the gunman built trust for a few seconds before opening fire, adding to the cognitive dissonance. In this case, you also have the relative youth and inexperience of many of the victims.Finally, it happened so fast and people were scattering in all directions, that there was no time or space for a concerted plan.If you think back to 9/11 and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania (UA 93), due to the actions of a group of passengers -They were initially taken by surprise, but the time frame was much longer. Once people grasped what was happening, they devised a plan. It was not 600 against 1, but it was good enough.United Airlines 93**Hopefully the people who were injured will recover and return to their families and lives soon.

a tragedy

yes, there was a huge element of surprise when the dude started shooting at people. however, that's exactly my point: why is that our default behavior is to run away? what if our panic reaction was to attack the attacker?

I read an article today about how some of the teenagers on the island managed to hide, some in lavatories, others in features of the landscape. They were text messaging each other and did not give away their positions by moving or making noises.As I said before, it is quite different when there is an attack in open space and people have scattered. If you were trapped with your friends in a building and some one was going through it systematically hunting for you, your response might be to fight back.An individual effort might be altruistic or just a last chance at survival. If there is a team effort, trust is a critical factor; if we agree to rush the gun man together and I start forward, will you really be right with me, rushing too?

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehwhat puzzles me in this kind of situation is this: there were 600 people against one gunman. if all of them attacked this guy, he wouldn't have killed 90 people. obviously there'd be a lot of dead people, but far less than 90. what makes us run away then? it is clearly better for overall good to attack the gunman, yet something makes us try to run and save our own lives. in terms of utility function then we don't reach global minimum, and as a whole we're worse off when running away.but by running away you reach local maximum which is what people are concerned with in a life or dead situation.In other words:Being one of the first guys attacking the gunman unarmed: P_survive≈0. He will almost surely kill you.Running away: P_survive>0.Joining into attacking the gunman: P_survive= hard to say, but you don't really want to be in a melee situation with a guy that has a shotgun.Running away while others melee with the gunman P_survive= higher than for the alternative.So, from a self-centered perspective it is strategically better to run and hide, especially because sooner or later police will arrive and as a potential victim your chance of getting found and shot continuously decreases as time goes on. From a global perspective it is of course better to attack the gunman.Side condition: You don't know if the guy has some sort of explosives that might be triggered by attacking him and which could very well kill even more people.

QuoteOriginally posted by: quantmehwhat puzzles me in this kind of situation is this: there were 600 people against one gunman. if all of them attacked this guy, he wouldn't have killed 90 people. obviously there'd be a lot of dead people, but far less than 90. what makes us run away then? it is clearly better for overall good to attack the gunman, yet something makes us try to run and save our own lives. in terms of utility function then we don't reach global minimum, and as a whole we're worse off when running away.I dont know the details but sounds weird that one gunman fired from close distance and killed 80 people with just one gun. I assumed he didnt use hand grenades or something. An assault rifle or submachnine gun magazine can load up to 30 rounds. In full auto fire it takes 3 seconds to empty it, and more than 5 sec to reload it, arm it, and start fire again. Enough time for one to rush and push the barrel up to the sky.

QuoteOriginally posted by: trackstarif we agree to rush the gun man together and I start forward, will you really be right with me, rushing too?i don't know for sure, but it's quite likely. the thing's that bees don't coordinate the attack, imho. it seems they attack you if you attack their nest, regardless of what their peer do. so you tend to not attack their nest, because it's troublesome. we seem to be smarter than bees, so we run away unless somehow coordinate the efforts. hard to stopQuoteForeign Secretary William Hague warned today that Britain's security forces may not be able to stop a Norway-style terror attack. Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-storie ... z1T26KtmY8 Go Camping for 95p! Vouchers collectable in the Daily and Sunday Mirror until 11th August . Click here for more informationwhy? in rural area, a lot people have guns, there could be active resistance. in populated areas, there's many places to hide and police arrives quickly. the fact that it took hours for SWAT to arrive at the scene doesn't mean that it's the case in every country.

What did the Oslo killer want?

QuoteOriginally posted by: PolterWhat did the Oslo killer want?this is irrelevant to the discussion here. we're discussing the behavior of crowd under attack in panic

QuoteOriginally posted by: trackstarI read an article today about how some of the teenagers on the island managed to hide, some in lavatories, others in features of the landscape. They were text messaging each other and did not give away their positions by moving or making noises.As I said before, it is quite different when there is an attack in open space and people have scattered. If you were trapped with your friends in a building and some one was going through it systematically hunting for you, your response might be to fight back.An individual effort might be altruistic or just a last chance at survival. If there is a team effort, trust is a critical factor; if we agree to rush the gun man together and I start forward, will you really be right with me, rushing too?no i won't. or maybe i would? I wonder if one can extrapolate trust experience from normal life ("he didn't tell on me when I was smoking in the restroom") into such life or dead situations? Maybe very basic survival behavior pattern take control? Maybe people would want to charge at that guy but literally get weak in the knees and collapse, then be shot point blank?I have no clue how I would react in this kind of a situation, but while sitting here sipping mai tais, I am quite certain that running away quite fast is the ideal strategy. as i said before there is only so much time the killer has before he is captured/shot by police. so to simply lay low far away is probably what increases your survival chance.

In terms of trust and the coordinated group action angle, it would be useful to look at military training and male bonding practices.Outfits like the Marines and maybe especially the elite corps know how to bring out that kind of commitment and self sacrifice in trained groups.It is built partly on the foundation of brotherhood and reinforced by intensive field experience.For women, the mother-child bond is primal, of course, and mothers do die to save their children.I am not sure how military training for women might or might not be different than that of men (possibly not so different in terms of mental and physical conditioning, but women don't tend to see front line action either, so they do not go through the ultimate test.)My bottom line point here is that quantmeh's bees are wired, mothers of all species are wired, others can be trained, but results will vary under duress.Untrained people will tend to flee unless there is no other option but to attack.We might have a thread on the shootings that occurred at Virginia Tech a year or so back.This became a lock down in building situation.

QuoteOriginally posted by: trackstarIn terms of trust and the coordinated group action angle, it would be useful to look at military training and male bonding practices. Outfits like the Marines and maybe especially the elite corps know how to bring out that kind of commitment and self sacrifice in trained groups.well, weren't the victims kids from a more left-wing/socialist background? seems to me as far away from male bonding/militia as possible.

QuoteOriginally posted by: CrashedMintthere is only so much time the killer has before he is captured/shot by police.over 90 minutes on an isolated island. since there was no resistance whatsoever, it's amazing that he didn't kill more. apparently he didn't resist to police and surrendered immediately.

I don't think it was easy to take him down. I don't know it, but i suspect he had always a loaded second gun, probably a handgun, when he reloaded his main gun. As long as he staid in an open space, an attack would require several people each willing to lose their lives and able to act together.There were many cases of similar shot-outs, typically in schools, when everyone was slaughtered like sheep. During "École Polytechnique massacre" some dude, Gamil Shamil whatever, walked around the school killing women. Interestingly, he just separated males and females and let the males go. And so they did, leaving their girlfriends to be shot. I guess his philosophical disagreement with feminism indeed had some valid grounds -- the whole complex of western liberal brainwashing that includes feminism as its part does indeed makes males feminine. I doubt he'd kill many if he tried this shtick in some high school in Harlem or some Chechen village with a couple of teenage boys around. I guess it takes an old fashioned man, at least not a modern western man. "On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho entered Norris Hall Engineering Building and opened fire on classrooms. Librescu, who taught a solid mechanics class in Room 204 in the Norris Hall during April 2007, held the door of his classroom shut while Cho attempted to enter it. Although he was shot through the door, Librescu managed to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom until most of his students had escaped through the windows. He was struck by five bullets, with a shot to the head proving to be fatal. Of the 23 registered students in his class, only one, Minal Panchal, died." This was during Virginia Tech massacre, and the guy was a 77 year old professor, a Holocaust survivor.