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When you think about it, panic is not a very adaptive behavior. We probably could not have evolved to this point by doing it very often. But the enduring expectation that regular people will panic leads to all kinds of distrust on the part of neighbors, politicians, and police officers. The idea of panic, like the Greek god for which it is named, grips the imagination. The fear of panic may be more dangerous than panic itself.

But just because panic is rare doesn’t mean we shouldn’t speak of it. Panic does happen. This chapter is a cautious exploration of the exception: What is panic? When does it happen, and why? How can you make it stop?

A Woman Down

At the end of 2005, Ali Hussain, a driving instructor from Huddersfield, England, went on the hajj with his wife, Belquis Sadiq, a social worker for the elderly. The couple had been married for seventeen years and had four children, the youngest of whom was eight years old. Both Hussain and Sadiq had been on the pilgrimage before separately, and Islam requires only one hajj per lifetime. But they had always wanted to have the experience together. So on December 29, Hussain and his wife left for Saudi Arabia with an organized tour group of 135 other Muslims from their area.

On January 12, Hussain and Sadiq gathered their pebbles together and left their hotel for jamarat, the location of the previous four stampedes. Jamarat is a stretch of land surrounding three stone pillars, which are required stops on the hajj. In a ritual known as the “stoning of the devil,” pilgrims must pelt the pillars with pebbles three separate times. It is a cleansing ritual, meant to commemorate the way Abraham, in the Islamic version of the story, repelled Satan each time he tried to stop him from sacrificing his son Ishmael. In the 1970s, the Saudis built an overpass to allow two levels of pilgrims to participate in the stoning at once. As the crowds grew, jamarat became the most dangerous bottleneck in the world.

Hussain and Sadiq knew they were entering the most perilous part of the hajj. But it was a matter of degree. They had been in intense crowds since their arrival. For Westerners, it can be especially unnerving to be so close to so many strangers. The men’s bare shoulders touch, and the women’s scarves can get entangled. If a shoe falls off, you don’t dare try to salvage it. At the pillars themselves, it can be hard to even find the space to raise your arms and toss the pebbles. As the crowd pushed onward, Hussain and Sadiq clasped each other’s hands tightly. They knew they needed to stay together.

That morning, the crowd approaching the pillars was extremely dense. Some of the participants had brought their luggage on rolling carts, in violation of the rules. But the throng was flowing fairly smoothly. At 11:53 A.M., however, something changed. The crowd began to lurch in stop-and-go waves, a pattern visible on the video footage. Hussain and Sadiq began to feel a surge of pressure from behind. The crowd was so tight that they began to have trouble breathing normally. But there was no way to turn back. They just had to make it to the pillars, throw the pebbles, and then get back to the hotel safely.

At about 12:19 P.M., the situation became untenable. People began to be violently pushed in random directions by this amorphous force called the crowd. People stumbled, and then became obstacles for everyone else. Hussain’s wife gripped his arm tightly. The heat from the other bodies wrapped around them like a woolen shroud. Breathing became even harder. Then, suddenly, Hussain tripped over a luggage cart. He felt his wife lose her grip. Down on the ground, he saw bodies and heard screaming. People scrambled over his back, injuring his shoulder. He managed to pull himself upright, and he started yelling his wife’s name. It had been only a few seconds since he fell. She could not have gone far. But he could not see her anywhere in the thicket of humanity. It was 12:30 P.M. Soon Saudi soldiers arrived and cordoned off the area where