Panic during an emergency escape was not a certain tragedy of human nature.
It was a stone-built failure of hall width, way out shape, and signage clear sight.
When people died in theater fires or siege bombardments, they rarely died from weapons. They died from bottlenecks, jammed inward-opening doors, and narrow stairwells that triggered crowd crush.
A crowd in flight behaved according to the laws of granular fluid dynamics.
The exit rate was lower than the arrival rate. Then, pressure piled up faster and faster against physical constrictions. That turned human bodies into incompressible blast waves that fractured ribs and suffocated lungs.
Lord Giles Croft stood upon the central transit mezzanine overlooking Wharf One. He held a clockwork brass stopwatch and a clipboard of flow diagrams.
Above him, suspended within recessed granite ceiling pockets by magnetic latches, hung twenty-four massive four-inch forged steel blast doors.
Each blast door weighed six tons, balanced by heavy lead balance weights so exactly that when the air-powered trip-valve released, gravity pulled the slab down in three seconds flat.
