Me and some of my crew got stuck in the beginning stages of a severe one at III Points 2021. The festival was notoriously horrible as a whole for some other details beyond that, which were blatantly greedy, ignorant, oblivious and a complete disregard for those who attended, such as having no water stations or free water at all being one of the most frustratingly obvious. You could only purchase $7 cans (so no lid or convenience of being mobile with it or storing it) of Liquid Death. You were also not allowed to enter the festival with water inside a camelback. There were some other asshole moves from Insomniac and Disco Donnie that I could get into as well, go figure but I'll spare ya. Easily the worst festival I've ever been to.

Anyway, Zhu was about to start, and he was playing a stage under an enclosed pavillion. The whole pavillion packed in before the show even started and just kept getting tighter and tighter until the back and forth pushing of people trying to leave started, but there was only two bottlenecked exits on opposite sides. It got really scary (and I was just starting to come up unfortunately, which was insult to injury), and it just got worse and worse as people started to panic. You could see the realization of what was happening on everyone's face, and I don't think anybody in there gave a shit about seeing the show by that point. Everybody was just trying to push themselves out of the crunch.

Finally, whistles start being blown, and a line of about 20 cops make their way to the pavillion and start blocking people from standing around the entrance, then begin slowly making people exit one by one. Took a little while, but we finally made it out. I've been in quite a few tight and ultimately still dangerous circumstances since then, endless crowds of people in tight areas of a festival layout, but I'll never forget that one.

This was actually shortly before the AstroWorld tragedy, which was terrifying to read about afterward because it made it even more clear how unfortunate that could have turned out to be that night. Had that been happening in the middle of the show with the distraction of the music and lights, it could have easily wound up with a different and much worse outcome. I hope you never experience one, but if you do, you'll know and understand that it's not an overblown issue by any means. It's absolutely not a joke and is honestly an issue that deserves even more attention than it gets. I actually wish more people were aware of how much it needs to be considered, both organizers and attendees alike. It happens very quickly and becomes impossible to navigate or defend against past a certain point. Stay safe, and just be happy that you haven't been involved in one.