I visited Venkateswara Temple in India, which gets some 50~100k visitors daily. The main takeaway I got was that it doesn't really matter what the path is -- yo

I visited Venkateswara Temple in India, which gets some 50~100k visitors daily. The main takeaway I got was that it doesn't really matter what the path is -- you don't get a say in the matter. The flow of the crowd moves you along, and that's all there is to it. You have people pushing from all around you (in a vague general direction), and next to no space to actually influence your movement -- and the lack of choice in the matter is fairly incredible. The pushing stops coming from any particular place, it just becomes some indeterminate feeling of pressure forcing you along. I'm quite positive you could easily be crushed by it, getting caught between a pole somewhere in the path, and with no external factor to influence the crowd (a wall is clearly visible, a pole is not), simply be pressed against it indefinitely. A stadium probably isn't an intense, but likely similar -- once you're in the stream, the only thing that matters is stream. Eventually, you're suddenly ejected from the stream and have to figure things out for yourself again.