Adventure Lives

How to Survive (And Enjoy) a Riot
By E.C. PHILLIPS

Protests and riots can be an educational and exciting experience, but they can also be dangerous. While we love danger, there's a fine line between danger and stupidity. This how-to on riots can help you avoid acting foolishly at protests where people can be excitable and tense. Nothing is as unpredictable as the mood of a mass and being stoned to death or trampled is not a fun way to die. And the protesters are the least of your worries. Add police with the right to do as they please and you can be trapped in a bad situation. But follow these guidelines and you'll get through almost any protest unscathed and with a great story to tell.

Protesters in Colombia are sometimes the children of guerrillas. They use the same tactics their parents use to provoke the police and encourage conflict.

Before the protest:

Understand what the protest is about. If you could potentially be targeted as a symbol of what’s being protested, use extreme caution. Try to blend in as much as possible.
Never go rushing to the frontlines of a riot situation without understanding what the people in the riot have at stake. If people are protesting the loss of their families, they may be desperate and things may escalate quickly. On the other hand, American injustices around the world, while a pressing issue, will probably not lead to a lot of violence (this is usually, but not always, true. Obviously, use your judgment.)

In the midst of the protest/riot:

Make a friend in the crowd or bring a local friend who speaks the language if you don’t. If the situation gets tense, you may need someone translating in order to understand what’s happening and how serious it is.
Stay away from police shooting rubber bullets. These can kill or maim you.
If the police are shooting into the crowd, keep your head down, and protect your eyes with your arms.
People throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police will invariably attract retaliation. If you don’t want to end up in the middle of the fray, watch for the more militant protests and avoid getting to close to them.

When you first feel tear gas, you will be surprised by how painful it is. The pain generally doesn’t last that long if you observe the following procedures:

Take deep inhalations through the nose
If someone you know has an inhaler, use this to clean your nose and mouth of the bad air.
If you’re wearing glasses, remove them. The gas can become trapped between your face and the lenses.
Keeping moving. You may have just walked into a particularly bad cloud of fumes.

If People start to Stampede:

Try to avoid becoming hysteric.
Look for an elevated place to stand.
Get against a non-moving object and hold on.
If you are being pushed forward, try to hold on to two people in the crowd. It will stabilize you and make you a difficult mass to push over.

So there you have it. There are always momentous events happening somewhere in the world. You could be sticking your nose in and getting involved. While nothing’s safe in life, using these guidelines in a protest situation could keep you alive for many more to come.