In both of my trips through airports I was impressed with the herding techniques:
Line you up
Funnel you
Hurry you
Demand, do not explain
This was like cattle being funneled into a meat-chute, or people into a kill box.
John Keegan was of the opinion that Nomads made such good war fighters because they were used to herding animals to slaughter and simply expanded the method for dealing with humans. Moving people to a destination seems to work well under these conditions and with choke point contact with herders.
On the other hand, my experience evacuating the Museum of the West in Cody Wyoming was a fiasco. We were summoned to the massive lobby to leave and at the same time herded by barely motivated staff who seemed bereft of methodology and most certainly of menace. If this had not been some kind of bogus alarm it could have been terrible. Few could fit out through the doors at one time, and there was no gradual bottlenecking effort.
It occurred to me here, that herding primate livestock who have a destination fixed in their mind is not enough. Careful attention must be paid to maintaining momentum and preventing the development of friction and this requires aggressive reinforcement.
Under the God of Things
My big shock coming back from Afghanistan was the Dulles International Airport cattle chute lines. I'd been so out of it that they struck me as very alien.
Looking at both the cattle and the herders' faces, I understood with a strange finality that I no longer had anything in common with either. I thought about the old guys with their four wives waiting with great dignity in the dingy chaos of Kabul International and what they would say if the herders had suggested that their wives go through the body scanner so someone could look at them naked; they'd probably come back with their tribe and burn the place to the ground. I definitely empathized with the feeling.