Can cooperation slow down emergency evacuations?

We study the motion of pedestrians through obscure corridors where the lack of visibility hides the precise position of the exits. Using a lattice model, we explore the effects of cooperation on the overall exit flux (evacuation rate). More precisely, we study the effect of the buddying threshold (of no–exclusion per site) on the dynamics of the crowd. In some cases, we note that if the evacuees tend to cooperate and act altruistically, then their collective action tends to favor the occurrence of disasters.