I'm not sure you can effectively prepare for something of this scale and nature. The extent to which you can prevent something like this is to have access controls in place and have security screening at the entrance, with a mechanism in place for locking the building down in a crisis — a mechanism which by its nature must operate in such a way that it could cut off all
ingress and leave people to fend for themselves at the main doors.
As for evacuation, you can't know whether or not the goal is to
smoke people out of the building in the first place and into the open where they could then be attacked.
It's one thing to prepare for an active shooter scenario. It's another thing entirely to try to protect your
venue under siege.
You can do all the planning you want, but in a situation like that everything happens so fast you wouldn't know what was happening in time to assess the situation and activate whatever
safety measures you may be able to scrape together.
If attackers
lay siege to your
venue and have suicide vests, several dozen national security measures have failed you and unless you happen to have a secret service detail on your staff, I don't see how any preparedness plan can mitigate the damage they intend to cause.
I'm actually very surprised the one bomber tried to get through security into the stadium and got caught. (Getting "caught" here meaning he detonated his device). If he wanted to inflict harm to a large number of people, he could've gotten the crowds when they were in
line going in or on their way out at the end of the match. My estimation is he knew he would probably be caught but that on the off-chance he did make it through, he could blow himself up on live TV or next to President Hollande — which is to say any preparedness plan you may put in place should account for the grave likelihood that those trying to enforce it will die trying, and any plan that hinges on someone sacrificing themselves is a plan that with an incredible likelihood of failure. Most venues' security staffs are qualified to handle drunks, not suicide bombers.
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