This is well known. People tend to freeze when confronted with a novel situation. That is why there are fire drills, and why soldiers are drilled until obeying orders is reflexive.
When people freeze like this, they are not just idly goofing about, but are in a state of high tension and indecision, looking to see what everybody else is doing, or for someone who appears to know what must be done to take the initiative.
I imagine something like this is going through the heads of many people:
Oh, an alarm is going off. Is this a drill? Must be, I don't see anyone running or anything on fire. No one is telling me that I have to leave, so I'll just stay right here and carry on with my business. I don't really want to go outside only to wait 15 minutes to half an hour until they tell me the alarm was an accident.
Solution: Have someone go to the fire panel, see where the alarm was set off, go to the place where the alarm was set off, verify there is an actual emergency, make a live announcement on the PA system telling people to exit the building.
At the minimum, telling people to exit the building, even if it's an automatic recording that plays when the alarm was set off, is the best way to get people to comply. Telling people to exit is much more powerful than a noise and having people decide for themselves whether or not to exit.
I don't think it's "fear of change", but rather that people in the civilized world, who live in urban areas, are rarely faced with dangerous situations and don't have developed a judgement of when a situation is dangerous. They are not in fear when a fire breaks, they are passive. Fear would make them think quick on their feet.
Well I think mainly it's about how once we get into routine subconsciously it's really hard to change especially so when the situation is more dynamic hence intrinsically it's a fear for change. They can tell that the situation is perilous but they way they react is to stick to their prior routine.
This is odd, because every time I've been in a building when a fire alarm went off, people by and large got up and got out. Okay, so they generally brought their coffee with them, and sometimes their laptops. Maybe it was because there were unannounced fire drills and occasional false alarms, so it wasn't really a novel situation.
"Forensic reconstruction after a famous restaurant fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky confirmed that many of the victims sought to pay before leaving, and so died in a queue."
When people freeze like this, they are not just idly goofing about, but are in a state of high tension and indecision, looking to see what everybody else is doing, or for someone who appears to know what must be done to take the initiative.