A swarm of people gobsmacked the town of "Lake Elsinore", CA over the weekend in an effort to see the rare, beautiful poppy blooms blanketing the area. It's great people want to see beauty and share their experiences online with others, but the incident is troublesome in that with the advent of instant messaging via social media large groups are able to amass and create unintentional havoc in unprepared areas without warning, particularly in areas like southern California with a large population ( 20 million ) to draw from. I suspect such flash social happenings, which have occurred more slowly in the past by means of word of mouth, newspapers, radio and tv media, will increase in number, yet there are few protocols in place to deal with such events. The city of Lake Elsinore had to finally close the poppy fields to visitors, but people found a way to circumvent the closure and attempt to see the poppies. There is poppy preserve near LA that is specifically set up for many visitors.