| Issue |
EPL
Volume 151, Number 1, July 2025
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 12001 | |
| Number of page(s) | 7 | |
| Section | Mathematical and interdisciplinary physics | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/ade8a1 | |
| Published online | 16 July 2025 | |
Physics reveals and explains patterns in conflict casualties
1 Dynamic Online Networks Laboratory, Physics Department, George Washington University Washington, DC 20052, USA
2 Physics Department, Florida Polytechnic University - Lakeland, FL 33805, USA
3 Moody's (Risk Management Solutions) - London, EC3R 7BB, UK
Received: 2 January 2025
Accepted: 26 June 2025
Why humans fight has no easy answer. However, understanding better how humans fight could inform future humanitarian aid planning and insight into hidden shifts for peace efforts. Here we show that an empirically grounded physics theory of fighter dynamics —which is a generalization of the well-known physics of polymer assembly— can explain casualty patterns observed across decades of violence in a current conflict hotspot (Israel-Palestine). It also suggests the possibility of future “super-shock” surprise attacks that are even more lethal than those that have already been seen. These insights from physics open the door to new policy discussions surrounding humanitarian aid and peace efforts that account mechanistically for human violence across scales.
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