Battlefield Detectives - Gettysburg

(updated  31st August 2007)

Keywords: Battlefield detectives, battlefield analysis

Dr. Still recently developed a series of models for the analysis of the retreat through the town of Gettysburg for a History Channel - Battlefield Detectives. The programme was shown on the History Channel on the 20th of December 2004. Click here for the analysis of the battle of Agincourt.

We filmed part of the show in front of a large screen projector (and my wife says I need to lose weight!!!)

The graphic to the left showed the convergence of troops onto the bottleneck of the town of Gettysburg. With reports of the crowd being so dense (number of soldiers per square yard) that you could literally walk over the heads of the soldiers I constructed a series of models that illustrated the typical problems this would create in such a complex and congested environment.

We looked at the retreat on the 1st day and how the town's geometry may have contributed to the confusion. In typical crowd problems (see crowd disasters) the effect on the individual in these types of situation is extreme confusion and lack of coherence to the advancing Confederates would have left the army without any clear idea of the state of the battle. On the other hand, the retreating Union forces become more ordered as they are converging to the a single retreating mass, moving in the same direction and towards the high ground at Cemetery Hill.

We also created a series of animations using our "intelligent agents" which illustrated Pickett's ill fated advance and the pursuit through Gettysburg. Several other animations, based on our extensive research into crowd dynamics, analysis of high density crowd movement in projects and study  of major crowd accidents around the world were used to illustrate the TV programme.

The movie clip above shows the "agents" moving across the battlefield. Agents that are RED are moving at a normal pace but as the battle continues the ranks break, the formations fold and the density at the centre increases, These agents turn BLUE to indicate that they cannot move "like shooting fish in a barrel). This is a characteristic of crowd convergence and followed our work on the 7th programme in the Series - the Battle of Agincourt.

Strangely this is a pattern we see in many of the decisive victories across the ages - lack of understanding of the dynamics of crowds. Of course our work has an entirely peaceful application such as modelling high density crowds at the various emergency evacuation scenarios