Tactics, command, leadership

the psychological or social, even though a commander very much
needs to be aware of these also.
A point of interest here is that incidents and accidents, and
the damage they cause, almost always entail some form of energy
change. It could for example imply a change in energy caused
by a car driving off the road and hitting a tree. When the car
collides with the tree the kinetic energy in the car is transferred
to the tree, which moves (if only slightly) and pieces of bark and
wood are dislodged. The change in energy also causes the car to be
compressed, panels are deformed, members are bent and broken
and the engine and wheels can be detached from their mountings.
But above all, a great deal of the energy is transferred to the pass­
engers in the car, who suffer internal and external injury as a
result.
This situation can in principle be likened to a fire in a room.
Different materials or combinations of materials have different
characteristics which cause fires to develop in different ways,
depending on, among other things, the configuration of the fuel
they provide. A room fire is also affected by the layout of the
room, even with the same fuel, as the surroundings also influence
the conversion of energy. In other words the object affects the
outcome of the incident and how damage is in flicted. It is, for ex-
ample, a well known fact that sawdust does not burn in the same
way as solid wood, despite their physical properties, apart from
the obvious one, being the same (Bengtsson, 2001). In the case of
a chemical substance leaking from a tank, it is, for example, the
pressure energy or the potential energy that causes this to hap-
pen. The character of the discharge will change, depending on the
properties of the chemical concerned, the design and condition
etc. of the vessel and several environmental factors.
According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can
neither be created nor destroyed. It can, however, be changed or
converted and it is these changes that often occur in connect ion
with incidents and accidents. In which case the change in the
energy is an unwanted one within a system, between systems or
from one form of energy to another. Changes or trans ference that
causes an incident or accident results in some form of damage
or personal injury. Note that even if in principle two incidents
are the same, for example, with regard to the forms of energy
involved and the way in which the energy is converted, there can
be considerable variation in the objects in which the conversion