  The Degasperis-Procesi equation (DP) is one of several equations known to
model important nonlinear effects such as wave breaking and shock creation. It
is, however, a special property of the DP equation that these two effects can
be studied in an explicit way with the help of the multipeakon ansatz. In
essence this ansatz allows one to model wave breaking as a collision of
hypothetical particles (peakons and antipeakons), called henceforth
collectively multipeakons. It is shown that DP multipeakons have Painlev\'{e}
property which implies a universal wave breaking behaviour, that multipeakons
can collide only in pairs, and that there are no multiple collisions other
than, possibly simultaneous, collisions of peakon-antipeakon pairs at different
locations. Moreover, it is demonstrated that each peakon-antipeakon collision
results in creation of a shock thus making possible a multi shock phenomenon.
