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Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

nytimes.com

391–400 of 599 posts

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#391

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I’m guessing there aren’t many studies on this, but as a young, fast runner I’d zigzag every time if they’re shooting _at_ me. At least run in a straight line that isn’t collinear with the shooter’s position. Obviously, if you can find cover, put it between you and them and cover distance. It’s so, so hard for any amateur to hit a target that is moving radially in a polar coordinate system centered on them, at all. I…

> It’s so, so hard for any amateur to hit a target that is moving radially in a polar coordinate system centered on them, at all. Isn't that the easiest possible way because they remain on a constant bearing?

Radially might be the wrong word; I thought for a while about it. You’re correct, your goal is to present a target that is moving from the perspective of the shooter. Ideally not moving at a constant angular velocity.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#392
post #387

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One counterexample may be sufficient to disprove a hypothesis. If you claim a certain quadratic equation has no roots and I give you one root, you can’t say “n=1”.

Claims about populations in medicine are not very much like math theorems. There are too many exceptions for a single case study to settle the question.

i don't think that is true of lead poisoning

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#393
post #216

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>Historically, the rationale for excluding women from the draft was that they weren't eligible to serve in combat roles, voluntarily or otherwise Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. If a country loses a double-digit percent of its men it can still repopulate just as quickly, because one man can make multiple women pregnant, while if it loses it…

> Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. If a country loses a double-digit percent of its men it can still repopulate just as quickly, because one man can make multiple women pregnant, while if it loses its women then it takes significantly longer to repopulate, because one woman can't have multiple babies at the same time so the birthrate will ne…

You probably should look at single mothers' statistics.

Edit: To provide more context: It was not exactly "official policy", but single mothers became much more common in Britain after WWI due to the fathers either dying in the war or, well, being already in another marriage. To the point the women started organizing and campaigning for their rights https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/about-us/gingerbread-history/

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#394
post #320

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Fertility rates do not decrease after a war, which means fewer remaining men get the same number of women pregnant.

From a sibling comment, in Russia fertility rates did indeed decrease: https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/99/2/229/58403/...

The URSS did draft women. Also, massive civilian casualties.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#395

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> It’s not either/or. The psychological shit is real Depends, because we had millenia of wars, even much more gruesome (but without explosions), and much fewer accounts of psychological shit. It was just a fact of life, and most people carried on.

I think cultural context can make the difference between a psychological traumatic event and another day at the office. Somebody who grew up on a farm might snap a chicken's neck without a thought, while a vegan city slicker being made to do the same might plausibly suffer severe psychological trauma. It may be the case that being from a society in which violence is glorified and made into a virtue makes people less…

Based on psychological research we know that early childhood trauma can help develop sociopathy. It's easy to see the effect of perpetual violence in terrorist hotspots like Palestine where children grow up to become terrorists because of the violence they experience in "counter-terrorism", which their existence as terrorists of course feeds into, repeating the cycle. As the saying goes "hurt people hurt people".

I think it's a mistake to look at a civilisation past or present that is defined by widespread violence and death and think of it as anything other than dysfunctional. It's just that the baseline of suffering is so high it drowns out all the easily identifiable forms of suffering we're accustomed to.

You often hear people talk about the cultural trauma of Japan, Russia, or Germany. As an outsider there's also a clear circle of violence in American society which pervades and informs cultural attitudes, social policy and conflict resolution. This shouldn't be surprising given the US's history of widespread suffering throughout its history: indentured servitude, religious prosecution, chattel slavery, genocide, disease, civil war. American hyperindividualism as well as both the Cold War and War on Terror "world police" eras of foreign policy and the more recent popularity of isolationism have all the trappings of a trauma response.

Meat is violence. This is why slaughter is often highly ritualized in "primitive" societies, often thanking the animal for its part and being deeply aware of the interplay of life and death that meat eating requires but also the importance of the slaughter for the survival of that society. Both the meat-eating urbanite having an existential crisis over having to kill an animal for sustenance as well as the farm hand thoughtlessly killing an animal are in unhealthy positions - one from the detachment of mass production, the other from the desensitization of their involvement in it. The vegan might be in a healthier space but given modern industrial production is likely as detached from the food they consume and the suffering and death that enables it (be it the field hands working in bad conditions for low pay, the animals dying in the process of industrial farming or the ecological damage caused by shipping exotic or out-of-season produce around the globe).

I say that as a city dwelling meat eater living in Germany, which is a deeply unwell country scared of understanding its own history beyond easy platitudes and simple stories of good and evil people. Humans are not a virus but humanity is very sick and it will take a long time and a lot of effort for it to get any better - if ever.

More to the point: as someone who has had a justified need for therapy before, I think it's important to recognize that of course you can often simply "push through it" because if you can't, you simply break. But importantly you won't get any better, you will just appear more functional for as long as you can keep it up. Therapy was a taboo in my lifetime and I'm not even 40. Suicide is still often a taboo but only started being acknowledged a few short decades ago because a number of celebrity deaths became widely publicized (in Germany it was a soccer player, the stoic masculinity equivalent of an American quarterback). That didn't mean these things didn't happen before. It just meant we didn't acknowledge they did and we didn't know how to get help.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#396
post #342

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10.1096/fj.201701031R

That’s about apnea though. Don’t seals mostly do scuba diving? Or are they really holding their breath?

Some have died from doing underwater breath holding training [1] but I don't know how many minutes they aim for or how regular that is.

[1] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/1...

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#397
post #61

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Eh. Historically, the rationale for excluding women from the draft was that they weren't eligible to serve in combat roles, voluntarily or otherwise. (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostker_v._Goldberg ) That policy changed by 2016, so the rationale no longer holds. With that said, we also haven't had mandatory conscription since the Vietnam War, and I think it's unlikely that we would any time in the near future…

>Historically, the rationale for excluding women from the draft was that they weren't eligible to serve in combat roles, voluntarily or otherwise Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. If a country loses a double-digit percent of its men it can still repopulate just as quickly, because one man can make multiple women pregnant, while if it loses it…

You're right but this isn't a conscious calculation - its deeply rooted, evolved behavior. It evolved because of the dynamic you described. Its the same reason women left the Titanic first, men are more likely to task risks, the Y chromosome has a higher mutation load and a million other things.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#398
post #279

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.50 cal sniper rifles and shoulder launched weapons like Carl Gustaf, the M72 LAW or the AT4 can. Firing a rifle may or may not cause shock waves that are strong enough. If you have been firing a whole day you definitely feel funny in the head.

> Carl Gustaf The CG is LOUD. Wicked backblast on that, too. Generally, you're limited to firing 6 rounds or less per day during training due to blast & shockwave effects. The guys we trained with didn't have that much ammo on hand, anyway, but interesting to know.

It's loud when you are the loader/spotter or are standing close by. It's not loud at all if you are the one firing it (with your head practically on the tube). That is my experience anyway.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#399
post #333

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Shooting suppressed carbines and SMGs generates a completely different level of air pressure than Grandpa's 30-06 or Dad's .308.

Have you shot anything you mentioned? .30-06 and .308 are both quite powerful, and you can feel them in your chest when fired. An M4 (the only carbine I can think of in use by the military) is already a step down in boom as a 5.56mm; adding a suppressor makes that even less so. It’s like shooting a .22 at that point. As to SMGs, they’re all small caliber – 9mm, .45, 5.7mm…

I shot a .50 a couple times and didn't feel much of anything tbh. Less of a shockwave than fireworks on July 4th.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it would break the neck. Typical AK47 bullet at 100yd has momentum 5 kgm/s, which is about the same as a baseball at 77mph.

Guns are kinetic energy weapons, not momentum weapons. It’s the kinetic energy that matters. Momentum is conserved, recoil momentum is the same as bullet momentum, yet recoil does not kill the shooter.

In the movies, the good guy casually fires a shot - one handed. He experiences almost no kickback.

But then the bullet hits the villain’s 300lb henchman, who is lifted off his feet and goes flying.

This is why people think bullets are magical momentum machines when in reality, due to air resistance, the momentum transfered to the target is even lower than at the moment of firing.

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