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

nytimes.com

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

#261

Post by lostpwagain »

kragen wrote: post #217

> Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts. that is to say, it's actually shell shock? as in, actual physical shock from actual shells? george carlin would be so proud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc the article also mentions that they'd all trained extensively in diving deep underwater, which is also known to cause brain damage, b…

What I've heard is they do/did a lot of explosive breaching. Then things like recoilless rifles, heavy machine guns or if you use a .50 caliber sniper rifle might further contribute to the situation.

I'm not sure if these types of units usually dive that deep that you would be worried about brain damage, but I'm less familiar with that side of things. Diving probably hasn't been that much of a focus during the recent years in the middle east either.

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

#262

Post by jjallen »

kragen wrote: post #217

> Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts. that is to say, it's actually shell shock? as in, actual physical shock from actual shells? george carlin would be so proud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc the article also mentions that they'd all trained extensively in diving deep underwater, which is also known to cause brain damage, b…

Rifles would never do this. They probably usually/always wore ear protection during training. Even if not it wouldn't do it. Many civilians fire guns throughout their lives, often without ear protection.

This would take a much bigger explosion.

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

#263

Post by actionfromafar »

manuel_w wrote: post #259
alexey-salmin wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the good thing they went forward back then and invented the modern helmet to protect people in trenches from overhead explosions. And incredibly it seems that the Adrian helmet still outperforms modern helmet designs in the blast protection quality. [1] It can't stop a bullet sure, but I suspect that chances of being hit by an overhead blast are higher than that a of a headshot in a typical warfare scenario. [1]…

FYI, also modern helmets are not designed to stop bullets but rather to protect from shrapnel and hand grenades. Stopping a bullet would mean breaking the wearers neck. (The kinetic energy needs to go somewhere after all.)

Deflecting it could maybe work though.

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

#264

Post by prabhu-yu »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #252
sofixa wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Why on earth would you think laws would be necessary? This mechanism is older than laws or human civilization itself.

Some people want laws for everything.

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

#265

Post by kragen »

lostpwagain wrote: post #261
kragen wrote: post #217

> Much of what is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder may actually be caused by repeated exposure to blasts. that is to say, it's actually shell shock? as in, actual physical shock from actual shells? george carlin would be so proud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc the article also mentions that they'd all trained extensively in diving deep underwater, which is also known to cause brain damage, b…

What I've heard is they do/did a lot of explosive breaching. Then things like recoilless rifles, heavy machine guns or if you use a .50 caliber sniper rifle might further contribute to the situation. I'm not sure if these types of units usually dive that deep that you would be worried about brain damage, but I'm less familiar with that side of things. Diving probably hasn't been that much of a focus during the recent…

yeah, those do sound like more likely causes

as for diving, it's more about holding your breath for long periods of time repeatedly; look up national apnea teams

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

#266

Post by flourpower471 »

munificent wrote: post #45
vunderba wrote: post #4

This was a really well-written article. I think for years I had naturally thought that traumatic brain injury as a result of explosives basically caused the brain to rattle so hard that it smashed against the skull causing contusions, but apparently this is something different. The way it's explained in the article is that this is actually a result of the blast energy wave bouncing off of differently dense brain tiss…

This would also explain why accounts of "shell shock" and PTSD rose so dramatically during WWI but were less common in prior wars where explosions were less common.

However also confounded with the rise very different forms of warfare.

Prior to ww1 there were limited periods where you would live on edge - if you have to march armies into position and have pitched battles (e.g. Waterloo) the soldiers have some warning and mental preparation time.

WW1 saw the start of widespread normality of living in trenches and never knowing when the artillery shell might kill you.

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

#267

Post by coldtea »

seventytwo wrote: post #154
joegibbs wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting that at the time, in WW1, it was assumed to be a physical injury to the brain caused by the shockwave of exploding artillery shells (hence the name). A few years later a consensus evolved that it's a psychological problem caused by the stress of combat, which was the prevailing opinion for about 100 years. And now it's looking like it might actually be a physical injury caused by shockwave damage t…

It’s not either/or. The psychological shit is real, but the physical damage to the brain is real also. Both things are true.

>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.

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

#268

Post by actionfromafar »

WA wrote: post #260
ok_dad wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine doesn’t have 350 million citizens and the world’s 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 7th largest air forces, ten times more aircraft carriers than the next country, the worlds most effective military training, and a total military budget of more than the next 15 or 20 countries. If we sent troops to Ukraine, Russia would be out within weeks, and we’d have less casualties than Iraq and Afghanistan, assuming Putin didn’t start…

They probably said the same in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. "Merely weeks until victory." And as percentage of GDP, military spending was even higher back then: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...

You just have to cut the Russian supply lines, the situations are completely different.

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

#269

Post by camkego »

The article says "The vast majority of blast exposure for Navy SEALs comes from firing their own weapons, not from enemy action."

Is it possible damage can be modeled with something like:

total_damage = incident_count * Impulse - or - total_damage = incident_count * Energy Density

It seems like the question of potential damage from small arms and personal weapons should be investigated.

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

#270

Post by alexey-salmin »

manuel_w wrote: post #259
alexey-salmin wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the good thing they went forward back then and invented the modern helmet to protect people in trenches from overhead explosions. And incredibly it seems that the Adrian helmet still outperforms modern helmet designs in the blast protection quality. [1] It can't stop a bullet sure, but I suspect that chances of being hit by an overhead blast are higher than that a of a headshot in a typical warfare scenario. [1]…

FYI, also modern helmets are not designed to stop bullets but rather to protect from shrapnel and hand grenades. Stopping a bullet would mean breaking the wearers neck. (The kinetic energy needs to go somewhere after all.)

Older steel helmets don't but modern IIIA-class helmets (e.g. ECH) do.

Kinetic energy is not an unsolvable problem, energy can be dissipated. The momentum is in fact the problem that can't be really worked-around (except spreading it over longer period of time) but the momentum of a bullet is low.

UPD replaced "impulse" with "momentum", lost in translation

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