Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by runjake » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:18 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #425

runjake wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M16 platform has small projectiles, but there’s a lot of powder behind them. They are pretty loud, more so if you’re to the left or, especially, right where the ejection port sits. My guess for SEALs is the breaching charges play a big role. Carl Gustafs are notorious as well, but I don't know whether SEALs use them. US Army Special Forces do. Edit: Yeah, I should clarify to say the M16 is more likely to cause he…

As far as rifles go 5.56 is about as anemic of a round as you can get and have it still be fit for purpose in a military or defense context. You can't even hunt most things with it because it's not powerful enough. They only way these rifles are causing brain damage is if you're on the wrong end of one.

Yep. Clarified my original comment a bit.

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

#472

Post by 8372049 » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:19 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #347

15155 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the above, yes. I'm saying that a SEAL shooting a suppressed SMG feels nothing after dumping magazine after magazine downrange. There's no way this is causing concussions. Grandpa's 30-06 will rattle your fillings a little bit after one round - still probably doesn't result in TBI.

That's not all SOF shoot, of course. SCAR-H, M14 EBR, M249 SAWs and M240 all shoot 7.52mm x 51mm NATO (compatible with .308 but slightly different chamber pressures)

The FN Minimi (M249) fires 5.56. The others fire 7.62, not 7.52.

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

#473

Post by Maken » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:22 PM UTC

fwip wrote: post #430

Maken wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Naively, it seems like there'd be a lot more of the "dead fathers" case than the "out of wedlock because women want to have kids but there aren't enough husbands to go around" case.

Given one of their first goals was to end the discrimination against bastards (children with unknown father), I would say not.

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

#474

Post by rwultsch » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:24 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #425

runjake wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M16 platform has small projectiles, but there’s a lot of powder behind them. They are pretty loud, more so if you’re to the left or, especially, right where the ejection port sits. My guess for SEALs is the breaching charges play a big role. Carl Gustafs are notorious as well, but I don't know whether SEALs use them. US Army Special Forces do. Edit: Yeah, I should clarify to say the M16 is more likely to cause he…

As far as rifles go 5.56 is about as anemic of a round as you can get and have it still be fit for purpose in a military or defense context. You can't even hunt most things with it because it's not powerful enough. They only way these rifles are causing brain damage is if you're on the wrong end of one.

They are however incredibly loud. Being close to someone shooting 556 with a brake is a really annoying experience and I would not be shocked if there were follow on effects.

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

#475

Post by munificent » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:25 PM UTC

ein0p wrote: post #231

lazide wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there is no ‘primary cause’ that can be fixed, while still solving the underlying need the country seems to have - which is ‘have a large standing group of highly trained, extremely focused, non-conformist, insanely competitive, and professional killers ready at a moments notice’? It’s not like the mere fact of creating/concentrating the population of the folks willing to be this doesn’t also create a whole s…

What if there is a primary cause, and brain trauma is not it? Seems pretty likely that the issue is psychological in nature, otherwise contact combat sports and eg rugby/football would show similar incidence of suicide. I can see how after a couple of years of high intensity combat civilian life would feel like a complete waste of time and a road to nowhere.

> otherwise contact combat sports and eg rugby/football would show similar incidence of suicide.

As the article says, the brain damage described here is from blast shockwaves passing through brain tissue with different densities. It's entirely different from the brain damage caused by sports injuries like in American football.

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

#476

Post by grvbck » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:26 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #308

mkl wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infidelity exists. Serial monogamy exists. No-strings liaisons exist. Polyamory exists. Etc. Single mothers exist even with an equal number of men and women. The exact legal nature of marriage is not going to stop any of these. Enormous numbers of people have lived and reproduced without any legal or financial protections at all, including the majority of your ancestors.

And the core premise I'm disagreeing is that countries on purpose draft only men, because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country in case of military disaster. IF that were the case, governments would do something , anything , to encourage such behaviour (one man getting multiple women pregnant) after the war is over. Nobody is able to come up with any examples of anything like that happening, which again…

> and the real reasons why only men are drafted are somewhere between biology and misogyny.

Sounds about right. Historically, the military culture is obviously deeply rooted in patriarchy. Men are to defend their countries, in the same way that 'women and children' have been supposed to go first into lifeboats.

There are some arguments to be found in the above mentioned Rostker v. Goldberg, and in the legal debate that followed:

Once the combat issue is put in proper perspective and the evidence of women's recognized ability to perform military functions is assessed, it becomes apparent that an exclusion of women from a draft registration requirement would be the product of the archaic notion that women must remain 'as the center of home and family.'

and

Congress followed the teachings of history that if a nation is to survive, men must provide the first line of defense while women keep the home fires burning.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150502095151/http://digitalcom...

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

#477

Post by mike_hearn » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:31 PM UTC

jajko wrote: post #340

mike_hearn wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if they just spray a bunch of bullets in the general direction I am? From what I understand, real soldiers generally don't spray bullets like you see in movies or video games unless they are in a defensive machine gun nest or on some sort of vehicle. Ammo is an extremely finite and precious resource on the battlefield. You can't carry much with you, and you don't necessarily know when you can resupply, so ever…

A standard NATO soldier should carry 210 rounds of 5.56 ammo. That's 7 30-magazine clips if he actually has all of them in clips. If you ever saw any combat video, soldiers often fire a LOT, experienced or not (experienced just tend to hit more often). Maybe not a full auto, but nobody thinks in '1 bullet per enemy' mentality, self-preservation makes you overdo it, and they train you to not save on ammo unless you ar…

Of course nobody thinks they're going to get a kill shot with every single bullet. But if you were to fire continuously you'd get through 210 rounds in like 20 seconds or something. Unless you plan to be in the battlefield for only a few minutes you've got to be pretty careful with that ammo.

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

#478

Post by coldtea » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:34 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #382

coldtea wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, do you have any examples of this actually happening in the real world? You were given examples already: "Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility, higher nonmarital births, and reduced bargaining power within marriage for women most affected by war deaths" You can read about similar post-war periods with similar problems and outcomes in…

> You were given examples already: "Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility, higher nonmarital births, and reduced bargaining power within marriage for women most affected by war deaths" The fertility rate (amount of kids per woman) dropped, so no. > policies that promoted nonmarital births Nonmarital births does not mean that men were getting m…

>The fertility rate (amount of kids per woman) dropped, so no.

Of course it did, since tens of millions men still died and tons were left with severe impairements. It's not about it remaining stable or raising after the most horrible war casualties in history it's about it not dropping as much. It's about it being elevated to where it would be if what we describe wasn't the case.

"The magnitude of the effect on completed fertility is relatively small in light of the scale of male losses, perhaps due to the pronatalist policy that promoted out of wedlock births"

>Nonmarital births does not mean that men were getting multiple different women pregnant at the same time.

Who said anything about "same time"? Men had more choice and thus more affairs/women and reduced being tied to marriage. This translates to more women pregnant by fewer men over the previous period - doesn't mean men got 2-3 women pregnant at a time.

In any case, I think this is more of a "hands on the ears" mode, than a discussion mode, so I'll stop here.

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

#479

Post by mrob » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:37 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #218

cjbgkagh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. I am aghast with the press-ganging going on in Ukraine. I think if Ukraine can’t motivate volunteers to fight then they must surrender. I get that we (the west) wouldn’t like that but they’re taking volunteers so anyone who wants to fight that war is free to do so. Too many people wanting other people to fight their wars for them. I don’t even like my country, the thought of be…

It's literally a question of life or death. If Ukraine surrenders, that could very well be the end of the country and ethnic/cultural identity. Look up what happens to Ukrainians captured by the Russian army - rape (irrespective of gender), torture, starvation, daily beatings, etc. Russia has kidnapped hundreds of thousands of kids too. Surrender is not an option. Unfortunately, everyone (men and women included) must…

They could pretend to surrender (ethically speaking, surrender can never be a valid contract because it's always performed under threat of violence, so feigned surrender is always a valid military tactic), pretend to integrate into society, and then continue fighting as guerillas.

Slavery is always evil, including military slavery ("conscription").

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

#480

Post by hotdogscout » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 3:38 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #439

hotdogscout wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't read like science, it reads like an ideological statement. The current punishment for scientific fraud is non-existent and academia is full of it and ideologically driven pseudoscientific research. Subsequent evidence debunked that "post-mortem", as another user posted. We've seen, with evidence, China pressure research groups and Nature into calling the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory. Like "fak…

I would quite strongly disagree with you here. When researchers engage in academic dishonesty, it not only tends to have extremely negative consequences for themselves in terms of ability to publish, acquire grants, etc but it also directly and significantly affects the journals they published in. And in the case of the COVID stuff, public health officials who officially mislead people may also face criminal conseque…

While public health officials may face criminal charges, Nature magazine editors and the team of researchers that were contacted by the Chinese government and lied walked away with nothing close to extremely negative consequences. I didn't claim public health officials can fraud without consequence, I said researchers can. I can't find one instance of misleading science for political purposes lead to academic consequences for fraudulent researchers. There were researchers arrested for connections with Chinese Military by the US government but if it were up to Harvard I speculate nothing would be done, because it never has been done, as far as I know and looked at. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor-...

I also didn't claim Journalists and Intelligence Agencies are bearers of truth but it stands that to study something like Lab Leak or Havana Syndrome is a question in the realm of investigation, not science. No?

Peter is risking criminal consequences based on evidence gathered by investigation, not the scientific process. Also not because of purposefully misleading research but dangerous research and lies while testifying, which isn't fraudulent science.