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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

#541

Post by lttlrck »

erva wrote: post #427

Qualifier: Former US special operations operator that served in multiple wars. My anecdotal take is there are many ways that shock and trauma can accumulate through training and war that are far beyond the minimal effects of an M4. Firearms: While the primary weapons systems are the M4 and side arm (pistol), there are many weapons systems utilized by special operations such as sniper rifles, crew serve weapons, and n…

Thank you. That is enlightening. Not something I had ever thought about, but why I...

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

#542

Post by kragen »

fullspectrumdev wrote: post #405
nabla9 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have been firing a whole day, you definitely fell funny in the head. Ear protecting does not protect brain much. It protects hearing. Brain heals from very mild damage when there is time to rest, but when you shoot all day, day after day, the damage can accumulate. One already recognized problem area is the show wave getting between helmet and skull. It can amplify the impact. Nobody knows what the impact from…

Modern combat helmets don’t leave a “gap” between head and helmet, the “gap” is filled with padding to absorb impact/shock and improve comfort.

the kind of shock that padding absorbs is not the kind of shock we're talking about here; we're talking about supersonically propagating pressure waves which create discontinuities in the pressure field, as well as the temperature field and the velocity field. to my surprise modern combat helmets are designed to protect against those to some extent, but padding is irrelevant to that; to shock waves, it's effectively a gap. the padding protects you from things that could displace the helmet until it hits your head, such as bullet impacts

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

#543

Post by mrob »

sofixa wrote: post #536
mrob wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

You should look up what Russia does to captured Ukrainians, military or civilian, before spouting such nonsense.

That's why suicide vests should be standard issue equipment for all soldiers. The suicide vests should be equipped with heart rate sensors to automatically turn them into land mines if the wearer dies without triggering them (with a short delay to avoid collateral damage). Cyanide pills embedded in false teeth should also be standard equipment as a backup in case the vest fails.

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

#544

Post by beAbU »

kubectl_h wrote: post #421
beAbU wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been surrounded by guns most of my life, going out to the shooting range at least once a month, sometimes more. Range days are busy, with sometimes dozens of people shooting on the line at the same time. The range is open air. I have some hearing damage (which I actually think is from somewhere else - we've always been anal about protection). Other than that, no other issues to report with myself nor my family/f…

> Small calibre gunfire does not have a big enough shock/impact to really affect bystanders. Unfortunately at my public range it seems like there is always one guy with a muzzle brake and he ends up setting up beside me.

Oh yeah, muzzle brakes are actually prihibited in many disciplines where multiple shooters share the same shooting line - they're extremely disruptive to competitors next to you.

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

#545

Post by beAbU »

jajko wrote: post #411
beAbU wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been surrounded by guns most of my life, going out to the shooting range at least once a month, sometimes more. Range days are busy, with sometimes dozens of people shooting on the line at the same time. The range is open air. I have some hearing damage (which I actually think is from somewhere else - we've always been anal about protection). Other than that, no other issues to report with myself nor my family/f…

Its the back of the bullet that is vaporizing from the start from the explosion and hot gases (since it has very low melting/vaporizing point), and then second, smaller spike is when hitting hard surfaces and melting instantly into 100s of pieces (if you watch any slow-mo impact of a lead bullet they mostly don't vaporize, just melt and fly parallel to surface being hit). There is safe ammunition these days, but it c…

Almost all rifle (and quality handgun) ammo are copper jacketed, meaning no lead vaporisation until it hits the backstop.

I use solid brass ammo on one of my larger caliber rifles, but not the others. Guns can be very finicky about their bullets, and not all like solid brass ammo which results in weird accuracy issues.

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

#546

Post by reducesuffering »

el_benhameen wrote: post #139
p51-remorse wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A classic scene on the subject: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=szcviFDt9xM Fictional, but based on a real event.

I was thinking more Always Sunny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCZ9sIrjXpM

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

#547

Post by moomin »

moomin wrote: post #501
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we assume: * Women can be hired for a discount relative to hiring men * Women are just as good at those jobs as men are, i.e. the lower wages are not due to worse job performance Then it follows that some company or other would be going out of its way to hire women in preference to men. Yes, not everyone is a rational actor - but even if many companies are run by raging misogynists, not all are. And the companies…

I think people underestimate how powerful market forces are. Bear in mind that they do not apply within a firm, except in fairly extreme circumstances. Instead most things are done on the basis of perception, which is where racism and patriarchy thrive.

*overestimate

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

#548

Post by tokai »

Invictus0 wrote: post #418
tokai wrote: post #370

Prisoners is another population where we would find pervasive brain damage if we scanned them.[0] In time I believe we will find that a ton of destructive/aggressive behavior is due to physical issues in the brain. [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00406-013-0403-6

And then what? Do you kill/indefinitely confine the ones with brain lesions? Can you grant them parole in good conscience?

treat them obviously

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

#549

Post by quesera »

gampleman wrote: post #300
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 do you think the sexual revolution happened right on the heels of WW2?

WWII ended in 1945. The sexual revolution was a full generation later.

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

#550

Post by lazide »

munificent wrote: post #475
ein0p wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn’t mean the same type of effects don’t happen. I knew a guy who suffered a closed head TBI due to a commercial trucking accident - not the same as a concussion or a shockwave induced tbi mind you - and his personality changed in similar ways to those I’ve heard described.

He started to isolate, got paranoid and (more) violent, and ended up divorcing his first wife and marrying a second woman who seemed to be a kind of hoarder, and isolating at home with her - long before it was ‘cool’.

No idea what ended up happening to him, but murder/suicide would not have been surprising.

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