551–560 of 599 posts
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…
The special forces tale is heroism - being brave and tough in dangerous situations.
That the danger comes from your own equipment, used as intended, is just sickening.
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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.
Also throughout history there just wasn't much attention for regular people, and they're seriously under-represented in the historical record in pretty much every way. Do you think some Roman general is going to write about his soldiers crying about how horrible war is? Of course not; that would make him and his army look bad. He was much more likely to under-represent his numbers to make his army look good ("we defeated the Barbarian horde of 50,000 with just 5,000 soldiers!" sounds a lot better than "our armies were of equal numbers but we won"). And the soldiers themselves typically didn't leave any records.
And throughout much of history there just wasn't all that much attention for these types of problems in the first place. Patton famously slapped some soldiers dealing with shell shock because he thought it was just fake and they needed to "man up". That was probably more or less the typical response for much of history.
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I wonder if the Havanna syndrome is somehow correlated with this as well
There was a rather scathing study on it here. [1] In short the government's own internal investigations realized the obvious answer, a mass hysteria event, was the most likely culprit. But politics got involved and so then they classified reports mentioning this, and released reports suggestive of foreign adversaries attacking people with some mystery weapon, even though their own internal reports put the chances of…
“It is necessary to use an animal like a ferret that has brain structures resembling the “gyrencephalic nature” of the human brain; mice and rats do not fulfill this criteria, according to the summary. The brain tissue of gyrencephalic animals, like humans, ferrets, pigs and primates, resembles ridges and valleys, compared to smooth surfaces of the brains of lissencephalic animals, such as mice and rats.”
“You don’t get approval for animal testing unless the science is there. … You’ve already proven out that the science is correct and exists, and now you are looking at the biological impacts that can’t be modeled and you need a specimen to determine what it does biologically,” the former official said.
0. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/09/pentagon-funding-ex...
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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").
Also, the guerilla scenario is not that realistic. Russians are experts at fighting guerillas and insurections, they have accumulated centuries of experience in it. That's because they've been a multi-ethic empire consisting of a lot of conquered unhappy minorities for a long time now, so they had to learn how to keep them in check. They have world-class spy network and surveilance state, so that any dissidents will be quickly found (torture enough people and someone will give up the location of their guerilla relative etc.). Moreover, they begin the occupation of a given region with mass-murdering people who have leadership capabilities ( see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre ), so that there's literally no one left who could organize the guerillas into anything meaningful.
For context - in the part of Poland occupied by Germans during WW2, there was a vast Polish underground state (there were 200k guerillas soldiers alone, but there were also underground schools, universities giving diplomas, underground theaters etc.). That was all operating under Gestapo's nose, and in spite of heavy military commitment to occupy Poland. Meanwhile, in the Soviet-occupied part of Poland, there was practically nothng. Russians were that much better than Germans at squashing dissidents.
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> 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.
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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
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…
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But greed is not always the strongest motivating force. It is demonstrably often overpowered by classism, racism, sexism, queerphobia, etc.
You'd think new companies would form and employ all women and end up undercutting the sexist ones who pay men more?
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Depression is a lot like being drunk. There’s a point where you wish you could puke and get it over with but it’s just not happening. As I understand it there’s a lot of ex football players in this state. Just hopelessly miserable but not on suicide watch. Or on their way to Parkinson’s.
They need to implement weight limits in football just like are in use in most other contact sports. You don't force boxers to go up against guys 50+ lbs heavier than they are, over and over, daily in practice and weekly in games.