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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

> it only took two days of basic training to make clear that signing up for the US Air Force was the worst mistake of a heretofore untroubled life

Was it really impossible to just put your hand up and say "uh, guys, I made a mistake, can we please forget about it?"

I mean, what were the consequences of you just sitting on the ground and refusing, or even just walking out of the place? Do they physically own you like a prison?

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In the Australian military there is a cooling off period and you can do just that for the first few weeks. One person from my course signed up and never got on the bus (changed his mind in like 3 hours). Another quit on the second day. If you AWOL in that first week or two they aren't going to waste resources chasing you, because they don't want you back anyway.

Yes, it's called desertion, and penalties are pretty serious.

http://military.findlaw.com/criminal-law/failure-to-report-f...

Yeah, you're pretty much stuck. Come to think of it, there's no reason you should be. Asking someone to commit to something like military service before trying the (degrading) training is total BS. If they think letting people leave in the middle would loose them too many recruits, they might actually have to start training people humanely.

You realize a huge part of basic is getting people to be capable of functioning for an in stressful situations?

True - although I feel like every other job that deals with high stress situations finds other ways to give people that training. Also you can always drop out.

At least in combat MOS, there aren't very many comparable civilian jobs that train in a "friendly" manner. SWAT and HRT (FBI) often have former servicemen who have already learned or been trained to deal with combat situations.

Well, if you try to simply walk out of the place they can and will stop you at gunpoint, and can imprison you without resorting to the civilian justice system - the military can try, convict and punish you on their own according to their own regulations.

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