Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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 niche small arms.
The M82 sniper rifle shoots a 50 BMG round. In either the bolt action or semi-auto versions they feel like you are getting punched in the face when you shoot them.
Crew serve weapons like the MK19 and M2 do pack a punch. The MK19 is a machine gun that shoots 40mm grenades. The M2 is a .50 cal machine gun. These weapons systems are mounted, but the percussion of them is still far greater than an M4.
More niche arms like the M249 SAW, M16 HBAR, full-auto AKs, M240 Golf, MP9, etc are not as mild as the standard M4/M16.
Blasts: There are many types of blasts encountered such as Mortars (inbound and outbound), Flash Bangs, Entry charges, IEDs, Landmines, etc. These do make your head ring if you are close enough to them.
In my own personal experience there are many other daily jarring events that aren't nearly as sexy to talk about. Riding in the back of a 5 ton will almost shake your brain out of your head. Riding in an LCAC (hovercraft) is like riding in a 5 ton. Doing boat work in Zodiacs will bounce you all over the place, especially when doing surf passages. Doing hydrographic surveys right where the surf breaks will pound you for hours and make you a little sick afterwards. When your chute opens on a jump, if jumping round chutes, will make you see stars...the landing is not a soft pretty one like rectangle chutes...you hit the ground hard.
There are many more ways your body gets pounded on a daily basis far in excess of the weapons you use.
Round chutes (cupolas) are designed to get soldiers from the plane to the ground quickly.
Quickly enough to remain the least possible amount of time in the air where they are an easy target for any ground troop. (This is why soldiers are dropped from very low altitudes; 400m is usual, but some combat drops occurred at even lower altitudes) But not too quickly that too many of the dropped soldiers end up unable to fight from the hardness of the landing. Please note that it is assumed that some will get hurt on the landing, and the calculus is designed to balance the risk in the air with the risk of the landing.
In contrast, rectangular chutes (wings) are designed to be dropped from higher than 900m, steered in the air, and to provide a very comfortable landing (as long as the surface of the wing is adequate for the suspended weight). They were also introduced for skydiving as a sport, and only later found some military use.
Ram air parachutes can effectively open in a more gradual manner due to the cellular design.
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.
Most injuries involve an element of luck or skill, and the ego serves as a natural buffer.
Consistent, unavoidable, permanent, self-inflicted damage is different. It hurts in its own (sickening) way.
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, but the 'interface astroglial scarring' pathology lab results sound pretty specific to big shock waves
i'm skeptical that firing a rifle produces shock waves that induce cavitation in brain tissue, though
Firing a rifle may or may not cause shock waves that are strong enough. If you have been firing a whole day you definitely feel funny in the head.
The US military, and militaries in general, do not use weapons like the M82/M107 as sniper rifles very often. The M82/M107 in particular has a recoiling barrel (the entire 2.5' barrel slides back when shooting) and isn't a very precise weapon.
They're used for blowing up ordinance or disabling light vehicles. They are sometimes used for hostage situations because they're more likely to immediately disable someone.
The US military has pretty rarely used shoulder fired weapons, since they very rarely have to worry about tanks or aircraft. SEALs in particular wouldn't be doing that.
Do you know that, or are you thinking "these are AT weapons so they wouldn't be used"?
I haven't worked with US forces on a tactical level, but I have served in Afghanistan with my own country's SOFs. We used M72s extensively, even though we never engaged any armor.
I wasn't around for this picture, but it illustrates the point:
This should really be a big, fat, red flag that something is not quite right..
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.
You're much more likely to see SF guys with short-barreled rifles, pistol-caliber carbines, suppressors on everything, etc. For all the (justified) complaints about military overspending, there just aren't the resources or training available to give every rifleman a suppressor.
lead is also easy to detect in blood, or via things like hair samples. no doubt SF types are getting more residue than most, but again fairly easy to notice
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.
as for diving, it's more about holding your breath for long periods of time repeatedly; look up national apnea teams
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 hearing damage, but not brain damage. The concussive force isn't that bad.
Other react mostly to guns, but as a diver I can assure you that there is no automatic brain damage from 'diving deep underwater', whatever that layman term means. There are many folks in diving community with 10s of thousand of dives working cognitively as well as their peers. If you mean Nitrox for bigger depths, again that ain't true, Nitrox is actually better than regular compressed air re effects like nitrogen bubbles in your bloodstream.
If you screw up or your equipment fails and end up with decompression sickness thats another story, but its like saying paragliding breaks your legs.
possibly people are upvoting because they know some facts you don't
never heard about that. can you back this up with a source or explanation?
One of my friends in particular had a saturation dive go really bad and he came back a completely different person. Like going from someone living the life to a complete wreck in one month.
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/App-Central/How-to-create...
I've never heard of seals doing that kind of training.
[1] https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1096/fj.201...
[1] https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/1...
so, this paper neither is relevant for seal training nor does it claim any harm caused by breath holding, based on the Abstract section.
this kind of bullshit is really frustrating. my comment already explained that the kind of brain damage caused by apnea isn't the kind the pathology reports found, so it absolutely doesn't matter whether seal training involves apnea or not, or exactly what conditions are needed for apnea-induced brain damage, unless you have some strong reason for believing that the news article's reporting of the pathology is wrong
so actually it's fine with me for you to continue being wrong if you want. i don't have anything to sell you
---
Over the course of their 6-year investigation into “Havana Syndrome” U.S. officials expended considerable human capital and financial resources going down a rabbit hole searching for exotic explanations. Instead of finding secret weapons and foreign conspiracies—they found only rabbits. For in the end, prosaic explanations were determined to be the cause of the events in Cuba and its subsequent global spread. That is the lesson of “Havana Syndrome”—follow the science.
---
[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10913303/
“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...
[1] - https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_W81XWH2211105_210...
[2] - https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_W81XWH2211105_97D...
- a very small minority of navy seals have committed suicide after exhibiting signs of psychological disorders
- post-mortem analysis showed damage that could be related to exposure to blasts
- blasts causing brain damage? perhaps in training?
Everything else that's written is (to me) pretty much irrelevant. Because in science, a good scientist engaging in good science would now setout to reject their own hypothesis. And only after trying to refute it in every way imaginable might they begin to accept it as even possible, and then set out to test it, again with the goal of rejecting it, so much as possible. But media goes the other way and now runs around collecting statements, data, and evidence in favor of their hypothesis, but you can collect practically endless evidence in support of ideas that are false (which is why science focuses on rejecting your own ideas instead), so it's quite a pointless endeavor.
I tried to do the same with the 60 minutes article (going by the transcript), but failed. The reason is that what they presented sounds pretty silly if you remove it from the "flow." A Russian working in America as a chef, who previously worked as a military comms guy, is arrested for speeding/evading arrest and has a device to allegedly wipe his car's comp? That doesn't even really qualify as circumstantial evidence, because it's just not at all logically connected unless you're playing a game of "connect the dots." And one can do that, but in the end you mostly just end up drawing a Jackson Pollock.
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 "fake news", "conspiracy theory" is now actively used by China as a way to shut down evidence.
From subpoenaed communications we even know that certain figures who publicly denounced the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy, privately believed the theory was likely.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid-lab-leak-deception-an...
Government covert operations are not the kind of phenomenon science can properly study because it's not reproducible and data is not open. It's the realm of investigative journalism and intelligence.
But when journalists or intelligence agencies lie, exactly nothing happens. Intelligence agencies clearly see lying as just part of their retinue of weapons. And the media in general has mostly become a mixture of entertainment and bias confirmation. The internet seems to have largely killed the traditional role of the media as the bearer of information and knowledge on the happenings of the day.
[1] - https://nypost.com/2024/06/02/us-news/house-covid-panel-chai...
---
A consensus has formed among the growing community of AHI sufferers that the U.S. government — and the CIA in particular — is hiding the full extent of what it knows about the source of Havana Syndrome. The victims offer two general hypotheses as to why. The first is that releasing the full intelligence around Russian involvement might be so shocking as to convince the American people and their representatives that Moscow has committed an act of war against the United States, thereby raising thorny questions as to how a nuclear power fond of showing off its hypersonic missiles ought to be made to pay.
---
Okay, so Russia is running around randomly attacking low level embassy workers, and the US knows this and is playing PR for Russia, because they're worried about US citizens viewing Russia negatively. I'm sure there's far more absurd mental gymnastics in there as well, as that was literally from the first section I clicked to. When we get out of this clown world era and back to something vaguely resembling normalcy, there's about a 100% chance that these "citizen investigative journalists" are mostly all going to end up having been little more than Operation Mockingbird 2.0. [1]
This would take a much bigger explosion.
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 very frequent rifle training is. Very people few do that. Once a month in the range is probably not enough.
People that hunt and shoot guns their whole lives don't shoot guns their whole lives. They shoot guns a few times when hunting and then a lot of times at the range but at a leisurely pace. This is like comparing a package delivery guy who likes jogging to an Olympic athlete.
A hunter (I am one) might shoot a dozen rounds to zero in a rifle, or a hundred shells at a clay range. Actually hunting is never more than a handful of rifle rounds or a few dozen shells.
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 tissue sections and causing cavitation.
I'm glad that these issues are finally being brought to light, It's truly unfortunate that no matter how highly trained and skilled some of these soldiers are, that blast waves from IEDs or in this case from their own munitions can result in such insidious physiological changes.
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] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
I’ll summarize the video’s transcripts here partially.
In WW1, it was called Shell Shock. That was 70 years ago. In WW2, a generation later, it was called Battle Fatigue. In the War in Korea in 1950, it was called Operational Exhaustion. In the War in Vietnam and because of that war, it has been called Post-Tramatic Stress Disorder.
The NYT Article basically concludes that PTSD has been Shell Shock all along. Progress has been hampered by Euphamisms. If the combat veterans were diagnosed with Shell Shock, we might have a solution or remedy for it 70 years later.
This problem is pretty bad. U.S. soldiers are almost 9x more likely to die by suicide than by combat, according to a Pentagon internal study ending in 2019.
According to data published by the CDC, if you’re a white male (civilian/military/all) the main thing you have to do to live to see your 44th birthday is not die by suicide. The data says that’s a lot harder than it sounds as it’s the second leading cause of death in all age brackets up to age 44. A staggering 70% of all suicides are by white males. What societal factors are disproportionately affecting them?
Maybe put out an ad campaign that says “Suicide is selfish, misandrist, and racist.” Although that doesn’t treat the underlying issue(s) and causational factors. It’s similar to when Foxconn added nets to the upper floors of their iPhone factory.
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.
Just thinking aloud.
Shock damage from firing a gun might be bad, damage from incoming shells is much worse.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/06/14/armys-recruit...
That policy changed by 2016, so the rationale no longer holds.
With that said, we also haven't had mandatory conscription since the Vietnam War, and I think it's unlikely that we would any time in the near future, short of WW3 landing on our front doorstep (either directly or as a result of NATO's collective defense clause) -- recall that we didn't formally enter WW2 until after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
I recall that the only reason I signed up for selective service was because it was a requirement to receive federal financial aid for college, although it seems that requirement was removed in 2023.
Except if by international order we mean "the will of the stronger dogs imposed upon the whole world, with tons of mayhem and blood, but it's not done to white people so it doesn't matter"?
Just telling people not to, or to call a hotline, seemed like the worst most patronizing advice as it never solved the underlying thing.
I've since learned that there is a subset of suicidal people where that's enough, where the suicidal tendency is a kneejerk decision that can be disrupted, but it bugged me that its not serving everyone that becomes suicidal with a recurring condition that's not improved by merely being present.
It always feel like people are too uncomfortable to talk about it enough, or to question the response measures. A "I'm Helping!" sentiment by copy and pasting a suicide hotline memo, when they're not helping at all, just offloading their discomfort into a protective layer for their own psyche.
In contrast, I'm comfortable enough to wonder whether suicide was the most rationale and objectively best choice, as someone with strong self preservation circuits you can see how far apart I am from everyone else. But this is opinion, a hunch, what I really want is a data driven analysis of the conditions. As with real science, I am accepting of any conclusion, instead of trying to conform a conclusion to preventing it if prevention isn't what winds up being on the table with our current infrastructure.
I feel this article does a good job of not explicitly saying this when describing what must have been an agonizing existence for David Metcalf before he took his life.
Sometimes opting out is the only rational choice. If there is no support in society for an individual who cannot work and generate profit, if there is no support in society for an individual who is terminally ill (expensive palliative care aside), if there is no support in society for an individual who has "fallen throigh the cracks" (and the cracks are mighty wide), then what is there to do? Slowly die on the street?
This thinking can lead to all kinds of dark paths, such as the state being in charge of the matter (and abusing it, as they can already abuse it via the carceral system), but ultimately we have to confront the fact that as a society we often leave people with no way out, collectively shrug our shoulders, and then act horrified when they take the only viable option that immediately removes all suffering.
People who are uncomfortable with suicide are ultimately uncomfortable with facing the reality that they live in a society that encourages it.
This also is the problem with the autonomy argument - this is not what the person might themselves would choose if they were in a more sober mood. The autonomy argument is also seen as invalid in other situations like when signing oneself to slavery.
Money men being against suicide for economic reasons runs contrary another other point in your post - money might be saved by the suicide of the invalid and sick. Making suicide legal can easily be abused by powerful state officials incentivizing people to commit suicide for economic or political reasons.
So yes, create a good social support system, but don't encourage suicide.
Source: I am a man who has, and is, "falling through the cracks" as a child abuse victim with multiple disabilities, no hot job skills, and a marginalized identity.
My life is slipping away and I'm almost 40. I am an extremely suboptimal individual as far as capitalism is concerned. The passage of time has only cemented this very real and very grim outlook.
The "powerful state officials" are already doing what you fear they might do, and have been doing it for longer than I've been alive. They do it with prisons or under terms like "austerity" of "welfare queens" or "dole moochers"
Disabled people are treated like garbage. Look to the USA or UK for immediate examples.
"Aktion T4" never went away, it just got privatized.
There is no support or viable path forward for people like me, short of going on Social Security Disability and living in basically a slum if I'm lucky. Honestly If something like MAID was available, I would absolutely take it.
No, I am not irrational or acutely suicidal. No, I do not need some hotline. My upbringing and disability has taught me exactly how society views me over the course of decades. No, touching grass isn't going to solve it.
I have a partner and a job (for now). Partner understands what I'm going through, and is also marginalized and partially disabled, in a dead-end job, also circling the drain.
I was writing about myself and others I know in the same boat.
Go talk to some disabled people and otherwise marginalized people (due to skin color, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, disability, etc. -- often several overlapping things) who are clinging by their nails to the workforce. You'll find many similar stories.
Many of us are gone already. Many of my friends are gone or on their way out (homelessness, etc).
The kind of comprehensive help we need simply isn't there. We disappear quietly. You don't see us go, and we are not noticed or missed by anyone except our immediate circle or whatever community we can cobble together.
Seriously, go talk to people. You'll find that this is a common but unspoken thing.
FWIW, my point was that in many cases suicidal feelings can be relieved and the abuses (that you point correctly say exist already) can become more dangerous when directed towards getting rid of vulnerable people. But, that doesn't mean that chronic, hard-to-cure situations don't exist.
Best.
People with temporary problems have a right to bodily autonomy and so do irrational people. Everyone does and doesn't need to justify themselves to anyone. The only exception is if they're hurting somone else.
If you are allowing transient decisions for giving away a life, then transient decisions would be allowed for lesser stakes too.
Most societies are debating even something like unrestricted access to drugs. There are people who would take drugs as a conscious/long-term plan for whom the transiency distinction is irrelevant but there are also those who hate it while succumbing to it and would gladly sign a contract to stop access to consumption, if that were practically possible to enforce.
Contracts often involve trading away autonomy of a future self whether for the good or the bad. Signing such a contract is often not legally valid if the person is in a disturbed mental state.
A more common example, children are not allowed to buy alcohol or consent to a sexual relationship with an adult.
The issue being that the immediate decision of the child can be something they would reject if they have more experience and had the ability to make a more informed choice. Of course, the problem of impulsive bad decisions doesn't go away as an adult, but considerations of intrinsic freedom and the problems of giving power to a state become much bigger.
When a criminal commits a crime, a premeditated/planned action is treated more severely than an impulsive action which in turn is treated more severely than an action caused by a mental illness.
Taking one's life is a much more drastic step than drugs or signing a contract.
> not necessarily transient
Not assuming this, chronic examples don't rule out the existence of large families of cases where things can and do look better due to time and a change in circumstances.
It really does seem like projection.
In the US, neighbors will pay for your funeral but not your insulin. Collective disinterest in being confronted with the problem.
They do? Genuinely curious.
For the very simple reasons: it costs money and resources to grow up (and to die), and it’s a life that capitalism could’ve otherwise maybe used.
Artillery was around for 500 years and shell shock was hugely discussed for past 100 years.
There is much better corellation with divorce. Soldiers returns home with PTSD, only to have their house, children, savings and pension stollen. Because they were not around to guard it! And they may get thrown into prison for being too poor!
Shell shock is very convinient excuse, when victims do not get proper recovery!
"It was not chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which is found in football players and other athletes who have been repeatedly hit in the head. It was something new.
The lab’s research team started looking for similar damage in other brains. In civilians’ brains, they did not find it. Nor was it in the brains of veterans who had been exposed to a single powerful explosion like a roadside bomb. But in veterans exposed repeatedly to blasts, they found it again and again."
In other words, data is always a better choice than narratives.
The SEAL in the article was married at the time of his death.
"Shell shock" is a made up term. Other than on hearing the effects of high impulse on a human are long-term, complex and still an areas of research.
In WW1, in Northfields hospital they started to define PTSD in ways that didn't quite add up. Some soldiers had never been under bombardment but had the same symptoms.
Nonetheless, the term remained in use because
1) "Shell shock" was deemed curable with rest, and the main objective was to get soldiers patched up and back to the front.
2) It was a way to avoid getting shot for desertion. A decent officer would not order traumatised men disciplined but send them on to hospital with "shell shock".
Encounters with IEDs were common, especially during the surge.
So many of my friends have died to suicide or have killed themselves due to drugs and/or alcohol that it is hard to keep track.
Now that primadonna seals are dying maybe someone will pay attention.
Thankfully the only lasting effects of my deployments seem to be a bad back and distaste for authority.
Why not both?
One of the key challenges with taking care of humans is that we rarely have the luxury of having only a single problem at a time.
While we cannot find a response to everything, we can isolate the key significant factors.
It can be the case that two easily treatable conditions combine to make a condition that is very hard to treat.
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 swath of secondary effects.
Since after all, if steroids and similar PEDs do actually improve performance - which we wouldn’t be getting worked up about them this way if they didn’t! - then isn’t using them nearly a duty of the folks we are talking about? After all, mission first, and they’re (somewhat) expendable due to the nature of the work.
We make them do all sorts of other things which regularly puts their lives and health in danger, after all, and all the ‘high speed low drag’ folks I’ve personally known have had some kind of long term health impacts. Even if it’s just a lot of joint pain, or screwed up knees/backs.
And barring undesirable secondary effects, isn’t it saving lives and accomplishing missions that otherwise would not be? That is what they signed up for, literally. That and having the absolute craziest stories at the bar later.
note: professional bicyclists and weight lifters will also always have a doping issue that needs mitigating. Well, mitigating if we care about their health vs absolute performance anyway.
If I break my leg and have COVID, I'm not going to be better until both of those problems are fixed and neither has any bearing on the other. There is no primary cause. There may be different levels of urgency, but some problems in the real world are just intrinsically messy and complex.
I have no idea.
Strangely the most common thread seems to be the ones who off themselves went back home after getting out.
Almost everyone I know who got out and stayed away from home is doing ok. Almost everyone I know who got out and went back home is a wreck.
Some had TBI exposures, some didn't.
Ending up back at the place you wanted to get away from could be pretty depressing.
I don't know whether home folks are actually the problem or it's just delayed response. I think it was T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) who said that reactions to the trauma of war continue to bubble up long afterwards. Maybe that is suppressed for as long as you stay "in the field."
Also they're all on drugs and will kill you if you report them for embezzling unit funds.
This is maybe not too related to the brain damage stuff (or maybe it is?), but I don't think the wider public knows nearly enough about the frankly shocking kinds and amounts of criminality in the various US special forces units. OP is not kidding about these people operating as gangs (but worse, because they're sanctioned killers).
A smattering of such behavior:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/07/internal-study-defe...
https://news.usni.org/2021/01/24/seal-sentenced-to-10-years-...
https://abc7chicago.com/us-navy-seals-seal-training-drugs-in...
The journalist (and Army vet, iirc) Seth Harp does yeoman's work on this topic, and is a good Twitter follow. He's got several excellent long-form investigative articles, often for Rolling Stone. Here's one on the rampant murders (ongoing!) at Fort Bragg that the Army won't talk about:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/fort-b...
And another one about rampant drug deaths at ... also Fort Bragg:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/inside...
I think it's time to have a big cultural conversation about how much our current era of spec ops worship is worth all the war crimes and other less-than-normative behavior.
Discussing or criticizing anything military related us seen as disrespectful to troops, and Killing the argument there kills more problematic questions (like 'was the invasion of Iraq a symptom of a larger problem like a too-bloated budget?')
One can appreciate those choices served, and support their assimilation into society, while at the same time questioning military ideals, spending levels, and behaviors.
And yes, training people to function well in situations that are borderline suicidal, training them to follow orders that put them in harms way, is going to have psychological effects on at least some of them. When you train people to behave abnormally you shouldn't be terribly surprised at abnormal behaviour patterns.
I say this as an ex military person myself. There are a lot of questions worth asking, but unfortunately society would prefer to remain ignorant. It's easier to live guilt free if "we didn't know".
What the flying fuck!?
UCMJ can take a long time to process similar to civilian cases. All that time the accused is with their unit, as usual.
To be fair to the SEALs, this is every US SF unit.
I sense a lot of bitterness.
> they're all on drugs
See the Kyle Mullen death during the SEAL entry testing[0] and subsequent policy to test for PEDs[1].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32656856
[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/10/20/navy-seals-st...
Digging into an issue that is affecting lives in such a drastic way and bringing these issues to light.
Like this part of the article for example:
Until The Times told the Navy of the lab’s findings about the SEALs who died by suicide, the Navy had not been informed, the service confirmed in a statement. A Navy officer close to the SEAL leadership expressed audible shock, and then frustration, when told about the findings by The Times. “That’s the problem,” said the officer, who asked not to be named in order to discuss a sensitive topic. “We are trying to understand this issue, but so often the information never reaches us.”
Could this problem also be affecting civilian gun enthusiasts? Or is the order of magnitude of the exposure just wildly lower compared to the military, even in the most enthusiastic?
And then if you have a chance to be around some small artillery, do that too. It’s hard to describe the difference.
(“You” here is used to address HN in general, not you personally)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caltech%E2%80%93MIT_rivalry#20... [1] (which is, admittedly, pretty small)
Intrigued, I got some info from wikihow.
> If you are a fast runner or have bad knees, run in a straight line away from the attacker towards cover. The faster you can get away, the fewer shots they will be able to fire.
>If you are a slower runner and do not have knee trouble, a zig-zag run may be a better option. You may still be hit in this case, but the chances of being hit in a vital area may be reduced.
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’d bet your average shooter who makes the news can’t put 7/10 shots in a stationary silhouette at 10yd. It’s harder than you’d think.
Idk if i would trust my life with that. What if they just spray a bunch of bullets in the general direction I am? Also what is the minimum distance where this tactic becomes effective? I just can’t imagine that zigzagging helps that much when you are 2 meters away from the shooter. And then there is the question of what is the typical distance between the shooter and the victim in most gun violence scenarios. Would not be surprised if that is inside the “zigzag helps you” distance.
Besides… how would going to a range and shooting guns help one learn this information? It feels what you really would need is someone practicing running away from someone with murderous intent to get an intuitive understanding of what you are claiming. And of course people are reluctant to practice that.
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 every shot has to count. If you spray bullets you'll be out within seconds and then you're on a battlefield unarmed. Not good.
> And then there is the question of what is the typical distance between the shooter and the victim in most gun violence scenarios.
In a war? Can be quite high.
> how would going to a range and shooting guns help one learn this information?
Ranges have moving targets, you try to hit them and observe that it's hard.
Yeah, there's a very big difference. I mean a BIG DIFFERENCE
“Great question, did you know if you zig and zag you become impervious to bullet :)”
Still snarky, but there is a point.
I hope they never invent a gun that fires more than once per trigger pull, then you would be able to just sweep it around in the general direction of Invincible Mr. Zig
Why does this matter? Hearing loss is often a causative factor with depression, social isolation, anxiety and early onset dementia.
Fear and anxiety drive a lot of the behavior that gun merchants leverage to sell guns. It’s a vicious cycle.
Doing something is a stressful situation (combat zone) is infinitely more likely to lead to stress-related disorders than doing it in a safe, controlled environment (shooting range)
No?
> came home plagued by hallucinations and psychosis
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/friends who participated with me in this hobby. Small calibre gunfire does not have a big enough shock/impact to really affect bystanders. Interestingly, I dislike shooting in an indoor range, because so much of the shot is radiated back to the shooter and bystanders. Where in an open air range that impact goes up in the air and away.
Risk of lead exposure is very real though. A friend almost passed away due to too much shooting in an indoor range with poor ventilation. After some serious negative personality changes and other related symptoms he was finally diagnosed with nearly acute lead poisoning. Lead bullets basically vapourised when they hit the backstop, so the dust that's kicked up is very nasty.
There is safe ammunition these days, but it costs more. Swiss make their military ammo lead-free (they have cca same ammo as US/NATO but bullets are most effective with different barrel twist compared to NATO ones, I think 1:7 vs 1:10), but both can fire each other's rounds safely.
Safe ammo is essentially just back of the bullet covering lead core (if present at all), but for some reason most manufacturers don't do it by default. Some stuff doesn't have lead core at all, but then desired weight needs to be achieved via other substances and is priced accordingly.
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.
The US military has been switching to lead-free ammo, too, starting about 10 years ago.
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.
Handguns and rifles make loud popping noises. Exploding artillery shells are concussive bombs that produce brain rattling blasts.
It seems the WW1 doctors got it right the first time.
The concern itself was right to have, but I don't think the concern has ever gone away.
So I don't characterize that as very "right the first time".
one of the major problems with such weapons is that although the support crew can shield themselves, often the firing soldier cannot due to operation of the weapon.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/26/us/military-brain-injury-...
there is no good way to protect from concussive blasts aside from avoidance and shelter.
fwiw most DoD studies have found that concussive blasts that seem to be damaging to personnel start at around the AT4/Carl Gustaf range of large shoulder-fired almost-artillery -- understandably since they're large and mostly open-air combustion driven.[0]
[0]: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/05/01/...
It reminds me of the other side, the receiving end: shell shock in WW1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock
I think the key here is to explore all options, not limiting yourself to the obvious.
Steel Industry: In the steel mills people reported similarities 100-60 years ago. I remember talking to workers and their problems after being exposed to huge mechanical machines that form steel. Usually they are extremely loud, feel like a permanent earthquake, dusty and toxic air, hot temperatures and high risk for life threatening events.
I see some similarities here between steel worker’s mental impact and military. It is fair to say that some conditions are not really helping you as an individual “unlocking your full potential”. Some conditions are simply very detrimental to your health.
Exposure to lead is a much larger risk for gun enthusiasts from my point of view.
On the other hand, artillery and rockets are extremely loud. If you want to look it up and start comparing things, keep in mind that every 3 decibels represents a doubling in pressure, so a howitzer having twenty or thirty decibels on a handgun is actually saying a lot.
I've shot .357 magnum and shotguns in there. It's loud, yes. I wear ear plugs and ear muffs when doing that.
But not by any means do they rattle my brain, and I can't imagine it's anything close to what you see around an artillery when firing.
I mean look at the ground towards the camera in this[1] shot, clearly a powerful shock wave going out in all directions.
However
I’ve personally met a gun enthusiast that collected elephant guns [1] and shot barrels filled with tannerite [2] for fun. He was also… not all there. So who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/
As an aside I entreat everyone not to entertain confident proclamations about secondary damage from weapons from someone that claims that they can avoid primary damage (bullets) by the proper tactical battlefield execution of a Sesame Street dance. [3][4]
1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_gun
2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannerite
Impact of repeated blast exposure on active-duty United States Special Operations Forces - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313568121
"We performed a multimodal study of active-duty United States Special Operations Forces (SOF)—an elite group repeatedly exposed to explosive blasts in training and combat—to identify diagnostic biomarkers of brain injury associated with repeated blast exposure (RBE). We found that higher blast exposure was associated with alterations in brain structure, function, and neuroimmune markers, as well as lower quality of life. Neuroimaging findings converged on an association between cumulative blast exposure and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), a widely connected brain region that modulates cognition and emotion. This work supports the use of a network-based approach, focusing on the rACC, in future studies investigating the impact of RBE on SOF brain health."
Characterisation of interface astroglial scarring in the human brain after blast exposure: a post-mortem case series - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27291520/
"The blast exposure cases showed a distinct and previously undescribed pattern of interface astroglial scarring at boundaries between brain parenchyma and fluids, and at junctions between grey and white matter. This distinctive pattern of scarring may indicate specific areas of damage from blast exposure consistent with the general principles of blast biophysics, and further, could account for aspects of the neuropsychiatric clinical sequelae reported. The generalisability of these findings needs to be explored in future studies, as the number of cases, clinical data, and tissue availability were limited."
We can train everyone without this level of exposure, and I can imagine a world where your dose is tracked like radiation, kept to a safe level, and people are forced into retirement after they hit the limit.
I've said for years that people who are suicidal typically have very serious, intractable personal problems but get dismissed like it's "mental" or emotional. They need actual help for actual problems, not "attaboys" and not empty assurances that "Someone cares."
The quote says they frequently get psychiatric diagnoses but new research indicates it's brain damage, not something talk therapy will help.
I'm saying the same thing: Suicidal people have real problems that need real solutions, not talk therapy or emotional encouragement.
My concern: given that this is becoming more common knowledge, in a world in which other, potentially adversarial, countries are more than fine sending their soldiers through the mental meat grinder, how can we prevent outcomes like the ones shared here while retaining hard power?
In the short term I could see leadership pushing a fourth volunteering (volunteering to commit suicide so the Mission can continue)
Flesh and mind are weak. Metal and code is strong.
At least 2X more soldiers kill themselves in peacetime than die in combat in every war that we as a species has tracked suicide rates for veterans.
[0](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009846329/military-suicides-...)
I'm not sure if I would have made it if I'd been born into a world without computers.
Of course this is now a much bigger problem for the military as it affects all combat soldiers even during training exercises.
OK, so not that.
There are going to be a huge number of people with this problem from the Ukraine war. There haven't been years of artillery duels since WWII.
The Carl Gustav 8.4cm recoilless rifle now be procured by the Marines has a big back-blast through the typical venturi used by these kinds of weapons. In training, (Sweden at least) they are limited to the number of rounds they can fire. I do not know if this for merely hearing loss, or if there are concussive effects.
Also, while "small arms" do not typically have concussive effects, I have stood behind a.50 Barrett rifle discharge and there was a noticable shock wave in the air. I didn't feel it in my head, but my intestines were not happy. If you were in the front hemisphere of the muzzle blast it would be far worse.
Muzzle brakes on rifles usually make the blast wave propagate more to the side. A high caliber rifle with a muzzle brake could easily hit 160db. Maybe a .50 cal could go higher. So now you are even punishing your friends, not just folks downrange.
One of the things that is becoming apparent in football CTE is that damage is not limited to the big hits, the chronic effects of smaller hits are causing damage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/sports/football/cte-study...
Maybe an instructor sure, but we're talking about SF here.
I don't doubt that artillery will also do this kind of damage, so I'd be curious about what the brains of field artillery folks look like.
> Researchers found that before they worked around blasts, the instructors brains looked healthy. But in follow-up scans five months later, their brains were teeming with an abnormal protein called beta amyloid that is associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
> “In a young brain you should see no amyloid. None. Zero,” said Dr. Carlos Leiva-Salinas, the University of Missouri neuroradiologist who ran the study. “We were surprised, very surprised.”
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00406-013-0403-6
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/us/maine-shooting-brain-i...
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.
What other preventive measures could be employed?
luckily i only experienced those lows for a period of time. and some days i would be lifted out of it and feel perfectly normal. this experience is what made me realize what almost nobody realizes: that there is no situation where a healthy person will feel the desire to kill themselves. this is because mood is an illusion. i would go from having this entire world view that my life is hopeless and being completely lost and almost instantly switch over to having lots of things on my mind and looking forward to many things and wanting to get on with life. having a normal mood involves being blind to negative things as much as being depressed involves seeing bad things that arent bad. the human mind is designed to translate sensory input into action by any means and when this system breaks down it weirdly feels painful and makes you want to kill yourself. i think the breakdown of this system can be isolated to a domain, concept or situation or be global. and i think that high stress can cause this effect through inflammatory dysregulation or some other stress pathology giving the incorrect impression that suicide is a reaction to stress. if there were a pill to stop the root cause of depression, nobody would ever kill themselves except for terminally ill people. and just because someone killed themself doesnt mean that their life was especially hard, hopeless or messed up or whatever. it just means they were sick. thats it. and yet every time theres a suicide, all people talk about are the circumstances surrounding the suicide even though they probably are indirectly involved at best!
when i was in those deep depressions i would connect the dots of all the things about my life into a causal web and would be convinced myself that it was the circumstances of my life were the reason i felt depressed. but then within hours that mental framework would disappear completely and i would feel fine. its an extremely powerful illusion. thats why the word trapped resonates so powerfully with people who have been through it. the illusion makes you feel trapped.
this realization has made me basically immune to depression. i recognize mood disfunction immediately now and i have coached myself to remember its an illusion. i am sure that i have experienced significant mood dysfunction in the past, and that most people have, and gotten lost in it simply because i didnt understand what was going on. i think that this is a huge component of the decision to commit suicide: people start experiencing pain, they think its intrinsic to their life situation, they get lost in it, and they would hold on if only they had some context. i wish there was a way to induce severe depression temporarily to show people what it is and educate them so they could not go into it completely blind when the time comes. that would really help people.
Hormone replacement therapy is a game changer for a lot of men who have CTE. I’m a clinical social worker. I’ve worked in emergency medicine, correctional medicine, and now outpatient psychotherapy. I used to think HRT was for ego lifters and old ladies. But I have seen first hand the value of HRT for CTE patients. I’ve seen guys go from three OWIs and unable to manage an entry level job at Lowe’s to law-abiding, midlevel executive at national corporations within months of starting on HRT.
> Nearly everywhere that tissues of different density or stiffness met, there was a border of scar tissue — a shoreline of damage that seemed to have been caused by the repeated crash of blast waves.
> It was not chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., which is found in football players and other athletes who have been repeatedly hit in the head. It was something new.
Estrogen in the brain is neuro-protective and neuro-trophic. The primary source of estrogen in the brain for men is testosterone converted via aromatase.
However, that's speculative. I found no significant studies on point, notwithstanding physician interest. Because some men seek out testosterone, some doctors might be quick to offer it off-label for other conditions.
Hormone replacement would remedy some of these issues. The same can be seen in people under chronic stress or substance abusers.
By definition "Leadership" in this capitalistic society is predatory - this style extends to the armed forces, where everyone is expendable.
I just don't understand this "freedom" argument that seems to gloss over the obvious--poor people dying for a small group of people that benefit massively from war