It's All in the Neuropeptide Y

Hah! Nearly drown three times.

I think I did that stress test when I was five, pushing up off the bottom of the lake to breath.
Conked out and turned purple/blue, with the result that my father jumped in to save my sorry ass.

Holding me upside down to drain the water from my lungs I eventually came around. In addition to disobeying orders not to mess around on the pier which resulted in a good paddling. Five minutes later I was back in the lake, this time under closer supervision.

Another time, I skied into a creek with full gear on and got locked into a deep whirlpool, in the middle of winter. Again nobody there to bail my dumb ass out.

Parents got tired of almost 'losing me' and so put me in swim team, this time minus the ski gear.

Maybe I should have applied for JTF2, but I think I may be too old now.

Cheers

Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group "True North"

In a similar vein, in sudden and stressful situations, why is it that civilians with prior military training/experience are less apt to lose their heads when everyone else around is losing theirs?

A broad brush statement for sure.

IMO, discipline, training, experience separate the wheat from the chaff.

While I never did this with my hands tied behind my back[scary],I did have to do it wearing full combat gear and off the high diving board to simulate jumping from a ship.The hard part for me was undoing the draw strings at the bottom of my combat pants,pretty hard not to panic.

Paul

We must have some trial or training like this here in Canada. Do you have any details?

This is hardly fair, verging on discriminatory. I would much rather see equal outcomes for a more diverse Special forces than this outdated grading system.

Woodporter: JTF2 trials are secret, but I know they involve water. Canadian Special Operations Regiment ... and I quote a friend who made it in, "I never want to see a swimming pool again".

Didn't someone call waterboarding a war crime?

Now we find out it's a recruitement exercise... lol.

When will leftards ever understand that the supposedly tortured "child" soldiers are treated better and fed better than the real soldiers?

Woodporter- All navy divers go through some scary training, Canadians are no exception. I used to dive a bit, and all the dive scales were developed by trial and error, by navy divers. Keep in mind, the "errors" often involved a casualty. Cousteau may have invented Scuba, but navy divers made it safe for us tourists.

I took my dive training to get laid, and haven't kept active in the sport. I found it fairly easy to relax under stress, and only had a couple of scares. A woman I knew was totally gung ho about diving, and I saw her panic once, for no reason. It's quite difficult keeping someone from losing it in 60 feet of water, especially when their air supply is cut off. I decided to quit when I realized I didn't have enough fear/respect for the risks involved. It's one "sport" that requires your full attention.

The same logic can be used to defend hazing rituals(you know, the ones that the leftard librano jerk offs got all excited about).

I would rather a soldier lose it over a hazing ritual, than lose it over my sucking chest wound.

"suck it up private, you didn't join the boy scouts"

Just this old soldier's opinion.....lol.

.......or girl guides.......

Everyone wants a tough guy to protect them, but has trouble accepting what makes a guy tough.

The folks who do this stuff love it.

Thank God we have them.

Wow. That's all I can say.

"The same logic can be used to defend hazing rituals(you know, the ones that the leftard librano jerk offs got all excited about)."

Hazing rituals aren't developed and implemented from a TP or course outline. There's a massive difference between proper training and an ad-hoc ceremony usually involving too much testosterone and WAY too much alcohol. It's like saying that, since soldiers fire weapons at the range, there's no reason why we can't hand them all handguns before they go out to the bars.

With that said, I don't generally have a problem with most of the initiation ceremonies or hazing rituals which I've witnessed or been part of. Most of them are really quite harmless. The problem is that they set a bad precedent, and open the door to abuse. Every generation remembers their initiation as tougher than it really was, and they want to make it even worse on the new guys. Eventually you end up with situations which are completely inappropriate, and more than a bit dangerous. Those extremes are why the CF "doesn't have" initiation ceremonies any more.

What amazes me is how wonderful our soldiers are as people, judging by what I read and hear.

It amazes me that these people who are trained to kill, and who are willing to die for their country are such decent extraordinary folk.

Totally agree with you sentiment about our military, Erik.

A Poem by: Father D. E. O'Brien

"It's the Soldier, not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press.

It's the Soldier, not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.

It's the Soldier, not the campus organizer,
who has given us freedom to demonstrate.

It's the Soldier, not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trail.

And it's the Soldier who salutes the flag,
who serves the flag,
whose coffin is draped in the flag,
that allows the protester to burn the flag"

To you all,

THANK YOU

for the job you do or have done!

dp @4;02 PM "I took my dive training to get laid, and I haven't kept active in the sport."
So... that 'sport' would be...dive training? or getting laid? ;-)

Haha.

A little of both, I'm afraid.

dp wrote: "I took my dive training to get laid"

What great honesty. I salute you, sir, and respect your motivations!