more than once on the podcast you’ve mentioned how the teams were so competitive that no one wanted to admit when they were cold being too too cold puts you at a tactical disadvantage in hindsight was that a failure to control your ego so your ego doesn’t control you i didn’t ask this question out of idle curiosity a lot of folks on active duty listen to the podcast and i’m concerned they might put themselves their teammates and their mission in jeopardy because of their egos won’t let them admit they’re too hot or too cold all right so good question good point and there’s definitely a big difference between between being uncomfortably cold right like on like you’re just uncomfortably cold or uncomfortably hot or uncomfortably thirsty or hungry or whatever and being in an actual state where you’re putting the mission in jeopardy because you’re too cold or or hot or thirsty whatever so i just needed to say this in the teens you are 95 of the time you are cold too cold too hot too wet too thirsty too miserable something there’s no time when you’re in the field you put on a hundred pounds worth of gear worth of gear you’re uncomfortable from the word go from the word go and you’re cold you know you come in over the beach you’re in wet camis it doesn’t matter you come out with great technology and we got a dry suit of this we got a wet suit that no you’re you’re miserable it’s not you’re going to be cold you’re going to be uncomfortable you ride in a zodiac first you you ride in a in a big rib which is like a 10 meter boat and you have your zodiacs on that boat so you’re in that boat you’re getting sprayed with water you’re getting bounced up and down you do that for three hours and then you launch your little boats into the water well while you’re doing that you fall in the water you slip you get sprayed more you’re covered in water by the way the water’s not warm and then you gotta because you’re gonna travel then 15 knots so you gotta you’re facing a 15 knot headwind for another two hours in a zodiac and then you’re going to get in the water and swim with me you’re going to be cold that’s just the way it is and you can’t complain about that so and you don’t complain about it in the teams you just keep your mouth shut that’s what you do keep your mouth shut now the big distinction here is this is correct if you’re going to get hypothermia or you’re going to get a heat stroke or you’re going to go down from dehydration then yeah you got to speak up and be you know you got to say hey guess what i got an issue here i’m i’m starting my you know i’m starting to get dizzy or i’m trying to get lightheaded or whatever yeah if you cross the line to where it goes from discomfort to actual problem then you definitely need to speak up um and it does happen it happens a lot actually you know when we when we do our land warfare training in the desert in the summer time it’s 120 degree heat got you’re going to take heat cash please you know when i was running training we used to just have pre-meditated heat casualty evacuation because we knew someone was going to go down that’s just the way it’s going to happen because you got 40 guys that are all turning and burning and they’re all running on three or four hours of sleep and then they’re going out in the field and they just got back from the field and there’s no time to rehydrate you know okay there’s time but some guys might forget to rehydrate and next thing you know you got a guy going down so this stuff does happen and yeah you got to let your team know what’s going on i’ve the the closest call i had i was on a long patrol training patrol in the ozark mountains of arkansas it was summertime it was hot we were planning to pump water meaning you bring a little water filtration system into the field and you get to a stream and you can fill your canteens and it’s great and seems like you have water forever because there’s streams well we the way the patrol went we started off in pairs and then we linked up with fire team and then you like up with squad then you look up with a platoon well while we are in the squad link up we for whatever reason the course that i was on i didn’t hit water we had a couple of streams that were supposed to be there and they weren’t because they’re intermittent streams so sometimes streams aren’t running year round and the time of year it was the streams weren’t running so the first one i was like okay i’ll be okay got to the so you go up over a mountain come back down the other side get to this where the stream is marked intermittent stream is marked on a map guess what no stream so and then by that time i was out of water so now coming that the next day i said to myself you know if there’s not water on this next stream i’m gonna i’m gonna have issues and there wasn’t water the next day so yeah that’s but i started to feel the dehydration coming on me that’s why i hate being thirsty i hate i always carry as much water as i can you got to be paranoid about being thirsty once you start going down from a dehydration it’s really a bad situation you went the whole day no it was two days dang yeah and now i had water going in but i didn’t refill i didn’t have a ton of water i should have had i should have had one i should add maybe two more liters of water as a as a just in case but i didn’t then you gotta carry that yeah yeah because you gotta carry it now you’re heavier now you’re sweating more so there’s a little balance you got to figure out yeah yeah but yeah can it be a problem yes i have seen it become a problem where guys ego’s too big they don’t want to admit it for sure so yes this is a good warning don’t let your ego get you in real trouble because that’s going to hurt your platoon even more so don’t let that happen don’t let your ego prevent you from telling the truth about what’s happening and this happens in this can happen in the business world too where oh you know what oh i don’t really know how to operate this piece of equipment but i’m not going to say anything i’m just going to try and do it well that’s how someone gets hurt so again that’s an ego problem when you have an issue when you know you can’t do something or you’ve never done something before step up and and raise your hand now of course you should have done the research you should you know you should have figured some stuff out on your own but if you fail to do that don’t dig the hole deeper yeah raise your hand say what the problem was there you go good question yeah makes sense because that especially the thirst thing like the dehydration thing yeah you don’t want to be the guy saying oh i’m thirsty but here’s the thing i think nowadays though like teams and coaches here’s the thing in football okay so pop warner football they’d be like yeah no water you know we have a water break you drink water at the water break otherwise you’re practicing you know kind of thing it’s like a toughing you up thing but man that can jam your health up yeah but let’s face it i mean it would be pretty rare if you gave people the if you’re doing a practice what how long does a practice last two hours two hours okay bro you can make it two hours if you’re properly hydrated now if a person’s not properly hydrated going into the practice sure that can that can be a problem but if someone is properly hydrated going into the situation it should not be a problem and i’ll tell you what if you are in the military and you’re going in the field man pre-hydrate like that used to save me so much from carrying so much water just drink so much water now i’ll tell you where the problem comes in you’re in a helicopter ride for an hour and a half and you gotta piss so bad it’s awful but you know what bring a little bring a little plastic bottle with you so you can piss through the bottle that’s way less of an issue i think like finding a place to drink versus for sure it’s weird but yeah if you pre-hydrate properly no matter how hard you’re working you can go like 12 hours without any water yeah which is pretty legit yeah for for you you know kind of an average seal mission 12 hours get you plenty of time yeah yeah but kid i mean i’m talking pop warning here so you know but here’s the weird thing like when you went to high school college they’d have water right there right there on the sideline and they’d you know they’re really aware of hey you need good you need water drink more water well i think that was also the time yeah that’s the actually the point the era the yeah right like when we were kids no one ever ever one single time in my whole from the time i was zero until i was 18 yeah no one ever said to me hey make sure you drink water yeah never never heard anyone say that yeah it was like oh you’re thirsty drink a coke what you know yeah that’s just the way it was you know so that changed for you in that time period yeah when i got to when i got to seal training when i got to buds that’s when they were saying oh you got to stay hydrated yeah i thought it was kind of a joke i thought they were kidding at first yeah like what are you talking about hi do you mean drink water what do you what do you mean why would you call it something else hydrated yeah well you’re thirstier like it’s like this well you should because you can go down from like heat okay there’s like for there’s heat uh exhaustion heat stroke heat exhaustion there’s all kinds of heat injuries you can get yeah and you get heat stroke right you can straight up die oh yeah so that’s not you know it’s not a matter of like oh yeah tough it out but you can’t tough it out you’re shutting down kind of thing yeah that’s for sure so you know that is important for the heat thing and i guess that is and that’s go you know going back to this question that is probably why we would see heat casualties in training because guys do not want to say anything they’re like man i’m not going to say anything yeah i’m not going to get an idea and then you look even worse because that’s what happens you get stuck with an iv now you’re laying in the field everyone else by the way continues on doing another 10 kilometer hump to a target and you’re sitting there laid up in the ambulance like a little baby no one wants that but pre-if you pre-hydrate properly you won’t be in that situation yeah but if you are gonna get that situation you need to say something yeah we’re talking about your health life yeah essentially and more importantly we’re talking about the mission yeah yeah i’m still thinking about the pot warner situation but yeah man i dig it and you are correct i can’t help but agree with you 100 percent
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