Couple things 1. Body armor is > than “fitness” in a gunfight 2. Fitness is > than body armor for long term survival. 3. Buying good body armor is the single most important thing you can do today to increase survivability by tomorrow 4. Don’t listen to C/Is. Especially idiots
Body armor can save your life. Once a gunfight starts, it is chaos and random. Anyone telling you “body armor only covers 9% of your body”, “I can be a harder target to hit if I’m fast” or “I can only stop one round” have no idea what they are saying.
You absolutely can not dodge bullets, and you will absolutely never be “too quick” often enough. That is insane. Listen to yourself
“It doesn’t cover my head”…. You don’t have a brain anyway you’ll be fine
Don’t believe me? I wonder if we would have any takers if we went back to Omaha Beach and asked if they’d trade a minute slower mile time for some ESAPI plates
If you are talking about some sort of long term “Rogers Rangers Guerilla Band of Extraordinary Forest Fighters” then yes, cardio and fitness are more important.
But cardio and fitness take time. Body armor is immediate. Also, it is hard to run with a gaping hole in your chest
Cardio and fitness help you take the fight to the enemy. It helps you close with, or break contact with, the enemy. But that last 50m to the objective you will pray for a plate.
Buy one. Do cardio in it. If your plate carrier doesn’t have sweat stains you NGMI
Lastly… there is absolutely no one of literally any value saying you ONLY need a plate carrier. If you are arguing with someone who says that, or more likely than not, making it up, then you are the idiot same as them.
There are people here who invent fake problems
They want to sell you their “training” or be a “thought leader” when really they are just idiots. They have absolutely no idea what they are talking about, and try to convince you by posting some malapropos poverty induced counter-think straw man.
Don’t be dumb. Be smart
The hell did I say?
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This is one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite war movies, and it is exactly why all those alpha, sigma, raw egg weirdos know nothing about women, war, or what makes a man a man
The men start the clip hardened. It is 1917, three years into the slaughterhouses of the trenches. The French Army is at its breaking point, they just had some of their own men executed for mutiny
They start jeering the German girl, she is an object and they are at their basest
But then she starts to sing. It is a German song called Der treue Husar (the faithful hussar), who learns his love is sick and dying and tries to make it back to her in time.
The French soldiers don’t understand the words, but a woman’s voice is a woman’s voice
Grab a beer, we are going to talk markets and people who put their finger on the scale of them. (And no, this isn’t a thread about the small hat people, so just stop)
Almost all of Salt Lake City’s housing woes can be told in the story of this one house.
Why does this house cost over $300,000? It is by all objective measures a shitbox in a not great neighborhood Well, we have this wonderful tool called Zillow to help us. zillow.com/homedetails/63…
But first, a little history. The American residential real estate market used to be pretty simple. I invest in my house, hoping the market goes up and when it is time to sell, I sell it for a profit. Homes were huge purchases. The biggest most people made.
Here is your guide to the “they march like bums” and the “we don’t need to march” debate.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, but neither side it wrong.
(Caveat: the side posting the North Koreans as an example are wrong. Clowns)
Caveat, I have had a drink or two.
1 For millennia, the ability of individual soldiers to march, turn, and act as one with their comrades is why the West became what it was. That is how wars were won. From Phalanxes to the triple line, tercios, hollow squares, and line volleys, the disciplen of the West dominated
2 the discipline and the order and the obedience became synonymous with success. The Roman Vegetius said
“Few men are born brave. Many become so through training and force of discipline.”
One of my favorite D Day stories is the HMS Rodney, who, while providing direct fire support at Gold Beach, slammed a 16 inch shell directly into a Panzer IV
Rodney had been damaged by am LCT, and had a 9 foot hole in her side, but refused to be left out of the fight
She knew the Germans had their big guns waiting for the Allies coming ashore. Despite water rushing into his ship, Rodney's Captain would be damned if Britain's sons went ashore without their big guns behind them
While the courage of the men in the small boats is without question, what amazes me most is the senior officers in the battleships who basically said "fuck it, we ball". Like USS Texas flooding its own damned torpedo room to bring its guns to bear and got the boys off Omaha
Why is what Thomas Ricks wrote either buffoonishly dumb, or a straight up lie?
He fails to understand both history and how wars are won. He mischaracterizes both the US experience building auxiliary forces, and how World War 2 was won. It is comically bad.
Let us start with the role of auxiliaries in general. Large powers throughout history have used foreign troops to bolster their imperial forces abroad. From the Greeks to the Americans. Balearic slingers fought with the Romans, and Montagnards fought with the Americans.
Auxiliaries provide a difficult skill (Genoese crossbowmen) or some local expertise (Crow scouts). They are useful... when used properly.
Sometimes we try something, and it fails. The dumb pout, the smart learn. One never knows where that lesson will lead. Years or decades later it might come back into play, and might serve you and your people again. Like the Soviet Space Program and the Battle of Katya Roof.
1/ As the great "Space Race" began in 1957, the autocratic and highly centralized Soviet Union was in a perfect position to get out to an early lead. Their willingness to slap stuff together and catapult things into space outpaced the methodical approach of the Americans.
2/ The Soviets dominated the early days of the program, under the expert leadership of Sergei Korolev, whose name was kept secret in the Soviet Union, (This doesn't mean he is @ChestyPullerGst , but it doesn't mean he isn't) for fear of assassination attempts.