Jocko Podcast
Hosted by Jocko Willink
USAF Manual, "Psychological Aspects of Survival." Part 2. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content
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This is Jocko Podcast number 424 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. So continuing from the last podcast that we did for 23, if you haven't listened to that one, you can go back and listen to it, or you can listen to that one later. These kind of stand on their own. This is going back to the book, the same 1954 Air Force manual called Psychological Aspects of Survival. And there's just a bunch of good information in there. Today, we're going to talk about some sections. This, look, it's a survival manual. That's not what it's about. It's about the psychology of survival. And so the, the things that I found that we're going to cover today, they're helpful to so many
different aspects of your life. It's, it's a section on fear and it's a section about leadership.
And how to recognize and overcome fear, something everybody needs to know. And then how to lead a group or group leaderships or group leadership in dynamic situations. How do you do that? And I think you're going to see both these topics. I was pulling all kinds of stuff out of them that we can apply to our normal lives, business lives, tactical lives. If you're in a tactical scenario, family, relationships, the whole nine yards. So here we go. We're going to go back to the book.
1954 Psychological Aspects of Survival. Fear in survival. Fear can save your life or it can kill you.
Opening line. Yeah. I like where we're going. Some men are at their best and enjoy themselves most when they are scared. Many down flyers faced with survival emergencies have been surprised at how well they remembered their survival briefings, how quickly they could think and react and what strength they had. The experience gave them a new confidence in themselves. On the other hand, some men became paralyzed with faced with this, when faced with the simplest survival situations. Some of these have been able to snap themselves out of it before it was too late. In other cases, a fellow crew member was on hand to save them. The others, however, have not been so fortunate. They are not listed among the survivors.
How you will react depends more upon yourself than it does upon the situation. Once again, these people take it right to the source. The, the early versions, extreme ownership. How well you react depends more upon yourself than it does upon the situation. This has been demonstrated both in actual survival situations and in laboratory experiments. It isn't always the physically strong or happy-go-lucky guy who handles fear most effectively. They frequently become frozen in panic. On the other hand, timid and anxious men have met such emergencies with remarkable coolness and strength. It's about you, what you're gonna do. And that is true, you don't know
how people are gonna react. Now, look, do you get a sense for it? You, you do, you get, you can make an assessment and you're gonna be accurate to a certain percentage. So like, let's say if I looked, if I knew five guys and I knew we're gonna put, throw some dynamic situation at them and I had to predict how they were gonna react, I'd probably get a 70. 70% right.
Yeah, well, I guess it's based on how good you know, or how long you've known them, maybe?
Yeah, but even then.
Yeah.
Even then.
Like just being around them for a second, you can kinda?
Yeah, you can look at them, but you're only gonna be like a 70. You know, now, look, if you have the chance to put them in scenarios, you can start to know them, know them better, right, which is what you're saying. But even when you know them, there's still gonna be some people that just lock up at the wrong point. You don't know.
And that's one of those things when you get to experience it for the first time and you're like, okay, I'm good. It's a good, it's a good feeling.
Oh, like that?
You've been in the scenario, yeah, you've been in the scenario and you're like, okay, that's kinda, you know, that's what everyone, that's why young men wanna go into combat, right?
They wanna see what up.
They wanna see what up, they wanna see how they do. They wanna make sure that they react the way they envisioned. And I think that that's one thing that plays into sort of how you handle the whole situation, right? If you didn't respond and didn't act the way you wish you would've, I think that's probably pretty hard to deal with. And actually, we got, I got another book that I'm prepping right now that's, that kinda tunes into the, the trauma and the post, the post-traumatic scenarios. But that's one of those things that I think I did. It also reminds me of that. Remember when Jimmy May was on and he was talking about people going through buds and the way that they saw themselves, the more closely that aligned to the way other people saw them, the better chance they had to make it through.
And if they saw themselves differently than other people saw them, they had less of a chance of making it through. I think this one, the way you see yourself and the way you actually do, I think that has a lot to, I think that impacts you. So if you have high expectations, if you think you're gonna be a superhero and you act like a super wimp, that's a problem. If you don't, if you think you're kinda wimpy and you kinda perform wimpy, you're okay. If you think you're gonna be wimpy and you perform well, then that's kinda, you'll be okay. But I think the hardest one is like you think you're gonna be a stud and you end up being a dud and that'd be hard to deal with.
Yeah, well, that does make sense because even just in everyday life, you know, we're grown adults now.
Allegedly.
But, and you know, you think of, I don't know if you have this, where you think of something you might have said to somebody or did or like behaved and you just regret it and you can't get that time back. You know, you almost wanna be like, like you wish you could just rewind time and like not do that, you know, kind of a thing. But it'll, and it won't ruin your life or nothing like this, but it's even now if you're reminded of something you did 30 years ago, it still actually has like an actual impact on how you feel. It's like that kinda, and it's just such a small thing, you know, so I can't imagine, or I can imagine how big of a deal it is, you know, in these extreme situations.
And there's two things. Number one, like, hey, you're in harm's way. If you don't act like a hero, bro, you were there. It's okay. Like, we get it. It's, you know what I mean? Like, we hold a higher expectation of ourselves and then when someone doesn't do what they wanted to do, they feel bad about it. When it's like, hey, man, you were there. It's okay. Like, we appreciate you just being there. So, thank you.
That's number one.
That's different. You know, like what you feel in your head is like, it's different, you know?
It's harder to convince someone. Like, you missed the, the, the winning touchdown as a receiver. You know, and I'm like, hey, Echo, it's okay. Like you, we wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for you in the first place, but you don't care about that. Right. You just know that you let us down. In your mind, you let us down when we needed you the most. Yeah. So that's one part. The other part is what you just said. And they talk about in this book. That's why it's kind of fresh in my mind. And you've heard me talk about this a bunch of times. Being mentally prepared and in this book, they just call it set. They call it set. We'll get to it. But being set mentally to handle something. It makes you so much more prepared for it.
And the example I always use is if you came to my house and I was like, I hid in the hallway and scared you, like you'd be scared. If I told you I was gonna scare you, I probably, I probably could not scare you just because you were ready for it. If you role play like a conversation that you're gonna have with someone before you go and do it, you're gonna do so much better. Then if they suddenly show up like, I want to talk about this right now, you're gonna be totally frazzled. Where if you role play at first with one of your peers and then you go and you make it happen. You're gonna be able to handle a lot better. Patrolling down the street. And thinking, okay, if I get contacted from the front, I'm gonna go over here. I'm gonna make the call to move the platoon over here. Just having that little bit of foresight.
Helps you out tremendously. And that's one of the things you and I talk about jujitsu. If you train. And someone grabs you in the street, you're like so ready. If you don't train and someone grabs you, you, it takes you. A good chunk of time just to compute what's going on and the fear and the aggression and the hostility. And the physical, the physicality of the whole thing. That's five things or whatever I just named that you gotta get over. Yeah. Meanwhile, if you train, you're, you're over them. You're already on the other side of that mountain. You're like, what? Let's go. You just got hip tossed, son.
You just got hip tossed. Alright, going back to the book here. Fear. Everyone who faces an emergency that threatens any of his important needs experiences fear. In a survival emergency, you may be constantly threatened with lot, the loss of such basic needs. As food, water, companionship, shelter, even of life itself. In a survival situation, you, like everyone else, will experience fear. Your fear will greatly influence your behavior and your behavior.
Your chances of surviving. Fear cannot be removed by a military order. It is very natural response to danger. You must recognize fear, live with it, and if possible, use it to your advantage. Oh. You must accept fear as a normal reaction. It is not an emotion you need to be ashamed of. You must realize that you cannot avoid fear by denying that the danger causing it exists. You must realize that there is always something you can do to improve your situation. Good advice. That's a big one. And this is another thing to point out. Taking MMA fighters that are nervous. And you can see that they're nervous and they've gone to the bathroom nine times. And they're pale and they're sweating and they're just nervous, you can tell.
And if you tell them, hey, that's just your body getting ready for combat. That's it's it's good for you to be feeling what you're feeling right now. And they go, okay, cool. If you're like, hey, what's wrong, bro? You just send them in a tailspin.
That that's so helpful.
Very helpful.
When you
basically indicate to someone that their feelings as weird or wonky as they are, whatever those feelings are. When you tell them that those feelings are normal. Part of the process, whatever, however you want to say it, like, it's weird how helpful that is. And and I use that all the time now, thank you, with my kids. Cause you know, they're growing up, you know, my daughter is 10. You know, they go through things socially and all this stuff. And it's like, you know, they don't understand, they just understand what's in there in front of their face, how they grew up. They, you know, all these other things outside of the household is, you know, a lot of time a mystery, you know? So, you know, she'll get like offended or just troubled with this and how this went. And I'm feeling this for this reason. And I'll be like, hey, no, no, this is all normal. You got to understand this how it works. But what you're feeling right now is completely like, that's normal.
Everyone feels like that. And then it it helps 100% of the time, or it has, in my experience.
The companionship through the hard patches. Companionship, in this case, just being other people feel the same thing.
It's like, oh, okay, God, it's normal.
Yeah, yeah.
So totally.
Wait, what did you just call it companionship?
It's like companionship through hardship.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like you are, what, what you're being told is yeah. Oh, you've got to go for the first day of school.
You, you feel all nervous. Everyone's nervous. Everyone feels that way. You're all in this together.
It's okay. You gotta go try out for the, the football team. You're scared. You're nervous. Yep. Yep. That's everyone that's going out on that field is nervous.
Yeah, that's true, huh? Cause if you feel like you're the only one that feels like that, that's when comes like the feeling of like, hey, there's something wrong right now. This isn't correct. This isn't normal. You know, this is something wrong, kind of a thing.
But yeah, if you, if you know that there's nothing wrong with it and it's normal, it's like, all right, business as usual then I guess.
That's what we're doing.
Next section. What is known about fear symptoms? When you are afraid, you may have one or more of the following symptoms or signs. However, these effects may also appear in circumstances other than fear. So it goes through a bunch of these rapid and noticeable pulse, palpitation, trembling, feeling or muscular tension. Dryness of the throat and mouth, change of pitch of voice. You ever watch, uh, like police shooting videos?
And you can hear the voice of like a cop that's totally petrified and his boy, like they're losing it. That's a good example of that. Stammering. Perspiration, especially on the palms of the hands, soles of the feet and the armpits. Feelings of emptiness in the stomach, desire to defecate or urinate. I just talked about that. You get a UFC fighter that's going to the octagon for the first time. He's probably going to the bathroom 14 times and in the final hour there. Same thing with combat. Like you got, you going out and the guy going on his first mission, he's in the freaking port of John a bunch.
Uh, nausea, faintness, forgetfulness, talkativeness in the early stages, later tending to become speechless. You ever been around someone that's scared? They're talking about.
Confusion, fatigue, dilation of pupils, increase in blood, blood sugar, increase of sugar in the urine. Increase in adrenaline content to the blood, feelings of unreality, irritability, inability to concentrate. That's the last one. So these are all things that you can see when you see someone that's scared.
Do you have anything that you've that you've been around where people are scared where you already know the deal?
I mean, you kind of just like with your kids, like it's the first day of school.
So you can cut. Have you seen them shiver?
No, not shiver, but just um.
Not any of those symptoms. That's like extreme. So no, I mean, you know, at football game, but I would still have, even though I know the deal, I would still have all those feelings.
Nerves and stuff.
For a football game.
Yeah, or like Jiu Jitsu master or whatever. Remember I told you I would gag all the time before my first match only for some reason. Or it's obvious now because before your first match, that's when, you know, once the seal is broken after the first match, it's like, whatever. But and in football, I'd have super, super dry mouth. It was weird just for the first, maybe like three, four minutes of the game.
I've been backstage at UFC where well-known fighters are throwing their guts up.
And I'm like, oh, that must be something like, are they going to be able to fight? And the coach would be like, no, that's just what they do.
That's kind of crazy. Yeah, all those things. But like, like we've been saying, when you are helping someone get through a frightened moment. That's those are some of the things they experience. If you tell them, yep, that's you. That's just normal. I always tell people like that's your body getting ready for war. Whether they're going to fight in the cage, whether they're going out on the wrestling mat, whether they're going into combat, that's your body getting ready for war. That's your body getting ready for combat. So it's good. It's good. I tell them it's good and it is good.
Getting focused.
Next section. Who experiences fear? Almost everyone who has flown a combat mission has experienced fear. In a study made of 1,985 flying officers and 2,519 airmen after World War Two, 99% expressed some fear. 33% of the officers and 42% of the airmen were afraid on every mission or on almost everyone.
Where do airmen experience fear? Study of the fear reactions of 150 normal airmen following World War II combat tours in the Eighth Air Force indicated that some experienced greatest tension the night before a mission or at some time even more distant from danger. The majority, however, experienced the greatest tension between briefing and takeoff and perhaps over again over the enemy coast, tension is relieved by action.
A few experienced the greatest fear at the time of combat or catastrophe. Some show no marked response until after the mission has been completed and they begin to talk it over. Very few seem to show no tension at all, some because they displace fear, other because they convert their fear into aggressive action against the enemy. For me, I was like a night before guy, like the further away, that's when I, and I would feel, what I'd feel is nervous and I was nervous, number one, obviously a guy's gonna get hurt or killed. And number two, that we're gonna do a bad job, like we're gonna make a mistake, I'm gonna make a mistake and that's gonna cause the unit to do a bad job.
But for me, like after the briefing, actually, basically during the briefing, I'm now, I'm in the mode of, remember when I talked a little bit about getting a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of cocky? Yeah. I would, basically when I'm going into brief and I'm briefing, that's how I'm feeling. I start feeling like we're gonna crush the enemy. And still have a little bit of that, but I start feeling pretty good. And then the greatest fear in the time of combat, I'm one of those people that when it's going on, and I think most people, that's why it says a few, most people are like when you're, when it's happening, it's happening, that's what you're, that's what you're focused on. Some show no marked response until after the mission has been completed and they begin to talk it over.
I don't have any of that, but I have talked to guys where you could see that when we got back, they were like, what the hell just happened? And you could see the fear settling in afterwards. And then no tension or no fear, you know, they displace the fear or convert it into aggressive action. That's probably, I know I felt that way a lot of time, I wasn't really afraid before, during, or after. I was more, I guess for lack of a better term, focused.
Um, but also like you're driving down the street, you're waiting to suck start an IED. Well, that's called fear, you know, or you're going out the gate, you're like, yeah, this could happen today, it could happen in the next 500 meters, 300 meters. Like this could go down. So, yeah, so that means if you can, if you're coaching someone, or if you're coaching yourself, or you're looking at yourself, you may feel any one of these things in any one of these times before, during, after, it could come your way. So be ready for it, be ready to recognize it.
Next section, what do airmen fear? The study already mentioned the flying officers and airmen showed that the following things were most frequently feared by combat flyers. Number one, failure.
Number two, cowardice.
Number three, enemy action. So the enemy didn't even make the top three. That's what Americans are like. Americans are, we don't want to be cowards and we don't want to fail. Oh yeah, the enemy might do something that killed me, but no, what I'm really scared of is I don't want to fail. And I don't want to be a coward. Next, having a plane on fire, very specific.
Bad weather. Malfunction of the aircraft, injury to the eyes, abdomen, brain, and genitals. Worried about that. Worried about that.
Factors which increase fear in combat. One study indicated that fears are increased by feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, of being attacked when you can't fight back, of being idle when you are in danger, or of being insecure in the future. Yeah, this goes to like,
for me, I never liked being in, reliant on a machine, like being in the back of a Bradley. You and when you're when you're a passenger in a Bradley, like you're just in there. It's dark. It's you don't know what the hell is happening. It's loud. It's hot. And you can just get blown up and that's the way it is. You're a passenger in a Humvee. You know, Humvee is a little bit more proactive, especially it's normally you're in a Humvee with your platoon. But a Bradley, you're in the back of a Brandon Bradley, like you got picked up or you're getting dropped off or whatever. You don't have much control. You feel a little bit helpless. You feel it does feel badass being in a Bradley, of course, but when Bradleys are getting
getting IED and blown up and destroyed and catching on fire, it doesn't give you the the confidence that you might think you would have in a Bradley. I would have chosen 100 times out of 100 to be on my feet instead of in a Bradley. Love the Bradleys. I appreciate them and God bless them. But my personal feeling, I'd be way more, I'm way more comfortable being on on my feet than in a Bradley. So
tentative summary of what is known, everyone in a survival situation may expect to experience some fear. Some will experience normal fear with well-controlled rational behavior. Some may have disabling fears. Good leadership and training will modify all fears. Very important to remember. Good leadership and training will modify all fears. What downed crew members say about fear reactions fear that the air crew members interviewed who had been downed said that they experienced some or all of the previously previously listed symptoms. The in-flight emergency and bailout were the most for most survivors intense experiences. As a result of the fear experienced, then some suffered considerable mental inefficiency.
Yeah, I wasn't gonna read this, but I'm gonna read it. I was, this is a quote. So again, this book is based on just interviews with a lot of people. And this is World War II and Korea. So they've got fresh memories. This guy says, "I was stretched out against the bulkhead and scared as hell." The bulkhead is the wall of the plane. "I don't remember doing anything until I had fired 100 rounds. Then I looked at my own body for holes. Even though the Japs had not fired, I made three attempts to jump. Every time, my hands were holding on to something and I could not free myself." So here's a dude that's scared. He's trying to jump out, but he can't let go of the plane.
"Some described the fear reactions of fellow crew members as panic, which proved fatal." Quote, "The co-pilot blew up when the plane was hit. He hit the panic button and didn't bail out. This was just the opposite of what you would have expected." I had thought he would have been the, I, I would have thought I would have been the one to blow up. But I was unnaturally calm. I did begin to shake when I finally hit the ground. So dude's just so horrified that they just don't get out of the plane. Recognizing and Facing Fear. Fairly common, especially among those captured, is an attempt to suppress from conscious awareness
the reality of danger or inability to accept the reality of the situation. Quote, "My first thought or feeling was that this just couldn't be happening to me. I couldn't believe it. My thoughts were that I had to get to the rendezvous point so I could get home for supper. It finally dawned on me that I, that it couldn't be done. I then got out of my escape kit. It took me quite a while to reconcile myself. I decided to take the line of least resistance afterwards. I was aware of evading, although somewhat vaguely." So just not accepting the reality of the situation that you're in.
I'm gonna fast forward a little bit to a section called releasing tension. Many said that they experienced tremendous relief from tension or fear when they escaped from the aircraft, hit the ground, or some said even when captured by the enemy. That's not good. But you can see if you're totally unprepared and you're totally uncomfortable and you're out there and you're scared, you could see where, once you get captured, you feel like an amount of relief if you're in the wrong mindset. You might even not try to as hard as you should to evade capture. Cause you're waiting to get caught.
Yeah, it's like that feeling of the unknown.
Yeah, the feeling of the unknown is worse.
Yeah, it's like, at least you got some relief from that, you know, and you're not really considering like the, you know, the new stuff, your new issues, because they're not right there in front of you, you know? You could see that.
Yeah, oftentimes people prefer known rather than unknown. Even when the known is like being a prisoner of war.
That's crazy.
There's an important section. Things you can do to help reduce or kill fear are,
keep busy. Keep busy with your job, plan bailout and escape procedures. Keep the crew briefed about the latest developments. Here's a bunch of quotes. Quote, "It is important to keep everybody doing something all the time. Some were drying socks, some fishing, etc." Another quote, "I was getting chilled, so I bailed out the dinghy to keep warm. This also kept my mind occupied and helped to keep me calm." Next one, quote, "I was so, I was miserably cold in my hiding place, so I began doing pushups to increase my circulation." And it's crazy, World War II in Korea, you've got people that were shot down over the ocean, people that were shot down over the jungle. It's, these are just vast experiences.
Many activities such as the last two not only release tension, but also serve to fulfill other survival needs. Get into a relatively safe place to think things over. Getting out of my chute harness, I ran to the nearest ditch about 30 yards away and lay down to think things out.
Lots, a lot of these, and the same, same with the last podcast we did, these moments where you take a second, get yourself to a position where you can, as we say in the SEAL Teams, take a freaking wrap off. Take a wrap off and assess what's happening. A little bit of detachment, a little bit of detachment.
And this is what I was talking about earlier. The psychological set, they just call it set for survival. To me, I think what they're talking about is mindset.
Be mentally prepared. Having a psychological or mental set for survival, or hoping for the best, but being prepared for the worst, seems to reduce fear and increase survival chances. Having a mental set for an experience affects your reactions and hence your success in evading and escaping. So again, having the mindset that like, if this happens, I'm gonna be ready for it. What am I gonna do? Walk through that a couple of times mentally. Hopefully physically. Hopefully you can run through the, you know, when you're parachuting, you kind of constantly just kind of go through the motions of what your cutaway procedures are. Like I'm doing, I'm talking, you can't see if you're listening, but if you're watching,
I just instinctively started kind of like thinking through the wave off and thinking through the, the protocols that you do, but you do that a bunch of times. You do that over and over again. You just go through the motions of doing it and that helps you be set if an emergency occurs.
Going on here, one airman says, quote, "I always tried to remember all the information I would need if something happened. You may never need it, but suddenly something may happen so that you have to use it." In an emergency, this crew member recalled clearly without panic or confusion, all the pertinent information. He behaved almost as if he had rehearsed the situation and actually salvaged his crew when the designated leader failed to carry out his duties. You know what's wild is I've been reading this book and we'll get more into it, but you think, you don't think about this, but these bombers, when they're getting shot down, it takes time. Like they're up there at thirty thousand feet.
They get shot, they lose an engine, they lose a wing, now they're gonna crash. It takes time. So there's a bunch of things in here where they're, they're talking through how they're gonna bail out. They're get bailing out their wounded friends, they're grabbing people like getting them patched up, getting them in their parachutes so they can go like you don't think of that amount of time. That's you think, oh, it just blows up and you're dead, right? You don't think of, oh, we're descending from thirty thousand feet on, you probably have a few minutes. You probably have two, three, four minutes
to bail out, maybe even more. I mean, from thirty thousand feet in a free fall, you got like three minutes. That's going down at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. If you're in a glide slope, you might even have six, seven, eight, nine, ten minutes. Fifteen minutes, maybe not fifteen, that might be getting extreme, but, but you have a lot of time to think about what's going on. I've never really considered that before. And yeah, it's, it's pretty wild.
One of my, I guess it would be my great uncle was, was shot down in World War Two. And ten crew members, five of them were killed, five of them were captured. He was captured and made it back to America. Pretty, pretty amazing, but I never thought about the seven minutes of plummeting on fire towards the earth and what the hell is going through your mind as that's going down.
Uh, continuing on, another crew member had no mental set for an emergency. He was an emotion, he was emotionally prepared for a rest camp after the mission and not for an emergency on the mission. He did not anticipate having to bail out. When the emergency occurred, he was panic stricken and froze up. Later, he could not remember getting back into the pilot's seat where he used all of his strength to right the aircraft so that the crew could bail out. He feels his, the experience was so unexpected that he was not quick enough to realize he was actually in trouble. He continued with this shock type behavior on the ground and was captured. Although he now believes he had a good chance to evade and escape.
He says he now tries to get set for any situation in order to avoid such shock and panic again. That's what I was talking about earlier. This idea, if you're going into a situation, if you take just a tiny amount of time to think through the contingencies and what could happen and how you're going to behave. If you do that, it's going to help you so much. If you walk into a restaurant and you think to yourself, you know what? If an active shooter comes in here, here's what I'm going to do. You're going to respond 10 times better than if you wait until an active shooter walks in there and starts pulling the trigger.
It's you going through those little exercises in your mind, so helpful. Like I said, we'd walk down the street constantly having the the thought, okay, if I get contacted from the front, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I'm going to tell the opportunity to do. If I get contacted from the left, if I get contacted from the right, just thinking through those things constantly. It's it's going to benefit you to a point that in the moment of truth could be life or death.
You know, in what elementary school did you go to?
I think it was actually called the Red Brick Elementary School.
So red bricks on them. So in, I think in high school too, I forget. Anyway, you know, the fire drill, you did the fire drill. And did you ever go through the fire drill and think like this is the most mundane thing pretty much ever?
It's like you just.
It also doesn't seem real good.
It didn't seem good, right?
Like there's a fire and you want me to line up and count people and then walk orderly down the hall. I'm going out the window, bro.
Like, why are we not going out the window?
But when you think about it, it's probably the best broad drill to have. Because why would you go out the window? Like, come on, I don't know, your school, I don't know how it was shaped, but. Given my situation at our school lining up in an orderly fashion like
It's a rehearsal man, that's great.
Cause if it's like, hey, if everyone beelining towards the door, bro, we're gonna get jammed up in the door. Like little bottleneck scenario kinda thing. And then if we go single file to this very specific place, we all know what to do. One, there's an actual fire. Literally know what to do, little kids, not just me, a bunch of little kids too. So yeah, if there's, it kinda makes sense. Think kinda you reading this and just thinking about how that works. It's like, yeah, you've literally been through this before.
This is a hundred percent right. That's exactly why they do it.
Exactly why they do it is because if you rehearse it once or twice, you're gonna be ten times better. Than if you just try and do it for the first time under duress.
Under duress. So yes, rehearsals, we used to say in the SEAL teams, when they're getting ready for a mission. The goal was one-third planning, one-third gear prep, one-third rehearsal. Now, we didn't achieve that very often, but that's the goal is that we're gonna rehearse this a bunch of times. And you do that rehearsal, it's gonna pay off, it's gonna pay dividends.
Yeah, yeah, I remember in football and in jujitsu is a big one where, cause that's what practice is, right? It's levels of rehearsal essentially. And I remember when I played football, when I first started playing when I was 11 years old. And I remember going through these practice, these plays in practice all the time in our first game. And I remember getting a play called where I had to, you know, they give me the ball and I run and do all this stuff. And I'm thinking like, how the heck is this gonna play out with some real, another team, you know? When I'm looking at the faces and I don't know those other faces. And it's almost surprising. To be like, oh, this worked just like it did in practice. Like sometimes it works really good, sometimes it kinda doesn't work, some, you know, like, but it,
but there's nothing surprising about the whole scenario, aside from the strangers across from us versus our teammates, you know, in practice. And in jujitsu is the same thing where it's like, okay, if I kinda execute this take down the way we did in practice, like, you know, I'm looking at this guy and I don't know him and I'm like, oh, man, I hope this works. And you do it, you're like, bro, that worked just as good as it did in practice. Like almost surprising, you know? But yeah, it's weird how that can just play out like that. It's so beneficial.
Do your rehearsals.
Continuing on, one sign of mental set is to equip yourself physically for a possible emergency. One man prepared a personal escape kit in addition to the one he had been issued. He sewed straps on his GI shoes in order to safeguard them. He spent five months successfully surviving and evading. No other member of his crew took such precautions and no other ones came out alive. Another took no precautions. He assumed that if I were knocked down, I would be killed and survival would be useless. He was slow to accept the emergency, not realizing immediately that he had crashed. He felt panically and yelled, "Get me out of here." He made little attempt to escape and was soon captured.
Go through some freaking rehearsals. Training helps. Many survivors frequently mention that training gave them confidence, especially training in parachute ditching procedures. In general, the evidence is adequate training equals order and a high survival rate. Inadequate training equals confusion and a low survival rate. That's another thing. You play chess a lot. What's your call sign?
EchoCharles24.
So I know you're getting a lot of challenge matches.
Yes.
But as you get better, you're starting to see patterns on the board, right?
Yeah, big time.
And you can go, "Oh, I see this pattern, therefore I can do this."
So part of what training is, is pattern recognition and knowing, "Oh, I've done this before." So now, let's say you've rehearsed getting out of your parachute 10 times. Now, when you're actually getting out of the parachute, it gets hung up on a piece of your gear. And you don't have to worry about the nine protocols that you've been through that you've rehearsed because you just do those naturally. Only thing you need to focus on that one little area that's hung up so you can get out. So having these chunks of information, I think they actually use that word in chess as well, like the board is in chunks and they see different chunks of the pieces and the way they're put together. So you can do that
with anything. When you do an arm lock in jujitsu, There's 10 things, let's say you gotta do right to get the arm lock right. If you've done it a bunch of times and there's a variable, you don't need to worry about n- nine things. You only worry about that one variable and correcting that one thing.
So that's why we want to train. It's exactly why we want to train.
I had a weird shot in archery this year. Hunting. I was. I, I was like leaning over really far and I was leaning on a, on a, on my photographer.
Hmm.
And like he was shooting and Caleb, like I'm, I'm basically almost laying on him.
And my form was not normal. It was, and, and that's the thing about archery is you want basically the geometry of your body and of your shot to be the same every single time.
Mm hmm.
Yeah. It's a whole purpose of training and so that the geometry of that all comes together. Well, I was not even close to my normal geometry, not even close. It was never been so out of position. I've never even, you know, you'll practice being in weird positions. I hadn't practiced a, a position this weird.
And I was totally out of position, but like the few critical things that you have to do, the sight, the grip, like those few critical things, that's what I focused on and made the shot. But if I would have had to been thinking about more than those things, man, it would have been a disaster. I probably, I actually wouldn't have even taken the shot.
But yeah, I, I'm like, basically my buddy Caleb, I'm like laying on him. He's scooting back, trying to get out of my way and I just did the, the little components that you drill over and over again. And I'm not even thinking about them. I'm just doing them.
My brain is turned off. I'm, I'm executing the protocol of the shot.
Why were you laying on Caleb?
He was in my way.
Like wait, so what are you sitting? I mean, you're not sitting down. You're standing up.
No, I was sitting down.
So you're sitting down.
Yep.
Bow.
Yeah. Bow drawn, leaning over to get, so to get between.
Like where the shot is gonna be taking place.
So.
Oh, and he was just there with you and.
Sort of in your.
And by the way, Caleb's credit, guess what? Perfect video. Like he got the whole, like he nailed it. See, he got even more credit.
Cause he was, he was having a just for me and, and he steady, just dialed in. So let's give props to Caleb.
Oh, big time. So the thing that you might not have realized.
Copeland Creative, check that out.
Okay. So the thing you might not have been realizing in the moment is while you're over here contorting and leaning on him to get your shot.
My man Caleb's over there leaning and contorting and adjusting to get his shot.
No, a hundred percent.
See what I'm saying?
He was. And he was also, you know, we were laughing about it later, but he was thinking, do I take a breath? Do I not take a breath? Is Jaco anticipating me to breathe like, what? You know, he's, so he's just trying to.
And it's not like you rehearse this.
Oh, wait, yeah, cause you guys are connected like physically. So yeah, if he nudges or he starts doing some wonky.
So not only did he get, did he get the video?
He didn't foul up my shot. He got it all dialed, all steady.
And credit to you.
I've hunted with him a bunch before and so we, we've been around each other a lot, but not enough to be like, to, to know exactly what to do. He's, he's very experienced.
At a hunt photography and video. So I was lucky in that respect. A guy that was not in, that didn't have that experience? Bro, if that person didn't have that kind of experience that he has.
It would have been a disaster. Cause he had to keep the camera thing, keep me, you know?
Yeah, yeah. So he knew the flow, like of the whole deal.
He just, he does it. I mean, that's what he does. That's what he does for a living, but.
I would almost wager that he was more concerned about his shot than yours. Like the way you were like, it would be funny if this was a kid where you know how you're like, okay, I gotta get my shot or whatever. And Caleb's like, oh, I don't care if Jaco gets his shot. I'm over here trying to get this shot. This is the important shot here.
Yeah. No, I think, I honestly think, well, for, for a hunt photographer, their priority is to make sure you get your shot, right? They're not gonna, they're not gonna mess that up.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
But the fact that he was able to get it.
Without interfering and it's pretty impressive.
Actually, that is very impressive because you're right about that. We're obviously, you know, joking with that because you know, like some people, they're like, no, it's not about the hunt. It's about the video, you know, kind of a thing. And that's like, oh, that's a guy really, you know, loves his craft, kind of a thing. But um, it's, it's really like anytime you're in these intense, more intense situation as a video or photographer person, like it is like a flow, a little dance where, yeah, especially if he's right up against you or whatever. And just like even like, um, you know, you don't want to disturb the habitat kind of a scenario, but at the same time, you want to like capture it like the best you can. You're going to get right in there if possible, you know, even when Alex Honnold was talking about that, where like his guy was right, because that guy, he, he's kind of in the mix with you, you know, he's not standing on the sidelines with a, you
know, lens trying to get there. He's like with you. So yeah, you guys got to kind of work together.
Yeah. And there's actually video from the other angle too. And that was interesting because I never, you don't really see yourself in like pressure situations. You don't, you can't see, but I saw myself and I, I look like I'm gonna brush my teeth. Like I look just, I was laughing with Leif, I was like chilling with Leif in the video and it just looks like I'm, I'm a robot, basically, like no emotion, just look like I'm very, very, very calm.
And just I dial in, boom, lean over and I'm just leaning, leaning, leaning. Caleb's getting this lot. Props to Caleb. Copeland creative out there in the world. So, training, back to the point here, training, the protocols, you will have less to think about if you've trained properly. I didn't have to think about really jack, didn't have to think about anything. I'm just executing the protocol. That's what you want to do. And that way, when there is a disruption, you can focus on that and you don't have to worry about all the other things that you're doing naturally because you've trained well. Uh, back to the book, men who had no parachute training described
many kinds of panic behavior that resulted in injury, capture or death. Some said even a few simple escape rules gave them confidence. Apparently adequate training enables the individual to avoid being surprised and to establish defenses against danger. That is to take immediate measures to counteract the danger.
Here's a quote, "At the time, our altitude was such that we could not return." This is really crazy to think about these bombers. You're at altitude, but you're at an altitude that you know you can't make it back to base. So at the time, our altitude was such that we could not return. Instructions for ditching were given, for which we had been adequately briefed many times. The entire crew assumed ditching stations and calmly awaited contact. As soon as we hit the water, so they were taking this thing into the ocean. As soon as we hit the water, ditching operations were immediately put into effect. Within 35 seconds, all crew members had left the ship. The ship then broke in half and sank within two minutes. And by ship, he means aircraft.
I've done something called a helodunker. Which is, you get into a helicopter, like the body of a helicopter. And it goes in the water and flips upside down. And then you gotta get your way out. And then you do it blacked out. So you put like a mask on where you can't see anything. So you go through both those things because it can be really hard. You get disoriented. Now for guys that are SEALs, like I was there with my SEAL platoon. It's pretty easy for us, but if you're not used to the water, bro, you get put upside down. You get flipped around and there's like jolting. But that's why they do it. That's why they do it. They're training you so you are prepared for those situations.
I also did the training to go in the backseat of a jet. And you had to pull the ejection handle. So you sit in a chair, like an ejection, like a pilot chair. And you gotta go through the protocol to eject and then it like shoots you up. It's like a carnival ride type track. You just go up, you pull the thing, you pull the lever and you go.
Yeah, is that cool?
It's yeah, it's cool.
Is it kinda like a like a ride or is it?
It's kinda like a ride.
Kinda stuff.
No, no, no, it's just more like a ride.
So is the Helodunker. I mean, if you're good in the water, the Helodunker is kind of a fun ride.
Yeah, but the Helodunk, is there like a technique to the Helo, like an actual protocol?
Yeah, yeah, you, you, I forget what it was, but you know, you like find a crease or something and you follow the crease to a window. Or like as you're gonna impact, you put your hand on something so you know where you're at. That's what it is. That's one of the techniques. I forget them all, but as you're impacting, you grab something so you maintain your your sense of location.
Oh, yeah, this is when you're blacked out.
Yeah, when you're blacked out, like you grab the the seat.
Cause if you don't grab the seat, all of a sudden you're floating around, you don't know which way is up. Could be a problem.
Yeah. So isn't there, I mean, I imagine there's, this sounds kinda familiar where like there's a car one too, right? Where you're in like the car, there's like a protocol. Where like, yeah, if you hit, you know, you drive in a lake into a lake, you fall in off a bridge, I don't know, whatever. And you're in the car and now water's coming in the car. There's like a protocol, like a technique to do that to escape. Cause like you can't open the door when there's air in.
You wanna like try and roll down the windows is what you wanna do.
Yeah, so you gotta like kinda suck it up for a little bit.
And I think the other thing is you've got to, if the car, you gotta let, if you can't get down the windows, you gotta let the car fill up with water so that it equalizes the pressure so you can open the door.
Yeah, so that part would be spooky.
Or you gotta have a tool with you, you can smash the windows.
Yeah, then it all comes flying in.
Then you gotta be careful.
Now you gotta suck that up. So it's like this fortitude you kinda gotta have.
Yeah, but but it's not just a fortitude, it's a plan.
Right, right, that's yeah.
Yeah, it's a set, as they call it.
Yeah, so if you have that plan, you know, hey, this is part of the process, this shitty part where the water's freaking coming in and you're like, you wanna panic right now, but you gotta like let it fill up, get underwater, then things can can kinda continue. Yeah, that's kinda scary. But yeah, if you're if you're trained in it, it kinda seems like, okay.
Just if you did that one, if you talked through that one time, it'd help you a lot.
If you rehearse it with your kids.
Everyone's living.
If you don't rehearse it, you got issues.
Oh, yeah.
Inadequate training. Here's a quote, "On a bombing run over France after hitting the primary target, we were severely hit by flak. I was scared," and it just got a, like a bleep, a written bleep, it just says a space. So the guy probably said, "I was scared shitless."
That's the only way I can describe it. "Our bailout was very disorderly. It was just a madhouse. Due to the lack of adequate bailout procedures, there was no orderly conduct at all. We had to kick some of our guys out. I pushed the radio operator out, but his chute didn't open. My mine opened just in time." So this is if you haven't rehearsed, it's mayhem.
Other good, other ways to minimize fear, fear, good morale. Some name good morale as the important fear killer. Others mention self-confidence or psychological preparation as important. Here's one, quote, "If you keep your morale up, your brain works better. When your morale is down, everything looks bleak and you feel afraid." Another quote, "The most important thing is to have a well-trained crew, good court, good crew coordination, and the proper mental attitude. Try to get a crew in a state of mind where no man bitches about what should have been done or what mistakes have been made, but rather all concentrate on what they can do now."
So apparently scared shitless wasn't a bad word, or was a bad word, but you can say, bitches. No bitching. Another one, quote, "Like the other 11,000 prisoners of war where I was, I was not psychologically prepared. They lacked confidence and gave themselves up with little or no attempt to evade or survive. I know some men who just sat down by the side of the road and waited for somebody to capture them."
"The presence or absence of normal leadership does much to increase or decrease fear." Good leadership, quote, "We decided to fly as far as possible toward home base and to bail out as soon as we got below 1,800 feet." Geez, that's low dude with a parachute. Especially if you don't have any familiarity with parachuting. To keep as much altitude as possible, we jettisoned lots of equipment, including a waist gun and ammunition. We even considered throwing out the ball turret. Everyone was calm during this maneuver. Can you imagine you're getting ready to crash, you're throwing stuff off your airplane? Everyone was calm during this maneuver. Our position was radioed to everyone every five minutes. So this is a long, like I was talking 15 minutes, yeah.
We're talking 15, maybe even longer. It's crazy. The pilot cut the switches before the bailout. The engineer and I rigged up a static line to drop the wounded bombardier out. We had many bailout drills and the aircraft commander was sharp on emergency procedures. We talked things over in the crippled plane and made plans. We had, we had decided to walk back toward the plane to pick up all crew members. We worked out even to use the, the use of water and food. Even though there's little hope of getting out alive, everyone felt that what we were doing was the best thing that could be done.
I wish they had GoPro cameras that were on that aircraft as dudes, they're gonna crash into enemy territory and they're just coming up with plans, helping their wounded guys, radioing positions. Freaking impressive. All members of this crew, including the crippled bombardier, evaded successfully for several days and survived. Hoo ya.
Rescue system in some interviews indicate that knowing that there is a good pickup system in the area for stalls for your downed airman are more confident when rescue or recovery squadron operates in the area. That makes sense. Survey the situation. Fear can at times be quieted by simply, by a simple survey of the situation. Many found it helpful to take cover and to observe what was going on before taking action. Failure to do this resulted in what was probably avoidable capture in a number of cases. The enemy is scared too. The thought that the enemy is as scared as you are and faces similar problems enables some to continue against considerable odds. That's, that's, you know, we were talking earlier about
shared companionship in fear. That's another good thing is to say, you know, if you're going to fight someone, they're more scared than you are. Like the enemy is scared of you too.
Prayer helps. Several said religious practices, especially prayer and reading the Bible, calm them down. Quote, "I never pushed the panic button even when I came down. I'm a Catholic and you may think I'm a religious fanatic. The Sunday before this mission, I'd gone to mass and communion. I was in a state of grace. I was not alone up there. Religion and God are no longer beliefs to me. I know. He was with me for four months." End quote.
And then we get to a section that's very important. Caring for those who crack. When fear becomes too great for a crew member, he introduces additional hazards for the whole crew. Since fear can become contagious, others also may be affected beyond their control. The actions of the man who cracks may endanger the safety of others and taking care of him can also add to the group's dangers. In some cases, such persons was kept under close watch and away from others as much as possible. Quote, "One of the men was an ex wrestler. He folded purely from fear. He cried with fear. We kept him concealed as much as we could so that he wouldn't influence the other men
or the natives. I kept telling, I kept him with me all the time and he did everything he was told."
Another section, closely knit crews sometimes lend strength to their members who are on the verge of cracking. Quote, "The wing gunner had broken his ribs and became hysterical, but calmed down when he saw that we were getting out. The other gunner was screaming that he was dying. The copilot temporarily lost his head and started swimming away from the sinking ship, but returned to where the rest of us were."
And then it goes on to say, "Sometimes, sometime, an objective estimate of the risks involved demands seemingly harsh measures. One crew decided that a man who was delirious could not continue with the group. The rest of the group, the rest of the crew escaped. The man was left behind, was captured, treated, and eventually returned in good health. In another case, two crew members who became hysterical had to be tied up and placed in the front compartment of the boat, of a boat, that had been dropped to the crew. Drastic means we're taken at times to get a crew member to come along and to bring him through the experience. Quote, "The bombardier wanted to quit one night, but I drew my gun
on him and told him I would shoot him rather than leave him behind. He said later that he thought I meant it, so he got up and came along."
Check.
Now we get into a good, important section. What can be done about fear? These stories and the inferences to be drawn from them suggest a number of means for controlling fear. Above all, they emphasize that combat crew members need not be helpless victims of their fear. So there you go. You don't need to be a victim of your fear. Sometimes, only the crew members can do for himself, or sorry, some things only the crew members can do for himself. Other things the air force must provide in order to give the crew member the mental and physical tools with which to handle his fears. And here's a whole section.
What you can do about fear. Do not run from fear. Understand fear. Learn to recognize fear. Learn what your reactions to fear are likely to be. Admit and accept fear during training. Face as many fears as you can. When you do, many of your fears will vanish.
Learn how to plan and to act purposely even when you're afraid. And if you think about military training, if you think about SEAL training and the things that you do, jumping out of an airplane,
climbing over the cargo net. I didn't think too much about climbing over the cargo net. I was down at the teams the other day. It's fifty feet tall, like it's tall. It's very tall. If you're not, if you're afraid of heights, it's gonna be a problem and you're gonna have to get used to it. Or you're not gonna graduate. So that's like one of those things where you're just gonna get exposure therapy to heights. Going, this is another thing I never really thought too much about. Some people are really scared of the ocean at night. Like they're really scared of it. You do you spend so much time in the water at night. I think I was too young to process fear for a lot of the stuff. I was just like young and just.
Yeah, it's almost like it comes though, right? Where the it's like, kinda like a version of the fear of the unknown, like for ocean at night, for example.
I can see how someone would be scared of that.
For sure.
I was, we've, we've been diving and spearfishing at night since we were kids. So at at first, it's like, what the hell you have to be scared of. It's just like the regular ocean. Just the sun ain't out. It's like literally, there's no difference. But when you really consider it, what if you've never been there?
Oh, man, it's like, it's kinda like a haunted like place. Where with death just all around you waiting to just eat you, you know? Like everything in like when you're a little kid.
Haunted death waiting to eat you.
Oh, yeah, at every turn. The, so I remember when I was a little kid, like little kid, maybe like six, seven years old, being in one of these community, I was in New Jersey. And we're in one of these community pools. You can just go to the pool. And there was this, it was this big one with these high dyes. And I remember that it was so deep. I couldn't, I felt like I couldn't see the bottom, right? That's how deep this pool was. And I remember looking down there and thinking, but this is like kinda scary down there, like way down there, you know? It's like you can't see the bottom. There's infinite like just horrors down there. I don't know what, but it's a pool. So there's nothing literally down there, but I remember that feeling.
And then, you know, when you grow up, you start to like, you know, logic kicks in and all this stuff. So you're not scared of pools. But think about it, that feeling doesn't necessarily go away. So as a, as an adult, you grow up, that feeling just caught a fight because you didn't go in the ocean, especially at night, you know, all this stuff. So that fee, that fear is now like, it's kind of morphed into this real like thing that lives in your head. So now you go in the freaking ocean at night, somewhere you've never been. You don't know the horrors that wait down there for you, you know? So you get in there and it's just sheer panic. Makes sense.
Yeah, but the, the opposite of that is you overcome that fear. You, you, you get in the ocean at night. You jump out of the airplane. You jump out of the helicopter. You go free fall. You have your oxygen taken away from you at night. Like all those things that you're doing, my, my, my point in saying this is if you go through SEAL training, there's going to be something that scares you.
And what you learn how to do is you learn how to go anyways. So there is a method to the madness of making you do all these things where you're gonna, some of them are gonna scare me. It's very normal to not like heights. That's a human instinct. It's very normal to be afraid of very dark, large areas where there's monsters.
It's, it's normal. So you're gonna have to overcome those fears over and over again. It's, it's very normal to be fear, feared of or afraid of bullets. But you can do live fire where people are shooting right next to you. So all these fears that you have, you're gonna learn how to take fear and contend with it. And which is good because when you go into combat, it's going to be a fear that you haven't had yet. But you're gonna go through those protocols, whatever they were, to get through that situation and perform.
Develop confidence in yourself. Use your training opportunities wisely. Maximize your capabilities by keeping physically and mentally fit, knowing your equipment and how to use it, learning how to survive, evade and escape. Know what you can and cannot do so you can make wise choices.
This is what a lot of, you know, field craft survival, they're doing those courses. You're going to go through these basic protocols. Mike Glover, he's going to talk to you about, oh, what if your vehicle does break down? What if you do slide off the road? What if someone does approach you in this dark alley? What are you going to do? You're going to think through it and you're going to have the set for it. And you're going to have equipment that you're going to learn how to use. You're going to learn how to use a tourniquet. The first time you use a tourniquet, you don't want it to be when you've got to put a tourniquet on yourself or someone else for real. Cause there's going to be other things that are going through your head. That's why, that's why we are being prepared.
Same thing with Tim Kennedy, sheepdog response. That's more like, hey, what are you going to do when you are in a conflict of some kind? In a confrontation of some kind, whether it's an active shooter, whether someone's trying to grab you. So both those two schools are going to give you the preparation that you need to handle certain scenarios.
Be prepared. Accept the possibility that it can happen to me. Be properly equipped and clothed, have a plan. Keep informed, listen carefully to combat briefings, know where you are going, what is going on at all times. That's such a big deal. They just throw it out there, know where you are and what is going on at all times. They throw that out there, that could actually be the number one thing. Know where you are and what is going on at all times. Know when danger threatens so that you can be prepared if it hits. Keep busy, do all you can, prevent hunger, thirst, fatigue, idleness, ignorance about the situation, since these increase fear. Know your fellow crew members under stress. Learn to work with them in emergencies, learn to live with them under stress, learn to plan with
them. Practice your religion, don't be ashamed of having spirit, spiritual faith. Remember that the enemy may be as scared as you. Always remember that your ultimate goal is to get back alive.
And then it talks about the, the training that you're going through and it uses a good term. The Survival School and unit level training programs offer the combat crew member gradual, supervised experiences with survival evasion escape problems to afford what may be described as quote battle inoculation. So what I was talking about earlier, you're going to get inoculated to fear. You're, when you go through basic SEAL training and you go through hell week, there's freaking explosions going off. There's machine guns going off. It's mayhem. You can't see, you can't hear. You're getting, you're getting stress inoculation. Cause guess what happens in combat? There's machine guns going off. There's explosions going off. You can't see, you can't hear the smoke, there's chaos. You get inoculated to it.
The, the machine gun, they shoot blanks, right? Like it buds or whatever. Are those blank, is that equally as loud as like a real one? Straight up. So it's like a pretty good representation of machine gun fire in your ears?
Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's freaking loud. And they have not just, they have like 50 caliber machine guns too, which are real loud. And then they're freaking tossing grenade sims and flash crashes. Like it, it's a cacophony of noise that does simulate combat very well.
Yeah. Cause that's a big part of it, right? I mean, I know a lot of kid, guys, they grew up as kids shooting guns and stuff like that. But if you don't, just the noise and that weird, that impact pressure in the air or whatever, when you're in the, the presence of gunfire is like, just that alone, that's a big freaking thing. You know, big factor in the thing. So yeah, when you're used to that, it's like, oh, it's way different. Yeah.
They're going to inoculate you to it.
Followed by quote booster shot. So it's battle inoculation followed by quote booster shots. So they're going to keep you stimulated, you know, and in the SEAL teams, you're going to go through workup, you're going to, you're going to get crashed with flash crashes, you're going to once again have machine guns. Like all this stuff is going to, you're going to continue to get these booster shots of stress inoculation. And then what's interesting is, once you start to become more senior, you can handle that, that lower level stress. Now you're going to start to get the stress of making decisions, looking around, trying to figure out what's happening, simplifying what's going on, making decisions and passing the word to people. So you've got to be able to handle the lower level stress from the situation to start to now handle the stress from the leadership scenario that you're in and all that works.
The knowledge of the principles of map reading, route finding, ground navigation, camouflage concealment, like all these things are good to know and understand. Knowledge of the basic survival essentials, that's what we got to do. Knowledge of how to bail out of the aircraft, knowledge of his own survival and enemy's weapons for survival purposes. Yes, that's smart. Know your, and it goes on to talk about survival equipment, talk about rescue and recovery procedures. And then it gets into a section, physical fitness and psychological conditioning. Physical fitness is a bulwark against fear and despondency, since it enables the crew member to successfully overcome the many physical problems of survival,
escape and evasion. It sustains his will to go on. Many units, but still not all, have continuing programs designed to improve the physical condition of every combat crew member to survive, evade or escape. There has been much psychological research at all levels to determine the causes, characteristics and effects of fear upon survival. Mental conditioning seems closely related to physical fitness, knowledge of equipment and competence in survival procedures. I'm gonna say that again. Mental conditioning seems closely related to physical fitness, knowledge of equipment and competence to survival procedures. Some
flight surgeons are helping to train combat crew members to accept fear as normal and channel aroused energies, energies towards the survival goals.
The emotional state of the individual in emergencies has been the active concern of numerous chaplains and many competent far sighted aircraft commanders. Some counsel the individual directly, others work through other crew members, and still others emphasize group counseling and group experiences to build up the confidence of all crew members. So that's what we're doing. Notice that falls on the leader. Summary of this section. The Air Force has done and can do much through training to prevent many fears and to make possible purposeful action in stress situations. However, the crew member himself must learn how to handle his own fears. He can do this.
He can best do this by taking advantage of the training opportunities and knowing himself. So it's on you. So much good information about fear. And look, fear is not necessarily the chaos of combat. Fear is going to a job interview. Fear is confronting someone that you need to deal with at work.
Fear is helping your kid overcome the fear of the first day of school. So all the stuff that we just put out, very important. But I want to get to a section here. I'm gonna fast forward like to probably the last section. Might be the last section we cover from this book, but this is where we start talking about leadership and group behavior. It's called group behavior in survival. And what it says here, the behavior of a group under survival conditions emerges as an important factor in almost every survival story. During an in-flight emergency for one bomber crew, decisions are made promptly, plans formulated, crew members are kept fully briefed, individuals who have difficulty are assisted.
The result is escape, evasion, and survival with minimum hardship and 100% recovery. In another episode, there's indecision. No one assumes leadership. Crew members panic and the crew is not kept informed. The result is that two crew members lose their lives, two go berserk. The remainder, fight and unnecessary suffering results.
That's bad leadership. That's bad leadership. To go berserk. This is what they're saying in this book, which is based on interviews of people that were like, oh yeah, Fred went freaking berserk. And then Mike and Jim were fighting. Like that's what's happening. We're trying to survive as a team.
Here's fast forward a little bit. General psychological conclusions. Group organization. A crew's chances of surviving depend largely on its ability to organize activity. A tight situation does not weld a crew together. Rather, the more difficult and disordered the situation, the greater are the disorganized crew's problems. So that's important to think, because sometimes you think, well, we'll, we'll perform well if, if like something happens. No, it's actually not true. If you don't have a good, well-oiled machine of a team, when something bad happens, you freaking fall apart. The tight situation doesn't help you. This is particularly true in the face of common danger when fear can result in panic rather than concerted action.
And it goes into a bunch of things here. Group morale. High group morale exists when all crew members feel themselves to be part of the crew rather than individuals and are proud to be members of that crew. High group morale has many advantages. The individual feels strengthened and protected since he realizes that his survival depends on others whom he trusts. Two, the group can meet failure with greater persistency. And three, can formulate goals to help each other in the face of, and face the future. High morale must come from internal cohesiveness and not merely through external pressures. That's very important.
The spreading of a mood. Under certain conditions, moods and attitudes become wildly contagious. Panic of a crew may be caused by a few exceptionally frightened members, members, false rumors, horror stories, lack of faith in the group, or a badly frightened leader. Panic often may be prevented by conscious, well-planned organization and leadership on the basis of delegated or shared responsibility, combined with faith in the group and realization of the need for cooperation.
It's contagious. What you're doing is contagious, how you're reacting, your emotions are contagious. Fast forward a little bit, the survival leader and the survival companion. So what this is talking about, it says survival companion, it's talking about teammates. So it's talking about leaders now and teammates. And this is, this is just great, great information here. Several studies were made to determine the characteristics causing acceptance or rejection of crew members as survival leaders or companions. Some 240 trainees were queried upon completing advanced survival training. The experts, instructors, training officers, psychologists and others who have observed
some 14,000 trainees during, during the two week training interval were also queried. Results were checked by having crew members select or reject specific individuals and then describe the man chosen or rejected. While differing as to the details, the results indicate consistent importance of certain characteristics, many of which are applicable to any type of leadership or any type of companionship. So you got a bunch of people, you interview a bunch of people. Who did you like as a leader? Who did you like as a teammate? Who did you reject as a leader? Who did you reject as a teammate? This is the goods right here. The ideal survival leader.
According to crew members, the ideal survival leader has the following, following characteristics. Knows himself and his men. Can hold his crew together. Is interested in crew member welfare. Considers and uses the suggestions of others. I love, this is just you, if you're, you can be, if you're watching, you can see a big smile on my face because these are the things we talk about all the time. These are the things we're talking about all the time. Making sure you take care of your troops. You look out for their welfare. Make sure you consider what other people have to say. Can keep up crew morale under stress.
Has crew members respect and confidence. Can get along with crew members. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? If you're gonna be a good leader, you gotta be able to get along with people. You can't be a dictator, you can't be an authoritarian, you need to get along with people. Distributes work fairly. Plans and organizes well. Keeps his crew well briefed. Boy, you gotta keep your people knowing what's going on.
According to the experts, the ideal survival leader must recognize and advantageously use individual differences. So people can be a little bit different. And you gotta be able to take advantage of that. Strengths and weaknesses. Oh, Echo's real good at this, I'm gonna have him do that.
Echo's not good at this other thing, I'm not gonna make him do that. Be resourceful.
Have the confidence and respect of his crew, keep his crew well briefed. Those individuals selected as ideal leaders were described as described as respected for their superior experience and background. Personality and physical adequacy. Mature judgment. Ability to achieve results through resourcefulness and understanding utilization of the men.
So that's what we're looking for. Those are the positive attributes here.
Now we're getting into the poor survival leader.
Not seeming to care whether anyone else survives.
Easily excited, excitable and becomes panicky. You wanna remain calm. As a leader.
We don't wanna lose our temper. We don't wanna freak out.
Unable to maintain control of his crew.
And easily discouraged and gives up.
That's the poor survival leader.
Now we get into the teammate, the ideal survival companion.
In the abstract, the ideal survival companion or teammate is easy to get along with. Big shocker. Stable. Not freaking out. Personally and physically adequate. Skilled and knowing in survival techniques, able and desirous of surviving adversity, able and willing to do his share.
One who works for the welfare of the group.
Able to prove himself in survival training. Okay. Look, don't, don't look out for yourself.
Get along with other people, be stable. Like, these are the things we talk about all the time. This is from 1954.
Individuals rated by others. Most highly as survival companions were those who helped others the most, joked the most, then hunted the most. Yeah, I got a good attitude.
And here's the list of the poor survival companion.
Men were rejected because they got on the nerves of others as a result of loudness, boasting, arguing, using profanity, disagreeable personality characteristics, failure to keep clean, crying type of complaining, self-centeredness, failure to do their share, personality inadequacies and immaturities, physical inadequacies, personal dislikes. Isn't that interesting? Personal dislikes. If you're just one of these people that, I don't like this, I don't like that, complainer.
And poor handling of authority relationships. Oh, that's right. Oh, you're in charge. You know, that boss everyone around. Boy, that list right there. Let's just remember that list. Loudness, boasting, arguing, using profanity, disagreeable. Personal personality characteristics, failure to keep clean, crying type of complaining. Self-centeredness, failure to do your share. Personality inadequacies and immaturities, physical inadequacies, personal dislikes. I really like that one. It's just annoying.
What? The personal dislike?
That person that's gonna like that.
And poor handling of authority relationships.
The whole self-centeredness.
Yo.
That's like.
It's ego. It's a big ego, baby. It's a big ego all day.
It's weird because the more, the more you guys talk about ego, or I guess the more we all talk about ego. And how it can just appear in so many places, but there's so much to like this idea of self-centeredness, like selfishness. Narcissism, inflated ego, like however you want to kind of put it, like it seems like there's different like little departments, you know, where self-centeredness kind of has this very specific feel to it versus ego versus narcissism, you know? Like self-centeredness almost like isn't like a thing that it's less about like other people, more about this person's self where like nothing lands on them if it ain't about themself, kind of a thing.
I think it's important to remember the context that we're talking about. The context that we're talking about is survival.
Which means we get a little bit of food.
This has nothing to do with ego. I want to get mine. I want to get more. Oh, we, we have a blanket that we found.
I, it's about me. It's not my ego saying like, I want to prove to everyone that I can win the blanket. No, no, it's like, I want to take care of myself.
That's the self-centeredness.
Yeah. And that's how it like, that's how it feels to me too, where.
It's like a component. It's under the umbrella of ego, but you're right. It's a very specific thing. When someone is trying to take care of themselves.
Look, that can be a component of their ego because I want to get promoted because I want to be in charge. But when what I want to do is I want a little bit more food.
That's a thing.
And and not others kind of a thing because there's a difference between like, hey, if I go out like, I don't know, I went out on my own. I had to use bathroom in on a desert island. I don't know, we're trying to survive. And I go and I see this like tree of mangoes and I'm like, oh, this is some delicious mangoes.
Mango mayhem.
Oh, damn. So it's one thing to be like, hey, I'm gonna eat some. And then remember, oh, wait a second, let me bring some back for for the rest of the people or for, you know, whoever else is with me. Versus, oh, I'm gonna do that same, I'm gonna eat some, but I just totally just forgot about it. I forgot about others, you know, like, that's like a weird, that's like a version of self centeredness where it's not an active like, okay, I could and I choose not to. It's just that you don't even think about other people. You're just so self centered. You're just like, your whole reality is just centered around you and that's sort of it, you know? Versus the guy who's like, eh, like they almost reject others actively and think about themselves. That's like a different flavor of self centered centeredness, you're saying?
Yeah. But again, what we're dealing with here is like, I'm gonna take care of me.
Yeah, regardless, they are. They both entail that. Like, you ever knew someone, I I know a couple of people like this and I didn't even realize it. Where they're self centered in that first way where it's like they're oblivious to others. Like scenarios and they're nice.
Now I see what you're saying.
Yeah, like they're nice people.
People that they just, you ever, you ever go and, you know, you go to a restaurant or something and the the hostess is whatever, walks by you or something or put you at your table. And the the person you're with just they that hostess does not exist as a human being. Yeah, they don't say like, thanks, or yeah, I appreciate it, or what they just like, they just don't exist. Or like a dorm, a coat person.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You're like, give them the ticket, just they hand the coat, they don't say thanks, they're just like, grab it and walk away. Those people are, that's, I don't think that's necessarily ego, but they're just so self centered. That you think, dude, can you just be nice to another person that's like helping you out?
Yes. So consider that exact thing like, so there's a difference between look, both equals and equal, um, like scenarios, right?
But there is a difference between the person who sees the quote person and consciously thinks, oh, they're beneath me, so they're not worth my time or hello or niceness versus the person who just, they don't even see them because they're not in their centered world. They're not in their world. They're just like a tool of life, you know, like a, like a, like a feature of life. You see what I'm saying? They don't mean, if it were to be pointed out to them like, hey, that's a person too. They're like, oh, wait, I didn't even realize it, kind of a thing, you know? So it's almost like a benign self-centeredness versus a malignant self-centeredness, something like that. See what I'm saying? Because I, like I said, I know some people, a couple of them, that they're kind of this benign self-centeredness.
They're super nice to you when you talk to them and stuff like that, but anytime like they start going off about something or you start talking about something, it's always like themself hundred percent. Where it's almost like, even if you do say something about yourself, they almost like gloss over a little bit and they'll be like, oh yeah, cool. And then they go right back to themselves the whole time. And sometimes in my case, Brian didn't even know this. I didn't even realize it. I was like, I wonder, you know how you're just left with a certain feeling a lot of the time? It's like, why am I not vibing as much? Because they're so nice, these people, you know, they're like nice, the ones I know anyway. And I just don't vibe as much as maybe another person or whatever.
And I start to realize it, wait a second, like sometimes this weird benign self-centeredness will produce this experience.
Yeah, it's real weird if you think about it to have in your head that what the group that we're with right now, what they really want to hear is about me.
You know what I mean? Like, that's a really weird, like, thing.
But I feel like that would be a consciousness though. Like if you're conscious of it, that's one thing versus if you're just not conscious of it. You know, some people that, you know, because there's such thing as that, oh shit, I just didn't realize I was doing that. Which is kind of a lot of the stuff that goes, you know, what we do, like we don't realize sometimes, a lot of the time anyway. But to have it that hardcore is like, I think that's, that's what I'm kind of stumbling upon. You know, that there's versions of self-centeredness.
You ever see sometimes like, um, someone will talk about a politician and they'll be like, the politician mentioned I, me.
I or me, you know, thirty nine times in a three minute talk.
Yeah, yeah, fully.
That that's that's what's happening in those situations like a little, maybe it's a little bit of both or whatever. But in their mind, they what they want everyone to hear about is them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Kind of jacked up. And listen, can you? You know, you you are gonna have to, if you're a politician, you're gonna at some point have to say, well, I was born, or I think what we should do here. Like, I get it.
Yeah, fully.
But there are times where it just is so over the top and you think, ooh.
Yeah, and again, it it's a bunch. It's a collection of experiences. It's not just, oh, yeah, I listened to this guy's speech and he said I thirty nine times. That's not it.
Pattern.
Yeah, exactly right, where
you can, again, yeah, your first experience with someone, it's like, that's not enough info, you know? It's like you're left with a certain feeling for a certain reason, and it's usually because of that consistency, you know? Because there's a difference between using yourself as an example, because yourself happens to be a good example. So you're gonna tell a story like about what you went through to exemplify whatever point you're making. And there's a big difference between that and then just simply always talking about yourself and referring to yourself to glorify your past or to glorify your this or that or whatever. Those are two completely different things. And usually you can sort of formulate where it kind of formulates after a while, the experience when you have enough experiences with somebody like what they're doing, which one of those they're doing.
We don't like that vibe.
No, no, another vibe. Exactly right. It's the vibe, but it's for a reason. Yeah, exactly.
This is pretty funny. Another study indicated that the most annoying survival habits, mannerisms and actions were
authoritarian behavior of officer personnel, inconsiderateness, playing the star, bossiness, always right attitude. That's a list right there. That is a list right there. You might want to you might want to note those down. Authoritarian behavior of officer personnel inconsiderate, playing the star, bossiness, and always right attitude. Watch out. Aloofness or failure to become integrated into the crew. Lack of cooperation, lack of participation in crew activities, inconsiderateness of others, failure to do their share of the work, superiority attitude.
Irritating verbal behavior, excessive griping, false high spirits, foul language, excessive arguing, bragging, criticizing, questioning those in authority. Commandingness, chattering and loudness, telling the same old jokes.
Threatening to quit, sarcasm. This is an interesting one, singing immediately upon waking.
Need to tell that one to my kids when they were younger. Bro, this was like a freaking musical at my house with my kids running around. My daughters are freaking just singing, like just singing and all the musicals, bro. Ariel and whatever else.
The Little Mermaid?
Yeah, Little Mermaid and all those things, bro. It was like a Broadway play, singing upon, and it was, it was definitely an annoying characteristic for me.
Good thing it wasn't a survival scenario, unless it was, I don't know.
Here's a good one. Monotonous monologues about private episodes.
Oh, let me tell you about, oh, this is a classic right here. Talk about the last war. Temper outbursts, making an issue of someone else's mistakes.
These are so important to note. Irritating nonverbal behavior, borrowing, horseplay, snoring, lack of personal cleanliness, unsanitary practices. These are good stuff. These are universal, by the way.
But boy, talking about the last war, monotonous monologues about private episodes. Oh, you don't you hate getting caught in those scenarios? Cause they're, they're, the thing is they're private, so they're kind of like personal.
And you, so it's rude kind of to walk away. I'll be like, look, I don't give a shit about you, whatever you're about to say.
Or you've told me this freaking sob story a million times.
So there you go on that. They're definitely down on swearing. I wonder if this was written today, we probably wouldn't catch all that because they're talking about swearing so much.
Like, are Air Force guys, do they tend to be more proper or what?
No.
Yeah, because I kind of thought like every time when you're like, because it's Air Force guys, right?
Yeah, so actually, when you first brought it out, I was like, wait a second, this could be, actually, it probably does reflect a lot of the common, you know, like ethos of what Air Force guys are, right? In a way?
But I think it's just the modern day. But the interesting thing is like, people swore all the time back then.
Yeah, that's what it feels like.
Even in the book, they made, swears made it into this book.
Right, like what?
They beeped them out, but like, they're in here. So it's interesting that, I wonder what level of, maybe it's just like the totally atrocious level of swearing.
I think this is what it probably is. I don't know. I'm me, so I don't know. But it could be more than the norm, kind of a thing.
Excessive.
Yeah, yeah, like everyone's swearing a level one and you're over here swearing level eight. Like, that's a problem.
You ever heard a comedian that just is swearing to the point of where you'd feel like this a little bit?
Occasionally that can happen, or, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Comedians, it's real clear too, because you're up there as a comedian, you're there to be funny first and then everything else second, or second, third, whatever. But funny first. So a lot of times people will be controversial, right? Which it's super funny when they're funny first, so it works. But when they're controversial first and funny second, it's like, oh, this guy's just trying to be comfortable. And it's not funny. So there's, the violation is very clear as far as the experience goes. See what I'm saying? That's what it seems like.
Uh, men actually rejected as companions. So these are people just straight up rejected, not even, not annoying. These are rejected. Gripeing the most, helping others the least, and seeming to be near the breaking point. Okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, that, I think it is that though. It, it has to be as far as um, like how much of each of these factors are going on. Because it seems like in any intense situation, some of this is gonna be going on in everyone's, you know, it takes a kind of special person to never do any of these.
The last stuff that we read was uh, things that were annoying. The things that I just read were out actually rejected, like we don't want you.
Right. And they said griping the most. So it's kinda like that. Griping is tolerable.
Yeah, but let's face it, it's not advisable.
Yeah, yeah, it's not good.
Doesn't help. Shouldn't be doing it.
Yeah, it's like snoring, right? Where if someone snores quietly one night out of the week versus the guy who's just snoring up a storm every single day, super loud, it's kinda like, right, there's a big, big difference. So you're saying, so that makes sense.
Except for the fact that snoring is somewhat involuntary. Whereas griping is, that's on you.
Yeah, fully, but I'm just saying the comparison.
You gotta take ownership of your snoring. Like if you snore, you gotta say, hey, man, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sleep with my whatever. I'm gonna tape my nose, whatever you gotta do, you try and, you try and suppress it, but that ultimately is an involuntary thing.
Yeah, so.
There's no one I've ever met that was proactively wanting to snore.
Improving their snoring.
Right, they're not working on their snoring. But you can definitely control your griping and your complaining, so.
Yeah, but the, as far as the difference between this guy doing it and this guy doing it, it's kinda like the degrees can make it like worthy of rejection versus, okay.
Like, oh, this guy sucks.
There's a certain level of acceptance of some of this stuff.
Groups in real survival situations based upon the processing of many survival evasion and escape reports, certain general principles emerge concerning good and poor survival crews. They go into a list of these things. Here are some of the principles for working together that you can practice in survival training and in other situations. If you practice these, you will find that your crew works smoother, no matter what the problem is. So what we're talking about is like leadership principles to work together. Organization of manpower, the survival of almost any group largely depends upon the organization of its manpower. Organized action where crew members know what to do and when to do it, both under ordinary circumstances and during crisis is one specific means of preventing
panic. Prioritize and execute. Flexibility and versatility are important in emergencies. Clearly. Supervision. One authority states that survival leadership differs from other leadership mainly in the manner in which it must be maintained. In order to continue his effectiveness in a survival group, a leader must maintain his position of prestige by using it. That one's interesting because you can imagine someone that is not stepping up and then all of a sudden they step up. You ever seen that in a work environment before where someone's not leading and then all of a sudden they decide to step in and start leading at some point?
Oh, the kind of like in a bad like not in a bad way.
Yeah, like where he doesn't work. It doesn't work. Yeah, because everyone's been doing their thing and then all of a sudden I roll in and like, hey, this is what I want to do.
Right, right, right.
B. Salvage the opposition. For instance, this is, I didn't understood what this meant at first. It says salvage the opposition. So here's what it means. For instance, by putting to some useful purpose the human energy which causes conflict. So you've got this energy, freaking Echo's frustrated. Hey Echo, can you help me move this wood to build the fort?
I'm going to take your frustration. I'm going to do something positive with it. Salvage the opposition. Take advantage of that situation. Keep somewhat aloof from, but not too high above the group. Dichotomy of leadership. Motivate wisely and in accordance with the severity of the survival situation.
The next one is participation in group decision. The advantages of full group participation in a survival situation are obvious. So getting input from the team gets them on board with the plan. Give that ownership when you can. Acceptance of suggestions and criticism. Many survival stories show how an airman becomes the real group leader. Initiating action which saves the group. Although some one person such as the aircraft commander must accept responsibility for the final decision, he still can make good use of other suggestions and criticisms. Isn't that interesting? Listen to what other people say. Accept their criticism, accept their suggestions.
Consideration of available time. Hundreds of survival stories indicate that there is rarely unlimited time in which to make a decision. On the spot decisions which must be acted upon immediately usually determine survival success. Those who just drift, failing to consider time, are the ones who perish, are captured, or suffer the most.
Time. This is why in the Extreme Ownership Leadership Loop that I wrote about in the new version of Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, when I'm making a decision, the first thing that I consider is time. The first thing I consider, and this is exactly why.
Talks about checking equipment. It talks about understanding the severity of the situation. The necessity for surveying the situation is widely recognized in problem solving. Frequently, the things most feared are those involving the unknown, which is what you just talked about earlier. Surveying the situation serves to remove those unknowns and to set in readiness powers of the adjustment.
Group atmosphere.
Group atmosphere, crew relationships, group ego, or whatever term is used emerges as highly important in the group's survival. The following illustrates how the individual gets support and strength from the group. Quote, "We elected to stick together and ditch. Everyone helped in the preparations. The tail gunner had broken a collarbone, nose, and ribs. The wing gunner had broken ribs and was hysterical, but he calmed down when he saw that we were getting out. The copilot temporarily lost his head and started swimming away from the ship, but returned when he saw that no one was following him. The pilot was very stable. He pulled the tail gunner out.
We tried to comfort those who were injured, giving the tail gunner morphine. Since we were all wet and cold, we huddled together for warmth while awaiting rescue. All except the tail gunner, went back to flight duty." God, these are some hard men. Freaking getting shot down, shot up, shot down, crashing into the freaking ocean, getting recovered, healing up, and getting back in the game. Props. Talk about the future served to raise morale in some groups. A feeling of unity also improved morale in some cases. Adverse conditions can seriously threaten the group morale, obviously. Quote, "We were getting discouraged. We smoked a cigarette for breakfast.
It was rained until 11 o'clock, so we remained huddled together under a tent, talking and somewhat pessimistic. We were about out of humor and snapped at one another. I shot a squirrel and soon Shorty got another. Our spirits improved, but we were still at or near daggers points with one another." Just rough conditions. That's why in a leader, as a leader, you gotta pay attention to that. You gotta recognize when you got your team in rough conditions, they're sleep deprived, they're sleep deprived, they're cold, they're hungry, whatever the case may be, you gotta recognize that. You gotta pay attention to that.
Reaction speed in survival emergency previously established reaction patterns are important in enabling the group to react quickly. One authority claims that one main purpose of survival training is to afford an opportunity for knowing and understanding the responses individuals and groups need to acquire. This is what we were talking about earlier. Going through the drill will make your reaction time so much better and going through the drill as a team will make you understand the way other people are going to react.
What holds a crew together? If your crew does things just outlined, you will find that things go much easier. If you find that your crew is unable to do these things, take stock and find out why. You may say, "We may not work very well together now, but we would if we ever got into a tight spot." This is where you are wrong. A common danger is not enough to hold a group together. When danger threatens, you may even become competitive rather than cooperative. This is when panic is likely to occur.
I like that term. I like the term of competitive rather than cooperative. And that I've seen that happen. That's a real thing. There are four main qualities which hold a crew together under pressure. A liking for one another. Isn't that shocking? One thing that holds a crew together under trying circumstances is a liking for one another. There have been stories of downed air crewmen who have refused to escape in order to stay behind and protect a fellow crew member. Men crowd together to keep warm. During the parachute descent, they count the other parachutes and try to identify their buddies. It's also an unwritten code that an injured crewman will be bailed out by those who are uninjured. You can't
expect everything to be rosy under conditions of danger and discomfort. Feelings will be raw and on edge. It will be easier for you to hold together if you already like one another. If you find yourselves getting angry with one another, don't just ignore it. Recognize what you are doing and why, then do something positive about it. So, that's one thing that
I noticed that the stress of combat or the stress in stressful business situations, people are going, people will not act the way, they may not act in the most positive way. And I never held that against people. Like you and I were in a stressful situation and you started acting like a jerk, yelling and screaming, I would not hold that against you. I would measure it and be like, okay, well, if that kid gets under stress, he's gonna freak out. Okay, I noted. I'm not gonna hold a personal grudge against you. I noticed that a lot. I noticed that people, the way they behave in stressful situations and combat and business, things start going sideways. Some people freak out.
I note it. I put it in the calculus of how I'm gonna work with them in the future, but I don't hold it against them. I realize that they're just, you know, short, on edge, tempers flare, emotional. So keep that in mind. Be the person that de-escalates, but don't be the person that holds a grudge.
You ever watch these, uh, what is, what's the freaking show? Well, were they like, a lot of these, on YouTube, there's these little, like, little mini ones. They're like social experiments, right? How do people react into these conditions? And they put on some weird condition. But there's a show, an actual TV show. What was it called? There's this dude, like, what would you do? Or I think it's like, what would you do? That's what the show is called. And it's this one, it's kind of like a candid camera scenario, but this, the scenarios aren't like funny. So they're basically, it's like, you know, they'll be at a restaurant, everyone, the staff of the restaurant is in on the gag and they wanna do this one person. They wanna find out what would they do, whatever.
So they set up everything where like the, the people in the next booth, the dad is like abused, like verbally abusive to the kid to see, okay, what's this person gonna do, you know? Public scenario, restaurant, whatever. And then a lot of times, the person like doesn't step in. They're like nervous, you know, whatever. And they don't react in this like favorable way sometimes. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, right? And then, haha, candid camera, like, why did you do that? Or why didn't you step in? And they, they put them on the spot, you know, a lot of the time. And I had that same thought right there, where I was like, Not everyone just can just immediate when a stressful scenario gets sprung on them in
public in the middle of their day in a peaceful situation otherwise like not everyone's just gonna step up and be like a hero not everyone's gonna do that every single time you know so we you know we get these guys on camera we put them on TV and you know we laugh at them when they don't respond favorably like ah freaking no spine or with no character whatever we cast these judgments on this one thing that they were totally set up for you know where it's like yeah what you say would be like okay you look under this specific circumstance they acted like that you know like bro stop bro leave these people alone sometimes it's like you don't know what that guy's going through you know you set up this freaking show all these actors to do all this weird stuff just to haha see
how this person reacts bro can't do that man yeah some more to it
yeah and also additionally if you are thinking about what's going on and you're a little bit detached from it you're probably gonna make better decisions than if you're just reactive to the scenario so they what do you say the dad's abusing verbally abusing the kid like you like you gotta think through what is that what's what's happening you know and if a guy's playing that out in his head okay well what what's the right move right there cuz you can you know generally speaking as a human it's like oh I don't know what's going through the you got a dad that's publicly verbally abusing a kid that
guy's got issues right this isn't normal this guy's got issue what is he what are you gonna make it worse for the kid or what so there's a lot we you can throw that out that are like it's real simple and easy but when you do get in a situation like that I'm not talking about a candid camera but when there's something going on You've got to detach and really run through, not let your emotions drive it, but what's going on? Can you actually help? Are you gonna make things worse? You know, oh, if now we got a physical abuse going on, now we, now we're probably stepping in. Matter of fact, we're stepping in, like you start abusing a child, we're, we're, we're gonna have issues. We're gonna, we're gonna put a stop to that. The verbal abuse thing, like, how will, how far are you willing to go?
You gonna go and report this? You gonna call child services? You can do the follow-up calls? Are you gonna make it worse for that kid? Are you gonna get stabbed? So there's a lot of things to consider. And the way that you consider those is by taking a step back and detaching. And look, there's so many nuances in that situation. We couldn't, I couldn't say like, well, here's what I would do. I would need to be there. I would need to be sitting there. I would need to physically size the whole situation up. I do, is there a, is there a wife there? Is a mom, what's her reaction? Are there other kids? What are their reactions? There's so many things to consider. But the only way you can truly consider those things in the moment is to be able to detach and take a step back and look around.
Uh, next section here is power, leadership. A liking for one another is not the only thing needed to hold a crew together in survival. Survivors agree that every survival group should have a leader who will exercise his power of authority. This doesn't mean that he has to be a dictator. Somebody has to take lead in accomplishing the things already outlined. Stories of crew survival clearly show that disaster strikes if this power isn't exercised. So somebody's gotta step up and lead.
Communications, almost every story of 100% crew survival gives an account of good communications during the in-flight emergency and what follows. Where there's a lack of communication, there is panic and heavy losses. And again, this is talking about a plane, being in a plane, being in a bomber. But imagine in your company, imagine your organization, imagine your team. When things start going sideways, you gotta communicate what's happening.
Because of poor communications procedures, the men bail out when there's no need to bail out or fail to bail out when there is a necessity. Failing to communicate also causes panic. Having someone to talk to helps morale. It prevents panic.
Next thing, a goal. Having a goal is a fourth factor which holds a crew together when things get rough. If you recognize that all of you have the same goal, survival, you will do a lot of things you wouldn't usually do. When an individual crew member forgets his goal and wants to give up, the crew may be able to snap him out of it. One evading bombardier wanted to quit. The crew knew that this would endanger all of them. The aircraft commander drew his pistol on him and told him that he would shoot him rather than leave him behind. The bombardier got up and came along. The entire crew survived. And here's the the summary section. Based on the social psychology literature,
literature about group behavior under stress, interviewers, interviews and reports, interviews with and reports about Air Force survivors and continuing study of survival trainees, the following conclusions have been reached. Factors which further group survival chances: skill in organizing activity, good group morale, definite goals which serve to improve crew morale, the leader's knowledge of his men as individuals, a wide spread of participation within a crew, keeping the crew well briefed which helps achieve organized action, splitting
up into smaller subgroups as the occasion demands, development of interdependencies based on each man's resources, ability to make quick decisions and act upon them immediately, proper supervision or leadership, group decisions based on adequate survey of the situation, effective previously established reaction patterns, that's good training, good interpersonal crew relations, yes, good relationships, and high prestige personnel such as the aircraft commander taking full advantage of their relative great opportunities to initiate action which may lead to success.
And here's some things that decrease group survival. The absence of any of the foregoing factors. Failure of someone to fulfill the leadership function. Panic, which often arises from a lack of group organization leading to crew disintegration. Lack of inner cohesion as a unit or lack of crew stability. Lack of conscious, well-planned organization and leadership. And this is going to close this this section, this day, this book out. We may go back to the book at some point, but for today. This is what it means to you. Every crew member can examine his own personality, behavior and habits in relation to his fellow crew members in order to judge how he can add to the entire crew's potential for safe return.
So you as an individual can get better and you do examine yourself. And then every aircraft commander can find hints for measuring and for improving his leadership performance under both normal and emergency conditions. He can use the same material to analyze and improve the performance of his whole crew as well as that of each member as an important factor in influencing the crew's survival potential.
The leadership and the crew both need to pay attention, both need to make improvements. And so we see once again that the biggest impact on our survival and our lives is how we lead, how we train, how we prepare, how we test, how we improve ourselves, how we understand our fears, how we train to control our fears, how we understand what being a leader is and what being a team member is, which is interacting with other human beings. That's what we need to do. Improve in those areas, which is on us.
So there you go.
There you go. That's the psychological aspects of survival. And again, I just saw the folks that gave me this book. They came to the muster.
Oh, right on.
And I told them we the last podcast hadn't come out yet. I said, it's coming. So appreciate you giving me this book. She, uh, the woman actually found it in her father's who served in the air force or the army air corps.
Found it in his, you know, old, old box of stuff. So pretty awesome.
Army air corps.
So before the air force was formed, they had the army air corps.
And then eventually that became the air force.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's crazy. So is that the real, that's the actual one?
It's it.
Straight up.
Right there. It's the real thing. It's the real deal. 1954.
Bro, I like these manuals.
They're, yeah, cuz they're like cool little guides where you can be like, huh? Cuz a lot of this stuff and really a lot of what's kinda out there. Is just. Ideas, guidelines, whatever, that are not necessarily in this like cohesive formation where some of this stuff, a lot of it is like. I kinda, that makes sense. It's not gonna come as some big revelation or surprise, but to have it like laid out in a certain way where it's like a little guide. Where you can be like, cool, survival scenario, but wait a second, that kinda applies to me in us in life.
Everything, of course.
Just, and when you really think about it.
Welcome to Jocko podcast, bro.
But, okay.
Welcome aboard.
That goes without saying, okay, but in a way you can kinda look at life as one big survival task, really. Yes. On a lower level or less intense level, see what I'm saying? So. All this stuff is a pretty relevant approach to surviving.
Bro, welcome to Jaco. Have you ever been to a book called Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy, Leadership, Leadership Strategy and Tactics? You seen any of those?
Yes, sir.
Just wondering, just wondering.
But what I'm saying is that's why I like this one cuz they're so straightforward in that.
And you can, you know, with every line, you can just, just apply, apply, apply, apply.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that has made the, you know, echelon front.
Appeal to people is because you get to see the extreme combat examples, but they're so clearly related to what you're dealing with in your business, with your team, with your family, with your life. So when you know that you have to take ownership of a terrible situation in combat, guess what? You also have to take ownership when you make a mistake with your spouse, or you make a mistake with your superior at work, or whatever the case may be. When you know the consequences of not covering and moving in combat, well, now when I'm not supporting my operations department at work, I realize there's consequences as well. So the translation,
it, it, it makes it very obvious what the consequences were and are in combat, but then you also take those and you apply them to your life, your business. So yes, in survival, it may be a, a really important thing to rehearse. And if you don't rehearse, you die.
But guess what? We're going to brief a potential client. We might want to rehearse a couple of times just to make sure we're ready for whatever questions I might ask. So yes, you're very astute in your recognition of the fact that after 424 podcasts.
The things that we talk about apply to life.
Yeah. Or, you know, that's just one of the many reasons I like.
Am I falling in that super annoying category?
You're a bad survivor teammate, whatever.
Bad survivor teammate right now.
The self-centered part of it too is like, you know how, I'm gonna be honest with you. Hey, I like you a lot, so I'm gonna be honest with you. Pretty much every one of those bad scenarios, I was like, shit, I, I can name a time where I did that. You know, so.
That's good.
So I was thinking, well, some of this, I mean, to never do any of these is like, bro, that's almost impossible for a human, you know? So it's one of these things where the guide is like, or the manual is telling you, hey, like, this is bad. So hey, if you catch yourself doing this, freaking knock that shit off. So the self-centeredness, that's a, that's a big one where you know how, I don't know, maybe I'm different, maybe I'm the same as everyone else, I don't know. But you know, like if I'm like hungry, right? I'm cruising by myself or whatever. In my situation, let's say I'm at home, it's only me and my wife home, and I'm hungry and I'm like, bro, I'm not gonna make something, I'm gonna get something for delivery, right?
Hell, yeah.
So every once in a while, I'll just like forget to get her something too, or even ask her like, oh, are you hungry? Yeah, not every time, but every once in a while I will and I'll be like, what the hell's wrong with me? Like, why, why was I not at myself?
Bro, there's an unwritten rule at my house.
If you're getting food.
You don't need any communication. You don't need any texts. You get food. You bring it home.
You bring it home.
You. So if I'm gonna swing by and get some freaking.
Chick-fil-A.
Chick-fil-A. I'm getting it for the fam.
For everybody.
And it would, and if the error is there's already food on the table when I get home and everyone already ate, it's okay. That's the mistake you make.
Yeah, yeah, that's part.
Look, you already sent him a text. You're like, hey, gonna swing by Chick-fil-A, gonna grab some. Does anybody want anything? You don't hear a response. Like you texted him a little bit late. You don't hear a response. Guess what you do?
Get it.
You get it.
Okay.
If you don't get it, you show up.
You, and my family, you're gonna have problems.
My dad, B C, he would always say this. He's like, better to have too much than not enough. But he would, he would always say it. He'd always say it in regards to food when we're making food or whatever. Like, oh, should we, should we peel like, you know, eight potatoes versus, you know, the six or I don't know, whatever. And he's like, do the, do more, cause better to have too much than not enough, which is kind of what your philosophy is where, yeah, like if, hey, if it's a when in doubt, bro, get it.
So yes, we don't have that rule. So I guess that's kind of solid.
Well, once your kids are driving.
You know, then it becomes a thing. Cause I would say my wife and I kind of had that, you know? Like if you're gonna pick up some food, you're gonna get it done. But now that, once you got kids that are driving too, like it's happened. My kid rolling into the house with In-N-Out, with not a thing for me, you know? Guess what happens?
Guess what just happened to their meal? Became my meal. That's what's happening.
Freaking administrative.
Yeah. Punitive measures.
Yeah. Well, so here's now that I'm really thinking about implementing this, I kinda can't. This is why. So a lot of the stuff I get, a lot of times, the rest of my family doesn't want it. Like, I would say like a good 75% of the time.
What, like sushi?
They'll say no, like, yeah, like sushi or pokey or something like this.
They just don't even want it.
Yeah, or they're not in the mood for it. Cause like sushi is one of those ones, most people you gotta be in the mood for.
But, or pokey or something like this, like raw or something from that place, you know? Uh, my kids like sushi, but they like rolls and I'm like, eh, or maybe they already ate. They'll be like, yeah, I want that. They always say yes to sushi, but then when you bring it home, they only eat like a little bit. They like the idea.
Yeah. If you're buying something weird to eat, then yeah, maybe it don't apply.
But if you're getting In-N-Out.
In-N-Out, 100%.
You're getting Chick-fil-A?
Uh, you're getting some Mexican, bruh.
I'm with you.
Better, you better supply for the fam.
I would actually say now that I'm thinking of it, anytime where it's like, yeah, like a Shake Shack or some burger place or whatever. I know to ask everyone, cause everyone like, the chance of them being down for that is like probably 90, 95%. I mean, unless they ate already or whatever.
But even then, contingency planning is you just get it.
I think you're, you're right.
You just get it. That's what we're doing.
But yeah.
So if you roll to my house and you have In-N-Out with you, you have Chick-fil-A with you, you better have enough for the old man. That's what's happening.
It's community Chick-fil-A. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, hey, yeah. Oh, yeah. You're right.
Those were, those were the spots for after wrestling with my kids.
Get done with wrestling, like tournament, gotta weigh in there all day. On the way home, Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out. That's, that's the call. That's what's happening.
Yeah. In-N-Out solid for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta all formulated a thing like that being a rule at your house, that makes sense. But it can't be a rule at my house, but it should, but it should be.
Like I said, not if you're buying weird stuff, right?
If you're buying un-universal foods.
Oh, yes, not universal. I understand.
If you're buying non-universal foods, then yeah.
If you're coming to my house, don't bring this other sushi to me.
Don't be bringing poke. Don't be bringing me this. But stop it in and out and grab that protein style.
Yeah, yeah, all day.
Uh, three by three.
Yeah, I get it.
I got you. But at least ask though, because that's really the original problem is, is like, I felt in terms of like, oh, even if my wife will be like, let's say fifty fifty, right? She's fifty fifty. Sometimes fifty percent she'll say yes, fifty percent she'll say, no, I'm good.
So I'll usually ask her whatever. And then after a while, you start to get the pattern like, hey, it's like freaking eleven at night right now. There's like only a certain amount of sushi places open. She's probably sleeping right now. Or about to go sleep. She's not going to wait another twenty minutes and then freaking eat. She's not going to, she's not going to do that. You know, you kind of go through that quick calculus or whatever. So I'm just, I'm just going to go. And then every once in a while she'll be like, oh, you should have told me I wanted something. Then I'll feel self-centered. Like, I'll be like, bro, I wasn't even thinking about it, you know, kind of a thing. At least ask.
Yeah, at least ask, bro.
Or just get it and put it in the fridge and you have it tomorrow for lunch.
Yeah, it's true.
You know what I'm saying? This is not hard to figure out, right?
Well, now I know now that I listened to the manual and you recome, go through the manual, we're good to go now.
Uh, hey.
Speaking of getting fuel, look, do we get occasionally, do we get some in and out? Occasionally, do we get some Chick-fil-A occasionally? This isn't our normal fuel, right? Normally, we got to keep it a little cleaner. We want to, we want to keep it clean, clean fuel. Jocko fuel. That's what we're doing. Uh, check out the hydrate, check out the greens, greens with creatine. Should we put creatine directly in greens?
Oh, like as a standalone?
As a thing.
I'm not sure yet. There's people that it would be a lot. It'd be a big move. But right now, I'm telling you, you can do this if you want.
You have the choice, freedom of choice. You want greens and creatine, boom, mix them up. Have it in the morning. It's a good thing, too. You get done working out. Maybe you have like, you know, you do some work, you get done working out, you get doing some work. Now it's like 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, you're getting a little hungry. Boom, have have like some mixed nuts, whatever. Then you want to get something a little bit sweet. You wouldn't think greens are sweet.
You wouldn't think that they taste good. Jaco Greens taste good and freaking outstanding for you. So Jaco Fuel dot com.
I don't think you should do the greens creatine thing.
Keep them separate?
Yeah, as of right now, with 15 seconds of thinking about it. I think you should keep them separate. This is why, unless, actually two things, this is why, because they're like, you're mixing it up. So it's like, you know, you think about the experience. So the only time where I'm like, hey, um, hey, I wish these were together already versus me opening up one more container, whatever. Like the only time where I'm be like, oh, I'm glad this is already mixed or whatever is like the ready to drink stuff. So like the ready to drink, like milk, for example, like the fact that it's already there, you just open it is way different than mixing it up. Like just day to day.
Mixing is a whole ritual is what you're saying.
It's a whole.
It's like a Japanese tea ritual. You're going through these whole procedures. Out comes the creatine, out comes the greens.
Little ice, little.
That's slightly, slightly dramatic, but um, yeah, sure comparable, we'll say. You know, the ritual, no, but put it this way. It's like more steps and more of a task, more of a time constraint, not in and out, not for one time. I'm saying over time. And you feel that when you're like, okay, oh, the ready to drink is just ready to drink. This other one, I gotta open the, I gotta go get the container. I gotta go get the mix. If you're doing water, okay, if you're doing milk, okay, now I gotta go grab that. I gotta do, I gotta clean up, I gotta put it away. It's different if it's RTD, right? So that's the only time I can think of where if it's like, hey, if you're combining things that are already ready to go. Okay. But if you're just like, oh yeah, you still gotta mix them. You still gotta go find the thing. Now it's just one less container. It's like, hmm, that kind of defeats the purpose a little bit.
And then you gotta relegate it to people who want the greens with the with the creatine. See what I'm saying? Now.
Do you want to do a separate podcast episode about this?
Here's the exception.
I'm having a hard time.
Well, follow me, follow me.
You could have just said, don't mix them.
Well, you gotta know why, though.
No, I don't.
Oh, you don't have to know why now?
Okay, continue.
Let's just get this done.
Okay, so if you had a RTD greens that had creatine in it, you know, something along those lines where it's like, hey, you're getting your greens, you're getting your creatine, and this is in a drink that tastes good. It's like refreshing, it's like a little drink, but you got that added, see what I'm saying?
I would, I'd be, that, to me, I feel like that would have a place in my life, I feel like.
Noted.
Versus like another powder that's, oh, this powder versus, you know, and you gotta mix them the same exact way. I feel like, you know, that might be a little bit spinning wheels. That's what it feels like to me. I don't know. That's just me.
Your input is just deeply appreciated across the board.
No, no, no.
I mean.
You're appreciated.
I'm even thinking about maybe putting together a separate podcast about this.
Anyway.
JockoFuel.com, come and check it out. Molk, you heard about that. We got protein, all tastes delicious, naturally sweetened, no junk in them, clean fuel, joint warfare. We, we got it going on. You want to get this stuff? Wawa. Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannaford, Dash Stores, Wake Fern, ShopRite, HEB, down in Tejas. Thank you. Meyer, thank you. Harris Teeter. Let's go. Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere, Jiu Jitsu, CrossFit Gyms. If you own a Jiu Jitsu gym, if you own a CrossFit gym, if you own a powerlifting gym, if you own an Olympic lifting gym, if you own a yoga studio,
let us know, [email protected], and we can set you up so you can give your clients, your customers, your consumers, the goods. That's what we're doing. Also, OriginUSA.com. You need clothes, clothing to wear. When you make, when you wear clothing, wouldn't you like your clothing to have been made by a person that was not enslaved?
My guess is yes, you would. Wouldn't you want your clothing to represent freedom? Wouldn't you want it to represent America?
originusa.com we can give you clothing for your entire life cuz workout gear in the morning jeans we got other pants coming out now have you seen the Moab pants they're coming out freaking just awesome work pants obviously we got the jeans obviously we got boots obviously we get done with your workday that's when you're putting on your jujitsu gear your gi your rash guard your shorts we got you covered head to toe head to toe belt got you wallet we got you socks even beanie beanie for the top of your head sure we got you hunt gear we got you anyways you guys know the deal originusa.com we're bringing manufacturing back to
America rebuilding America rebuilding the communities America freedom originusa.com let's go
it's true also speaking of freedom and discipline cuz without discipline there is no freedom
look at you with the connection
this is real
check you out
it's true look hey if you want to represent discipline equals freedom that concept combined go to jockostore.com get your shirts your hoodies your hats we've got some shorts on there too we have socks coming like soon like within the next few days and some new special hoodies as well
what is it what are the socks like say on them
discipline equals freedom
they don't just they're not just what do they call my socks people see my socks and like a picture
oh yeah your workout socks
old man socks or something
yeah grandpa socks yeah you don't put much aesthetic thought into your socks
I don't really put much aesthetic thought into the clothes that I'm wearing yeah I wear what what I wear
that is very clear yes especially when you look at your socks so and I dig it man do what you dig not all of us feel the same way you know like when I hey look when I'm walking through the freaking actually where I just wore some oh yeah I went to show Show.
What kind of show?
Comedy show, Bill Maher. It's like a political comedy show this past weekend.
How was it?
Good.
Did you laugh?
Oh, Bill Maher, he's the TV show guy.
Bill Maher, yeah, Real Time with Bill Maher.
Did you go to the, like, the filming of it?
No, no, no. He has a stand up, too, stand up show as well. So he was here, San Diego. I mean, my lovely wife went. Boom, I wore the Discipline Equals Freedom socks. Now, look, when I sit down in the chair and my pants kind of go up, it reveals the socks. What do you want them to see? Never thought about that, you with your grandpa socks. They're gonna see your grandpa socks, they're gonna be like, whatever, I'm gonna keep moving. They see my Discipline Equals Freedom socks, then they'll be like, hmm.
Does it say Discipline Equals Freedom on each sock?
Yes, sir, it does.
The whole, it was just one sock's discipline, the other sock is freedom?
Does it say over and over again, or just one time?
Uh, one time, one time, and then has the X flag on there.
They're, oh, they're legit.
Letting people know.
Letting them know if they care. It's true.
But yes, those are coming in, they're very good, they're quality. We got the long ones and the regular size, what do you call them? Cruel, whatever. Either way, you got some options there. And a lot of other cool stuff on there. Um, speaking of options on there, there's something called the Shirt Locker. That you can subscribe to, that's a new shirt every month with different designs.
About Discipline Equals Freedom.
Quite a few people at the muster were representing.
Representing big.
Big time.
Oh, yeah, and that's how, you know, like I said, you want to represent Discipline Equals Freedom. This is where you go.
Some people wonder about the magic. They see a shirt, they've never seen it before.
Where'd that come from?
Shirt Locker, there you go.
Yep, JacoStore.com, that's where all this stuff exists.
Also, if you need steak, which you do.
PrimalBeef.com or ColoradoCraftBeef.com. Both awesome companies making awesome steak for you to eat. It's freaking outstanding. You need steak, go to PrimalBeef.com, go to ColoradoCraftBeef.com. And get yourself some of the goods. Some steak, some ground beef. Just get it, get it done. Also, subscribe to the podcast, also JacoUnderground.com, also YouTube channels. You got the Jaco, what is it, Jocko Podcast YouTube channel? Official?
Official, yeah.
Origin USA?
Youtube channel, Jaco Fuel Youtube channel, so that we've got some Youtube channels if you want to see some of that. Psychological Warfare, don't forget about Flipside Canvas, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. Where I take ideas and leadership principles from combat and show you how you can apply it to your business and life, isn't that interesting Echo Charles?
Amazing, amazing.
Also got a bunch of kids books for the kids. That you can get kids, look, there's all kinds of paths kids can go down these days. And a lot of them are not good. In fact, most of them I would say are not good. Or you can get them down the path. Get the kids, you know, the Warrior Kid books. Also Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that. We have an online training academy, extremeownership.com. For these principles that we teach that can be utilized in business and in survival tactics, you can learn them. You can learn how to be a better human being. Go to extremeownership.com. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their
families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, don't forget about Micah Fink up there in the wilderness, helping our veterans relocate their souls. Go to heroesandhorses.org. And Jimmy May has got an organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org, helping our comrades in arms transition to the civilian sector. If you want to connect with Echo and I, we're out there, we're on the interwebs, Echo's at Echo Charles, I'm at Jocko Willink. Just be careful because the algorithm has been programmed to steal your time from you and flush it down the toilet.
So be careful. And thanks to all our servicemen and women around the world right now, and also to their families who serve and sacrifice. We are indebted to you always, and we will not forget the gift of freedom that you have given us. And also thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all other first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe here at home and to everyone else out there.
Do not run from your fear.
Do not run from your fear. Understand it, recognize it. Acclimate yourself to it. Face it. And learn how to take action. Action with purpose, even when you are afraid. And build the mental strength and endurance through physical strength and endurance. So that you can make yourself.
A survivor.
And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.
Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
