Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 100

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week: 1. Military or LEO, I am at a career crossroads and don't know what choice to make 2. I am depressed and feel as if it is spiraling out of control 3. The joys of complex ambushes compared to linear ambushes 4. I just found out I am going to be a father, any advice 5. If you are about to be tortured, what is the move? Do you hold out, or give them all the "intel" Enjoy

All righty. Here we go. Full Auto Friday, number 100. We made it into triple digits, which is ridiculous. I think back. And yeah, it seems like only two years ago I started doing this, which mathematically would make a little bit of sense. What else before we get started? Oh, the shirt I'm wearing right now. The fire tiger tea. Why I called that before people ask, even though a bunch of them already have. I don't know. All right. I don't know why the tiger's on fire. Maybe he pisses fire. maybe he sweats, fire. I don't know what it is, but this shirt's badass. It's one of my favorites. I just launched it. It's on the website. Get one if you want one. And if you don't want one, well, I highly recommend that you don't buy one.

And that's it. Let's go. Follow out of Friday, 100. I'm looking at danger close now. All right, I don't know about any of you. I'm ready to start my weekend. So we're going to get through these questions. We're still going to do our Friday episode, but we're going to get through these questions and move on with our day.

Shall we begin? Question one. I'm going to provide some brief context to help support this question. I'm 22 years old. I've been in the Marine Corps Reserve for four years, graduated college, and am in the application process with a police department. I have been in the process for almost a year now, and it's looking like I'm about to get hired. Decision time is coming up, but I can't seem to shake the thought of wanting to go active duty in two years when my contract ends. The noise around me is telling me to just take the job because I have wanted it forever, and then

then just carry on. I assume by that you're saying the law enforcement job. But my sicko mindset wants me to accomplish everything. Hold on. But my sicko mindset wants to accomplish everything and make as big of an impact as I can. And I feel that I am worth more in the military and also feel that I haven't lived up to my expectations. I have a feeling that even if I become a cop, put all the work into being one and work for a couple of years, that either way I'll pull the trigger in going somewhere in the military once I am a free man from my contract. What advice do you have on the decisions I have coming up? And I actually misread this a little bit.

Either way, I will pull the trigger in going SF somewhere in the military once I am a free man from my contract. So what advice do you have on the decisions that I have coming up? Well, first and foremost, what I would say is recognize that you have two really good decisions in front of you. You have some options that a lot of people would probably appreciate having. Both of those paths are similar in ways and they're different in ways. But the fact that you get to choose is awesome. Another thing I'll add on top of that is your 22. You have the ability based on your age right now to be a little bit riskier.

You know, you haven't committed 10 years, 14 years, 8 years even to the military. So it's not as if a potential retirement with health care is, you know, just over the horizon and you can start to see that. And you have the opportunity to take the military experience that you have and apply it to the law enforcement career path. The reality is if you go, let's say you go the law enforcement path and you don't like it. Let's say you work it for five years. I have no idea what kind of contract they make you sign as a law enforcement officer. But let's say five years.

you get out at the end of that and you are not satisfied with the occupation. It hasn't been what you'd wanted to be. And you feel like you would be better served somewhere else. Well, guess what? Now you're 27. You've already got your college degree. You have military time. You have law enforcement time.

You're going to have a lot of options in front of you. And you would also have the option if you wanted to to pull the trigger on that SF contract. and go somewhere in the military, depending on which force you may choose to serve as far as there are special operations component. 27 might seem old to people when they're looking at a pipeline, and it is older, I would say, than most people. But the huge advantage that you would have is life experience. So you might have a few more laps around the sun. Those laps come with experience. And in my experience, from what I have seen as a student as an instructor,

It's a combination of two things. You know, age is one part of it, but those with more robust life experiences are often better suited to deal with the challenges of some of those selection courses and programs. So the age might be a slight negative, but that life experience is a huge positive. So don't worry too much about that. I'd never advise you on which direction to go with either of these because I think people need to make choices for themselves. If the military is just not living up to what you think it's going to be, then move on. If you think you're going to kick yourself for not doing two years on active duty, well, then what I would say is maybe look at doing those two years and then pursue being a police officer at the end of that.

I mean, based off the fact that you have a college degree and you're going to have military service, I feel like you're going to be an attractive candidate to a department somewhere at all times. I feel like right now police departments are hiring over the vast majority of the country, and you are a highly qualified candidate and somebody that I feel like they're going to be looking for now and probably in two years as well. And like I said, if you become a cop and go down that path and it's not what you think, you're going to have so much time and ability to maneuver from there. So I don't have advice other than to really think through the decision that you have in front of you. And maybe as you're thinking through that, take a little bit of pressure off of yourself by recognizing and realizing that you've got a lot of room in front of you and you are at a phase in your life where you can be risky. You don't need to lock in because you, like I said, you could go back and forth, probably not multiple times. but you could go back into the military and finish off your pension there,

or you could love being a cop and you could work all the way to your pension. There you got great options in front of you. And I would say don't rush. Don't rush into your decision. And then once you make it, though, do everything you can not to look in the rearview mirror and worry about what could have been, focus on what it is that you're doing. And if at the end of the day it's not what you actually want it to be, then lift your head up and look for other options.

Question two. I enlisted in the army as a medic, September of 2021 at the age of 23. I'm thoroughly proud to wear this uniform, but I have had the worst depression I have ever had in my life since I've joined the military. I've recently come to the conclusion that I may have bipolar depression as opposed to your regular vanilla depression. And my lows just keep getting lower. I hate waking up every. day and it's getting worse as time goes on. I feel like a failure and like I've let everyone down, but I just can't take it anymore. I have been directly affected by suicide more than once, and I am not someone who wants to take their own life, but recently I've had more and more suicidal ideations with minor inconveniences. And I'm afraid one day I'll get low enough

that I may do something. It was made better a lot of the time by my fiancee of two years, who just recently left me, and now I feel alone, and I can tell that I am spiraling. I want out of the military. I know that this is the cause of my worsening state. I've talked to my team leader about the possibility of having bipolar depression, and he's helping me to get to a psychologist. But I know what bipolar medications can do to your brain and who you are as a person. I just want out. I don't know what kind of advice. I need. I've gone a large majority of my life being independent, but I'm lost and terrified and don't know what to do. Even if you don't use this on a full of Friday, I appreciate the

opportunity to at least verbalize my problems, as I believe taking or talking things out is a very important step in mental health recovery. Thank you for what you do. Okay, there's a lot here. First and foremost, please go find somebody to talk to. I know that your team leader is helping you to get in touch with a psychologist, but if you truly feel like you are spiraling, you need to get in touch with somebody immediately on your timeline as opposed to the military's timeline. And that may mean that you need to depart from the military offered services and find one on the civilian side of the house. There may be a cost associated with that, but I'm going to hear to tell you right now that there

are plenty of service-based organizations that although you may have to pay out of pocket up front, I guarantee you there is money available for you in one of these organizations that can offset this cost. But if you recognize that you are slipping and sliding and you're receiving, or not receiving, but you're having more suicidal ideations over minor inconveniences, the first thing that you need to do is you need to stop that slide and stop that spiral. It sounds like the departure of your fiancé. That's terrible and I'm sorry. I don't know anything about that situation and I can totally understand how it would impact your mental health.

My worry for you is that you seem to be equating your mental health with the fact that you are enlisted in the military. You say it specifically. I won out of the military. I know this is the cause of my worsening state. my advice to you would be allow a professional to connect those dots as opposed to you connecting those dots. There's a good chance. And before I say anything else, let's be very clear. I'm not a mental health counselor. I'm not a mental health professional by any shape, stretch, or form. But I think it's possible that you might be looking at the military as the cause of this, whereas the cause may be more deeply. rooted in yourself. And I say that because what I don't want to have happen for you is for you to

eject from the military, because I'm sure that you could get separated from the military, depending on how severely this is impacting you. And I don't know what kind of discharge that they would give you. I'm sure I would assume it would be an honorable discharge. Maybe it would be a medical discharge. I really don't know. But let's say you get out of the military and nothing improves for you. and then you don't have those resources that the military does in fact have for you that you can leverage. You're going to have a different type of health care. You're going to have different health care providers. It could be problematic.

I would recommend as soon as humanly possible sitting down with a professional and laying out for them in greater detail than you laid it out for me and let them poke and prod around in between your ears a little bit and allow them to come up with. a professional opinion and assessment. I don't know anything about bipolar medications. I actually don't know much about the medications that psychologists or psychiatrists prescribe at all. But what I do understand about them in talking with people who have taken them, and I am not somebody who ever has,

so I'm speaking a little bit out of school here, but I'm trying to impart the experience that I have had in conversations with people, is that they're not designed to be taken forever. And the people that I know who have taken them for short periods of time received the benefit that they were hoping for, and it bought them time to develop systems or just to have a chemical or mechanical change inside of their body. And it allowed them to navigate difficult times.

And then they got off of those medications. I know there are people who are on them for extended periods of time. The best results that I have ever heard from people is when they use them, when they needed them, and then we're able to wean themselves off of them. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that at all. Yes, it can change your brain and it can change you as a person. But what you are describing is somebody who is extremely unhappy and is having lower and lower lows, maybe you need to be changed as a person a little bit. Maybe you need to have a little bit of rewiring going on in your brain. And maybe what you need to do to stop that spiraling is to listen to those professionals.

If they prescribe you those, maybe leverage those a little bit why you are continuing good at counseling and building other structures and forms that you can use absent medication. That to me would be the best case scenario. That best case scenario, like I opened with, though, starts with stopping the spiral now. before you do get to a place where you're alone enough that you might actually do something. I agree with your last statement. Talking things out is a very important step in mental health. Being open and honest with somebody is a very vulnerable thing. And it's a misconception that people think that asking for help is a sign of weakness.

Personally, I believe it is probably the strongest thing that you can do. to stand there and be comfortable in your own skin enough to say, I need help. I am not doing well. And I'm going to need to lean on some other people that are around me. That's a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness. I'm sorry to hear that you are in this situation. And like I said, I'll end with what I opened with. Please immediately go get in touch with somebody that is more aligned with your timeline than perhaps the military's timeline and be as open and honest with them as you possibly can. Question three.

Could you provide some insight into the difference between a complex ambush versus a normal ambush? I have heard complex ambushes being mentioned a few times on the podcast. I have limited experience with this area from being a former British Army reservist about 20 years ago. But we never covered complex ambushes. let me get my visual aids for those of you who are watching this on YouTube. Okay, let's start with a normal ambush. And by that, I'm going to describe it as a linear ambush. And if people wanted to get a better idea, if you're audio only and you want to get a better idea of what I'm doing,

maybe I can talk you through drawing something out so you can understand. So if you have a piece of paper, a lined piece of paper, take your pen like the one I have right here. And just draw a line straight across like halfway. the width of the page, half the width of a page, just one straight line. And then put an arrow facing either up or facing down. The arrow would be the direction the bullets are heading towards. The line would be the soldiers that are shooting the bullets in that direction. A linear ambush would be like this pen right here, for those of you who are watching, and everything is oriented in one direction. It is very linear. There's not a lot of moving pieces. It's essentially a

straight line that has a field of fire that's going to come off the extreme left flank, call it a 45 degree angle, and the extreme right flank at a 45 degree angle. And you can imagine everything else in the beaten zone or on the X is going to be on the receiving end of projectiles. A linear ambush, the one that I just described, is a little bit easier. Actually, it's a lot easier to deal with because you are only being engaged. from one direction. So you only really need to orient and then react based off of that one direction. You're not necessarily worried about you'll be thinking about it, but if you're not getting shot at

from your flanks, you're really going to be able to orient your attention where the threat is coming from. A complex ambush. Now, so for those of you who have a line written on your piece of paper, go to either the far left axis or the far right axis and draw another line, let's just call it equal length, either up or down. So now what you're going to have is an L, depending on how you orient it. So you have your original line, and now you have what I'm going to call your vertical axis. We're looking at this into two-dimensional plane, so maybe that's the best way to describe it. On that vertical axis, that vertical line that you drew out, you need to draw an arrow that is heading towards, or I should say, away from that line.

So what you should have is two arrows that are, you know, basically converging on each other in between those two lines. And that is what sucks about a complex ambush. You're no longer worried about just receiving fire from one location. Now you're getting shot at maybe let's call it from directly in front of you, but also from your left or your right. And you can imagine now there is an overlapping field of fire for the vast majority of the source. soldiers that are on this L, you have the ability to really overlap and plunge in fire from two different directions, which creates a substantially different problem set for those on the receiving end. It limits your ability to move. You're going to have to break up and address

two different threats or multiple threats when it comes to where the fire is coming from. it's going to limit your avenues of approach or your avenues of egress. And oftentimes when you're looking at things like cover, let's say you're hiding behind a rock. And concealment would be something you can hide behind that doesn't stop bullets, but you visually can hide behind. Cover is something you can visually hide behind as well, but it also stops bullets. So let's say I'm hiding behind the podcast table that's sitting in front of me right now. I'll already get myself directly down the short axis here. And somebody starts shooting at me from across the table.

table. Well, I could duck down in this magical world. This desk stops all bullets. So I could duck down. And if that was a linear ambush, I could move left and right. I could move away. And maybe even I could bound forward. But let's say off of my right shoulder, I start taking fire from there as well. Now all of a sudden, this desk that I'm hiding behind that provided me cover no longer does because I'm getting shot at from my flank. And being on the receiving end of a complex. ambush absolutely sucks being on the receiving end of any type of ambush let me clarify sucks linear ambushes are easier to deal with complex ambushes are much much more complicated and they require in my opinion at least an immediate response an absolute overwhelming fire superiority you

need to fight your way out of that ambush as soon as possible and sometimes when it comes to those complex ambushes, the only way that you can actually fight your way out of it is to drive through it, to drive into that apex of where those two, the L, would actually meet and fight your way through it. But the odds of being able to do so, they're not great. So that is the difference between a complex ambush versus a normal or a linear ambush. And for all of you listening, I hope that you never experience either because they suck. Next question. Andy, I've been listening to the podcast for over a month now, and I love the content. I am a 28-year-old who recently found out I'm going to be a father.

Any advice for being a father or any other type of parental advice? Well, first off, congratulations. I'm going to assume, since you're asking for advice about being a father, that this is your first child, and I think that's awesome. My advice to you is do not put too much stress on yourself. I think, especially when we're younger, you know, in our teens, we look at our parents and, or maybe actually younger than our teens, I would say. We look at our parents and we feel like they have the answers to everything. You know, we can go to them, we can ask them anything, and they're just going to know what to do. And the reality is parents are just like kids.

They're a little bit older. They have more experience. But they never will and they never can know everything. And what I'll tell you, I'm sorry to give you this spoiler. alert, but you're going to have some failures as a parent. And that's okay. But you need to do the best you can at all times and try to minimize the number of repeat failures that you actually have. I found when my kids were first born, I was so excited for them to be born, especially my, my oldest son, who is now 18, which shocks me, absolutely shocks me to say to this day.

before he was born, I could not have been more excited. And he was born and he was amazing and he was perfect. And I don't know what I expected necessarily. But it was very readily apparent that he needed his mom more than he needed me. I could be there obviously to help feed from a bottle and to do some diaper duty. But he didn't have that much use for me. And it was actually a little bit boring as a parent. until my kids got the ability to communicate a little bit better and actually I was able to do things with them because I just was not as important in their life as their mom was.

She was the reason that they were still alive at that point, you know, breastfeeding, all of the things that come with being a mom. And I didn't know how to deal with it. I was like, God damn it. You know, am I not feeling right? Am I not? Am I doing something wrong? And the reality is there is no playbook. for being a parent, and if you find yourself in that spot, what I'll say is just give it time.

Kids are amazing. My kids are the most amazing thing that I've ever encountered in my life, and that has nothing to do with me. I'm just talking about how three different kids had expressed themselves differently through the same genetics. I'm fascinated by how they think. I'm fascinated with my interactions and engagements with them, but that took time, and that goes back to what I said in the very beginning. Don't put a lot of pressure on yourself. So I would say the biggest piece of advice that I would give you is not to put any expectations on either you or your firstborn and do as much as you can help out as much as humanly possible. Every opportunity to change diapers, go change the diapers. Every opportunity to get up in the middle of the night to allow

the mom to sleep, take it. Do as much as you can because I'm being dead serious. There's not going to be that much you can actually do when they are super small. You'll be able to do a ton more. as they continue to grow and they become more independent. But the first few years, I'm here to tell you, man, they're kind of like blobs. They just kind of sit there and look at you and make noises and fart and giggle and then shit in their pants, which I feel like is what we all end up doing later in life anyway. So it's a very full circle that we all have the great fortune to be able to complete, should we live long enough. You're going to make mistakes.

Like I said, try not to repeat them, try to learn from your mistakes. Be honest. with your kids, especially as they get older. Don't let them think that you have the answers to everything. Don't be afraid to say, I don't know. But always make sure that if you say you don't know about something, that you come back to them with the answer that you went and sought out. Be a parent, not a friend. That's a line that I think a lot of people struggle with. It's not your role to be your child's friend. It's your role to be your child's parent. And I don't know if that ever actually ends. Maybe it can turn more towards a mutual friendship as they get much older,

but at the end of the day, you're still their parent. I'm not saying for all of their life, you need to be there giving them guidance on every single thing, but just respect that role and the responsibility that comes with it. I think that's the best advice I could possibly give you. Congratulations. And have fun with that. Last question. Recently, I came across your podcast and really enjoyed the show and insight. First thing is, thank you for helping me become obsessed with watching people faceplant on bicycles. You're welcome. I spend far too much time every single day looking at those videos and I die laughing almost every single time. I don't know what it says about me. I'm not interested in people getting hurt, but God damn it, it's hilarious to watch people go sailing off

of mountain bikes at a high rate of speed. So this is a stupid question, but after all the shows I have listened to with regards to torture and the hundreds of books I have read by authors such as Brad Thor, Jack Carr, etc. If you were captured and facing torture, do you hold out? Or to everyone's point, everyone eventually breaks. Also, as a follow-up, if faced with waterboarding, is there any defense preparation that you can do? Would it be a different experience for someone who has experienced or trained? Thank you for your time and keep up the great work. I'm going to go backwards on this one. So I have been waterboarded. It sucks. And I don't think there is any level of preparation training that you can do. Because if it's done properly, you're going to be held down with your

head lower than your feet. So at a downward angle, your face is going to be held still and water is going to be poured directly into your nose and mouth. And I don't think there's any real way to train for that. So yeah, it just sucks. When it comes to the issue of torture, I'd swear this is one that comes from books in movies. I think most people would be wildly underwhelmed with the amount of classified information that people, and I can only speak into the military. Maybe it's very different when you get into the higher echelons of government. But I held a TSSSC clearance for many years. And you could find anything that I was ever read into with some creative Google searches.

And that's kind of been my experience when it comes to, you know, security clearances and secret information. There's really not that much out there. And I hate to break it to everybody and hopefully this doesn't ruin everybody's day. But Jason Bourne, like, he's not a real thing. That would be like the combination of probably 30 individuals working for multiple organizations. So, yeah, it's just not real. If I was captured and I was. I was facing torture. For one, I don't know what they would be torturing me about. Like, I don't have the nuclear launch codes.

I would definitely make them up if they were like going to cut my fingers off. I'd be like, yes, hold on. Get a pen and pencil. It's five, eight, four. And I would just keep making numbers up because I don't want to lose my fingers. But I don't have anything that anybody would torture me for. There's no like incredibly secret information that I've ever been exposed. two. And I do believe that at some point, everybody has a pain threshold that they can no

longer tolerate. And maybe that is not necessarily from one particular thing, but you just extend it over a period of time. So it's either a pain threshold or a time threshold or a combination of the two. I'm not saying that anybody should like be willing to sell out state secrets. I just really don't think that this situation is as legitimate and realistic. as you may think. Does it, does it sound great in books? Totally. Does it look good in movies? Absolutely. In real life, you're going to have to torture me at all. I'm going to tell you everything I know because I don't know shit. And that's it for this episode, the inaugural episode into the triple digits of fallout of Friday. See you guys Monday.