re: Does anyone have any BUDS stories?

Once witnessed most of a seal team having their faces drug across non-skid. Seals were relocated to a different ship after that. Semper fricking fi.

I figure I’d never make it as a seal. I hate the surf. It’s a personality thing as some people are built in different ways. I love the woods and can land nav well. The rangers would have been my path if I had developed my natural nav skills (pilot) back then. I’m not saying I’d make it, but I’d be better than in the surf - I get sea sick.

I’m also not a fan of not breathing when I want. Phase two would have sucked.

Watch the BUDS Class 234 documentary. It’s 4 hours long and covers every single phase from Indoc through Phase 3. One thing that’s super common among students is SIPE (swimming induced pulmonary edema). Since the students are in cold water for prolonged periods of time, their blood pressure gets so high that the alveoli in their lungs rupture which causes internal bleeding.

It was cold & wet

I got to go to my brother's BUDS graduation in Coronado back in the early nineties. Got to tour the base and hang around a couple of days. Watching the other classes was crazy. Those poor bastards just looked destroyed running up and down that beach with a boat or a log.

The indoor dive tank was very cool.

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the most intense military training in the world

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They do far more than the BUDS I went through (sarcasm), so I'm not knocking it, but I've got a family member who was a tier 1 PJ and those are some bad arse mfers. dude racked up a couple purple hearts and a silver star.

dude is a fricking nut, always has been, but in the kind of way those guys are. I think they have one of the highest attrition rates of any of the training regimens in the world.

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The D Boys have a long road just to get a chance to flame out. Almost all their candidates come from the 75th RR

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One thing people fail to understand is that attrition rates are really only meaningful relative to the candidate pool.

The initial assessment courses (BUDs, RIP/RASP, SFAS) consist of JAGs/dudes.

The candidate pool for later phases or for other units (SMUs) consists of guys who are already the small % who previously made it through other wickets.

Example: BUDs candidate pool consists of a bunch of generic Navy guys who passed a set of basic PT standards/quals and were approved to try out.

Candidates taking the long walk have very likely already been through the selection courses for Regiment and/or Group. So they're the small % of the small % of the small %, etc....and most still don't make it.

Then there are places where THOSE guys later go, and not all of them make it through that selection/assessment.

One of my childhood friends was a Green Beret for several years. Later, he went to Delta selection and passed. He was a Delta operator for about a decade and saw action in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.

Never had any interaction with SEALs. A family member of mine works with a former SEAL and said he's a cool guy.

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Seriously though all those schools are more mental then physical. If you are a committed person you can do it.

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I only have lowly Ranger and Sapper school on my CV but I don't know if I can agree with that. There are parts that are classroom type mental but a lot of it is using sleep/food deprivation and physical fatigue to test your brains when they are at their lowest level of operation. I didn't see anyone wash out because they couldn't add 2 and 2 together and get 4 twice in the same normal day they washed out because they couldn't add 1 and 1 together after 36 hours of no sleep, constant humping, and constant harassment by both OPFOUR and instructors or they literally got to a point where they couldn't put one foot in front of the other. I am not counting acute injuries because they generally had the chance to recycle.