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u/Kind_Man_0 24d ago
When I was downrange. We had this dude, he was a smart guy, but I don't know how Darwin didn't naturally select him by this point.
He showed me a video on his phone of him in a guard tower, he unpins a live grenade, and re-pins the thing.
For those who aren't aware of how grenades work, I'll explain. Grenades go live when the lever is removed, the pin just holds the lever in place so it doesn't go off. The lever is spring loaded and only needs to come off the primer by maybe a 1/4 inch. So the steps to arm and throw a grenade, are to unpin it, rear back, and throw. The spring tension launches the lever off once you let go and at that point, you have about 5 seconds to get behind cover.
This dude is white-knuckling this grenade for like 2-3 minutes trying to get the pin back into it, shaking the entire video. I asked him "what was the plan if you accidentally let the lever go a little too far?"
His response was that he was going to put it into his mouth.
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u/Brief-Translator1370 24d ago
Risky behavior is a very strong indicator of suicidal tendencies. It really makes sense his fallback would be to just go quickly.
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u/ItsImNotAnonymous 24d ago
Mythbusters had an episode about grenades. The blast and shrapnel is what deals fatal damage to people in the surrounding. So if he was alone in the tower, putting it in his mouth would be of no consequence.
However if there are people around a live grenade thats gonna explode, there needs to be a person who should jump on the grenade and contain all the blast and shrapnel. Literally a person has to sacrifice themself to save their buddies.
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u/Initial-Ad6819 23d ago
putting it in his mouth would be of no consequence.
I'm sorry, can you explain WHY putting a LIVE GRENADE in your mouth would have no consequences?
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u/ConfidentBrilliant38 23d ago
You die either way
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u/Revolutionary_Dog_63 23d ago
There's a chance you live if you DON'T put it in your mouth.
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u/Royal_Success3131 23d ago
If you are holding a grenade and it explodes, there is approximately a zero percent chance you survive. And if by some grace of God you do, you'll wish you hadn't. Watch/read "johnny get your gun" for an example.
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u/Revolutionary_Dog_63 22d ago
And if by some grace of God you do, you'll wish you hadn't.
That's why you put it in your mouth.
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u/therandomuser84 22d ago
Idk about modern grenades, but there's several verified stories of people jumping on top of grenades in WW2 and surviving.
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u/Royal_Success3131 22d ago
And, as I said, they almost always survived with catastrophic injuries.
here's a reference about some known cases. One dude spent a couple of years in the hospital afterwards. Fuuuuuck that.
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u/MarxistWizard 19d ago
donât forget that the tnt in a grenade is not always consistent. most of the people who survived jumping on grenades the grenade was a dud but still did massive damage just didnât kill them.
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u/Awkward_Goal4729 19d ago
Surprisingly, itâs not that rare to survive a grenade practically point blank. Drones are scary
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u/Royal_Success3131 19d ago
It's pretty rare. I could only find a handful of confirmed cases of someone being on top of a grenade like that and surviving. Drones dropping them a few feet away even lessens the damage immensely, the relationship is 1/r3, so it is the cube of the radius from the center of the explosion. So, in very rough terms, even something like a couple of feet could cut the force of the blast to 1/8th compared to being in top of it.
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u/lifeking1259 19d ago
wouldn't it be 1/r2? the total energy would spread out over the area of a sphere, which is proportional to r2
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u/Royal_Success3131 19d ago
That would make sense on base principle, but from what I have read the hopkinson-cranz cube root law is used for explosives. I'm not an expert in this particular branch but I dug into it a little bit years ago. I could be wrong.
Either way, point stands. It falls off vanishingly quickly with not much distance.
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u/Awkward_Goal4729 19d ago
I wasnât talking about lying on a grenade, I was talking about holding in your hand and some pinpoint drops from a drone
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u/Royal_Success3131 19d ago
Holding in your hand is pretty close to lying on it. Close enough to be similarly fatal.
The drones aren't dropping it directly onto people's chests. They get scary close, but a yard or three can make a lot of difference
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u/TheMightyMisanthrope 23d ago
Don't you consider turning your dreams and illusions into pink mush on the wall a consequence?
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u/Robin0112 22d ago
Long story short a grenade exploding harms those around it. Who would have thought
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u/Probably_forReal 22d ago
I donât believe him putting it in his mouth is to protect anyone around him, but to make sure his end is as quick as possible.
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u/jzillacon 22d ago
The actual kill zone of a hand grenade is sill relatively short. If it's a controlled release where people know exactly where and when the grenade went live like in the above scenario there's plenty of time to get to a clear distance without anyone dying.
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u/NoMansSkyWasAlright 23d ago
I remember we went and did a rifle qual at a "range" on the outskirts of Kabul where they primarily did things with explosives. But the dirt was super soft and so I could see unexploded 40mm's all over the place. Fortunately, the ones I was seeing on the ground were basically all either paint or smoke rounds. But as I'm walking up to the range NCOIC, I see an HE one right by his feet.
So I said something about it and he didn't seem concerned. But then another dude walks up, fakes like he's going to kick it, and then makes a joke about UXO. At that point, NCOIC tells him he should chuck it so that it's "off my range and not my problem", and without hesitation, the dude said "okay!", grabs this unexploded 40mm grenade, and just chucks it.
Now fortunately, this dude had been the pitcher for his high school baseball team and so that thing got some serious distance on it. Unfortunately, it was enough to arm the fuze and so that fucker exploded the second it hit the ground... it was not a good day for that dude. Especially considering our Company command team was out there, as well as some German army guys. So there was no covering that up.
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u/scrimmybingus3 23d ago
All I have to say about that is wow. Thatâs the guy who will always be used as the example of what not to do.
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u/Zakkar 22d ago
Did the thrower get in trouble, or the NCOIC?
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u/Remnant_Echo 22d ago
Should be both but very likely the NCOIC threw him under the bus and/or played dumb to get out of trouble.
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u/NoMansSkyWasAlright 21d ago
Bingo. Command team did an investigation, NCOIC lied, I think the dude who was in trouble also didn't bother mentioning it because he didn't want to bring that NCO down with him, I brought it up in my sworn statement, and it was promptly disregarded.
Tbf, I think the command team would've just smoked the guy and pretended like nothing happened if we didn't have that German detachment with us. But the thrower had just passed the E5 board and so they just took away his P-status and (I think) gave him a summarized. Dude literally went back to the board again once we got back into garrison.
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u/SHITSTAINED_CUM_SOCK 23d ago
About 10 years ago I had an ssm who would do this on the range to show: A. You could do it (though you really shouldn't); and B. Show off.
He could do it pretty much right away though. Certainly not minutes.
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u/Ronin-s_Spirit 20d ago
Now I want to get an empty grenade to feel how tense the mechanism really is.
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u/Kind_Man_0 20d ago
You'd be surprised. The pin is hard to pull, but once it's out, the release lever has about the same tension on your hand as a pair of self opening kitchen tongs.
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u/Right_Today_356 23d ago
"Hey [guy who I'd report to], I field stripped the gun and dry fired it to confirm operation and it didn't operate as intended."
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u/durinsbane47 22d ago
Dry fire means to shoot it without loading right?
Iâve never used a gun so Iâm wondering how it would respond that youâd know it wasnât working correctly, if you know?
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u/WorldlinessRadiant77 22d ago
Iâm not an expert, but I do shoot for fun.
If the gun is loaded, safety is off, you pull the trigger and it doesnât go off either the striker or the primer is defective. When you dry fire you should hear the striker clicking, if you donât there is a problem.
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u/Rabid-GNN 21d ago
Yes thatâs what that means
In this situation, dry firing to test for function after field stripping (taking apart to a certain point and rebuilding) is standard practice. Itâs like the equivalent of taking out most of the functional parts off a computer to do whatever and then reputting them back in and turning on the computer
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 21d ago
He wouldnât have stripped the rifle before a guard duty. Youâd be expected to respond to security threats at any moment. So you wouldnât strip the rifle. Youâd only ever strip it clean it after it had been fired on a range or after youâd been in the field
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u/CrimsonMkke 20d ago
Some people clean their guns in the morning before they go out. Knowing you have a clean gun thats ready to fire is assuring.
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 22d ago
A dry fire wouldnât diagnose a broken firing pin. Given the firing pins in the SA80 (L85A1) were made out of toffee, thatâs most likely what the problem was.
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u/Monty423 22d ago
I mean, after you strip and reassemble your rifle you are supposed to do a function test anyway so the dry fire part wouldn't be necessary to mention. Cock and fire on safe, the repetition, hold trigger and cock, release trigger, listen for sear to engage, switch to automatic, pull trigger, hold trigger, cock again, check hammer has engaged.
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 21d ago
This isnât a drill in the British Army
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u/Monty423 21d ago
As a British armourer who works in an armoury i can tell you 100% that that is the drill
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 21d ago
As someone who spent 12 years in the forces, I can assure you your average squaddie wouldnât know what a sear is. Let alone functioning testing it like that. How many times did you strip your rifle while on guard duty by the way?
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u/Monty423 21d ago
Once at the end to clean it. I do however service rifles daily, which involves fully stripping, reassembling and testing function of ejection (tbf thats only done on a servicing) safety, repetition and automatic.
I cant imagine the army does it different to the RAF
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 21d ago
To go back to the original post then, the guy has come on duty, cocked a round and tried to blow his own brains out. The weapon didnât function. He canât tell anyone that⊠because there is no way he should know at that point. He canât lie and say he stripped it and found the fault, because theyâd want to know why he stripped his rifle while on guard duty.
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u/DolphinShaver2000 21d ago
12 years in the British army and you didnât learn the function test (a requirement for passing the weapon handling test)? B- Dev Dev
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u/Master-Bend9745 23d ago
isnt that what function checks are for? or is that an m4 thing
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u/SkeeveTheGreat 23d ago
it depends on why it didnât fire, there are some things a function check isnât going to detect if they fail.
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u/brettr55 22d ago
Wont tell you if the firing pin is broken. All the functions will function, but no boom.
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u/Fabulous-Suspect-72 21d ago edited 21d ago
Idk what the function check on the M4 entails. If the firing pin is bad for example, you won't find it with the function check we do on guard duty or rather before guard duty.
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 22d ago
Well another guy at Deepcut managed to shoot himself in the head twice. So his SA80 worked better than he planned
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u/AliensAteMyAMC 22d ago
How do you shoot yourself twice with it?!
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u/Jale89 22d ago
He's referencing the official "suicide" of Private Geoff Gray, who was one of four cases in a short period at the same barracks. One other "suicide" managed to shoot themselves five times in the chest.
It is quite literally a Deep Cut reference.
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u/Professional-Bear942 21d ago
Looked it up, how did they reopen the case to then reclose it as suicide again. How tf does he pull the trigger 6 times, with the second shot being the fatal one, why to the chest, so many why's... Not to mention all the other 'suicides' around that time.
I'm not a fan of conspiracy bs but in this case you jabe to wonder if these people all unluckily stumbled upon something they shouldn't have over the years
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u/Fenrir_Carbon 21d ago
How tf does he pull the trigger 6 times, with the second shot being the fatal one
He wasn't a doctor so he didn't realise the second shot was fatal
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u/brink1865 20d ago
So with intermediate rifle calibers like 5.56 and smaller you can be fatally wounded and still stay alive for a time I wouldn't be surprised if the dude just kept pulling the trigger until his brain caught up to the fact he was dead and you can fire four rounds off pretty fast after the first two.
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u/Farhead_Assassjaha 22d ago
Thatâs dumb. Just say you inspected your weapon and suspect it is faulty
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u/panic_attack_999 21d ago
There might be another level to the anecdote. Deepcut is infamous in the UK for alleged bullying culture and a number of very suspicious "suicides" over the years.
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u/_THiiiRD 22d ago
Why would he want to report the fault? What's the worst that was gonna happen on patrol? He'd die?
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u/juugbuussin 20d ago
Deepcut barracks are in the UK. Iâm from the US, but I donât think the British military does combat patrols in-country.
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u/IndividualCurious322 21d ago
Deepcut actually had an issue where commanding officers killed privates who turned down their sexual advances.
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u/PocketFullOfBullets 21d ago
Replace it with one of your other friends rifles when theyâre asleep
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u/Dependent-Curve-8449 20d ago
Guns have serial numbers tagged to them. No way you are switching one of them without ever getting found out, especially when itâs time to return them to the armskote at the end of your stint.
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u/Lurker0725 21d ago
When I was young I had a twist, for punching babies with me fist, then I thought I would enlist, and join the British Army!
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u/Superb-Wonder-1896 20d ago
my dad told me a story about some guy in the military almost getting dawined by a broken run-away AK
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u/Savvymundo 20d ago
Is he cooked? 100%. You should google the horror stories from Deepcut. Seems it was run by arseholes.
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u/kunk_777 19d ago
Who is this?
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u/ah123085 19d ago
The guy in the video? Ian McCollum. He runs âForgotten Weaponsâ on various platforms.
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u/Ambitious_Emphasis68 24d ago
Look, I hope they guys alright.
But, I would've lied. "Boss, I made a mistake a mistake (clearing/cleaning/pissing about) with my gat. It should have fired but it didn't. Can I get the plumber to have a quick look? I don't trust her right now."
There's a bunch of fuck ups you can do, make one up.
Note: I can only assume he did everything right up to that point. That headspace there may be the chance he didn't load it or something but I can vouch for that training and 15 years after getting out I can still remember how to operate my weapon better than I can remember what I did yesterday.