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How Military Snipers Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from housetop works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
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Speaker 1: You could call us something of a podcast sniping team,
0:23
Speaker 1: taking out all MPR suckers ahead of us. That would
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Speaker 1: make me the spotter, which I like. Did you think
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Speaker 1: so you you're the spotter? I think I think it'd
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Speaker 1: be a good sniper. Actually, I think we could reasonably
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Speaker 1: trade off with that, you know, I mean, wouldn't you
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Speaker 1: eventually become envious? Like you know, I'm tired of spotting.
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Speaker 1: I want to pull the trigger. What's it like like, um,
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Speaker 1: Michael Douglas's teenage daughter in traffic thinking about shooting heroin?
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Speaker 1: You know, she starts out snorting it ends up shooting
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Speaker 1: it just because she's around it so much. I imagine
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Speaker 1: the same thing happens to spotters they've been so you
1:00
Speaker 1: want to kill. I would just be good on the team,
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Speaker 1: you know. I can. I could lay somewhere for hours
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Speaker 1: at a time without moving. I'm sneaking quieter. You're not
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Speaker 1: allowed to be asleep though, Okay, yeah, it would be
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Speaker 1: a problem. So, Chuck, we're talking about military snipers. I
1:17
Speaker 1: have a slight intro for this one. Alight, it's not
1:20
Speaker 1: really an intro. It's just an interesting fact. And I
1:23
Speaker 1: don't even know if it's true, so facts probably the
1:26
Speaker 1: wrong word. But have you ever heard the old old adage,
1:30
Speaker 1: the old superstition that you're not supposed to light three
1:33
Speaker 1: cigarettes off of one match. I've never heard that. Actually, well,
1:37
Speaker 1: it's a superstition and it is. That's just the real thing,
1:40
Speaker 1: And apparently it has a fairly recent origins World War One. Actually,
1:46
Speaker 1: it's that recent twentieth century um and it was based
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Speaker 1: on the idea that if you're in a trench and
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Speaker 1: you lit a match, you caught the attention of a sniper.
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Speaker 1: You lit your first cigarette, the sniper takes aim with
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Speaker 1: the second cigarette, and then when you're lighting the third cigarette,
2:02
Speaker 1: sniper fires and that guy is dead. I like that, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I buy that, until it's bad luck to like three
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Speaker 1: smokes off of winds one match. You know, a lot
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Speaker 1: of those phrase origins are military in nature. When you
2:13
Speaker 1: when you go back and look at him, and I
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Speaker 1: buy that like a wall. Yeah. Yeah, that's Military's Army. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: Silent Scope. Do you ever play that game? No? Is
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Speaker 1: it a sniper game? Is it good? It's great? I
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Speaker 1: mean it's a stand up arcade game. I prefer the
2:35
Speaker 1: sniper rifle on um Golden Eye yep. And I play
2:39
Speaker 1: the Call of Duty game and it's to have a
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Speaker 1: sniper level where you have to take out this one
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Speaker 1: guy and account for the wind and all that. And
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Speaker 1: it's thrilling to me as a gun hating, peace loving
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Speaker 1: liberal hippie aging hippie. I still love it. Man. There's
2:54
Speaker 1: something about it that's why little boys like playing with guns. Well,
2:57
Speaker 1: that's why you picked this article. How terry sniper's work
3:01
Speaker 1: this week? It's interesting this is a Chuck Bryant special,
3:04
Speaker 1: meaning that you picked it, not that you wrote it. Um,
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Speaker 1: and uh, this was a Robert Valdi's special. Huh. This
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Speaker 1: guy got to the bottom of it, interviewed an actual
3:13
Speaker 1: former Army ranger sniper. That enhanced it a lot. I
3:17
Speaker 1: think definitely. The guy was anonymous and everything, which is
3:20
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. Yeah. So, um, let's talk about sniper's chuckers, right,
3:25
Speaker 1: there's a I guess we can we can reveal the
3:28
Speaker 1: end the button of the article, right that where the
3:33
Speaker 1: sniper wants everyone to know, we're not just like these
3:35
Speaker 1: assassins that happens once in a while but very rarely,
3:40
Speaker 1: and we have many, many other jobs. And probably the
3:43
Speaker 1: biggest job that a sniper has is just reconnaissance, like
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Speaker 1: going and gathering information by being behind enemy lines and
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Speaker 1: spying on the enemy for days on end and then
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Speaker 1: reporting back what they see that. And they're highly highly
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Speaker 1: trained for that. They're not just highly trained for shooting.
4:01
Speaker 1: They're highly trained observers too, yeah, big time. And but
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Speaker 1: if duty calls, they can uh, if they don't have
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Speaker 1: a specific assignment like to take out whatever this general is,
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Speaker 1: they can't have what they call targets of opportunity, And
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Speaker 1: that's when they can really take the wind out of
4:20
Speaker 1: the sales of a battalion. If all of a sudden
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Speaker 1: the officers standing there, then he's not standing there, or
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Speaker 1: like the communications guy goes down, or later on even
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Speaker 1: some dude doing like you know, guard duty. Yeah, or equipment.
4:36
Speaker 1: We found out later in this article actually and we
4:37
Speaker 1: might as well spoil that. Yeah, this is not even
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Speaker 1: a human that's a material target. Yeah, like blow up
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Speaker 1: their generator or their ammunition bay or just anything that
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Speaker 1: would wreak havoc agree and make their job harder. And
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Speaker 1: then uh, I guess also because of this effect that
4:55
Speaker 1: the effect that a sniper has is um. It's not
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Speaker 1: just um physical e g. You know, blowing someone away,
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Speaker 1: but it's also mental um and um. It has a
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Speaker 1: real dampening effect on morale. I would imagine the psychological
5:11
Speaker 1: effect is probably pretty huge. Yeah, because you know, one
5:14
Speaker 1: of the things about snipers is that you don't know
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Speaker 1: they're coming, and you don't see just all of a sudden,
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Speaker 1: the guy next to you is dead, and that's going
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Speaker 1: to shake you, especially like you said, when there's targets
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Speaker 1: of opportunity it happens randomly, or when it's like a
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Speaker 1: very well chosen person like you said, like an officer,
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Speaker 1: somebody who's like, you know, kind of the moral spiritual
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Speaker 1: leader of the team is suddenly dead. That has a
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Speaker 1: big effect, which makes UM snipers what are called force multipliers,
5:42
Speaker 1: meaning just a one or two people UM can have
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Speaker 1: the effect of a you know, a big platoon you know,
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Speaker 1: charging in and shooting people. Yeah, and I always say
5:53
Speaker 1: band name a lot, but if you're in a heavy
5:55
Speaker 1: metal band. In your name isn't force multiplier, you might
5:57
Speaker 1: want to think about changing it, Yeah, unless it's master
6:00
Speaker 1: it on. They have a good name, so yes, they
6:05
Speaker 1: they're actually trained to UM, to spy on the enemy
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Speaker 1: and and learn who the officers are, which is you
6:12
Speaker 1: know you've always heard you're not supposed to salute in
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Speaker 1: the field of battle because it's pretty much that giveaway.
6:17
Speaker 1: But these guys are trained to look and stare and
6:20
Speaker 1: just you can tell. They can tell at least who
6:23
Speaker 1: the higher ranks are by the way they carry themselves,
6:26
Speaker 1: by what they're doing, by the way they're acting, and
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Speaker 1: they're trained to pick these people out and then pick
6:31
Speaker 1: these people off, Chuck. There's a couple of other UM assignments.
6:35
Speaker 1: I guess the sniper can land or positions that they
6:37
Speaker 1: play roles. That's the word I'm looking for. There's the
6:40
Speaker 1: famous Overwatch position where they're like up in a bell tower,
6:44
Speaker 1: clock tower or something like that with a just a
6:47
Speaker 1: three and sixty degree view of the battlefield. That's just
6:50
Speaker 1: taking people off like um prior to the Nation in
6:54
Speaker 1: Inglorious Bastards, saving Private Ryan because remember he took him
6:59
Speaker 1: out through the scope yeh, I remember only in the movies,
7:02
Speaker 1: but that was pretty cool. Yeah, only in the movies
7:04
Speaker 1: or World War two. Um. And then that that's called
7:08
Speaker 1: the overwatch position. I don't remember if I said they're not.
7:10
Speaker 1: And then there's a blocking action, which is, um, basically
7:14
Speaker 1: you are again up on a roof, but instead you're
7:18
Speaker 1: helping to defend a position rather than maybe take it. Right. Right, Yeah,
7:24
Speaker 1: you're helping out your buddies that are in the hiding
7:26
Speaker 1: in the farmhouse below, right, because this is World War two. Right,
7:29
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. Do you want to go ahead and
7:32
Speaker 1: reveal the big secret about snipers, the supposed lone gunman?
7:39
Speaker 1: It's not true. It isn't true. Have you've seen the
7:41
Speaker 1: movie Shooter? Did you see that with Marky Mark? No,
7:44
Speaker 1: I hate him. I don't hate him. No, I don't,
7:48
Speaker 1: I I don't. I liked him in um three Kings. Yeah. Yeah,
7:53
Speaker 1: I haven't seen The Boxer yet, but I'm sure i'll
7:55
Speaker 1: like it. The Fighter the same thing, uh, and I have. Uh. Well, yeah, well,
8:01
Speaker 1: Shooter is actually I had very low expectations and ended
8:04
Speaker 1: up being a pretty decent movie. And um it is
8:07
Speaker 1: buoyed by the great leave on Helm of the band
8:12
Speaker 1: my favorite group ever. He's an actor in that. I
8:15
Speaker 1: thought Tom Berenger was it, No, No, No, no different movie.
8:19
Speaker 1: I think that might have been called Sniper. Tom Berenger
8:22
Speaker 1: wasn't in that movie. So Leave Leave On Helm was
8:25
Speaker 1: the He's the old timer who who apparently had something
8:29
Speaker 1: to do with the Kennedy assassination too. Huh oh yeah, man,
8:34
Speaker 1: he's been in lots of movies. Boogie Knights loved him
8:36
Speaker 1: in Boogie Knights. He was awesome in that movie. Okay, okay, alright. Yes,
8:42
Speaker 1: snipers working teams always, They never ever ever go alone.
8:46
Speaker 1: It's not the way that military sniper units act. Yea.
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Speaker 1: They are, um so much so that their sniper rifles
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Speaker 1: are considered crew served weapons, like a you know, one
8:59
Speaker 1: of those heavy machine and it's like belt fed bullets. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it takes a defeat it bullets and one guy to
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Speaker 1: shoot it. That's a crew served um A weapon. Yeah, obviously,
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Speaker 1: UM so is a sniper rifle, not because it takes
9:12
Speaker 1: two people to shoot it, but because it takes two
9:14
Speaker 1: people to shoot it accurately, which is the whole point
9:19
Speaker 1: it is. And uh a spotter is uh from what
9:22
Speaker 1: we gather sort of a sniper in training. Um, you
9:24
Speaker 1: will act as a spotter and the hopes that one
9:27
Speaker 1: day you will actually be the sniper and lead your
9:29
Speaker 1: own team and the sniper. I mean we're calling it
9:31
Speaker 1: a team. It's two dudes, the sniper team. I'm sorry.
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Speaker 1: The sniper on the team is really the one in charge.
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Speaker 1: They're the one that he's to leave on helms of
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Speaker 1: the band helm. They get the orders, uh from from
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Speaker 1: the higher ups. They determine like the best route to
9:49
Speaker 1: get there, the drop off points, all that stuff, right,
9:53
Speaker 1: And I guess we should go ahead and walk through
9:54
Speaker 1: the process because those are the first two steps. Let's
9:57
Speaker 1: do you determine your drop off point for your objective,
10:00
Speaker 1: which isn't gonna be you know, fifty yards away from
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Speaker 1: your objective. It's gonna be miles and miles away. Probably,
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Speaker 1: Like a day's walk is a good bed, Yeah, you're
10:07
Speaker 1: gonna spend a day walk in there. You want to
10:10
Speaker 1: get a good setup position and and verify that you
10:12
Speaker 1: can camouflage that spot. Like, yeah, you're always thinking ahead.
10:16
Speaker 1: When you're on your belly and you're you want to
10:18
Speaker 1: move to your second position. You don't just say all right,
10:20
Speaker 1: that looks decent over there, You've got to look at
10:22
Speaker 1: everything around it, what's in your way to get there,
10:25
Speaker 1: because you're gonna be belly crawling. And then when you
10:27
Speaker 1: get there, what you can use to camouflage yourself. Uh,
10:31
Speaker 1: they're gonna establish an escape route very important, and a
10:35
Speaker 1: fallback position in case you get separated from your buddy.
10:39
Speaker 1: And then you gotta locate your target, grab the gun
10:42
Speaker 1: and get in position, right and um, getting in position
10:46
Speaker 1: after you locate the target is probably not what snipers do.
10:50
Speaker 1: They probably get in position and then locate the target.
10:53
Speaker 1: Would say, you know, if they're shooting somebody's specific, like
10:57
Speaker 1: maybe they arrive at the location of where they're you know,
11:01
Speaker 1: going to be shooting the person or whatever. But you're
11:04
Speaker 1: going to sit there, possibly for days on end. And
11:06
Speaker 1: by sid I mean late flat on your stomach. What
11:09
Speaker 1: is that prone or supine? I think prone? Prone, I
11:13
Speaker 1: think curses. So the spotter is going to be on
11:18
Speaker 1: the ground right next to and slightly behind you, basically
11:22
Speaker 1: trying to line up their spotter scope, which is way
11:25
Speaker 1: more powerful even than the rifle scope, as close to
11:29
Speaker 1: the barrel of the gun as possible. Yeah, in the
11:31
Speaker 1: same line as it and basically say okay, I've got
11:35
Speaker 1: this guy and he is, um a thousand meters away. Yeah,
11:42
Speaker 1: the wind is blowing at like six knots from the northeast,
11:47
Speaker 1: it's sixty five degrees, it's got a barometric pressure and
11:50
Speaker 1: a temperature of this humidity level is this? So you'd
11:53
Speaker 1: make a great spotter. See all that. So all that
11:56
Speaker 1: comes into consideration when you're trying to you know, you're
11:59
Speaker 1: shooting oftentimes from a thousand yards away. Yeah, a thousand yards. Well, remember, um,
12:06
Speaker 1: I think to become a sniper for Delta Force, remember
12:11
Speaker 1: like it was yards minimum you had to you had
12:14
Speaker 1: to have like eight or nine or nine accuracy from yards.
12:19
Speaker 1: We talked about it. That was a while ago though.
12:23
Speaker 1: So the sniper, how do they This was a cool
12:25
Speaker 1: thing because I saw it on YouTube. This thing creates
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Speaker 1: a vapor trail the bullet does. Yeah, the spotters not
12:31
Speaker 1: just you know watching. And also we should we should
12:34
Speaker 1: say that if you're there for days on end, um,
12:36
Speaker 1: the spotter and the sniper will probably trade off spot
12:39
Speaker 1: or duty just so one can get rest or something
12:42
Speaker 1: like that. And then exactly, um, but yes, when the
12:47
Speaker 1: time finally comes and the shot is to be taken. Um,
12:51
Speaker 1: the spotter watches to make sure that the sniper hit
12:54
Speaker 1: the target. And like you're saying, a bullet, the bullets
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Speaker 1: that they're firing out of these fifty caliber guns are
13:02
Speaker 1: seven point six too. Yeah, that's a big bullet. Those
13:07
Speaker 1: are the ones that look like missiles. They move through
13:10
Speaker 1: the air um in such a way that they create
13:13
Speaker 1: a vapor trail. And the army ranger who was interviewed
13:17
Speaker 1: for this article says, like it it looks you can
13:21
Speaker 1: see through it, but it's distorted air, which I'd take
13:24
Speaker 1: to mean like the matrix. That's exactly what it looks like. Oh,
13:27
Speaker 1: you've seen it, well, it's on YouTube. Yeah you can see.
13:30
Speaker 1: I mean you gotta look, but you can see it,
13:32
Speaker 1: and it looks like the matrix thing and all the
13:34
Speaker 1: other movies that copied it is like a hugely exaggerated obviously,
13:38
Speaker 1: but it sort of looks like that. It looks like, uh,
13:41
Speaker 1: the ABYSS, the little blob from the ABYSS traveling through
13:45
Speaker 1: the air, cavitating the air? Is that the word I think? So?
13:50
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, then the spotter says, you missed. That
13:55
Speaker 1: doesn't happen very often. No, it doesn't um. But if
13:58
Speaker 1: it does happen, these botter says, Okay, we need to
14:02
Speaker 1: move it this way a little bit. Yeah, maybe down
14:05
Speaker 1: a little probably uses more specific jargon than that, maybe
14:09
Speaker 1: down a little, and then another SHOT's taken and then
14:12
Speaker 1: another shot. Um. And the spotter is also going to
14:15
Speaker 1: be the one who's carrying, like, um, something like an
14:17
Speaker 1: M six teen or an M four some other assault rifle.
14:22
Speaker 1: Because if somebody comes up on you, as anyone who
14:25
Speaker 1: has ever played any video game when you're in hand
14:28
Speaker 1: to hand combat or close combat, uh, this sniper rifle
14:32
Speaker 1: is the worst weapon to have. Of all, you want
14:35
Speaker 1: the automatic assault rifle. That's what you want. And that's
14:38
Speaker 1: me in those games. I'm the one turning around fumbling
14:41
Speaker 1: trying to reload while the guy's dispatching the face inter
14:43
Speaker 1: shooting me exactly. And the relationship between these two guys
14:47
Speaker 1: is obviously very key because they're spending hours and days
14:51
Speaker 1: and days at a time with each other in very
14:54
Speaker 1: close quiet quarters. Trust is huge, obviously because their lives
14:59
Speaker 1: depend on each other and they usually don't have a
15:02
Speaker 1: lot of support from their unit. They're out there alone
15:04
Speaker 1: protecting their unit and their unit and platoon is depending
15:08
Speaker 1: on them. If you screw up, a lot of times
15:10
Speaker 1: your platoon is is not in good shape afterwards. So
15:13
Speaker 1: very high pressure job, right, they're doing recon or they're
15:16
Speaker 1: doing um, spearhead demoralization through selective assassination something like that. Right.
15:24
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, they're they're like if the snipers out there,
15:27
Speaker 1: probably shortly after a platoon is going to be on
15:30
Speaker 1: their heels and the sniper has to relay whatever information
15:33
Speaker 1: he's taking in. Um so yeah, if he screws up,
15:36
Speaker 1: it can be problematic. Sure, Um you want to talk
15:40
Speaker 1: about the rifles. Yeah, they don't just pull a rifle
15:43
Speaker 1: off with shelf at Walmart and and go hide in
15:46
Speaker 1: the woods, although some guys have. Remember Seemo Hia who
15:50
Speaker 1: seem O Hia the White Death. Oh yeah, yeah, well
15:54
Speaker 1: sure he had his plain old bolt action hunting hunting rifle.
15:58
Speaker 1: Any from five cool with it? Uh These days, Josh,
16:02
Speaker 1: it's a little more uh specialized than that. Um there
16:07
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's called an M fourteen with
16:10
Speaker 1: match grade upgrades. And match grade means that some professional
16:14
Speaker 1: gunsmith is hone this thing to within a good centimeter.
16:19
Speaker 1: You like that of accuracy? You were you were waiting
16:23
Speaker 1: for a better reaction than that. I didn't know if
16:26
Speaker 1: you thought that was a real word. So I think
16:27
Speaker 1: match grade means like, um, like a shooting match like
16:30
Speaker 1: competition grade. Yeah, probably because they use very similar rifles
16:35
Speaker 1: for competition shooting. Yeah, where they're hollowed out. Yeah, that's Olympic.
16:39
Speaker 1: I never understood that. I love it though. The guys
16:41
Speaker 1: who ski and shoot, yeah, what's the point of that,
16:44
Speaker 1: I don't know. I like it. They should add like
16:46
Speaker 1: they should snowboard and shoot and just do all sorts
16:48
Speaker 1: of things. You go up to half fife, then you
16:50
Speaker 1: stop and you take a couple of shots. Yeah, kite
16:53
Speaker 1: sailing and shooting. Yeah, And I'm sure there's some great
16:56
Speaker 1: history to that, but I don't know it. So match
17:00
Speaker 1: grade guns and also match grade handmade ammunition. So I
17:04
Speaker 1: mean it's all just like very detailed that like that's
17:07
Speaker 1: hollowed out. It's light. It's usually fiberglass because you don't
17:09
Speaker 1: want the wood to warp, and UM ends up being
17:14
Speaker 1: extremely accurate. The barrel doesn't touch the rest of the gun.
17:17
Speaker 1: This is cool. The free floating barrel. It touches as
17:20
Speaker 1: little as possible so that the initial explosion from the
17:24
Speaker 1: bullet being fired causing the recoil in the barrel that
17:28
Speaker 1: it doesn't kick as much, and just the rifles accuracy yeah,
17:35
Speaker 1: disadjusted plus move maladjust to any kind of movements. Ben Yeah,
17:39
Speaker 1: which is why they use more often than not bolt
17:42
Speaker 1: action rifles, which had disadvantages in that you have to
17:46
Speaker 1: load a single round, shoot it, and then unload that shell,
17:50
Speaker 1: reload another round. But um, their motto was one shot,
17:54
Speaker 1: one kill, so one shot is usually all you need.
17:57
Speaker 1: But they do sometimes use the semi automatic rifles, but
18:01
Speaker 1: which you have there are shells flying out of the gun,
18:03
Speaker 1: which is not very smart. Right. Either way, you're gonna
18:06
Speaker 1: be detected with movement possibly like when you do the
18:08
Speaker 1: bolt action that's moving, that flying shell that's moving. But
18:13
Speaker 1: the automatic or semi automatic rifles have more moving parts
18:17
Speaker 1: than a BOWLT action. Checkers tend to prefer bowlt action. Yeah,
18:21
Speaker 1: although they said they can their shoot it's their choice.
18:25
Speaker 1: Shooters preference, Yeah, sniper's sniper's choice between eight and fifteen grand.
18:31
Speaker 1: These things costs. Yeah, it's kind of pricey, but they
18:34
Speaker 1: look really cool. Yeah, they do. Uh do we talk
18:38
Speaker 1: about the scope, No, we haven't yet. I mean, we
18:41
Speaker 1: talked about how the the spotter has a superior scope.
18:46
Speaker 1: But yeah, the scope on the sniper rifle usually has
18:48
Speaker 1: about a ten time magnification power. It's just you know, telescope,
18:54
Speaker 1: a high powered telescope, mini telescope sorry, with um crosshairs
18:59
Speaker 1: on it. Called redicules, right, is that what it has pronounced?
19:03
Speaker 1: A targeting ridicule, ridiculation ridicule. I didn't know how it
19:08
Speaker 1: was pronounced. I kept saying articular, and then I thought
19:11
Speaker 1: it was ridicule. Uh, what you're looking at when you're
19:16
Speaker 1: aiming though, Like we said, there's all sorts of variances
19:18
Speaker 1: in the wind and everything will change the path of
19:20
Speaker 1: your bullet. But um, you're looking at the point of
19:23
Speaker 1: aim and the point of impact, and if you're firing
19:26
Speaker 1: from six yards away, it's not gonna be what you're
19:29
Speaker 1: aiming at. And this is accurate even in that Call
19:32
Speaker 1: of Duty game, like you aim at the dude's head
19:35
Speaker 1: and then you end up shooting like three ft to
19:37
Speaker 1: the right of them, and every one goes, what was that?
19:39
Speaker 1: And then it's over? What's over? Well, that little round
19:42
Speaker 1: is over. If you don't get the guy, you're done.
19:44
Speaker 1: You can't get off at a second shot. What happens.
19:47
Speaker 1: I think you gotta start over so they don't come
19:50
Speaker 1: at you or anything. No, no, they come at you
19:52
Speaker 1: and then you start over eventually. But so you have
19:55
Speaker 1: to aim over aim a lot of times because of
19:57
Speaker 1: things like gravity. And that was the fact of the
20:00
Speaker 1: show to me. The gravity one. If you drop a bullet,
20:05
Speaker 1: If you aim a gun a sniper rifle and then
20:09
Speaker 1: shoot it level to the ground and you drop a
20:11
Speaker 1: bullet at the same height as the barrel, they're both
20:13
Speaker 1: gonna hit the ground at the same time because of gravity.
20:16
Speaker 1: That's that's the fact of the show for sure. Um, Chuck.
20:21
Speaker 1: What you're talking about can be adjusted for in the
20:24
Speaker 1: scope through the ballistic drop compensator, which is a little
20:28
Speaker 1: dial so you don't have to go redo your whole
20:31
Speaker 1: scope settings and all that. You can just adjust it
20:33
Speaker 1: up or down or left or right just a little
20:35
Speaker 1: bit to compensate for gravity. And um. The other like
20:39
Speaker 1: wind and that's what you see him doing. Yeah, they're like,
20:43
Speaker 1: you know, wind it two nots you seed Markey, Mark,
20:45
Speaker 1: go click, that's all you need to do. That's it.
20:49
Speaker 1: One little click, gun shoots itself, not true. Um. And
20:53
Speaker 1: then there's also these things called Gillie suits, which, um,
20:57
Speaker 1: anytime you see a sniper or you don't see a sniper,
21:01
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden he stands up from
21:03
Speaker 1: the leaves and brush and all that in front of
21:05
Speaker 1: you and he's wearing what looks like leaves and brush.
21:09
Speaker 1: That's called the Gillie suit, which has a pretty cool
21:11
Speaker 1: little history to it. I like it. Go ahead. So
21:14
Speaker 1: gillies um were the Irish game wardens Scottish game wardens
21:19
Speaker 1: from days of your uh, and basically their job was
21:22
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on the landowners um game right
21:28
Speaker 1: while game that he liked to hunt um and the
21:32
Speaker 1: gilly once in a while would have to basically catch
21:36
Speaker 1: a deer or something like that, say bring it back
21:39
Speaker 1: to the castle for the landowner to hunt in a
21:43
Speaker 1: mock hunt and kill the deer. But he couldn't just
21:46
Speaker 1: kill the deer and bring it. He had to bring
21:48
Speaker 1: it alive. So this meant days of stalking a deer,
21:52
Speaker 1: staying completely silent, camouflaging himself with stuff found in the
21:56
Speaker 1: in the local environment, and then waiting for a deer
21:59
Speaker 1: to walk by in jumping on it, grabbing it. Can
22:01
Speaker 1: you imagine these dudes and then dragging it back to
22:04
Speaker 1: the castle for this mock hunt. Yeah, so think about
22:08
Speaker 1: how despised the nobleman must have been for his little
22:12
Speaker 1: mock hunt in between glasses of sherry of a deer
22:17
Speaker 1: that the Gillie caught with his bare hands after waiting
22:20
Speaker 1: two days for it to walk past him, you know,
22:23
Speaker 1: and then they just killed the deer like when they
22:25
Speaker 1: bring it in because like his gout and his flaring
22:27
Speaker 1: up so you can't even get out of his chair.
22:30
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's like early internet hunting. Oh yeah, God.
22:34
Speaker 1: They outlawed that pretty quickly, thank goodness, because it was awful.
22:38
Speaker 1: I almost had to write an article on that. Did
22:41
Speaker 1: you get out of it? Yeah? I refused. I said,
22:43
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not even gonna put this out
22:45
Speaker 1: there as something that exists. And they went, you know what,
22:49
Speaker 1: you may be right on this one. And then like
22:50
Speaker 1: two weeks later they outlawed it controlling the flow of information.
22:54
Speaker 1: Huh no, you know nice. I didn't want I didn't
22:57
Speaker 1: want it happening. Yes, I stopped internet hunting single. So
23:02
Speaker 1: the gilly suit is what they call what the sniper
23:04
Speaker 1: wears now because of that cool history, and it's usually
23:07
Speaker 1: like really reinforced on your torso because you're gonna be
23:10
Speaker 1: crawling a lot, probably padded to help you out with comfort,
23:14
Speaker 1: and you know it's not like you're really comfortable. It's
23:16
Speaker 1: padded for comfort. Padded for comfort, and you've got a
23:18
Speaker 1: netting all over you so you can work in twigs
23:21
Speaker 1: like what you don't want our straight lines like the
23:24
Speaker 1: antenna from your radio or the muzzle of your gun,
23:27
Speaker 1: because nature didn't have straight lines like that, right, So
23:29
Speaker 1: they make gilly suits for their guns. Yeah, um, can't
23:32
Speaker 1: you see them having like it's the Special Ops barracks,
23:36
Speaker 1: like gilly suit contests, like who's got the best one? Oh,
23:40
Speaker 1: that's elaborate, you know. Yeah, yeah, I can't believe you
23:43
Speaker 1: work that rock into it well. And when I envisioned
23:46
Speaker 1: that SIT's that skit they like are putting the medal
23:49
Speaker 1: around the winter and then a guy just rises up
23:51
Speaker 1: behind him that they're never He comes off with the
23:54
Speaker 1: back of his Gillie suit and steals his metal. Uh
23:59
Speaker 1: we'll speak King of Special Ops. These are Special Ops
24:02
Speaker 1: teams and uh Sniper teams are all a part of
24:06
Speaker 1: Special Operations and they train all the time. If they're
24:12
Speaker 1: not training specifically for a mission. They're studying the mission,
24:15
Speaker 1: and their goal is to know every single thing about
24:18
Speaker 1: everybody on that mission and memorize it, because if you're caught,
24:22
Speaker 1: you don't want to have paper saying these are signals,
24:25
Speaker 1: these are call signs or whatever, because I could just think,
24:30
Speaker 1: you know, like being caught with the paper like this
24:33
Speaker 1: is Corporal Todd Thompson's call sign ACE, you know, and
24:41
Speaker 1: then the enemies like this, who's this Todd Thompson? Why
24:44
Speaker 1: do you get ACE? That's the coolest one, right, because
24:47
Speaker 1: he's the best one. Uh. The U S m C
24:50
Speaker 1: is known even though all military branches have sniper teams
24:54
Speaker 1: and schools, the Marines are obviously because they're the Marines.
24:58
Speaker 1: They have what's known as the best school, the U
25:00
Speaker 1: s m C. Scout Sniper School in the Marines actually
25:04
Speaker 1: may have been the origin of the snipers in the U.
25:07
Speaker 1: S military. Yeah, the leather necks, the original guys who
25:11
Speaker 1: used to ride around in the eighteenth century on ships
25:14
Speaker 1: were um often tasked with basically sniping from crow's nests
25:20
Speaker 1: um other people on other ships during battles. I don't
25:23
Speaker 1: think I knew what the leather necks were. Yeah, their Marines, Well,
25:27
Speaker 1: I knew that, but I didn't know that it went
25:28
Speaker 1: back that far. Yeah, nine eighteenth century. Well back then
25:33
Speaker 1: they actually had next made of leather, right, that's pretty
25:35
Speaker 1: cool human leather. Um, it is the best school, like
25:41
Speaker 1: I said, and if you get in, even fewer graduate
25:45
Speaker 1: because it's not just about being a good shooter. You
25:48
Speaker 1: have to have the right temperament. You have to be
25:50
Speaker 1: calm and not like some hot head. You have to
25:53
Speaker 1: have confidence in your decisions, confidence in your in your
25:56
Speaker 1: spot or yeah as this as this um this niper
26:00
Speaker 1: who was interviewed for the article said he basically like,
26:02
Speaker 1: you can't just be calling back like can I shoot
26:04
Speaker 1: this guy? Or you have to make the decision and
26:07
Speaker 1: make the right decision and confidence in your decision so
26:10
Speaker 1: that you can say I am going to shoot this guy.
26:13
Speaker 1: It works well alone and their little report card growing
26:16
Speaker 1: up was probably a key for a future sniper. So
26:19
Speaker 1: it's a two month course, Josh. Here at the Marine Corps, Uh,
26:23
Speaker 1: they train in three main um disciplines marksmanship obviously, observation,
26:29
Speaker 1: and stalking. Yeah, and let's talk about can we talk
26:32
Speaker 1: about the games? I think we should like the Kim's game. Yeah,
26:36
Speaker 1: I didn't see what that stood for I don't know
26:38
Speaker 1: why they made it all caps because it's Um. It's
26:41
Speaker 1: named after a Rudyard Tippling book Kim, So it's not
26:45
Speaker 1: a boy's name, UM. And he was an Irish orphan
26:49
Speaker 1: who grew up in India, was trained in intelligence and
26:52
Speaker 1: in the book they would give him um trades of
26:54
Speaker 1: like stones and gems and give him a minute to
26:57
Speaker 1: look at it and then take it away and say
26:59
Speaker 1: what did you just So that's what the Kim's game is.
27:02
Speaker 1: It's very similar to that. It's based on that. Well,
27:04
Speaker 1: go ahead, explain it. Well. It teaches observational skills, right
27:08
Speaker 1: and basically um with this game, Uh, the guys in
27:12
Speaker 1: sniper School are presented a tray and it has you know,
27:16
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty things on it, and they're told to look
27:19
Speaker 1: at it for you know, thirty seconds or a minute
27:22
Speaker 1: or something. Then the trays removed and they say what
27:24
Speaker 1: did you see? And say there was a paper clip? Right,
27:27
Speaker 1: You can't say well, there's a paper clip because they
27:31
Speaker 1: want to leave it to the guys who are analyzing
27:34
Speaker 1: the intelligence you're sending back to determine what it was
27:37
Speaker 1: you saw. So you say, well, I saw a piece
27:40
Speaker 1: of wire bent around into um an oval three times
27:44
Speaker 1: or something like that. Ever slip and you can just
27:48
Speaker 1: say paper clip. But and then as as school goes along,
27:53
Speaker 1: the training, this observational training through the Kim's game apparently
27:56
Speaker 1: gets more and more difficult, where they show you something
27:59
Speaker 1: in the morning, then you go out and practice all day,
28:03
Speaker 1: and then at night they say, write down what you
28:05
Speaker 1: saw this morning. Yeah, and they'll add more things and
28:07
Speaker 1: give you less time to look at it to begin with,
28:10
Speaker 1: Because when I first read it, I was like, that's
28:11
Speaker 1: not too hard. It's like a wine cork and a
28:14
Speaker 1: paper clip and uh and a CB radio done. But
28:18
Speaker 1: then as it gets harder, I was like, oh, there's
28:20
Speaker 1: a method here, right, and not being able to call
28:23
Speaker 1: something what you know it is like, how would you
28:25
Speaker 1: describe a wine cork? I would say I have thousands
28:30
Speaker 1: of these around my home. Lungs are coated with the
28:35
Speaker 1: dust of them. I could say it's a cork in
28:37
Speaker 1: a spherical cork with a red stain on one end.
28:42
Speaker 1: It would be tubular, wouldn't it tubular? It wouldn't be spherical,
28:47
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be conical. And then right now there's someone
28:50
Speaker 1: standing behind it's the gun. Yeah, exactly, we'd be the
28:53
Speaker 1: worst sniper team ever. Actually. Um. And then another another
28:57
Speaker 1: good game I guess you could call it is how
29:00
Speaker 1: they trained to stalk, right, Yeah, that is really cool.
29:03
Speaker 1: So stalking is moving from say your drop zone or wherever,
29:08
Speaker 1: to the place where you're going to set up without
29:12
Speaker 1: being identified, without being seen or noticed. But you have
29:15
Speaker 1: to make your way there and there may or may
29:18
Speaker 1: not be people watching you, are able to see you,
29:20
Speaker 1: but you need to get to the point you need
29:22
Speaker 1: to get to. So you have to practice that. That's
29:24
Speaker 1: called stalking, and they practice it by basically saying, Okay,
29:27
Speaker 1: here's a nice grassy field. Um, you guys stay here,
29:31
Speaker 1: and we're gonna put two people a thousand meters away
29:33
Speaker 1: and we're going to look for you, and you need
29:35
Speaker 1: to make it within a hundred and fifty meters of
29:38
Speaker 1: us without us seeing you. And they're looking for you.
29:41
Speaker 1: Not only that, they have two people out there in
29:44
Speaker 1: the field looking for you walking around. So apparently that's
29:49
Speaker 1: like real life on hyper drive that never ever would happen.
29:53
Speaker 1: But I guess the idea is if you can pass that,
29:56
Speaker 1: then you know you'll be fine out in the field.
29:59
Speaker 1: It's like we're an ankle, which makes sense. And then
30:03
Speaker 1: they have to take a shot from the hundred and
30:05
Speaker 1: fifty meters with blanks, obviously, and then they have to
30:08
Speaker 1: move from that position. They have to take the shot
30:10
Speaker 1: without being detected, and then move from that position to
30:13
Speaker 1: another position and take another shot without being detected, which
30:18
Speaker 1: apparently you very rarely, if ever moved to another position
30:21
Speaker 1: and take a second shot, and you definitely are never
30:24
Speaker 1: within a hundred and fifty of your target. So they overtrain,
30:28
Speaker 1: which is a good thing. Another little game they play
30:30
Speaker 1: is is just strictly observational from a distance. They will
30:33
Speaker 1: hide things in a field, very small things like a
30:36
Speaker 1: ballpoint pin hanging from a little shrubbery brush, and you
30:41
Speaker 1: get out there with your spot or with your scope
30:43
Speaker 1: and binoculars and you gotta pick this stuff out. And
30:46
Speaker 1: basically just canvas, you know, he said that. The guy
30:49
Speaker 1: in here said. You just block off one little, small,
30:52
Speaker 1: tiny block at a time, stare at it through your
30:54
Speaker 1: binoculars for five minutes, then move on to the next
30:57
Speaker 1: little block until you find something and chuck you were
31:01
Speaker 1: talking about when they were um with gravity is one
31:04
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems for accuracy, right well, there's there's
31:09
Speaker 1: a a unit of measurement that snipers use to adjust
31:14
Speaker 1: for these variables. It's called minute of angle m o
31:18
Speaker 1: A and UM. Apparently one point zero four seven inches
31:23
Speaker 1: UM for every hundred yards is the the the inaccuracy
31:30
Speaker 1: that's going to develop as the bullet travels. Right. Yeah,
31:32
Speaker 1: So if you're a thousand yards away like they say
31:35
Speaker 1: you can be, or more, you could potentially be off
31:37
Speaker 1: by ten inches, which means you could potentially miss your
31:40
Speaker 1: target altogether unless you account for wind and humidity and
31:44
Speaker 1: barometric pressure and temperature, the temperatures. I thought this was
31:48
Speaker 1: very interesting. Cold air is denser, which means it creates
31:51
Speaker 1: more drag, right, which is pretty cool. You have to
31:55
Speaker 1: account for that UM and then the other one UM.
31:59
Speaker 1: Depending on your distance. UM. Someone may or may not
32:02
Speaker 1: hear you. If you're six hundred yards away or more,
32:07
Speaker 1: potentially you are not going to even hear that little
32:09
Speaker 1: sonic boom crack because the bullet leaves the muzzle at
32:13
Speaker 1: the speed of sound. You won't even hear that. So
32:16
Speaker 1: you could be eight hundreds away and dudes could be
32:19
Speaker 1: standing there. And that's when you see in the movie
32:21
Speaker 1: that they see the little buff of dirt behind them
32:24
Speaker 1: and they're just like what was that? Yeah? So six
32:29
Speaker 1: is where the seven point six two millimeter round is
32:33
Speaker 1: dragged into sub sonic speed, meaning it travels less than
32:38
Speaker 1: the speed of sound, meaning it makes a sound where
32:42
Speaker 1: anything over that is like you said, suddenly there's just
32:45
Speaker 1: bullets appearing. And the guy who was interviewed from this
32:48
Speaker 1: head a great quote. He said, Um, you can basically
32:52
Speaker 1: just take shots at somebody. And the guy who has
32:55
Speaker 1: interviewed for this article had this great quote. He said,
32:58
Speaker 1: if you're shooting at a target eight a thousand meters out,
33:00
Speaker 1: you could be shooting at that person all day long
33:02
Speaker 1: and they don't even know they're being shot at. Why
33:05
Speaker 1: are these oil cans exploding he hates them? Uh, Yeah,
33:10
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. And that's a very good place to
33:13
Speaker 1: end because the goal of the snipers to not get caught,
33:16
Speaker 1: so they want to get as far away as they
33:18
Speaker 1: can from the target while still being within an accurate range. Done. Done,
33:26
Speaker 1: Do you got anything else? I got nothing else? Military
33:28
Speaker 1: snipers if you were expecting like the DC sniper or
33:32
Speaker 1: um Charles what was his name, Whitman, Yes, Uh, they're
33:37
Speaker 1: not military snipers. Although Charles Whitman was in the military.
33:40
Speaker 1: He's in the Marines, remember in full metal jacket. Yeah
33:43
Speaker 1: it wasn't Oswald too, or no, yeah, he's a marine too.
33:47
Speaker 1: Do you have it? Yea, I think they were both
33:49
Speaker 1: sharpshooters too. Do you have it? Well, okay, those are okay,
33:54
Speaker 1: Well they made an appearance then all right, okay. If
33:57
Speaker 1: you want to know more about snipers, Um, you should
34:00
Speaker 1: type in snipers in the handy search bar how stuff
34:02
Speaker 1: works dot Com and has some cool flash games inside
34:05
Speaker 1: of it and very cool links and cool pictures and
34:08
Speaker 1: if you're into that kind of thing, you're gonna love
34:11
Speaker 1: this article that's Snipers in the search bar at how
34:14
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com. Since I said that, it's time
34:18
Speaker 1: for listener mail, Josh, I'm gonna call this from a
34:23
Speaker 1: fan with MS multiple score rosis. I have a very
34:28
Speaker 1: very good friend of mine that has MS and it
34:32
Speaker 1: was afflicted with it later in life and is late twenties.
34:35
Speaker 1: I believe it's very sad, but so she writes, Um,
34:40
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck, perhaps I could tell you about the
34:42
Speaker 1: fact that I've been living with MS for over twenty
34:44
Speaker 1: two years and I found it a nonprofit called soft
34:47
Speaker 1: Serve matters that will empower people with chronic analysis. But
34:52
Speaker 1: maybe I should leave with I was listening to is
34:54
Speaker 1: Bhuton onto something with their gross national and happiness because
34:58
Speaker 1: I feel the need to tell you I believe that
35:00
Speaker 1: some people are just born with the happy gene. I
35:03
Speaker 1: am living proof of that, having started it in kindergarten um.
35:08
Speaker 1: In spite of the fact that I have a decreasing
35:11
Speaker 1: have had decreasing abilities since my twentieth birthday, and a
35:14
Speaker 1: six figured debt that my husband and I accrued while
35:17
Speaker 1: getting our advanced degrees, I am uber happy. Or maybe
35:20
Speaker 1: it's just a denial to all of these challenges. My
35:23
Speaker 1: default is happy, happy, joy joy. I made that reference
35:26
Speaker 1: just to amuse you. Uh. It may have something to
35:29
Speaker 1: do with the fact that I come from a family
35:31
Speaker 1: of armchair comedians and married a man based on his
35:33
Speaker 1: humor alone. Well not really, but doesn't that sound good?
35:37
Speaker 1: We have a nine year old who is freaking hysterical.
35:41
Speaker 1: Nature or nurture, I ask. I'll go with nature since
35:44
Speaker 1: it supports my theory, though clearly nurture as a major player.
35:47
Speaker 1: So while I figure out the approach to email you guys,
35:51
Speaker 1: let me just say I love your work. And for
35:53
Speaker 1: the administrative section of this email, I employ to check
35:56
Speaker 1: out these links. And she has a blog that I
35:59
Speaker 1: would like to pug and it is M S l
36:01
Speaker 1: O L dot WordPress dot com and that is Amy
36:06
Speaker 1: G and Amy. Like I said, my really good friend
36:08
Speaker 1: Billy has MS. So it's very uh dear to my
36:11
Speaker 1: heart cause and anything we can do to help you
36:14
Speaker 1: spread the word, just email us back and we'll do
36:16
Speaker 1: so cool. That was a good one, Chuck, Thank you,
36:19
Speaker 1: Thank you Amy, thanks for being an armchair comedian yourself. Yeah. Yeah, okay, Um,
36:26
Speaker 1: and I guess thanks to your whole family for that
36:28
Speaker 1: really husband good. Yeah. If you find something funny that
36:32
Speaker 1: other people may not, we love that stuff and we
36:35
Speaker 1: want to hear about it, Um, send us an email
36:38
Speaker 1: with it to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
36:47
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
36:50
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