Would they really train people with live rounds?
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Jarhead
cocacolaistherealthing — 9 years ago(July 16, 2016 08:22 PM)
Early on in the movie, when the guys are still in training, they are crawling under this barbed wire and there are apparently live bullets being shot over the wire. One of the guys gets upright above the wire and is shot to death by the bullets going overhead.
It's seem really unwise to train using live bullets since someone could get hurt. Training is to get someone ready for a situation, not to put them at risk.
Is that something that is actually done in the military or was this a film taking liberties? -
everymanaking6488 — 9 years ago(August 02, 2016 07:01 PM)
i was thinking the same
i'm sure with elite soldiers they use live rounds but with new recruits even for Marines i highly doubt it. but then again it was set like 30 years ago so who knows if policies have changed -
DaneInsane — 9 years ago(August 10, 2016 12:15 PM)
The thing is that these guys aren't regular marines.
They are training to become Scout Sniper, which is a special branch in the Marines.
They are irregulars, and trained like so.
I don't know if the US military trains this way, but the thing is that being shot at by blank fire and being shot at by live-rounds is two completely different things.
It's louder, the bullets crack like a whiplash and the force of the rounds can be felt impacting.
And the barbed wire above the training field, should somewhat keep them from standing up, I have no idea how the guy squeezed himself out through the holes in the barbed wire. -
eugene_stoner — 9 years ago(November 09, 2016 01:34 PM)
at that point we probably had blanks in our m16s but here:
http://www.imdb.com/board/10418763/board/nest/259445606?d=263117523#263117523 -
eugene_stoner — 9 years ago(November 09, 2016 01:29 PM)
@cocacolaistherealthing
i can only speak of my own personal experience, which was army basic training at fort knox in 1996. yes its true, they used real machineguns firing over us. from what i was told, the machineguns (M60s) were bolted or chained into a fixed position so they couldnt accidentally fire low enough to hit us as we crawled, but whether they would have hit someone standing up i couldnt say.
real bullets flying over me didnt bother me one bit, to be totally honest, not because im a tough guy but simply because i was too mentally and physically exhausted for anything other than more exertion to bother me. i was pretty much in a waking dream state at that point. basic was like football practiceALL DAY LONG, and sometimes much of the night.
that scene in the movie where the dude stood upim not buying it. maybe something like that happened back in the 1950s when someone who was unstable to begin with just freaked out and stood up, who knows, but a normal person doing that, someone whod already been through basic training? hard to believe. (i think at that point in the movie they were in sniper school, right? implying theyd already been through basic? i cant remember for sure.) -
MoviemanCin — 9 years ago(January 05, 2017 06:12 PM)
I went through army boot camp at Ft Leonard Wood MO (we called it Ft Lost in the Woods) in 1972, and they never did that to us. But as to other bases at other times I have heard that it actually was done. Kinda dumb, though.
Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar and doesn't.