CBRNE Explained
It's Friday again. Today is the 5th Friday of BCT. If memory serves, there are only six Fridays during BCT, so that means there is only one more to go. Are you starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel? I bet your Basics are. I know the WebGuy team is. We are all in countdown mode. Remember this is a marathon, not a sprint though. BCT isn't over till it's over and we are all going to push hard through the finish. (Then I am going on a Caribbean Cruise!)
Ok, so much for the Friday pep talk. Sorry for the website slowdown last night. In case you are interested in what happened, Mr. T (not to be confused with the mohawk and chains guy), our crack IT guru explained it by saying "This can happen when we are still uploading photos while lots of people are on the site at the same time. Too many database calls caused things to start getting backed up". He fixed it by doubling our web servers at Amazon and upgrading the database. I have no idea what any of the means, but I do know that it fixed the problem really fast.
When this site was built (by Mr. T) from scratch three years ago, he took all this into account. In the old WebGuy days, we used to have to literally shut down the site in order to upload. This site really is a work of art. It was custom built to handle this daily volume. We get all the love from all of you, but there a many people behind the scenes who make all this magic happen every day. We couldn't do it without them.
Today we are talking about CBRNE. CBRNE (pronounced "SEE-burn") stands for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive materials. During the CBRNE course, the Basics are walked through various situations and are taught how to deal with them. They also get exposed to tear-gas (which has also resulted in minorly gassed photographers as the wind shifted). The Basics put on their protective gear and gas masks, enter the container of gas, remove their masks, breathe in all the goodness, and then are released to go outside. Then they walk around in circles while flapping their arms and not touching their faces. Just in case you are planning to write us and ask why flapping ones arms is a part of this training, I will save you the time and effort. Brisk movement can help the recovery. Flapping the arms and rubbing the hair in a breeze or standing in front of a large fan will disperse most of the particles from the clothing and hair. Within five to ten minutes the symptoms produced by the agent should disappear. So there you have it.
Here are a few photos to illustrate the course. The last one is to illustrate that the effects of the training don't last long, but hopefully the lessons learned do.
I hope you enjoyed today's Uncle WebGuy's lesson, class. Tomorrow we will talk about the Confidence Course. A word about today's coverage. Half of you will get the night off tonight. As we get further into the Jacks Valley days, the squadrons will begin to go through some of the courses a second time. If we covered them already, we may not be able to cover them a second time for every squadron. It is a matter of manpower. Today was one of those days. As I have said many times already, by the end of BCT the coverage should come out pretty even for every squadron. So hang in there with us.
Here is what (and whom) we covered today.
Aggressors: - CBRNE
Cobras: - Assault Course
Demons: - Confidence Course
Executioners: Assault Course
Barbarians were supposed to do the Obstacle Course today, but were rescheduled. Pretty sure it was due to weather.
We'll be back at you tomorrow. Have a nice evening!