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Thread: Remarkable composure ...

  1. #1
    Jbb

  2. #2
    Nord
    Very Sad.

  3. #3
    3 daytona`s
    What a Heartbreaker

  4. #4
    Garrddogg
    Wow!! poor little thing..
    Usually when a celeb dies its kinda like "oh well !"
    but Steve's death really made me sad.
    RIP Steve! :cry:

  5. #5
    Froggystyle
    I have a lot of weird emotions about Steve's death... mostly because I have seen it before.
    Thing is, Steve died because of something relatively pedestrian compared to the rest of his life. He dragged venemous snakes out of holes in the ground, wrestled Crocodiles for the sake of whatever he did it for, opened up a lot of eyes toward endangered species, taught a world about Australian wildlife and showed that while fearsome looking, most species on the planet are out for the same things we are... just to get along and make it until tomorrow. Most of the most aggressive behavior he ever showed was when a mother (or father) was protective its offspring. Sound familiar?
    I have had a large number of Teammates die over the years. Some in combat... getting shot by snipers, stepping on land mines, walking into ambushes or IED's etc... but they are SEALs. They don't bag groceries for a living, so it is pretty tough to mourn their bad luck. We did that as a choice of profession, and those who die in combat takes their cards and plays their hands.
    Training accidents are where it sucks... and that is what Steve died doing in my opinion. 9 times out of 10, the training deaths were because of complacency and inattention. My first day in BUDs training I lost a good freind of mine in the 50 foot dive tower. He was practicing his breath hold. He was one of the best among us, and was able to hold his breath for nearly 4 and a half minutes. Nobody noticed him still down there, because you usually get bored counting the minutes, and Keith went down over and over again building up his breath hold. Well, one time he was down for a while, and while ascending the partial pressure of oxygen decreases. So, while he was coherent on the bottom, as he rose the oxygen left in his system became less potent and he blacked out. Thanks to Keith, we now call that a "shallow water blackout" and have it as a test question during qualification. That is a bummer way to go. That was day one.
    Throughout the rest of my time in the Teams, I saw freinds die by getting hit in the head with an outboard motor at night doing a beach insertion... nobody even knew until the squad turned up one short five minutes later. Nothing could be more routine for us than a Zodiac beach landing... yet we lose a guy doing it. Another great freind, platoon mate and roommate died when his reserve opened into his main chute. Ooops. Big oops when he cut away his main to pull the reserve and finally realized what had happenned. I think there is a paragraph during jump school dedicated to him too. The list goes on and on.
    Steve had the equivalent in my opinion. Dieing doing something ordinary, but still doing something he loved. Now I can't speak for him, but while I am pretty sure he would have rather gone out fighting a venemous snake than getting zapped by a damn stingray, he would have taken either over getting cancer, getting hit by a bus or have a terrorist fly into his building.
    Like I said... weird emotions. I think the world suffered a major loss though. I hope his daughter carries on his work and becomes a lot like her Dad.

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