They have a 92% washout rate.
Time and again their training has been described as the most mentally and physically tough
of any special forces outfit in the world.
Those who don't choose to quit, have a better than even chance of suffering a serious injury.
With one of the highest training fatality rates amongst special forces units on earth,
some will even die.
And if you want to be a United States Navy SEAL, you too will have to pass through the
dreaded Hell Week.
It starts with a bang.
A lot of bangs, actually.
One minute you're comfortably asleep in your bunk, if maybe a little drafty seeing as you're
sleeping inside a tent by the ocean, and the next the world has exploded into a cacophony
of gunfire and explosions.
Hope you had some nice dreams there, sweet pea, because you've just woken up to a world
of hurt.
Instructors prowl the tents, barking orders and ripping students out of their cots.
All the while, other instructors move through the camp firing off rifles and machine guns
loaded with blanks.
Others toss smoke and concussion grenades everywhere they please.
You better be able to find your swim buddy in the chaos as instructors shout orders through
the chaos of gunfire and explosions, because you do not want to be caught without your
swim buddy.
Then it's time to get your ass in the water, Hell Week is going to be long, cold, and extremely
sandy- and it all starts on minute one of night one.
You'll be running into the freezing cold Pacific surf and locking arms with the rest of the
students, letting the pounding Pacific waves slam into you over and over again, rapidly
dropping your internal body temperature.
You may have grown up the biggest, baddest guy on your block, maybe you can bench press
300 pounds.
Maybe you're an MMA champ- literally none of that matters to the United States Navy.
Thugs are a dime a dozen, and of no use to the professional United States military.
What interests the US Navy is men who are physically and mentally tough, and it all
starts with the ice-cold Pacific ocean washing over you at 2 in the morning.
It's only been minutes since Hell Week began, and already students are calling it quits.
The freezing waters of the Pacific leech body heat away, dropping corel temperature to dangerously
low levels.
Some of the students can't help it, each human body is different, and theirs simply can't
handle the cold and begins to shut down.
Others don't have the mental toughness to shrug off the effects of hypothermia.
Good, the United States Navy doesn't want them anyways.
Quitting is encouraged.
You're reminded of that on a nearly minute by minute basis, as instructors with bullhorns
give voice to your innermost thoughts.
It's too cold.
If you stay in this water you might die.
Wouldn't it feel better to be in a nice, warm bed right now, like the rest of the world?
There's coffee and donuts, you know.
Just over there, past a lonely silver bell.
All you have to do is walk up to it and ring it once, signifying that you're done.
Then you'll get a nice, fat, juicy donut and some piping hot coffee to enjoy in front of
your former classmates.
People are doing it even now, and you can see the steaming fog of the coffee even from
your vantage point in the surf zone, right before another ice-cold wave slams into and
over you, drowning you for just a moment.
Now that you're good and soaked, with sand washed into every crevice of your body, it's
time to get that body temperature up with some good old fashioned P.T.
Hope you like pushups, because you're going to be doing hundreds of them.
But the United States Navy isn't heartless, and it doesn't want you to get bored- so they've
given you the privilege of alternating your hundreds of pushups with hundreds of flutter
kicks.
It's the most exhausting workout of your life, but again, the Navy has you covered and gives
you plenty of breaks.
Just long enough for you to run- not jog- down into the surf, link arms, and get smashed
by freezing cold waves all over again.
If you had a watch, which you don't, you'd know that only one hour has passed since Hell
Week began, and already a tenth of your class has called it quits.
All your push ups and flutter kicks are boring the instructors, so it's time to switch it
up.
Now you're going to low crawl 200 meters on hard pavement to get to the next evolution
area, and your ass better not rise more than an inch off the ground as you move.
In combat that'll get you killed, here it'll move you straight back to the starting area
where you'll begin your low crawl all over again.
By now you've covered every square inch of your body in coarse sand, and now you're dragging
your worthless hide across hard pavement, digging that sand into your soft flesh.
That's not road burn, student, that's the American homeland giving you a loving kiss.
You can't so much as raise your head until you can physically reach out and touch an
instructor's boot, then, well, I did mention that the instructors were bored?
So it's time to entertain them.
You probably liked singing in the shower as a civilian, well, the United States Navy would
love to hear you sing, and they've provided the biggest shower in the world to be your
stage- the Pacific ocean.
That's right, it's time to hit the surf zone again, lock arms, and start belting out tunes
on request.
The instructors love the classics- America, my country 'tis of thee, and of course Anchor's
Aweigh, the Navy's own fight song- but they'll gladly accept some top 40 hits or even a few
holiday jingles.
You better know more than a few songs by heart, because you'll be singing them for the next
several hours.
Alright, you made it to dawn, congratulations.
Other special forces programs around the world will starve their recruits, in order to test
their mental toughness.
The United States Navy takes the opposite approach, and you'll not only eat often, but
you'll eat a lot- and most of it will be piping hot.
But only because the Navy has to feed you like this- you may be able to slog through
other special forces training on one protein bar every two days, but Navy SEAL training
will absolutely kill you if you don't eat hot food often.
You're burning a whopping 8,000 calories a day, and the warm food will help make sure
that your core body temperature doesn't dip so low that you die to hypothermia.
If you've made it to hell week you've definitely done log PT before, but you've never quite
done it like this.
You and several of your fellow students will be doing log PT for hours.
Give your log a name, get close to your log, get to know its likes and dislikes, its hopes
and dreams for the future.
Because you and your team are going to be doing log pt for days.
You'll carry your log.
You'll push your log.
You'll pull your log.
You'll jog with your log, and you'll take nice rest breaks holding your log close as
the Pacific ocean's freezing cold waves slam into you over and over again in the surf zone.
But the US Navy doesn't tolerate jealousy and other pettiness in its ranks, and all
that time you've spent with your log has kept you away from your inflatable rubber boat,
so you'll be spending plenty of time with it too.
You'll be carrying your boat over your head for hours on end, to the point that friction
will actually cause you to lose hair in patches on your head.
Hopefully it'll regrow, if not, well, you're not here to look pretty and win beauty contests-
you're here to help the United States Navy enforce a free and open world order on the
high seas.
It doesn't really matter where you run under the boat.
Go in the middle and the 200-300 pound boat will be constantly pressing down on you.
Go on the front or the back and instead it'll be smacking you in the head as you run, possibly
even giving you a concussion if someone on your team isn't pulling their weight.
You get exactly four hours of guaranteed sleep during all of Hell Week, because unfortunately
your mind is weak and the United States Navy has not yet figured out how to operate sailors
on an entire week with no sleep.
But don't worry, it's a weakness they're working on.
If you're smart though, you'll be catching a few blinks of shut eye literally anywhere
you can get it.
Finish an evolution before the other teams?
Your reward is a few minutes of sleep.
If the instructors are feeling egregiously generous, you might even get to rest by the
fire so you can warm up.
Even if you're not smart enough to catch sleep when you can- probably because you're from
Arkansas- your brain will try and force it on you.
It's your job to not let it do that, because the best way to repeat a training evolution
is to fall asleep in the middle of one.
By about the third day though your pathetically weak human brain will start to get a little
buggy, and it's your job to push through the hallucinations of cartoon characters rowing
the boat next to you and finish the evolution at hand.
That's right, you don't have to carry the boat all the time- that'd be silly.
Boats are meant to be on water after all, so in order to reward your progress through
Hell Week the United States Navy gives you plenty of opportunities for a nice relaxing
cruise through stormy Pacific waves.
Of course you'll be paddling the boat yourself, and you'll be paddling on absolutely zero
sleep and waves over six feet high, for miles and miles at a time.
Don't get swept out of the boat and drown though, that would be incredibly inconvenient
for the Navy.
And honestly, just plain selfish of you.
Hope you like whistles, because you're going to be hearing plenty of them throughout hell
week.
Each instructor carries a whistle, and it doesn't matter what you're doing or what you're
carrying- the moment you hear that whistle you better act.
One whistle means drop, flat on your face as if incoming rounds were on the way.
Two whistles means stop whatever you're doing and low crawl to the instructor- through sand,
mud, or hard cement.
You hear the whistle blow twice, you move, no questions asked.
And you don't stand up again until you hear the three-whistle all clear sign.
By now you haven't slept or showered in days, and even before getting to Hell Week you were
probably concerned with personal hygiene.
But the Navy's got your back, because guess what- it's time for more surf therapy.
Lock arms and lay in that surf, let Mother America hold you close with her barely-above-freezing
watery embrace.
Over and over again, for hours.
Until your teeth are clattering so hard you might actually need dental work done after
training- like many Hell Week graduates.
Or you might not even notice, after all, you've been shivering this entire time as your body
desperately tries to keep its temperature up so it doesn't die.
And make no mistake about it- this training will kill you.
That's why you get plenty of meals, most of them piping hot.
It's a matter of necessity, because in order to prove that you can join the ranks of the
most elite warriors the planet has ever seen, the Navy will put you through a week purposefully
designed to bring you to the brink of constant death by hypothermia.
It's not the strongest, or the fastest, or the best sharpshooters who make it through
Hell Week.
It's the most mentally fit, the most diehard sailors who refuse to quit even when their
body is on the verge of mechanical shut-down.
Then, and only then, can you even begin to officially start your training as a Navy Seal.
That's right, everything you've endured until now hasn't even been part of your official
training.
Hell Week actually takes place shortly after you're accepted into SEAL training.
It's all been one big test until now, with Hell Week the final exam, so the United States
Navy can see if you're even worth the incredible investment in time and resources that it'll
take to train you as a SEAL.
Even after this there'll be plenty of opportunities for you to fail.
You may have made it through Hell Week- and you should absolutely be proud of that, sailor-
but that doesn't mean you're anywhere close to getting your coveted trident pin.
You still have months of training ahead of you, along with the dreaded pool competency
test, and plenty of opportunities to get washed out of the program.
Then, even if you successfully complete all of your training, your instructors may simply
reject you at the end of training.
The SEAL community is so small that the odds of a new recruit ending up on a real-world
mission with one of their instructors are high, and no instructor will accept a candidate
they wouldn't gladly fight alongside with- even if they make it all the way to their
final day of training without washing out.
Now go watch Deadliest Day in SEAL Team 6 History, or click this other video instead!