It's yet another matchup for the ages, the US's premier special operations force versus
the infamous nighttime stalker and dream killer in the fashionably retro sweater and fedora,
Freddy Krueger.
When Freddy comes looking to score some night time kills on innocent Americans, it's the
US's SEALs coming to the rescue- but who would actually win a showdown between one of the
greatest horror villains of all time, and a squad of the finest fighting men to ever
walk the earth?
In our blue corner is a squad of Navy SEAL operators, arguably the best special forces
in the world.
Whether it's fighting terrorists in Afghanistan or taking on aliens in space, when you've
got a big baddy in either real life or fiction, seals are usually who you're thinking of to
come to the rescue.
Real seals are divided up between eight teams, with each team comprising six platoons of
16 seals each.
This makes seals one of the largest special operations forces in the world, seeing rapid
expansion during the cold war when they were expected to take on some of the toughest,
and most critical missions against Soviet bloc assets.
If World War III had kicked off during the icy decades of the Cold War, you can bet that
some of the first attacks would have been carried out by American seals against extremely
high value and sensitive Soviet targets.
On the individual level, seals are amongst the best trained soldiers in the world, and
much like their British SAS counterparts, are taught to be able to utilize any firearm
they may encounter on any battlefield.
This ensures that even when their own rifle is lost or no longer useful, a seal can carry
on the fight using the enemy's own weapons if need be.
Exactly what equipment a seal will carry into battle depends on the battle to be fought
though, with even the specific rifle to be used coming down to what the mission is, and
where it is taking place.
SEAL snipers for example could have up to 8 different rifles to be used in different
conditions, battlefields, and mission types.
For instance, SEALs involved in an operation to secure a target inside of an apartment
building will likely be equipped with shorter barrel weapons to aid them in such close quarters,
and favor a .45 caliber round with more stopping power at shorter ranges over a traditional
5.56 round with greater accuracy at longer ranges.
Mission dictates equipment for a seal, in effect making them battlefield specialists,
akin to a surgeon on an operation table.
Only the prescription is death.
Seals also have access to the world's largest black operations budget, which means that
they get all the best and coolest toys.
These toys include cutting edge thermal vision goggles capable of penetrating very thin walls,
radio frequency identifiers to track down an enemy's radio signals, and drones of all
kinds.
Miniature drones the size of insects can be used to identify enemies inside of complex
urban structures, while larger drones can be dispatched from vehicles or even launched
by soldiers themselves to monitor an area from above.
Air Force Predator drones can also provide complete 'eye in the sky' situational awareness,
beaming down infrared, night vision, or color picture images on demand to operators on the
ground.
As masters of improvised warfare though, an unarmed seal is not a defeated seal, and even
without weapons or fancy equipment, seals can make life a living hell for the enemy.
Every seal is a trained demolitionist, and capable of constructing IEDs with commonly
available materials on either a battlefield or a home.
Expert hand to hand fighters, seals are also trained in various martial arts, with techniques
designed to either kill or incapacitate.
In fact after the war in Iraq and Afghanistan began, US military martial arts programs had
to be redesigned as they simply presented too few non-lethal options for subduing a
foe.
With the world's strongest military at their backs and plenty of high end weaponry and
fancy gadgets, seals are a force to be reckoned with, but how could they cope with the original
dream killer himself?
Freddy needs no introduction, he's been haunting our nightmares since the 1980s when he made
the leap from Wes Craven's fertile imagination to the big screen.
Since then he's been slashing teenagers and nosey step dads alike, but also taking on
other big screen horror villains like Jason.
Freddy's survived them all though, probably because he can't ever truly die.
Instead, Freddy is often temporarily defeated, and must carefully work to cultivate nightmares
in people so he can feed off their fears and return to stalk more victims in the world
of the living.
Freddy's primary armament is his infamous glove stuffed full of razor blades.
An impractical weapon in the hands of anyone but a supernatural dream stalker, Freddy is
strong enough to push those razor sharp blades through a few inches of plywood, and given
enough time could even slash his way through a regular home doorway.
This clearly shows Freddy doesn't have superhuman strength, but he is stronger than the average
human, averaging out somewhere around peak human physical fitness, but not truly surpassing
it.
Freddy's greatest power however comes from his ability to seamlessly transition between
the real world and the dream world, making him an extremely elusive adversary.
Just when you think you've got Freddy cornered, he can leap through a mirror or otherwise
disappear from reality, and escape to the dream world where he can plot his revenge.
However, as incredible an ability this is, there's one serious catch in Freddy's supernatural
powers: they don't work very well if nobody is afraid of him.
Like many evil supernatural beings, Freddy is fueled by fear- the more of it his victim
experiences, the stronger he becomes.
Unlike other supernatural villains though, other people's fear of him can power him to
hurt other people who themselves aren't afraid of him.
In The Dream Master we see this happen when Debbie tells Freddy she isn't afraid of him,
and while it's true that she isn't, others have already powered Freddy up, giving him
the power he needs to kill Debbie.
But if an individual is specially fearless enough, Freddy is completely powerless against
them.
These individuals even have the power to banish Freddy back to a special part of the dream
world where he can't hurt people anymore- until he can slowly cultivate fear through
dreams again in others.
Unfortunately for Freddy, he's going up against some of the most fearless men in the world.
Nobody is ever truly fearless, unless they have some sort of brain damage or a severe
psychopathic disorder.
Navy seals may be brave, but they're certainly not fearless as any of them will admit.
However, seals train themselves to not just suppress their fears, but to actually thrive
in the throes of that fear, and have developed techniques to do so.
One of the most prominent techniques for overcoming fear that seals utilize is pre-visualization.
In this fear training, an individual will move themselves to a quiet place and meditate
silently to themselves on every possible thing that could go wrong in any given scenario.
By rehearsing their own reactions and realistically visualizing every disaster that could befall
a seal in combat, they are less affected when the worst comes to pass.
With enough pre-visualization practice, a seal will already have simulated a disaster
so many times that they have in effect conditioned themselves to the fear response, greatly lowering
its effect.
Another extremely effective technique for combating fear used by seals is fear conditioning,
or as it's known in the psychological community: exposure therapy.
By gradually exposing themselves to things that are terrifying, people can better work
to suppress their fear of those things.
But obviously a seal can't practice exposure therapy with freddy, or they'll be dead in
their first encounter.
However, with some of the most difficult and dangerous training and missions in the world,
veteran seals will have experienced so many terrifying things that as a fringe benefit,
their fear of new terrifying experiences is dramatically reduced.
Seals may be helpless to physically defeat Freddy, after all we're talking about a dream
killer who can be blown up, torn apart, have his head cut off, and even drowned and still
come back minutes later for round 2.
Freddy is in effect immortal, and thus even superior seal firepower is going to do little
to stop Freddy.
However, with zen-like mastery of their fear response, a veteran team of seals will provide
very little psychic energy for Freddy to feed off and fuel his powers with.
The normally fearsome freddy with his gauntlet stuffed full of foot long razor claws, will
be as helpless as a mewling declawed kitten if he can't get enough fear juice to do anything
to physically harm our seals.
And since most of his power comes from his supernatural abilities, and freddy is really
no stronger than a peak physically fit human, we really doubt that a fear-less Freddy is
going to want to go toe-to-to with eight highly trained martial artist Seals.
We're giving this win to the seals, but while they won this fight, Freddy can never be truly
defeated.
And with his penchant for vengeance, we hope that our seal's descendants grow up to be
just as fearless as their fathers, because Freddy always comes back eventually.
Now go check out you versus a xenomorph to see how you would match up against a space
monster, or click this other video instead!