Hell Week

Safety is always adhered to.  Medical personnel are on hand during all evolutions to take care of emergencies and monitor the exhausted trainees.  Throughout Hell Week, Instructors with bull-horns entice trainees to quit, mimicking the inner voice that tells you to give in to your physical pain.  The Instructors make it easy, even honorable, for students to come out of the cold: simply ring the bell that signals defeat, and enjoy doughnuts and coffee in front of your suffering former classmates.  Because the SEAL community is so small, the Instructors know that they will likely serve in future combat operations with those trainees who pass.  Therefore they rigorously test and critically assess which trainees have the SEAL Ethos, physical ability and character to save their and other teammates’ lives.

SEAL candidates commonly have the mistaken belief that Hell Week and BUD/S are all about physical strength.  Actually, it’s as much mental as it is physical.  Trainees just decide that they are too cold, too sandy, too sore or too tired to go on.  It’s their minds that give up on them, not their bodies.  While Instructors could get anyone to quit if they wanted to, that’s not what they’re after.  They apply great physical and mental stress, sow the seeds of doubt, and give tempting invitations for trainees to quit.  It’s up to the individual student to either turn it into increased resolve, or decide on his own to quit.  The majority of the students who make it through Hell Week go on to graduate BUD/S and become SEALs.  Having survived that severe trial, they feel literally unstoppable -- that they can do anything.  They have earned a place as one of the elite Navy SEALs the United States sends to do the “impossible” during times of war.

Click here to read the Hell Week chapter from the Jeff Kraus' book "You Want Me To Do What?"