5

Taiwanese Marines Have To Crawl Across 50 Yards Of Pointy Rocks

Nicky Loh/Reuters

Taiwan is a nation famous for its flimsy electronics, but the quality of its soldiers is pretty top-notch. A big part of that is due to the fact that Taiwanese Marine Corps trainees can graduate only after they've passed the heroically named "Road To Heaven" -- a 50-yard course of rocks and jagged coral that they must writhe across on their stomachs, which as you may have noticed is the side of the body on which the penis is located.

The China Post
"Crawling," we believe some people call this action.

Oh, but simply dragging their maligned bodies through stabby protuberances (after nine weeks of intensive training) clearly isn't hardcore enough: Along the track, they also have to stop and perform certain exercises, all while suffering the abuses of instructors trained in the art of jeering.

Nicky Loh/Reuters
Worst slip 'n' slide ever.

This track will take most of the recruits between 15 and 20 minutes ... on the first try, anyway. If the instructors aren't satisfied by the recruits' performances, they'll generously grant them another go at leopard-crawling through jagged rock until they're so battered and bleeding that the existence of any other type of heaven (or the deities ruling it) is firmly disproved in their minds.

Nicky Loh/Reuters
A young Taiwanese soldier setting a PB in the 50-meter freestyle rock swimming.

4

U.S. Marine Scout Snipers Have To Bathe In A Rancid Pond For A Month

Lance Cpl. Emmanuel Ramos

Ghillie suits are those stringy Chewbacca costumes your character wears while hurling digital bullets and devastating insults at complete strangers in Call Of Duty. Additionally, military snipers occasionally use them to blend in with their surroundings, allowing them to deal out sweet, sweet doses of freedom undetected. Now, how do you think the army procures these things? Amazon? eBay? The pelt of a mythical bird? Or do they just give the Marines a bunch of Endor outfits and tell them to jump in a big puddle of shit?

Believe it or not, that last one is pretty close to a correct answer: U.S. Marine snipers have to put on their suits and dive into the Pig Pond, a rancid pool of rotting vegetation and stagnant water. Repeatedly.

Via Discovery
"Hey. Hey, come on. Who's peeing? Jesus, people."

Sloshing around in the Pig Pond stirs up slime and mud which helps "deaden" the ghillie suits (as well as your soul) to stop them from reflecting light. Once you're sufficiently dripping with rotten slime, step two is dropping to the ground and getting some dirt all over your new duds. This part is important, because being seen with a new-looking ghillie suit is as almost as embarrassing as forgetting to take the clearance tag off of your new polo. Also, you'll be spotted by the enemy and shot, so there's that.

Via Discovery
There's always time to make muck angels.

3

U.S. Navy Recruits Have To Survive A 12-Hour Stint Aboard A (Replica) Sinking Ship

S.A. Thornbloom/Released/U.S. Navy

Most people's understanding of what happens on a sinking ship is based on James Cameron's Titanic: After improbably having sex in a car, you spit in Billy Zane's face before letting your lover drown because you need space to manspread on your floating debris.

The U.S. Navy has an even more insane view of what it's like to be on board a sinking ship, and it forces young recruits to re-create that hellish vision for an arduous 12 hours. No expenses are spared to make every element of the simulation as realistic as possible, starting with the 130,000 gallons of water that surround the fake vessel. Bass speakers buffet the ship, but this isn't a cruise dance-floor simulator -- they're ramped up so high that they jolt the crew, to simulate being struck with missiles. In debriefings, a mock CNN news program is set up to follow the "emergency" situation created for the recruits.

Popular Mechanics
This one really was an inside job.

2

Jordan Has A Massive City For Special Forces Training

Via Kasotc.com

1

The Belarus Red Berets Run The Assault Course From Hell

Via Russia-insider.com

To become a Red Beret in the Eastern European nation of Belarus, you have to complete an obstacle course that looks like what would happen if the ghost of General Patton directed an American Gladiators reboot with a budget of $200 and a demagnetized moral compass. Oh, sure, there are tires, balance beams, and climbing walls, like you'd expect from your granddaddy's obstacle course, but everything has a slight twist to make it more badass:

Via Russia-insider.com
What, you never played Jump The Burning Tire in school?

The camaraderie of the army is already on display for the eager young recruits attempting the course, as current Red Berets are on hand to swing tires at their potential companions in attempt to knock them off balance beams.

Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters via nationalpost.com
Pictured: Teamwork.

The current Berets are also in charge of spraying gas into holes and tunnels the new recruits are forced to navigate with masks on, as well as the essential duty of liberally firing machine guns all over the training grounds, just in case any newbies get the idea to try to relax for longer than three seconds at any given moment. In between all this team-building, potential recruits are running, climbing, crawling, and cultivating a pure, molten hatred for the soldiers they'll be serving with in the future.

Via Russia-insider.com
"Dance for me, private."

Out of more than 150 recruits who attempted the course in 2012, only 17 passed it. That's a pretty bad graduation rate for any class, but to be fair, the article doesn't specify whether the other 133 recruits actually failed the obstacles or if they were just killed in the attempt.

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