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A Marine Sniper Explains the Charlie Kirk Murder with Science: Do NOT Believe Social Media or Candace Owens. July 11, 2026

Posted by Chris Mark in Uncategorized.
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Introduction

This is a long post but I think it is important. Recently I came across what I can only describe is an offensive AI ‘explanation’ by Candace Owen’ group that attempted to refute that Charlie Kirk was killed by a rifle round. More disturbingly, the ‘video’ is a mocking explanation of ‘conspiracy theorists’ who know what happened. The video was wrong at nearly every turn and was, quite frankly, offensively incorrect. Unfortunately, reading numerous comments on her page, a number of social media members believe and bought into her commentary. I want to refute her and explain with very direct math and science why it is 100% how Charlie Kirk was killed. Who am I to comment on this? I am a former Marine Corps Scout/Sniper, and Urban Sniper with combat time as a Sniper in the USMC. I was also a Force Reconnaissance Marine, and I have not only shot tens of thousands of rounds through rifles and am an avid hunter, but I also write extensively on firearm technology. In fact, I was selected for a DARPA counter sniper project during my time in the military due to my knowledge of ballistics and shooting.

Every time a high-profile shooting makes national news, social media fills with confident proclamations from people who have never fired a weapon in anger, never studied wound ballistics, and whose entire frame of reference comes from action movies and video games. The commentary ranges from the merely ignorant to the dangerously misleading (as in Ms. Owen’s) — and in some cases it is being amplified by public figures with large platforms who should know better. Recently, I was on a popular political commentator’s website and was amazed at how many people are now, suddenly, ballistics experts. Some of their comments were staggeringly ignorant. One person actually justified her very incorrect statement by saying she was the “ex-girlfriend of a hunter.” That is not a ballistics credential.

This post is not political. It is a ballistics education to provide insight into a terrible murder that is being overshadowed by a person’s pursuit of clicks, and money. That being said — for every so-called “ballistics expert” on social media who is doubting that Charlie Kirk was actually killed by that rifle at that distance, you need to read this post and understand a bit about how terminal ballistics actually works.

On September 10, 2025, at 12:23 PM local time, a single shot was fired from the roof of the Losee Center at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. The shooter was positioned approximately 142 yards from where Charlie Kirk was speaking. The weapon recovered was a Mauser-type bolt-action hunting rifle chambered in .30-06, loaded with (what appeared to be) Sierra GameKing 180-grain soft point ammunition. For consistency and we will simply say a non-bonded soft point bullet. Kirk was struck in the neck by a single bullet and was pronounced dead at Timpanogos Regional Hospital a short time later.

Within 5 minutes of the shooting my phone was blowing up with people asking what happened. My response: “Watching the impact, he was hit hard by a .30 cal. From an incline, close range. He was smacked so hard it looked like a .30-06”. Then, the hard question. Do you think he will live? My response? “No chance. His brain was dead nearly immediately and that was not a survivable wound. People asked why I thought that? Easy. He showed Decorticate posturing immediately upon being hit. Decorticate posturing is when arms flex inward, hands curl in. Indicates cortical or upper brain stem disruption. This is classic with hydro static shock impacting the brain (to be explained later). Classic high powered rifle shot that impacted the brain or nervous system.

People are claiming the distance is too far, the rifle was not ‘zeroed’ etc. etc. etc.. Many claimed that the wound characteristics don’t add up. That the bullet behavior was inconsistent with the stated circumstances. Every one of those claims reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of projectile physics, atmospheric ballistics, and terminal wound mechanics. This post addresses them directly, with math and science. What I am seeing circulate on social media right now needs to be corrected with facts, not speculation. A hunter is not a ballistics professional nor a professional at shooting humans.

The Core Problem: Action Movie Physics

The most persistent myth in public ballistic discourse is that powerful rifle rounds produce cinematic results — bodies flying backward, heads exploding, dramatic visible destruction. Phrases like “a .30-06 would have taken his head off” reveal an understanding of terminal ballistics formed entirely by Hollywood special effects departments, not physics. Most people, when shot, react like Charlie Kirk. The expression I used to use to describe it is an old expression. When hit with a high powered rifle round (we can debate the high powered all day but that is for snipers etc. to debate) they drop as if ‘Pole Axed’. No drama, no flying backwards, no screaming. Simply dropped where they stand.

Here is the reality.

The human body is not a watermelon. It is not a Hollywood prop filled with explosive charges. It is a complex biological system composed of tissue with significant elasticity, fluid-dense cavities, and structures that respond to ballistic insult in ways that are well-documented, predictable, and frequently counterintuitive to the layperson.

While certain calibers and bullet designs can certainly have a devastating effect, a .30-06 rifle round fired into the neck will not “take heads off.” What it does is far more complex, far more dependent on specific variables, and far more lethal in ways that are invisible to someone whose education comes from cinema or bad AI as in Ms. Owen’s video.. The Charlie Kirk shooting is a precise demonstration of this — and the terminal ballistics are entirely consistent with a 180-grain non bonded, soft point .30-06 at 142 yards under the specific atmospheric conditions present at UVU on September 10, 2025. Every element of what occurred follows directly from established physics.

The Environmental Conditions: Why They Matter

Before we discuss what the bullet did upon impact, we need to establish what happened to that bullet during its 142-yard flight — because the atmospheric conditions at UVU on the day of the shooting are directly relevant to the ballistic analysis, and they completely undercut the conspiracy claim that the distance was “too far”, or the bullet “reacted the wrong way”.

UVU Elevation

Utah Valley University sits in Orem, Utah, at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains at an elevation of approximately 4,750-4,800 feet above sea level. This is not sea level. This is high desert, nearly a mile above the reference point used in standard ballistics tables. This matters because air density decreases with altitude. At 4,750 feet, the air is approximately 83-85% as dense as air at sea level. Less dense air means less aerodynamic drag on the bullet. Less drag means the bullet retains its velocity more efficiently over distance than the same bullet fired at sea level would. In simple terms: at 4,750 feet, the .30-06 bullet arrived at Kirk’s position carrying more velocity than a sea-level calculation would predict, not less.

Weather on September 10, 2025

Historical weather data for Orem on September 10, 2025 shows the following conditions at midday:

  • Temperature: approximately 82-85°F (trending toward the day’s high of 89°F)
  • Barometric pressure: 30.0 inches of mercury — essentially standard
  • Humidity: 26%
  • Wind: 6 mph SSE
  • Precipitation: none

Warm air is less dense than cold air. At 83°F on a dry Utah September afternoon, air density is further reduced beyond what altitude alone accounts for. The combination of high altitude and warm temperature created conditions where aerodynamic drag on the bullet was significantly lower than a sea-level, standard-temperature baseline. The barometric pressure of 30.0 inches Hg is effectively standard, contributing no significant deviation from the altitude-corrected calculation.

The Net Ballistic Effect

Our sea-level baseline calculation for a 180-grain non bonded, soft nosed bullet with a G1BC of .501 launched at 2,750 fps yielded approximately 2,600-2,620 fps at 134-142 yards. Correcting for the actual atmospheric conditions at UVU on September 10, 2025 — 4,750 feet elevation, 83°F, low humidity — the bullet almost certainly arrived at Kirk’s position traveling approximately 2,640-2,660 fps. The bullet arrived faster than baseline. The environmental conditions at UVU on that specific day pushed the bullet even more firmly into its fragmentation velocity zone than a sea-level shot would have.

Anyone arguing that the altitude or atmospheric conditions somehow undermined the lethality of this shot has the physics exactly backwards. Thin air at 4,750 feet on a warm afternoon helps the bullet. The round arrived hotter, hit harder, and fragmented more aggressively than it would have at sea level on a cool day.

Understanding Terminal Ballistics: The Fundamentals

With the atmospheric picture established, we can now address what happened when that bullet — traveling at approximately 2,640-2,660 fps — struck Kirk’s neck.

Kinetic Energy: Understanding What a Bullet Actually Carries

When a bullet hits a target, the damage it causes is directly related to how much kinetic energy — the energy of motion — it is carrying at the moment of impact. Physicists and ballistics engineers calculate this using a standard formula, but you do not need to understand the math to grasp the critical concept.

The formula is:

KE = (mv²) / 450,437

Where m is the bullet’s weight in grains (the standard unit used in American ammunition), v is the bullet’s speed in feet per second, and the result is expressed in foot-pounds — a standard unit of energy. The constant 450,437 in the denominator is not a magic number — it is a unit conversion factor that accounts for the difference between the way Americans measure bullet weight (grains) and the way physicists measure mass, combined with a gravitational correction required by the imperial measurement system. It exists purely to make the units work out correctly in the formula. The most important thing to understand about this formula is not the math — it is what the math tells us about velocity.

Velocity is squared in this equation. That single fact changes everything.

When you square a number, small increases produce large results. A bullet traveling just 10% faster does not deliver 10% more energy — it delivers approximately 21% more energy. A bullet traveling 40% faster delivers nearly double the energy. This means that speed matters far more than weight when it comes to how much energy a bullet delivers to a target. This is why high-velocity rifle cartridges are so dramatically more lethal than pistol cartridges, even when the pistol fires a heavier bullet. This also explains why bullet technology has advanced so far.

To put this in concrete terms: the 180-grain .30-06 bullet used in the Kirk shooting leaves the muzzle at approximately 2,750 fps and carries roughly 3,022 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle. (I own a Mauser K98 and it appeared that the rifle had a 24 in barrel). By comparison, a typical 9mm pistol round carries approximately 350-400 foot-pounds — less than one-seventh the energy of the rifle round.

At 142 yards under the atmospheric conditions present at UVU on September 10, 2025, that bullet arrived at approximately 2,640-2,660 fps, carrying roughly 2,790-2,830 foot-pounds of energy at impact — slightly more than our sea-level calculation of 2,707 foot-pounds, due to the reduced air density at 4,750 feet elevation. While this seems relatively insignificant it is actually rather significant. That is an extraordinary amount of energy to deposit into the neck at that distance. The people claiming 142 yards was “too far” or that the round “wouldn’t have been lethal” at that range, or more disturbingly, claiming he was not shot because the bullet “did not exit: are simply wrong. The atmospheric physics do not support that claim. They contradict it. Those claiming that the round would have ‘exited the neck’ simply do not understand terminal ballistics.

To put the energy into perspective imagine a full-size pickup truck rolling at parking lot speed — about 5 mph — and the entire kinetic energy of that vehicle focused through a hole the diameter of your little finger. That is approximately what 2,800 foot-pounds represents concentrated into a .308 inch projectile (.30 cal).

The Temporary Wound Cavity

When a high-velocity projectile enters tissue, it does not simply punch a hole equal to its diameter. The bullet displaces tissue radially as it passes, creating a temporary wound cavity that can be many times larger than the projectile itself. This cavity expands and then collapses, because tissue is elastic — not rigid. Typically, the temporary wound cavity for a high powered rifle is 30 times the diameter of the bullet. This causes a negative pressure at the point of impact and massive tissue damage. The permanent wound cavity can be as wide as 10x that of the bullet. This is the first place Hollywood gets it wrong. The dramatic visible destruction people expect from a rifle round is largely invisible because the tissue rebounds. The permanent wound channel — what remains after the temporary cavity collapses — is the measurable injury. The bullet pulps tissue, and bone well beyond the wound channel due to hydrostatic shock. The temporary cavity is what drives hydrostatic shock, which we will address in detail below.

Bullet Construction: The Variable Nobody Talks About

Not all bullets are created equal, and bullet construction is perhaps the most critical variable in terminal performance — yet it is almost never discussed in social media ballistic commentary. In the Kirk shooting, the specific bullet — a non bonded, 180-grain soft point — matters enormously to understanding the wound characteristics. Companies spend huge amounts of money on bullet design. Hunters don’t want game to run away after being shot. It is neither ethical nor sporting. There are numerous different bullets but the following 5 are general categories.

Full Metal Jacket (FMJ): A lead core enclosed in a harder metal jacket. Designed to resist deformation. Passes through tissue with relatively limited energy transfer. The military uses FMJ due to Hague Convention requirements. This is NOT what was used in the Kirk shooting. Primarily used for target shooting and military.

Cup-and-Core Softpoint (Non-Bonded): A lead core with an exposed lead tip and a partial jacket. The exposed lead initiates expansion on impact, driving the jacket open and increasing the bullet’s diameter. These bullets are designed to expand — but they have a critical vulnerability: at very high impact velocities, they can expand so rapidly and violently that the jacket separates from the core entirely, causing fragmentation. The bullet used in the Kirk shooting is exactly this type of bullet.

Bonded Bullets: Premium hunting bullets where the jacket is chemically or mechanically bonded to the core, preventing separation across a wide velocity range. Federal Trophy Bonded, Nosler Partition, Swift A-Frame — these are engineered to perform reliably from close-range high-velocity impacts to long-range reduced-velocity impacts. The GameKing is NOT a bonded bullet. High end bonded bullets are significantly more expensive than non bonded.

All-Copper Bullets: Barnes TSX and similar designs use a single piece of copper alloy, eliminating jacket-core separation entirely. They have the widest reliable velocity window of any expanding design.

The Velocity Window Problem

This is the concept that most directly contradicts the “more powerful = more dramatic” assumption driving social media commentary about the Kirk shooting. Every expanding bullet design has an optimal velocity window — a range of impact velocities within which it performs as designed. Below the floor of that window, the bullet fails to expand reliably. Above the ceiling of that window, the bullet expands so aggressively that it fragments before achieving adequate tissue penetration.

For most cup-and-core non-bonded softpoint designs — including the one that killed Charlie Kirt — that ceiling is approximately 2,700-2,900 fps at impact. Within or above that velocity, you are not getting a more dramatic wound channel. You are getting a bullet that destroys itself in the first inch or two of tissue, trading penetration depth for a shallow but enormously energetic near-entry fragmentation event.

The 180-grain bullet fired in the Kirk shooting — launched at 2,750 fps muzzle velocity — arrived at 142 yards under UVU’s atmospheric conditions traveling approximately 2,640-2,660 fps. The bullet that hit Charlie Kirt has an estimated G1 ballistic coefficient of approximately 0.501, which means it retains velocity relatively efficiently — and at 4,750 feet elevation on a warm afternoon, it retained even more velocity than sea-level tables would suggest.

At 2,640-2,660 fps impact velocity, this bullet is operating at or near its fragmentation threshold. It will expand rapidly and aggressively. It will likely shed its jacket from its lead core. It will dump the majority of its approximately 2,800 foot-pounds of kinetic energy in a very short penetration window inside the neck tissue. This is why the bullet from the Kirk shooting did not exit the body. This is not anomalous. This is not evidence of a conspiracy. This is exactly what the physics predicts could happen for a non-bonded cup-and-core soft point operating at or above its design velocity envelope, hitting fluid-dense neck tissue at 142 yards from a rifle fired at 4,750 feet elevation on a warm afternoon. Could it have penetrated all the way? Yes, but, again, it was at the limit of the optimum velocity window.

Hydrostatic Shock: The Invisible Killer

This mechanism most directly explains the wound profile in the Kirk shooting — specifically, how catastrophic spinal involvement can occur from a projectile that struck laterally through neck tissue without necessarily contacting the vertebral column directly.

What Is Hydrostatic Shock?

When a high-velocity projectile impacts fluid-dense tissue, it generates a pressure wave that travels through the surrounding medium at the speed of sound in that medium — approximately 1,520 meters per second (~5,000 fps) in tissue-equivalent material. This pressure wave is independent of the bullet’s velocity and travels ahead of and lateral to the projectile’s path, reaching structures the bullet never directly contacts.

A critical but frequently overlooked prerequisite for hydrostatic shock is this: the projectile must be supersonic at the moment of impact. The speed of sound at 4,750 feet elevation on a warm September afternoon in Orem is approximately 1,110 fps. The GameKing arrived at Kirk’s position traveling approximately 2,650 fps — more than twice the speed of sound at that altitude. This matters because hydrostatic shock is not simply a pressure wave phenomenon — it is specifically a supersonic shockwave phenomenon. When a projectile travels through fluid-dense tissue at supersonic velocity, it outruns the pressure disturbance it creates, compressing tissue ahead of it before that tissue has any mechanical time to respond. The result is a shockwave — not merely a pressure wave — propagating outward through surrounding tissue at 1,520 meters per second (~5,000fps), reaching structures the bullet never contacts. Below supersonic velocity, this mechanism is dramatically reduced or absent entirely. This is precisely why a subsonic pistol round — regardless of caliber or bullet weight — does not generate meaningful hydrostatic shock, while a supersonic rifle round at 2,650 fps does. The Kirk shooting involved a projectile traveling at more than twice the speed of sound at the point of impact. The hydrostatic shock mechanism was fully engaged.

This is not a theory. It is documented in the wound ballistics literature, most prominently in the work of Martin Fackler, the Army’s leading wound ballistics researcher, whose studies on terminal tissue interaction remain foundational to the field. It is also addressed in Duncan MacPherson’s Bullet Penetration (1994), one of the most rigorous civilian ballistics texts ever published.

Calculating the Pressure Wave

Using standardized 10% ordnance gelatin — the FBI-standard tissue simulant calibrated to approximately 1,070 kg/m³ — we can calculate the pressure wave generated by the Kirk shooting’s .30-06 round at approximately 2,650 fps (808 m/s) impact velocity, corrected for UVU’s atmospheric conditions, using the acoustic pressure formula:

P = ρ × c × v

Where: – ρ = medium density (1,070 kg/m³) – c = speed of sound in medium (1,520 m/s) – v = particle velocity imparted to medium. This yields a peak theoretical pressure at the impact interface of approximately 1,313 MPa — roughly 190,400 PSI.. Note that this figure is slightly higher than the sea-level calculation of 186,800 PSI, because the bullet arrived at UVU with greater retained velocity due to the reduced air density at 4,750 feet elevation.

For context: the fracture threshold of human cervical vertebrae is approximately 3,000-5,000 PSI.

To put 190,400 PSI in perspective — an industrial water jet cutter, capable of slicing through six inches of solid steel, operates at approximately 60,000 PSI. The hydrostatic pressure wave propagating through Kirk’s neck tissue at nearly 5,000 feet per second was running at three times that pressure — directed at a cervical spine with a fracture threshold of 3,000 to 5,000 PSI.

The hydrostatic pressure wave generated by the Kirk shooting’s .30-06 180-grain projectile — corrected for actual atmospheric conditions — is approximately 38 to 63 times the force required to fracture the cervical spine, transmitted instantaneously through fluid-dense neck tissue before the bullet has even completed its wound channel. The reason the estimate is so broad is when talking about fragmenting bullets the calculations become exceedingly complex. That being said, even at the low end of 38 times, the force was well above what is needed to fracture a neck and cause hydrostatic devastation to the brain stem.

The Speed of the Pressure Wave

One of the most important and counterintuitive aspects of hydrostatic shock is this: the pressure wave travels faster than the bullet. The bullet at approximately 808 m/s is moving slower than the pressure wave it generates in tissue (1,520 m/s). The shock wave outruns the projectile. This means the cervical spine was experiencing peak hydraulic pressure while the bullet was still in the first inch or two of tissue penetration. Spinal involvement from hydrostatic shock precedes direct projectile contact — which is why catastrophic neurological injury can occur from a projectile that passed laterally through neck tissue without directly striking the vertebral column.

In the Kirk shooting, this is the mechanism that explains the immediate neurological result. The bullet did not need to directly strike the spine. The pressure wave arrived first, at forces approximately 38 to 63 times the fracture threshold. His neck was shattered NOT by the bullet but by the pressure wave created by hydro static shock from the supersonic bullet.

The Velocity Relationship

Hydrostatic shock magnitude scales with bullet velocity — but not linearly. Because kinetic energy scales with velocity squared, pressure wave amplitude increases aggressively with velocity. Research suggests hydrostatic shock becomes a significant independent wounding mechanism above approximately 2,000 fps impact velocity. At approximately 2,650 fps — the estimated impact velocity of the Kirk round at 142 yards corrected for UVU’s altitude and temperature — you are 650 fps above that threshold.

Again: the atmospheric conditions at UVU on September 10, 2025 made this mechanism more powerful, not less.

The Bullet as an Unintentional Frangible

This section brings together everything above into the specific terminal ballistics sequence of the Charlie Kirk shooting.

The bullet used appeared to be a BTSP (Boat Tail Soft Point) is an excellent hunting bullet designed for accuracy and controlled expansion at moderate hunting velocities. It was not designed for the velocity it was carrying at 142 yards under UVU’s atmospheric conditions. At approximately 2,650 fps impact velocity — elevated above sea-level predictions by the thin, warm air at 4,750 feet — it was operating above its design envelope. And it behaved accordingly.

Here is what happened, step by step, when the bullet struck Kirk’s neck on September 10, 2025:

Step 1 — Impact initiation: The exposed lead meplat — the soft lead tip of the non bonded hunting bullet — contacts neck tissue and begins hydraulic expansion immediately upon entry. At 2,650 fps, this process is violent and nearly instantaneous.

Step 2 — Pressure wave generation: A hydrostatic shock wave propagates outward through the fluid-dense neck tissue at 1,520 m/s — traveling nearly twice as fast as the bullet itself, reaching the cervical spine before the bullet does. This pressure wave is carrying approximately 190,400 PSI of force — roughly 38 to 63 times the cervical fracture threshold.

Step 3 — Aggressive expansion: The cup-and-core construction expands rapidly and violently at this velocity. The jacket begins to separate from the lead core.

Step 4 — Fragmentation: The bullet separates into jacket fragments and a deformed lead core, continuing on slightly divergent paths, each depositing energy into tissue. These are called secondary projectiles and this is the behavior of an unintentional frangible bullet — not by design, but by virtue of operating above its velocity ceiling. This explains why there was a bullet fragment close to Charlie Kirk’s heart.

Step 5 — Total energy dump: The fragmenting bullet and its components come to rest inside the neck. There is no exit wound because approximately 2,800 foot-pounds of kinetic energy — elevated above baseline by UVU’s atmospheric conditions — has been deposited entirely into tissue. None exits with the projectile because the projectile did not exit.

Step 6 — Hydrostatic spinal involvement: The pressure wave, which arrived ahead of the bullet at 38 to 63 times the cervical fracture threshold, has already transmitted catastrophic hydraulic force to the vertebral structures — structures the bullet fragments may never have directly contacted.

The absence of an exit wound in the Kirk shooting is not anomalous. It is not evidence of staging or conspiracy. It is the expected, predictable, physics-consistent result of a fragmenting non-bonded soft point depositing all of its energy within fluid-dense neck tissue, at a velocity elevated above sea-level predictions by 4,750 feet of altitude and a warm September afternoon. A through-and-through exit wound would actually indicate less energy transfer, not more. Again, if the shot was replicated 100 times would there be numerous bullets that exited? Sure. In this case, it did not but it was not unexpected.

The MLK Parallel: Documented Historical Precedent

The terminal ballistics of the Charlie Kirk shooting are not unprecedented. They have a direct, documented, forensically verified historical parallel.

James Earl Ray shot Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, using a Remington Model 760 Gamemaster chambered in .30-06, loaded with Remington CoreLokt 180-grain soft point ammunition. The CoreLokt is, like the bullet that killed Charlie Kirk is a cup-and-core non-bonded expanding soft point design. The shot struck Dr. King in the jaw and neck area at a distance of approximately 200 feet — roughly 65 yards. At that closer range, impact velocity was even higher than in the Kirk shooting at 142 yards, placing the CoreLokt even more firmly in the fragmentation velocity zone. The projectile severed Dr. King’s spinal cord, producing immediate neurological collapse and death.

Same caliber. Same bullet class. Same anatomical target zone. Same catastrophic neurological mechanism. Documented, investigated, and confirmed by forensic analysis over decades. This is not coincidence. This is ballistic physics operating exactly as the science predicts — in 1968 and again at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.

Why “It Should Have Done More Damage” Is Always Wrong

The social media commentary about the Kirk shooting consistently makes one particular error: assuming that a more powerful cartridge would produce more visible external damage, and therefore that the absence of dramatic visible destruction means something suspicious occurred.

This has the physics exactly backwards.

A bullet that exits the target has transferred only a fraction of its energy to tissue. The energy remaining in the bullet as it exits is energy that did not do biological work. An exit wound is not evidence of greater lethality — in many scenarios it is evidence of less efficient energy transfer.

A fragmenting bullet that remains in the target — like the bullet in the Kirk shooting — has transferred 100% of its kinetic energy to tissue. The biological work done — temporary cavity formation, hydrostatic shock wave propagation at 190,400 PSI, direct tissue destruction, cervical pressure loading at 38 to 63 times fracture threshold — is maximized. The external appearance is less dramatic than Hollywood suggests. The internal injury profile is catastrophic. The people claiming the Kirk shooting “should have” produced more dramatic visible results have the physics exactly backwards and, quite frankly, don’t understand terminal ballistics.

Bullet Anatomy: A Brief Reference

For readers unfamiliar with terminology referenced in this analysis:

Meplat: The diameter of the flat or open area at the very tip of the bullet. On a non bonded soft point, this is the exposed lead tip diameter. Meplat width affects initial pressure wave generation on impact — a wider meplat displaces more medium simultaneously, initiating expansion more aggressively. At 2,650 fps impact velocity, even the non bonded bullet’s relatively modest meplat initiates catastrophic hydraulic expansion almost instantaneously.

Ogive: The curved forward section of the bullet from the bearing surface to the tip. The bullet used in the Kirk murder (based upon pictures) uses a boat tail configuration with a secant-style ogive optimized for long-range ballistic efficiency — which is precisely why it retained so much velocity at 142 yards, and why altitude-corrected velocity at UVU was higher than sea-level tables would suggest.

Bearing Surface: The cylindrical section of the bullet that contacts the rifling. Length affects stability and chamber pressure.

Ballistic Coefficient (BC): A measure of the bullet’s ability to overcome air resistance. Higher BC = less velocity loss over distance. Common non bonded game bullets such as the GameKing 180gr has a G1 BC of approximately 0.501 — a relatively high figure. Combined with the reduced air density at 4,750 feet elevation, this high BC meant the bullet retained exceptional velocity all the way to 142 yards.

The M855 Lesson: Velocity Thresholds Matter

The United States military learned the velocity threshold lesson in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan with the M855 (SS109) 62-grain steel-penetrator round. The M855 was not designed as a wounding round. It was designed to defeat light cover and steel helmets. However, terminal ballistics testing revealed that above approximately 2,500 fps impact velocity, the bullet yaws after approximately 4-6 inches of tissue penetration, reaching approximately 90 degrees of yaw before the steel penetrator and lead core separate — creating a dramatically effective wound profile.

Below 2,500 fps — at longer ranges, or from shorter M4 carbine barrels — the bullet failed to yaw and fragment reliably. It tumbled and produced a relatively clean wound channel. The same projectile, at different velocities, produced dramatically different terminal performance.

This is the velocity threshold principle in military application. The same principle applies to every expanding and fragmenting civilian projectile design — including the bullet used in the Kirk shooting. Velocity is everything. Distance modifies velocity. Altitude modifies distance’s effect on velocity. At 142 yards, at 4,750 feet elevation, on a warm afternoon in Orem, Utah, the non bonded game bullet was not below its fragmentation threshold. It was above it. The atmospheric conditions at UVU ensured it.

Conclusion: What You Should Take From This

Terminal ballistics is a technical discipline with a substantial scientific literature. It is not a subject that lends itself to confident social media proclamations from people whose frame of reference is cinematic — or from commentators with large platforms who are willing to amplify misinformation to millions of followers. The Charlie Kirk shooting, analyzed through the lens of established terminal ballistics and corrected for the actual atmospheric conditions present at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, is consistent in every measurable way with the documented facts:

  • A 180-grain non bonded soft point .30-06 round
  • Fired from 142 yards
  • At 4,750 feet elevation
  • In 83°F temperature with 26% humidity
  • Striking the neck of the target

The bullet’s failure to exit, the nature of the wound, the immediate neurological result — all of it follows directly and predictably from the physics of that specific bullet, at that specific velocity, under those specific atmospheric conditions, striking that specific anatomical target.

The atmospheric conditions at UVU made the shot more lethal, not less. Thin air at 4,750 feet on a warm September afternoon means less drag, higher retained velocity at impact, greater kinetic energy deposited into tissue, a more powerful hydrostatic shock wave, and more aggressive fragmentation. Every environmental variable present on September 10, 2025 worked in the same direction — toward greater terminal effectiveness, not diminished lethality.

There is no anomaly here. There is no inconsistency. There is physics.

The key points:

  • Bullets do not produce Hollywood results. Tissue is elastic, not rigid.
  • Velocity is the dominant variable — and its relationship to energy is exponential, not linear.
  • UVU sits at 4,750 feet elevation. At that altitude, air is 83-85% as dense as sea level. The bullet arrived faster than sea-level tables predict.
  • September 10, 2025 in Orem: 82-85°F, 26% humidity, 30.0 in Hg pressure, 6 mph wind. All conditions favored bullet velocity retention.
  • Every expanding bullet has a velocity window. The bullet that killed Charlie Kirk at 142 yards and 4,750 feet was in fragmentation territory — above its design velocity ceiling, not below its expansion floor.
  • A bullet that stays in the target has transferred more energy than one that exits. No exit wound does not mean less lethal — it means more efficient energy transfer.
  • Hydrostatic shock is real, documented, and calculable. At corrected impact velocity of ~2,650 fps, the pressure wave exceeded the cervical spine fracture threshold by a factor of 38 to 63 times.
  • The MLK assassination used the same caliber, same bullet class, same anatomical zone, same neurological mechanism. It is documented historical precedent confirmed by forensic analysis.
  • These mechanisms are in the scientific literature. They are not theories. They are not opinions.

Before you share ballistic commentary on social media — ask yourself whether the person making the claim has ever studied wound ballistics, fired a rifle in combat, or read Fackler. If the answer is no, treat their confidence accordingly.

The author is a United States Marine Corps and Navy veteran (Force Reconnaissance, Scout Sniper MOS 0317/8541) with combat service. He is a disabled veteran and a published author of multiple works on security and threat analysis,He consults internationally on security risk and publishes at GlobalRiskInfo.com and ChrisMarkSecurity.com.

© GlobalRiskInfo.com. All rights reserved.

Fighting Misinformation: The Impact of Adversary Amplification in Society June 8, 2026

Posted by Chris Mark in cybersecurity, Industry News, Politics, privacy, security, Uncategorized, War.
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This is a brief 10 minute discussion on Adversary Amplification. We all hear it every day. The outrage over AI DataCenters. The Lone Star Tick, name it. The people spreading this are not malicious, they are simply passionately misinformed and doing the work of a centralized agent. That could be China, Russia, or a competitor. With the advances in AI and explosion of Social Media, propagating and advancing these fears have become easy. Today’s hearings on the SPLC are a perfect example of Adversary Amplification. To think the SPLC is supporting NeoNazi groups, the KKK and other simply to hurt Republicans! Here is a link to the actual paper.

Adversary Amplification Whitepaper_CMARK060926Download

Statistical Anomalies in LA Mayoral Election: A Deeper Analysis June 7, 2026

Posted by Chris Mark in Industry News, Laws and Leglslation, News, Politics, Uncategorized.
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DISCLAIMER: This article presents a statistical analysis of publicly available election data. It does not allege fraud, illegal conduct, or wrongdoing by any candidate, election official, or government entity. The statistical anomalies documented below demand transparent explanation. That is the appropriate standard in a functioning democracy. Nothing more is claimed here.

Introduction

Elections in the United States are decided by votes. The integrity of those votes depends not only on the honesty of those casting them but on the transparency and consistency of how they are counted. When the statistical profile of mail-in ballot counting diverges from election day results by a margin that falls outside any reasonable probability model, the public interest demands a clear and documented explanation.

This article presents a statistical analysis of Spencer Pratt’s performance in the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral primary election. The analysis compares his election day vote share to his performance in subsequently counted mail-in ballot batches. The divergence between these two data sets is not a matter of opinion or political interpretation. It is a mathematical fact that warrants examination.

This is not an endorsement of any candidate. It is an application of basic statistical principles to publicly available election data.

Background: The Race

The 2026 Los Angeles mayoral primary featured fourteen candidates, with incumbent Mayor Karen Bass seeking a second term against a field that included former reality television personality Spencer Pratt, a registered Republican whose Palisades home was destroyed in the devastating 2025 wildfires, and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, a Democratic Socialists of America member challenging Bass from the left. [1]

Under California’s election rules, if no candidate receives more than fifty percent of votes in the primary, the top two candidates advance to a November runoff election. Mayor Bass secured enough votes to advance. The race for second place — and the November runoff slot — became a contest between Pratt and Raman. [2]

A pre-election UC Berkeley-LA Times poll conducted in May 2026 showed Bass with twenty-six percent support, Raman at twenty-five percent, and Pratt at twenty-two percent among likely voters — a margin of error of approximately three percent. [3]

Figure 1: Election Night vs. Mail-In Ballot Performance — LA Mayoral Race 2026

Election Night Results

Pratt significantly outperformed his pre-election polling. With sixty-six percent of the expected vote counted on election night, results showed:

Karen Bass: 35%  Projected to advance to November runoff

Spencer Pratt: 29.4%  Comfortably in second place

Nithya Raman: 23.4%  Trailing Pratt by approximately six percentage points

Pratt held what appeared to be a comfortable lead over Raman. By Thursday, with additional votes counted, the gap remained near six percentage points. [4]

With 163,549 votes in Los Angeles’ latest tabulation, Pratt maintains a near 6% lead on Raman, who has 130,473 votes. — Fox News, Thursday June 5, 2026 [4]

The Mail-In Ballot Divergence

As mail-in ballot batches were counted and released in the days following the election, a striking divergence from election night results emerged. Rather than tracking the established proportions, the mail-in batches showed a dramatic and statistically extraordinary shift.

The Zero-Vote Batch

The initial anomaly identified was a batch of approximately 24,000 mail-in ballots in which Pratt received zero votes. At his election night rate of 29.4 percent, the expected number of Pratt votes in such a batch would be approximately 7,056.

Probability of zero Pratt votes in 24,000 ballots at 29.4%: 1 in 10^3,629  Effectively impossible by random chance

For context: the total number of atoms in the observable universe is estimated at approximately 10^80. The probability of Pratt receiving zero votes in that batch, if his actual support rate was 29.4 percent, is incomparably smaller than randomly selecting one specific atom from the entire universe on the first attempt.

The Subsequent Batch Analysis

Examining the larger batch of mail-in votes reported since Thursday — totaling 54,245 votes across Pratt, Raman, and Bass — the divergence becomes statistically quantifiable. [5]

Pratt mail-in share: 19.7%  vs. 29.4% election night — deficit of 9.7 percentage points

Raman mail-in share: 42.6%  vs. 23.4% election night — gain of 19.2 percentage points

Pratt vote deficit: 5,237 votes  Below statistically expected count in this batch alone

In concrete terms: if mail-in ballots had simply reflected election night proportions, Pratt would have received approximately 15,948 votes in the analyzed batch. He received 10,711 — a shortfall of 5,237 votes in a single counting batch.

Statistical Analysis

The Chi-Square Test

The chi-square test measures whether an observed distribution of votes differs significantly from what would be expected based on a reference distribution — in this case, election night proportions. Applying this test to the mail-in batch:

Chi-square statistic: 10,376.18  Extraordinarily high — any value above 6 is statistically significant at the 95% confidence level

Degrees of freedom: 2  Three candidates minus one

P-value: Effectively zero  The probability this divergence occurred by random chance

A p-value of zero means the observed distribution of mail-in votes cannot be explained by random sampling variation from the election night population. Under standard statistical thresholds, a p-value below 0.05 is considered statistically significant. A p-value below 0.001 is considered highly significant. This result is not in that range — it is below any threshold that statistical science has developed to describe.

The Z-Score Analysis

The z-score measures how many standard deviations an observed result falls from its expected value. In normal human affairs, results beyond three standard deviations are considered extraordinary and warrant investigation. Results beyond five standard deviations are considered essentially impossible by random chance.

Z-score for Pratt’s mail-in performance: -49.35  Forty-nine standard deviations below his election night rate

A z-score of negative forty-nine does not exist in the normal range of human statistical experience. To find a naturally occurring phenomenon with a z-score of this magnitude would require examining astronomical datasets, not election results. This number is not an anomaly. It is a mathematical impossibility under any standard probability model that assumes mail-in voters come from the same population as election day voters.

In statistics, anything beyond three standard deviations is considered extraordinary. Forty-nine standard deviations is not a number that occurs in nature through random variation.

The Current State of the Race

The cumulative effect of these mail-in batches has been dramatic. [6][7]

Pratt current share (78% counted): 27.3%  Down from 29.4% election night

Raman current share (78% counted): 26.2%  Up from 23.4% election night

Current Pratt lead: Approximately 7,500 votes  Narrowing with each batch

Raman received forty percent of votes counted on Saturday — a figure that, if sustained, would be sufficient to overtake Pratt before all ballots are counted. [7]

The race remains uncalled. California law allows counties up to thirty days to complete the official canvass. Millions of mail-in and provisional ballots remain to be processed in Los Angeles County alone — the largest voting jurisdiction in the United States, with 5.8 million registered voters. [8]

Three Possible Explanations

Statistical analysis identifies the anomaly. It does not, by itself, determine the cause. There are three explanations that must be considered:

Explanation One: Population Differences

California leads the nation in mail-in voting, with eighty-one percent of voters sending their choices by post in 2024 — nearly double the national average. [9] It is theoretically possible that Pratt’s support is concentrated among voters who specifically chose to vote in person on election day, and that mail-in voters skew heavily toward Raman and Bass.

However: even accepting significant population differences, a forty-nine standard deviation divergence cannot be explained by population variation alone. The pre-election poll showing Pratt at twenty-two percent among likely voters — not a dramatically different figure from his election night performance — did not distinguish between mail-in and in-person likely voters in a manner that would predict a divergence of this magnitude.

Explanation Two: Counting Methodology or Batch Composition

It is possible that specific batches of mail-in ballots being counted represent geographically concentrated areas where Raman has disproportionate support — council districts she represents, for example — and that the batches are not representative of the overall mail-in population.

If this is the explanation, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder should be able to document precisely which geographic areas each batch represents and demonstrate that the composition explains the divergence. That documentation should be made public.

Explanation Three: Something Requiring Investigation

The third possibility is that something in the counting or reporting process is producing results that do not accurately reflect the votes cast. This article does not allege this is the case. However, the statistical evidence is sufficiently extreme that it cannot be dismissed without documented, transparent explanation of the first or second type.

What Transparency Requires

In a functioning democracy, election results that produce statistical anomalies of this magnitude demand documented explanation — not reassurance, not dismissal, but transparent accounting of the counting process. Specifically:

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder should publicly document the geographic composition of each mail-in batch released since election day — demonstrating which precincts or council districts each batch represents and how that composition accounts for the observed divergence.

The methodology for selecting, processing, and releasing mail-in ballot batches should be made publicly available.

Any candidate or party requesting observation of the counting process should be granted that access consistent with California election law.

The zero-vote batch — 24,000 ballots producing zero votes for a candidate receiving approximately 29.4 percent of all other votes — requires specific and documented explanation.

The appropriate response to a statistical anomaly in a democracy is transparency and documentation — not political dismissal or reassurance. The numbers are what they are. They deserve a clear answer.

Conclusion

Spencer Pratt received approximately 29.4 percent of votes cast on election day in the Los Angeles mayoral primary. In subsequently counted mail-in ballot batches, he has received approximately 19.7 percent — a divergence of 9.7 percentage points that produces a z-score of negative forty-nine and a chi-square statistic of over 10,000.

These numbers are not consistent with random sampling variation from the same voter population. They are not explained by normal statistical fluctuation. They demand a documented, transparent, and geographically specific explanation from Los Angeles County election officials.

The question is not whether Spencer Pratt should be the next mayor of Los Angeles. The question is whether the vote count accurately reflects the votes that were cast. In a democracy, that question is never inappropriate to ask — and it is always appropriate to demand a clear answer.

Chris Mark is an Enterprise Security and Risk Strategist, published author, co-author of PCI DSS, named patent holder, and United States Marine Corps combat veteran. He writes on security, risk, and emerging threats at GlobalRiskInfo.com.

References

[1] NBC News. (2026, June 2). Los Angeles Mayor Primary 2026 Live Results. nbcnews.com/politics/2026-primary-elections/los-angeles-mayor-results

[2] ABC7 Los Angeles. (2026, June 4). Los Angeles mayor race: Live election results and updates on front runners Karen Bass, Nithya Raman, Spencer Pratt. abc7.com

[3] CBS Los Angeles. (2026, June 7). Pratt’s lead over Raman slims in new L.A. mayoral election results. [Citing UC Berkeley-LA Times poll, May 28, 2026, margin of error approximately 3%.] cbsnews.com/losangeles

[4] Fox News. (2026, June 5). Spencer Pratt loses ground to Democrat while Hilton maintains lead in latest California ballot batch drop. foxnews.com

[5] Fox 11 Los Angeles. (2026, June 6). LA mayor’s race: Nithya Raman surges, closes gap on Spencer Pratt for runoff spot. foxla.com. [Reporting Raman: 23,115 votes (38%), Bass: 20,419 votes (34%), Pratt: 10,711 votes (18%) in mail-in batch since Thursday.]

[6] CBS Los Angeles. (2026, June 7). Pratt’s lead over Raman slims in new L.A. mayoral election results. cbsnews.com/losangeles. [Citing 78% of votes counted, Pratt 27.3%, Raman 26.2%.]

[7] The Wrap. (2026, June 7). Nithya Raman Inches Within 1% of Spencer Pratt After Winning 40% of Saturday Tally in LA Mayor’s Race. thewrap.com

[8] NBC Los Angeles. (2026, June 6). Gap between Pratt and Raman gets tighter in LA mayoral race. nbclosangeles.com. [Noting 5.8 million registered voters in Los Angeles County.]

[9] Fox News. (2026, June 5). Spencer Pratt loses ground to Democrat. [Citing California leads nation in mail-in voting at 81% of voters in 2024, nearly double national average of 43%.]

[10] Statistical methodology: Binomial probability calculation P(X=0) = (1-p)^n. Chi-square test comparing observed mail-in distribution to election night baseline. Z-test for proportions: z = (p_observed – p_expected) / sqrt(p_expected*(1-p_expected)/n). All calculations performed using Python scipy.stats library.© 2026 Chris Mark / GlobalRiskInfo.com. All rights reserved. Reproduction with attribution

“Unforeseeable” Is the Wrong Word- What Camp Mystic Teaches Us About Risk June 4, 2026

Posted by Chris Mark in Risk & Risk Management.
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There have been some heated debates online about Camp Mystic. For those who don’t recall, Camp Mystic was a Christian Camp that was flooded in July 2025 and took the lives of 27 people including 25 young campers. In reading some of the comments from people, I am dismayed at the defense of the safety officer. In fact, many people online simply said we “should forget about it and move on”. That is irresponsible. Accountability is key to prevent this from happening again.

More disturbingly is the basic lack of understanding of ‘foreseeability’ and ‘risk’. This brief blog post is intended to explain, in laymen’s’ terms, how risk management applies to Camp Mystic and how this could have been mitigaged.

On July 4, 2025, floodwaters from the Guadalupe River swept through Camp Mystic, an all-girls camp in the Texas Hill Country. Twenty-seven children and counselors died.¹

In the aftermath came a word I’ve heard after nearly every preventable tragedy in thirty-five years of security work: unforeseeable. A local official captured the mood when he told reporters they had “no reason to believe” the flooding would be anything like what happened.¹

I want to take that word apart, because it doesn’t hold up—and understanding why it doesn’t hold up is one of the most useful things an ordinary person can learn. You don’t need an engineering degree. You just need to understand what risk actually is. The mistake at the heart of “unforeseeable” isn’t a Texas mistake or a summer-camp mistake. It’s a thinking mistake, and juries, executives, and well-meaning people make it constantly.

Risk Is Just Two Things

Most of us use “risk” as a fancy word for danger. It’s actually simpler than that. Risk is two things multiplied together: how likely something bad is, and how bad it would be if it happened.²

A paper cut is likely but trivial. A meteor strike would be catastrophic but is almost impossible. Neither keeps us up at night, because in each case one of the two numbers is tiny. The situations that demand real attention are the ones where both are meaningful—things that can plausibly happen and would be devastating. A camp full of sleeping children beside a river known to flood is exactly that.

Here’s the first thing worth understanding clearly: flooding is a natural hazard. Unlike a burglar or a hacker—who studies your defenses and adapts—a river doesn’t scheme. It behaves according to rainfall, terrain, and history. That makes flood risk one of the most predictable risks there is. We have decades of records, known flood maps, and a National Weather Service that issues warnings hours ahead. So the usual excuse offered after a surprise—“no one could have seen it coming”—carries almost no weight when the hazard is a river that has flooded the same valley for a century.

You Already Think Like This

Before we go further: there’s a good chance you’re already an expert at risk and don’t know it.

For years, teaching risk to people with no background in it, I’d tell a room full of parents: mothers are some of the best risk managers alive—they just don’t know they’re doing it. That got puzzled looks, so I’d walk them through it.

When it’s cold out, what do you tell your kids before they go outside? Every time, the same answer: put on a jacket. Why? “Because I don’t want them to get sick.” So I’d push a little—they can’t get sick unless they’re cold? “No,” they’d say, “but there’s a greater chance if they’re cold.”

That, right there, is risk management boiled all the way down. She spotted a hazard (cold), judged that it raised the likelihood of a bad outcome (illness), weighed the consequence, and put a control in place ahead of time (the jacket). She didn’t wait to see exactly how cold it would get, or whether this particular child would actually fall ill. She acted on the category of risk, in advance, with a standing rule.

Hold onto that, because it’s the same move that should have protected the children at Camp Mystic—and the same move whose absence is the whole story.

“Foreseeable” Doesn’t Mean “Predicted to the Inch”

This is the most important idea in this piece: foreseeability is about the kind of event, not its exact size.

When people call the Camp Mystic flood “unforeseeable,” they’re quietly swapping two very different claims:

1.  “We didn’t know a flood could happen here.”  This is false. The camp sits in a region locals literally call “flash flood alley.” The river had flooded before—including a deadly 1987 flood on the same stretch of water that killed teenagers being evacuated by bus.³ The hazard wasn’t just known; it was famous.

2.  “We didn’t expect a flood this severe.”  This may well be true—and it doesn’t matter. The exact height of the water is never known in advance. But you don’t need to predict the precise crest to know what to do.

Think of a smoke alarm. When it goes off at 3 a.m., you don’t lie in bed calculating how large the fire is or whether it’ll reach your bedroom. You get everyone out. The alarm tells you a category of danger exists; your response—leave the building—is the same whether the fire turns out to be small or total. Flood warnings work identically. Once “dangerous flooding is possible here” is established, the correct action—move people to higher ground—doesn’t change based on the forecasted number of feet. The warning triggers the action. The water’s eventual height does not.

That’s why “we didn’t expect it to be that bad” isn’t a defense. It’s an admission. It means someone decided in advance how bad a flood would have to be before they’d act—and then bet children’s lives that the real flood would stay under that line. It didn’t.

The “It’s Never Happened Before” Trap

A second common defense is some version of “we’ve been here for decades and never seen anything like it.” This sounds reasonable. It’s actually one of the most dangerous errors in all of risk thinking, and it has a name: the base-rate fallacy—treating “rare” as if it meant “won’t happen.”

Rare and impossible are not the same thing. A once-in-a-century flood doesn’t politely wait a hundred years between visits; “once a century” just describes its odds in any given year. It can arrive next Tuesday. And how often something has happened in the past is a separate question from whether you should be ready for it.

A rare-but-catastrophic event is precisely the kind you must plan for in advance, because—unlike a common nuisance you can learn from over time—it gives you no second chance. You don’t get to practice surviving the flood that kills the children. You get it right the first time or you don’t.

Responsible planning aims at the credible worst case, not the typical case. This isn’t paranoia; it’s the ordinary standard we apply everywhere lives are at stake. Hospitals keep backup generators that sit unused for years. Planes carry life vests for water landings that almost never happen. We don’t call those measures wasteful when the emergency finally comes. We call them prudent.

What the Record Actually Shows

The strongest answer to “unforeseeable” isn’t an argument at all. It’s the timeline.

Two days before the flood, on July 2, a state inspector reviewed Camp Mystic and confirmed it had a written disaster plan—including instructions for evacuating campers and emergency duties for each staff member. The camp’s director signed that report.⁴ Then the warnings came in stages: a National Weather Service flood watch on July 3, a flash flood warning in the early hours of July 4. According to the state’s own investigation, the director was receiving alerts on his phone overnight and grew concerned about the rising river before 2 a.m.—yet no evacuation of the children was ordered.⁵

Here’s the fact that collapses the defense entirely: you cannot claim you never imagined a danger that you had formally written a plan to survive. A disaster plan for floods is, by definition, an admission that floods were foreseeable. The failure wasn’t a failure of knowledge. It was a failure to act on knowledge already in hand. A Texas legislative investigation reached the same conclusion, finding the deaths preventable and the failures beginning “long before” the river ever crested.⁵

Why This Matters

There’s a fair objection here: after any disaster, the warning signs look obvious. Psychologists call it hindsight bias—the “I knew it all along” effect.⁶ It’s a real danger, and it’s why we shouldn’t blame people for missing subtle, ambiguous signals that only became clear afterward.

But that’s not what happened here. The signals weren’t subtle. There was a written plan naming the exact danger, official government warnings issued in advance, and a director awake and alarmed at the river’s rise. None of it is reconstructed after the fact. Hindsight bias protects people who faced a genuine fog. It doesn’t excuse those handed a clear warning and a ready-made plan who didn’t use them.

I learned long ago, working maritime security, why this distinction matters so much. A ship’s captain once told me, “Every safety measure we have is written in blood.” Every rule in his manual existed because someone had already died learning the lesson. That’s what accountability is for—not to punish the grieving, but to make sure the lesson gets written down once, so the next set of children doesn’t have to pay for it again.

“Unforeseeable” is the wrong word for what happened at Camp Mystic. The honest words are harder: the danger was known, the warnings arrived, the plan existed—and the gap was between knowing and acting. That gap is not an accident of nature. It is a decision. And decisions, unlike floods, are something we are responsible for.

References

1. ABC News. (2025, July 7). At least 27 dead at Camp Mystic as officials say they were caught off guard by the storm. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com

2. Kaplan, S., & Garrick, B. J. (1981). On the quantitative definition of risk. Risk Analysis, 1(1), 11–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1981.tb01350.x

3. The Texas Tribune. (2025, August 14). After a 1987 flood killed teenagers on the Guadalupe River, Texas officials took little action. Retrieved from https://www.texastribune.org

4. Associated Press. (2025, July 9). Texas inspectors approved Camp Mystic’s disaster plan two days before deadly flood, records show. Retrieved from https://apnews.com

5. Associated Press. (2026, April 28). A timeline of key events in the deadly flooding at Camp Mystic in Texas. Retrieved from https://apnews.com

6. Fischhoff, B. (1975). Hindsight ≠ foresight: The effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1(3), 288–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.1.3.288

The Misleading Nature of Military Death Rates May 26, 2026

Posted by Chris Mark in Uncategorized, War, weapons and tactics.
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Someone on Memorial day posted on social media that submariners suffered the highest death rate of any American service in World War II. As a comat veteran who holds Memorial Day as a somber occasion it caused me to pause and think. While the raw stats suggest that the statement is true, is also very nearly meaningless as a statement about danger — and understanding why is one of the most useful lessons in how a single, accurate number can completely mislead you.

The American submarine force was small. Roughly 16,000 men made war patrols, and about 3,500 of them never came home, with 52 boats lost. That works out to a fatality rate near 22 percent — the highest of any U.S. branch. Historian Donald Miller, in Masters of the Air, makes the point bluntly: of all the branches of the American armed forces, only submarine crews had a higher fatality rate than his bomber boys, at almost 23 percent.

Now set that against the Eighth Air Force, which lost about 26,000 men killed — more fatalities than the entire United States Marine Corps. In raw numbers, the bomber campaign looks far deadlier than the silent service. Both pictures are accurate. They simply measure different things, and neither one, by itself, tells you how dangerous it was to actually do the job.

Rate Versus Count

The first trap is confusing a rate with a count. “Highest death rate” is a proportion: deaths divided by everyone who held the role. “Most deaths” is a raw tally. A small, lethal specialty can top the rate chart while contributing a tiny share of total deaths, simply because its denominator is small. That is exactly the submarine service — a few thousand deaths out of a few thousand men produces a brutal percentage.

The bomber force generates the opposite illusion. The 26,000 dead is a frightening number, but 350,000 men served in the Eighth Air Force, and most of them were ground crew and support staff who were never in danger. Measured against the 210,000 who actually flew combat, the death rate was about 12.4 percent. Measured against everyone in uniform, it falls to around 7 percent. The raw body count reflects the size of the force, not the danger of the seat.

So once we strip out the size disparity and compare combat men to combat men, the submariner — at roughly 22 to 23 percent — was in the statistically deadlier billet, and the bomber crews, at about 12 percent, come second. If a death rate were the same thing as danger, we could stop here.

It isn’t.

Danger Lives in the Exposure, Not the Total

A death rate is a cumulative number — the odds you eventually died, summed over your entire time in the role. What it conceals is the variable that actually defines danger: how much risk you absorbed per unit of exposure, and how much exposure you were forced to take. Epidemiologists separate these as cumulative incidence (did you die at all) versus the hazard rate (how lethal each moment was). War tells the same story.

A bomber crew’s exposure was tightly capped. A tour was 25 missions early in the war, later raised to 30 and then 35. Each mission ran about six to nine hours; the famous Memphis Belle logged 148 hours across her 25 missions, under six hours apiece. Complete the longest tour and you had spent, at most, around 245 hours in the air — roughly ten days of cumulative flying. That cap is the entire reason the cumulative death rate looks “only” moderate. Per hour aloft, the danger was savage. In the brutal 1942–43 period, of the men who flew the original 25-mission tour, only about a third survived it; by October 1943, fewer than one in four crewmen could realistically expect to finish. The job didn’t become survivable until escort fighters won air superiority — by 1945, 81 percent completed a full 35-mission tour.

A submariner, by contrast, accumulated his 22 percent over an enormous span of time. A single war patrol lasted six to eight weeks — a thousand hours or more continuously inside the kill zone — and most men made several. So while the submariner’s lifetime odds were worse, the bomber crewman faced a far higher chance of death per hour of combat, by something on the order of five to ten times. The two jobs were lethal in opposite shapes: the submarine was a long, grinding exposure; the bomber was a short, concentrated burst of extreme danger, repeated until your luck or the war ran out.

This is the heart of the matter. A short tour with a horrific per-mission hazard and a long tour with a milder per-hour hazard can land on the very same headline death rate. The number hides which one you were.

Figure 1. Approximate death rate per hour of combat exposure. The submarine held the worse lifetime odds, but a bomber crewman faced roughly eight times the risk per hour in the air.

MACV-SOG: The Law of Small Numbers at Its Deadliest

If you want the purest illustration of how exposure and small denominators distort a death rate, look at the most dangerous billet of the modern era: the covert reconnaissance teams of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG).

During the Vietnam war SOG teams ran cross-border missions into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam in tiny “spike teams” — typically two or three Americans led by a “One-Zero” plus a handful of indigenous troops. Its recon men posted a casualty rate that exceeded 100 percent, described as the highest sustained American loss rate since the Civil War. In 1968, every SOG recon man was wounded at least once, and about half were killed.

Two statistical points make SOG essential to this discussion. First, the denominator was minuscule — of roughly 2,000 men who served in SOG, only about 400 to 600 actually ran recon and direct-action missions. This is the law of small numbers: tiny populations produce extreme, volatile rates that large forces never show. A rate above 100 percent is impossible for a big army and routine for a few hundred men hit repeatedly. Second, that 100-plus percent is a casualty rate — killed plus wounded — and it tops 100 only because individual men were wounded multiple times. Apply the same discipline we used on the bombers and the death rate among recon men sits closer to half in the worst years. The categories matter, and conflating “casualty” with “killed” is how the number gets abused.

SOG also fits the bomber pattern in a way worth naming: it was all-volunteer, and its danger was delivered in a relatively small number of discrete missions, each lasting only days, rather than spread thin across a long deployment. The lethality was per-mission, and per-mission it was off the charts. (The flip side of that intensity: SOG recorded a kill ratio of 158 to 1 in 1970, the highest in U.S. military history.)

Easy Company: When Replacements Hide the Body Count

The final distortion is the one most people miss, and the Band of Brothers company illustrates it perfectly. E Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, jumped into Normandy, Holland, and Bastogne. It was formed at Camp Toccoa with about 140 men. By the end of the war, 366 men had served in its ranks, and 49 were killed in action.

Run the naive math and you get a death rate around 13 percent — comparable to bomber aircrew, and apparently far less dangerous than the submarine service. That number is a lie of the denominator. The company’s standing strength was only about 140, yet 366 men cycled through it. Easy was effectively destroyed and rebuilt more than twice over. It jumped into Market Garden with 154 men and came out with 98; it had already taken 65 casualties in Normandy. Counted against the men who were actually present at any given moment, the company suffered well over 100 percent casualties. The 13 percent figure is diluted because the denominator kept refilling with fresh replacements who hadn’t yet been hit.

Notice, too, that almost no Easy Company men became prisoners — like the submariners, their losses converted into killed and wounded rather than capture. A downed bomber crewman could parachute and survive as a POW; an infantryman in a Bastogne foxhole or a submariner in a sinking boat had no such exit. The shape of the casualties is as informative as the count.

So How Do You Actually Measure Danger?

A headline death rate flattens at least three distinct things into one misleading figure: the intensity of each exposure (per mission, per hour), the duration of exposure (how long, how many times you went out), and the denominator (small units and replacement churn that warp the percentage). The submarine looks worst by lifetime odds. The bomber looks worst per hour of combat. SOG looks worst per mission and shows how small numbers break the scale entirely. Easy Company shows how a steady stream of replacements can bury the true cost inside a tame-looking percentage.

Figure 2. The four headline death rates as commonly cited. Each is measured on a different basis — a peak year versus the whole war, a small recon subset versus everyone who served, and a figure diluted by constant replacements. Lined up as equals, they invite exactly the false conclusions this article warns against.

The honest question was never “what fraction of them died.” It is “how likely was a man to die each time he went out, and how many times was he made to go.” Answer those two, and the statistic finally tells the truth. Quote only the first number, and you can prove almost anything — including that the deadliest jobs of the war weren’t very dangerous at all. On Memorial day, remember those who gave all for our freedoms. Whether they were killed in combat or died in training. They all served and died for us.

References

  1. Miller, Donald L. Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany. Simon & Schuster, 2006. (Eighth Air Force fatalities; submarine fatality comparison; tour-completion statistics.)
  2. 398th Bomb Group Memorial Association, “One in Twenty — The 398th’s Killed in Action.” (12.38 percent mortality among 210,000 combat aircrew; tour-survival rates by year.) https://www.398th.org/History/KIA/index.html
  3. Office of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army. Wound Ballistics in World War II, Chapter 9 — Eighth Air Force battle-casualty survey. (MIA resolution: roughly 40 percent killed, 60 percent survived as POW, wounded, or evaders.) https://achh.army.mil/history/book-wwii-woundblstcs-chapter9/
  4. Plaster, John L. SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam. Simon & Schuster, 1997. (Recon casualty rates; team structure; cross-border operations.)
  5. HistoryNet, “How Top-Secret Commando Unit SOG Took on the Most Dangerous Missions in Vietnam.” (Casualty rate exceeding 100 percent; 1968 figures; 158-to-1 kill ratio.) https://www.historynet.com/studies-and-observations-group-vietnam/
  6. The National Interest, “Inside the Daring Missions of MACV-SOG.” (Approximately 2,000 served in SOG; 400–600 ran recon and direct action.)
  7. Ambrose, Stephen E. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. Simon & Schuster, 1992. (Market Garden strength figures; Normandy and Bastogne casualties.)
  8. TogetherWeServed, “Famous Army Unit: Easy Company, 506th Infantry Regiment.” (140 original members; 366 total served; 49 killed in action.)

Note: Figures for elite and small units, especially SOG, are frequently dramatized. Where casualty rates exceed 100 percent, that figure reflects killed plus wounded (with multiple woundings per man), not a death rate. Comparisons above use matched combat populations wherever possible.