Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Tactical to impractical. ALICE Packs in Zuccotti Park.



Zoners in Zuccotti Utopia.

In an earlier Praxis post, from January 2010, Flight ER Doc commented:

In theory, the medium sized packs can be used with just shoulder straps (not with a frame)....

This is a bad idea! As long ago as the mid 1980's the Army started noticing (officially) that a lot of troops were suffering nerve damage (from slow to heal, to permanent) from the pressure of the alice shoulder straps in the brachial plexus (a cluster of nerves in the shoulder). The pack without the frame and waist band will pull down and put too much pressure on these nerves, causing the damage.


Now, it apparent that these two love birds from Zuccotti Park may indeed have nerve damage, but I don't think it is from the ALICE packs.

7 comments:

Hammerhead said...

Those 2 look more like they have brain damage than nerve damage. I don't think their parent's had any kids that lived...

Cocked, Locked and ready to rock!

Hammerhead Out!

Maddawg308 said...

I don't remember much about the "nerve damage" aspect of the ALICE pack from my days back in the early 90s, but I do remember that carrying one got old after a while, and your shoulders DID feel it. I don't blame the ALICE pack for this, carrying over 60 pounds at any one time in ANY pack will hurt your shoulders and fray nerves.

Regardless, I still put back ALICE packs w/o frames in storage for potential fence-sitters, in the event that I need to start passing them out. A military pack that might cause nerve damage over time, is still IMHO better than not having anything at all. Millions of vets from 1970s to the 2000s can't be wrong that despite it's drawbacks, "ALICE" was a welcome girl, indeed.

Bad Cyborg said...

Now, it apparent that these two love birds from Zuccotti Park may indeed have nerve damage, but I don't think it is from the ALICE packs.

I agree any peripheral nerve damage is going to be invisible in context with the major BRAIN damage from all the drugs they've taken.

That being said, I still want to know where in Article 1 Section 8 FedGov gets the authority to tell adults what they may or may not introduce into their own bodies.

Sean said...

And the f-ing frame causes boils, the scars and lumps of which I still have, Forty-one years later.To avoid the nerve damage/numbness, don't load the pack with more than about forty pounds, and keep it as high up on your back as practical. Also, not carrying it for weeks on end helps too. What you load it with is important too. Nothing densely heavy, like PRC-77 radios(OOF), and 81MM mortar rounds in their cute little plastic tubes(bad,bad, words). Just keep it light, like the Light Infantry fails to do everytime, and you'll be good. My own loads in VN approached and occaisionaly exceeded 100lbs,and that is just too bloody much. Jumped out of bird into elephant grass that appeared 6ft high, but was really twice that, and fractured my spine in two places, but didn't find out till I was over 40yrs old. That overloaded Alice and the drop did it. One way also to keep from overloading it is to not get carried away with extra ammo,and you do that by exercising better fire control. Would love to rip the metal out of the faces of those two in the picture.

Anonymous said...

Can smell em from here !

Walter Zoomie said...

ALICE pack frames?

What are those?

In 8 years I don't think I ever even SAW a pack frame until we deployed to the Persian Gulf for DS.

Filthy reservist pogue pukes don't get no stinkin' pack frames...

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