[Chainmail]

1. Not sure where you heard the SAW story - but the M249 SAW was introduced into service about 1978 or so - well after Vietnam.

2. Your buddy with the PTSD undoubtedly was traumatized - but the special effects in Platoon were the usual ridiculous Roman candles used to mimic tracers, “napalm grenades” (cans of gasoline blown up to simulate grenades) and tinny-sounding blanks. The real thing is much more chaotic, overwhelming, deafening. Hollywood never could get it right.

[Pelham]

“1. Not sure where you heard the SAW story - but the M249 SAW was introduced into service about 1978 or so - well after Vietnam.”

It was a machine gun forward of the position. My error to refer to it as a SAW.

“Your buddy with the PTSD undoubtedly was traumatized”

He said he was scared the minute he set foot in Vietnam until the day he left. When I knew him he wasn’t bothered by anything. Not bosses, not police, not angry husbands, nothing.

[Zhang Fei]

[The real thing is much more chaotic, overwhelming, deafening.]

---

As a business proposition, they need to keep the volume below the human pain threshold. If they amped up the sound of outgoing gunfire to realistic levels, it would be like going to a gun range without ear protection. And that’s not counting the enemy mortar fire going off in the vicinity. It would cost theater owners a mint in tort settlements for hearing damage.