The Intersections Of Morality And Courage: Stopping A Homicide-Suicide In Boot Camp

Suicide Hotline: 988

Today, I open season eight of Couple O’ Nukes with a solo episode that explores the heavy but necessary topic of courage and morality in the face of suicide prevention. As we celebrate the milestone of more than 200 episodes and approach the three-year anniversary of this podcast, I take a moment to reflect on my own journey — not just as a host, but as someone who has been in difficult situations where lives were at stake.

In this episode, I share my contributing chapter to the new book Survival to Thrive: Courage. My chapter, The Intersections of Morality and Courage, is a raw and personal account of my first major experience with suicide prevention during bootcamp. I dive into the moral crossroads service members often face when deciding whether to report a suicidal individual, the weight of those decisions, and how these choices impact both the individual at risk and those around them.

Alongside reading the chapter, I expand on the importance of individualized care when addressing suicidal ideation. I emphasize the need for personal connection, thoughtful action, and moral courage, rather than rushing to institutional solutions alone. This episode also connects listeners to suicide prevention resources and highlights the ongoing Survival to Thrive trilogy, which aims to spark conversations around resilience, healing, and purpose.

Whether you are military, civilian, or simply someone who wants to better understand how to support others in crisis, this episode is designed to equip you with perspective and encouragement to face these difficult situations with wisdom and compassion.

www.bookofsurvivaltothrival.com

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/redefining-love-in-a-loveless-culture-gratitude/id1657865479?i=1000717973425

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple O' Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and it is season eight, episode one. How awesome and how Blessed, praise to God to have seven seasons. Now, the last few seasons being 50 episodes, except that one time where I miscounted and had 53 episodes.

But yeah, I mean over 200 episodes now, over a hundred reviews. I mean, just glory to God for how far this show has come. Especially looking back as we approach the three year anniversary, December 3rd, 2025, we'll be the three year anniversary of couple of nukes, and as we approach that, it is so humbling and such an honor to.

See how far I've grown. The show has grown, the amazing connections and networking and community building I have been a part of from attending events to hosting events both virtually and in person. It has really been such a blessing and knowing that God is taking each and every episode to the right person at the right time.

That is just beautiful. Now, today we're not doing any big premiere or grand debut. Obviously, I, I had something very special planned for the season eight premiere, but life has just been busy in a good way, in a blessed way. A lot of projects, a lot of different things to help people with suicide prevention and awareness, addiction recovery, physical fitness, charities, nonprofits, volunteer work.

Books, other podcasts. You know, so many moving parts of my life right now. But today I'm sitting down by myself to record this episode, which will be going over my contributing chapter to the book, survival to Thrive. Courage. It's the first book in the Survival of Survival trilogy. Two other books will be coming out, uh, throughout the, you know, year and and next year, and I'll be doing episodes on those as well.

But today we are here with courage specifically my chapter is titled The Intersections of Morality and Courage, and that's what we're going to be focusing on today. In this episode, I'm going to read my chapter and then I'll be. Discussing it a little bit, talking about some of the background to it and some of the stuff related to it.

So a lot of insightful information. Hopefully it is a heavier topic, but it's one that's necessary and important, and we'll get into what I mean by that after I finish reading the chapter here. So thank you for tuning into this episode, the season eight episode one Premier. And without further ado, let's get into the intersections of morality and courage.

When most people think of courage, they instantly imagine a heroic scene, a man fighting a bear, or a woman rushing into a fire to save her children. These are definitely brave acts, but not all of us have experienced such events. Many of us live simple, yet meaningful lives, not realizing that they're actually full of courage, specifically.

Moral, emotional and spiritual courage. I want to pivot from the mainstream ideas of physical bravery to focus on the emotional and morally straining acts of courage, starting with me stopping a possible homicide. Suicide. Now wait a minute. Did I just say that I wanted to focus on common events that relate to everyone while homicide, suicide sounds drastic.

The unfortunate truth is that almost everyone knows someone who is struggling with addiction. Unresolved trauma, depression, or suicidal ideation in the military. This is especially true during my time in a service, and even as a veteran, I've prevented several suicides. It's not a burden, and I'll never call it that, but doing so has definitely put me in morally conflicting positions that weighed heavily on me.

My first experience with such a situation required the most courage and was the most difficult one, not just because I had never been in that kind of situation before. But also because I was significantly less developed mentally and emotionally than I was later on, while facing the others. It happened just a few weeks into bootcamp.

There was a sailor who was a bit of an outcast in our division, and he had difficulty getting along with others and even got into trouble a few times for our leaders. I always tried to understand his perspective from this. We formed a bond where he shared with me about ongoing trauma with his mother and an abusive stepfather.

It had followed him into bootcamp and in general, it didn't seem like the military was the right fit for him at the time. The tension between this sailor and the others continued to worsen each day. His little remarks to me about wanting to hurt others in his anger and sorrow had drastically grown To kill this, a suicide is one thing.

A homicide followed by a suicide is another thing. This was unexpected and it was unlike anything I had come across prior in my life. He told me that I was his best friend and I'd be spared. The others, however, whom we did not like had written, written down on a kill list in a specific order of priority targets to extra kills.

According to the plan, it would end it with his own death or possible escape. He did not care if he died in the process. Though it may initially seem like an easy situation, report the seller and go back to your day. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Not for me at least allow me to give you some military context first.

In the military, your job is also your lifestyle. When your job in the military changes, it can mean everything else changes, both for you and your loved ones. Due to the nature of certain jobs in the military, medications or mental health difficulties can get you removed from your position. Neither change to a new job or separated from the service entirely when a suicide report may affect a person's career in a civilian world, officially reporting a suicide to the military can drastically change a person's life.

Again, it's not just their job, it's everything. So while everyone in the military is supposed to be a mandatory reporter, when it comes to a service member mentioning anything that seems suicidal, many of us find ourselves that moral crossroads. We'll explore that now with my situation. Why I'm not encouraging disobedience to any military authority.

What happens if I report him? Where will they take him? Are they going to kick him out of bootcamp? Would be unable to join any military branch afterward. If I'm the only person he told, then he'll know I reported him. Right? Will he resent me? Will he try to find me one day? What about the abusive stepfather?

What if his income, what if he can't get another job? Is this just talk or will he actually do this? These questions are generally universal regarding a suicidal military member. That last question, the gauging of how real it is. Can be the most difficult part. While we're always supposed to assume suicidal remarks are serious, drastically altering a person's life over what was just a joke or passing feeling can be a majorly regrettable decision.

This is the morally conflicted battle of which I spoke earlier. Do you or do you not report a suicidal individual? I continuously contemplated the many questions in my head. It was tearing me apart in a way. My division's lives were in my hand, and while that sounds dramatic, it was possible that he would kill some of us and possibly himself.

After talking with a trusted shipmate about the situation. I knew that I had to report it. However, I was still afraid to do so. I was afraid of making the wrong decision. I had a small fear of becoming his priority kill. But even worse, I had a fear of ruining his life by making a decision that I would extremely regret.

Yes. Many would've considered me reporting him as the right decision. But if there was an alternative path where he ended up overcoming his feelings and being a successful member of the military, and I threw that away, what then is right and wrong? Morality is complex, as we all know. Human emotions are amorphous and ever-changing feelings inside of us tied to this world, religion, society, ourselves and others in complicated ways.

In my case. I was afraid either way, even if I wanted to report him, would his life get better? What if it got worse and pushed him to actually do what he had mentioned that he wasn't actually going to do? Then that would mean that I caused it to become a reality when it had only been a passing thought.

Yet there were lives potentially at risk. I was the involuntary maker of this decision and I needed to act on it. So I did. The sailor was taken away. When he showed back up to get his belongings, my heart dropped. I swore that he was going to kill me, but it turns out that he didn't know I had reported him, nor had he realized that I was the only one who could have done so.

Our leader of the division had made sure to keep me anonymous and safe, generalizing the situation and including his own personal assessments. When I packed the sailor's belongings, I was still very uneasy about the whole situation. A few days later, however, I saw him with the separation division and he was smiling, excited to go home, and glad to be outta the military before he had gone too far in and been pushed beyond his breaking point.

Since seeing that I've been able to sleep a bit easier and I try my best to drown out the questions and alternate time lens. Since then, I've also dealt with several sailors who were suicidal and didn't report them, and with my help and others, we took care of them. They are still in today serving this country successful and healthily.

So I encourage you to have the courage to make bold and heavily weighted moral decisions to trust yourself when doing so and to continually serve others and do good. And

now to rather short and simple version of the story. Obviously there's a lot more details that go into it, such as the sailor in question, the behaviors displayed, uh, with the division, with others, and there's a lot of questions that you might ask me that I've been asked on a lot of podcasts where I guessed speaking about suicide ideation and suicide prevention and awareness.

What are the signs to look for? How do I stop someone? What kind of care do they need? To summarize it very briefly and in one simple word, individualized, or if you wanna send them in for it personal. So many people are quick to throw people into a hospital or to the nine AA hotline, or here's a bunch of resources.

Those are important. We have those for a reason, and they're very helpful too. Those, they're helpful too. But individualized care and personal care is so important, especially to these people who feel like no one cares, not even their loved ones. So when a person comes to you about suicide and they're confiding in you, your first thing shouldn't be to hand them over to someone else.

I understand that maybe you feel like you're not responsible enough or equipped enough to deal with that kind of situation, but I'm saying don't just rush to hand them away. Listen, one of the few things I liked about the military was one of the trainings on suicide prevention. They put forward, act, ask, care, treat.

Treat is the last step. First is asking and caring that personal touch. So I think that is so important and we need to remember that. Now, again, I'm not saying you shouldn't report someone who is suicidal. I'm not saying to go against being a mandatory reporter, but I think you need to stop and really analyze the situation.

Before you just rush in and report everything. Yes, quick action in reporting can save lives. That's a hundred percent true even in the case of suicidal ideation. But when it comes to the military or a civilian position, or any similar situation where the consequences. Of that person's mental health, being exposed to others will drastically alter their life or the lives of others.

Please take the extra time to weigh those and make a morally balanced decision that saves everyone, keeps everyone alive, you know, alive. Keep, keep the person alive, but again. Don't just throw someone to a hospital and completely alter their life, especially if you're not sure. Now, yes, you should err on the side of caution.

I agree. But what I emphasize here is that personal touch, that personal relationship, and leveraging that to get the most information you can and to make an informed decision again. Please make a decision before anything bad happens, but also don't rush into making it un individualized so fast and so quickly.

That being said, I hope you found that chapter insightful. I know it was very military heavy in the sense that it was a military story, but like I said in the beginning of that chapter. Suicide is a very common thing. It's one of the leading causes of death in the United States. I'm sure it's a problem around the world in general, it's one of the largest leading causes of death in children starting at age 10, age 10 to 24, and even 34 is the big range of ages where suicide is most common and it does not discriminate.

I have had suicidal people come to me who are. Older who are younger, who were high ranking, who were low ranking, some of them were family people who had partners and children, and some of them were single people. It's a symptom we almost call it. Uh, some of the shows I've guessed on, we've described it as a symptom of many other issues, right.

The suicidal ideation is an issue on its own, but it's also the result of it could be one traumatic event, or it could be many small traumatic events, or a combination of both. So when addressing the suicidal ideation, you have to look at many different root causes in contributing factors to it when analyzing that kind of situation.

Now again, we're gonna have some resources in the description below for suicide prevention and awareness, as well as the link to Survival to Thrive with the Book of Courage. I'm excited for the other two books in this series as well, and also the link to the book of frequency. Love and gratitude, which was a different book that I was extruding author to where I spoke about the Power of love.

But ladies and gentlemen, this has been, I know, short and sweet, but season eight, episode one, a lot of great content coming out, uh, in the next 49 episodes until season nine. And I'm super excited. Thank you for all the support and I hope you enjoyed this episode and continue to enjoy the show And, you know.

If the episode doesn't speak to you, but you know, someone in my two definitely share it or keep this knowledge on standby. God bless.