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Zero Foxtrot We are a Veteran Founded and Operated niche apparel and goods company based out of Austin, TX.

We proudly honor past veterans, offer cool gear, and stack souls : Stay Zero

Saddam's RevengeI was living on fob Black just across the Euphrates from Fallujah. We had just come back after a typical...
10/09/2026

Saddam's Revenge

I was living on fob Black just across the Euphrates from Fallujah. We had just come back after a typical 7-10 days of hunting for IED's being installed their usual places. We lived and ate with the locals and a lottery had taken shape, resulting in only one guy from the team getting "the trots" after each trip. I was due.
We were close enough to Camp Fallujah to get "hot rations" a couple times a week and it was spaghetti night. I scarfed it down without hesitation and returned to my h***h. The team was circled around a mini-DVD player, sitting in lawn chairs, and debating our nightly movie when my stomach twisted into a knot and bit the backside of my bu****le. The warning was clear. The action was on me.
I hopped up to grab my pistol belt, baby wipes, and trotted out the door with a purpose. The GPS in my colon was tracking my steps and the closer I got, the more concerned I became about the task ahead.

For those who aren't familiar with the WagBag. It's a plastic package, with a trash bag of kitty-litter, toilet paper, hand wipe, and a ziplock to stuff it all in when you're done. We had toilet stations in nylon tents that required you to lift the seat, tear open the wagbag, find the p**p bag, shake it open, place it into the toilet frame, close the lid, unbuckle and sit down to do your business.
I made it to around step 2 before the first wave was caught by my boot bands. By the time I got the bag in place and the seat down, there was no reason to hurry. I hung my head in shameful anticipation of the big reveal. With a painful grimace I slowly dropped my pants and sat down to contemplate the clean up.
There was little I could do but strip naked and start at the bottom. A full pack of baby wipes later, I prepared myself for the walk of shame. I slid my boots on, rolled my socks into my pants, buckled my pistol belt, wished I hadn't cut off the bottom half of my skivvy shirt for toilet paper earlier that week, and held my pants over my meat stick as I walked bare ass across the fob back to my h***h.
It did not go unnoticed.
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TED KACZYNSKITed Kaczynski was 16 when he arrived at Harvard. Brilliant, awkward, isolated, and surrounded by older stud...
10/07/2026

TED KACZYNSKI

Ted Kaczynski was 16 when he arrived at Harvard. Brilliant, awkward, isolated, and surrounded by older students. He made "The Young Sheldon" look like Forest Gump.
While there, he volunteered for a psychological study run by Henry Murray, a Harvard professor and former OSS psychologist. Kaczynski wrote deeply personal essays explaining his beliefs, then sat under bright lights while an interrogator tore those beliefs apart. The sessions were filmed. His reactions were recorded. He was later shown the footage.
The study happened during the MKULTRA era, which has fueled decades of speculation, but there is no "proof" Murray’s experiment was part of MKULTRA or that Kaczynski was given L*D.
Kaczynski earned a PhD in mathematics, became Berkeley’s youngest assistant professor, then abruptly quit. He eventually disappeared into a tiny Montana cabin with no electricity or running water, trying to remove himself from the technological society while picking up a strange hobby for shipping explosives.
Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski built 16 devices. One exploded aboard American Airlines Flight 444 but failed to bring the plane down. In 1985, computer-store owner Hugh Scrutton bent down to move what looked like a piece of scrap wood. It exploded in his hands. The blast tore off his hand and drove shrapnel into his chest and heart. Kaczynski studied reports for what worked and improved his designs. In 1994, Thomas Mosser opened a package in his kitchen. The explosion killed him with his wife and children nearby. Kaczynski later described the result as “totally satisfactory.” The following year, Gilbert Murray opened a package meant for someone else. Murray died instead. Kaczynski wrote that he had “no regret.”

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Dead Man WalkingOn November 5, 2009, Army Major Nidal Hasan entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood...
10/06/2026

Dead Man Walking

On November 5, 2009, Army Major Nidal Hasan entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, carrying an FN Five-seveN pistol w laser sights and extended mags, and opened fire on a group of soldiers preparing to deploy. They dove behind cubicles and ran for exits while Hasan moved through the building shooting. Thirty-one people were hit. Outside, officer Kimberly Munley exchanged fire with him and was shot multiple times. Hasan stood over her and tried to fire again at point-blank range. His weapon malfunctioned. Thankfully they didn't teach "Tap, rack, bang" at OCS. Sgt Mark Todd eventually shot Hasan, paralyzing him, and ending the attack.
Thirteen people were killed. Among them was 21-year-old PFC Francheska Velez, recently returned from Iraq and pregnant with her first child. Hasan survived.
He's been on military death row since 2013. In September 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Trump to approve and order Hasan’s ex*****on. But to this day, Trump has not publicly signed Hasan’s death warrant, and no ex*****on date has been set.
At his 2013 court-martial, representing himself, he told the jury: “The evidence will clearly show I am the shooter.” He also said he had been on the “wrong side” of America’s war and had “switched sides.” He tried to plead guilty but the prosecution wouldn't let him. It would have limited his sentencing, and they wanted the death penalty.
He was convicted of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. In March 2025, the Supreme Court declined to hear his petition, effectively ending his military appellate path.
The REAL axe to grind is by the time Hasan was sentenced in 2013, taxpayers had already spent more than $5 million on his prosecution, security, transportation, expert witnesses, and trial facilities, while he had also received roughly $300,000 in military pay after the attack. Thirteen more years of maximum-security confinement, medical care, and capital appeals followed. There is no public Hasan-specific ledger for the full bill, but the actual taxpayer cost today is easily many millions more. Somehow this is justice... 🫤

It was 2006, Fallujah Iraq. We were tasked with watching a village south of Route Lincoln. 4 days observing a bridge tha...
10/01/2026

It was 2006, Fallujah Iraq. We were tasked with watching a village south of Route Lincoln. 4 days observing a bridge that was the only exit for insurgents to escape the raid that was planned on the final day.
We were responsible for reporting to the battalion the daily activities of the village, looking for weapons and mu*****ns, and any supposed enemy activity occurring behind of the village.
We stepped off for the insert around midnight. By 2am we were on site. The crater was big. Big enough for the 4 man team plus gear to move around and remain under the dirt line. There was no elevation to work from or houses we were authorized to take. So we settled into the crater.
Ctsssst.... broke the early morning silence. Eyes all turned his direction. It was dark, but we all knew that sound. Everything alwasy seems louder at night. But nobody said a word.
As the sun came up we swapped the thermals and took turns under a spray painted periscope. A gadget we laughed at initially but came in handy when you didn't want to stick your head up out of a hole. As the sun rested overhead I finished off a water bottle and stuck it in my ruck.
Ctssssst... broke the silence again. Same guy. Second can.
"Did you even bring any water this time?" I asked.
He took a swig of a fruit punch Rip It. Exaggerated his relief and said, "Nope." He opened his ruck and tipped it for me to see the 8 can's he had in reserve. Not a single bottle of water.
Day 2 and 3 carried on without much change. Logging radio checks, sit reps, and suffering through the days in the hole waiting for the night to emerge and stretch our bodies. I wish I could say the lesson was learned. All hell broke loose. NVA were chasing us to the waters edge and Bubba's last words were "I shoulda packed some water instead of them damn Rip Its." But nothing happened. He never fell out. But did knew I was right and agreed for future ops to carry at least 1 bottle of water.
Rip Its and dip... The bloodlines of the GWOT.

The Zong Massacre The crew of the Zong thought they were being clever, killed more than 130 people, sailed into port, an...
09/30/2026

The Zong Massacre

The crew of the Zong thought they were being clever, killed more than 130 people, sailed into port, and sent the bill to the insurance company.
The ship was owned by a Liverpool slave-trading syndicate led by William Gregson and commanded by Captain Luke Collingwood, a former slave-ship surgeon with little command experience.
The ship left West Africa carrying roughly 442 enslaved men, women, and children, packed into an overcrowded vessel plagued by sickness and bad management.
The crew missed Jamaica by hundreds of miles. By late November, people were dying, water was running short, and the owners had a financial problem to solve. Dead captives from disease were a loss but if they had to be thrown overboard to save the ship, they should be covered by insurance.
On November 29th 1781, the crew forced 54 women and children overboard and into the Atlantic Ocean, alive. Two days later, another 42 men were tossed over. Then a third group. Some reportedly jumped rather than wait to be thrown. Then it started raining. Seemingly solving their water shortage and need to sacrifice the cargo. The crew rushed to collect fresh water but kept throwing captives overboard anyway. This would bite them in the ass later when they claimed that the killings were necessary.
When Zong reached Jamaica, the survivors were sold, while back in Britain, the owners filed an insurance claim for £30 per person lost. They argued was that the dead were insured property, sacrificed because of water shortages and disease, to save the voyage.
The insurance company refused to pay, blaming the "emergency" on bad navigation, bad management, and likely fraud. The owners sued and won the first trial but the case was appealed and the insurance company never paid.
The entire focus was on whether the deaths were covered by insurance. Nobody addressed whether or not anyone should be punished for causing them. In the end, even mass murder couldn’t get past the fine print. The insurance company did what insurance companies do best, find a loophole and refused to pay.

Chibok, 276 girls taken. In 2014, Boko Haram was burning schools across northeastern Nigeria. Eight The school in Chibok...
09/29/2026

Chibok, 276 girls taken.

In 2014, Boko Haram was burning schools across northeastern Nigeria. Eight
The school in Chibok had been closed for a month. But the girls of Chibok gone back for a physics exam.
On April 14th, the Nigerian military knew Boko Haram was on its way. Villagers and herdsmen reported armed men asking for directions to the girls' school. Two military commands were alerted, again and again. A local official was told reinforcements were coming. They lied.
At midnight, 200 fighters rolled into town. Seventeen soldiers and a few police fought the good fight until they ran out of ammo. The girls laid in their dormitories and listened to the gunfire getting closer. Men in uniform broke through the door and said, "Don't worry, we're soldiers. Nothing is going to happen to you." and they marched the girls outside. Then they set the school on fire and shouted "Allahu Akbar,". The girls immediately understood who had come for them.
They stuffed the girls into trucks with stolen food and fuel. Gunmen on motorcycles rode alongside, ready to shoot anyone who jumped. When a truck broke down, some girls ran. One said to her friend, "They can shoot me if they want." Fifty-seven got away. The other 219 disappeared into the Sambisa Forest. A number of fathers who begged the soldiers for help went into the forest on their own trying to find them, with no success.
Three weeks later a video showing Abubakar Shekau standing in front of an armored vehicle and laughing. "I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah." He called them slaves. "I will marry off any woman at the age of 12."

Survivorship BiasDuring World War II, Allied aircraft were returning from combat riddled with holes, if they returned at...
09/24/2026

Survivorship Bias

During World War II, Allied aircraft were returning from combat riddled with holes, if they returned at all. So they started thinking about where to add armor without making the planes too heavy to fight? Engineers mapped the damage on aircraft that survived. The fuselage, wings, and other exposed areas were taking hits again and again, so the obvious answer was to reinforce the places showing the most damage.
Then Abraham Wald looked at the planes and asked a different question. Wald was a mathematician with Columbia University’s Statistical Research Group, a wartime team solving military problems with mathematics. The problem was that every aircraft in front of the analysts had survived.
If a plane could take repeated hits in one section and still limp home, that section might not be where armor was needed most. The areas showing fewer hits could be the dangerous ones, because aircraft struck there were less likely to return and therefore never appeared in the data.
That insight is now taught as Survivorship Bias. We study what survives because it leaves evidence. Failed missions disappear, dead men don't write reports, and defeated armies don't write history books. The stories that vanish into history are often the ones carrying the information we need most.

The Pitesti Experiment From 1949 to 1952, inside Pitești Prison in Communist Romania, the state ran one of the most extr...
09/23/2026

The Pitesti Experiment

From 1949 to 1952, inside Pitești Prison in Communist Romania, the state ran one of the most extreme “re-education” campaigns of the Eastern Bloc. Its victims were largely young political prisoners, many of them Christian college kids, and men accused of opposing the new Communist order. The objective was not simply to interrogate, punish, or imprison them. It was to dismantle the inner foundations that made a person capable of resisting. Could the human spirit be broken?
The prison’s system was designed so that official power could remain partly out of sight. Instead of relying on guards and interrogators, they built prisoner networks. Inmates were pushed, coerced, and recruited to watch one another, report private conversations, identify resistance, and participate in the abuse. Many of them were at university together and knew each other well. Seeing your best friend sharing a cell in hell would be a relief to most, not here. It was used.

The torture was physical, psychological, moral, and spiritual.

Prisoners were beaten with clubs, sleep deprived for days, forced confessions, and to denounce friends, family, and beliefs. Christian prisoners were subjected to deliberate blasphemies and mockeries of Christianity. The purpose of these acts was not only humiliation, it was to make faith itself feel contaminated, unsafe, or impossible to hold onto. Around Christmas and Easter, prisoners were forced into blasphemous “black liturgies” that perverted the rituals, hymns, and sacred figures. One prisoner would be cast as Christ, forced to crawl on his knees, carrying a cross, and a crown of thorns. Others describe the Virgin Mary being reduced to an obscene s*xual symbol, with prisoners forced to conduct s*x acts as part of the humiliation. The communion was given in urine and f***s to eat. The objective was not spectacle. It was to attach shame, terror, and forced complicity to the faith that had helped many prisoners endure.

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09/22/2026

Rule #3

The third rule for life that we wanted our kids to know if we never made it back, was to “Be Hard”.
Life is hard. There’s literally no escaping it. But we do get to choose our hard.
Being single, being married, getting divorced, all is hard.
Having that conversation or holding in the words you need to say, is hard.
Being fat and unhealthy, fasting and working out, is hard.
Nothing in this life escapes it, so embrace the suck. The cold, the fatigue, the fear, the rejection, the long days when no one is clapping for you. None of that lasts forever. Even the urge to quit is temporary.
But something changes in you when you persevere. Knowing what you’re capable of, stays with you. It’s where genuine confidence is built.
Being afraid of the deep end is hard. Learning to drown proof yourself at 8 years old, also hard.
You always have more in you than you think. Don’t quit.

09/17/2026

ZF Silkies: Buy 1, Get 1 50% for a limted time.

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