#342 Garand Thumb - SERE Specialist on Surviving the Most Dangerous Places on Earth

Mike Jones, a retired Air Force SERE specialist and TACP officer, walked into the Shawn Ryan Show studio and immediately felt underqualified. “I am not cool enough to be on Shawn Ryan,” he told himself the night before. He is, in fact, cool enough. Jones is the creator of Garand Thumb, one of the largest firearms and military-focused channels on YouTube, and he spent his military career learning to survive in the most punishing environments on earth. This conversation covers what that training actually looks like, how the war in Ukraine has changed warfare forever, and what it really takes to survive when everything falls apart.

The SERE Pipeline: Learning to Live on Nothing

Jones’s path to becoming a SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) specialist was anything but direct. He started in the Air Force Pararescue pipeline but washed out after two shallow water blackouts in the pool. “It was absolutely brutal,” he says. “I remember calling my family just crying.” He was given a second chance and reclassified to SERE, where he excelled. The training is a year-long ordeal that begins with a three-week selection course called “Triple S.” The first week is a brutal exercise in task saturation: students are taught to improvise equipment—like sewing a bag from a parachute—while being constantly smoked and deprived of sleep. “It’s a brutal first week,” Jones says. “You