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colour blindness in the army


oscar19681

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I have tried joining the dutch army 3 times and did not get in becuase of red/green colour blindness. I read somewhere on the internet that colour blindness is something they find usefull in snipers becuase they tend to focus more on shape then on colours. whats the deal with colour blindess in other armys around the world?

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Posted by Kingtiger

well its pretty dangerous to have a soldier who is colourblind..

"puss the green button"

"-NO NOT THE RED ONE!!"

:nuke:

and world war III finally started...:debile2:

Yeah, that would be a hoot.:biggrin: But colorblindness can be an asset in the military. I remember reading in a book about a recon unit in the 3rd Army during WWII, in which was a guy who was partially colorblind. Because of it, he was able to see enemy vehicles under cover in low light conditions before anyone else, and thus he became a valued member of the team.

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Yeah a side affect of colour blindness is that due to the fact that the cones in your eyes do not have the normal workload in seperating colour like a normal person has because of that the colour blind has a slightly better night vision because more light is proccesses in the visual part of your eyes and brain.

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well its pretty dangerous to have a soldier who is colourblind..

"puss the green button"

"-NO NOT THE RED ONE!!"

:nuke:

and world war III finally started.... :debile2:

Actually the strange thing about being red/green colour blind is that i actually see red and green like a normal person.

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you can do recruitment tests every 2 years or so becuase they get rid of your file after 1 or 2 years if you failed the tests then at the recruitment centre. Its colours like light green that i see as brown. Most colours are no problem though

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a few fun facts about color blindness:

1. many have that, at least partially. IIRC, it's about 10% of male population (who's bloody idea was "let's have males with non-identical 23th chromosome"?).

2. most colorblind are only blind to red-green.

3. usually you don't know about it if it's partial, since there are differences in luminance between red and green: red is more saturated, usually, so most greens around us are not as bright as red (or is it the other way around? been some time since I messed with color).

4. usually, color blindness has no real-world implication (see #3), though complete color blindness does.

I've never heard about an advantage in low light because of extra color processing. basically, the cones are all connected to one vision system which is in charge of high-definition color-contrast processing. rods are very very very sensitive to light, and are connected to a different vision system, which is much cruder, but is very sensitive to change and movement. during the day, the rods are absolutely overwhelmed by light, and are more or less disfunctional. only by night, they kick into action.

color processing is very complicated. in low-light conditions, cones might not have enough input to register color (lots of connections between different receptors), but have enough information for brightness. then we get that lovely black&white night vision (under moonlit skies, for example). retinal hypersensitivity is a very nice thing to have when traveling by night, but I don't see any connection to color vision. I think both are unrelated.

I see no point in not enlisting you, since only a jerk designs a tool that make differentiating between controls critical, yet fails to take color blindness into consideration. they're just making an excuse :)

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thats my point exactly . However its known nato forces have zero tolerance for colour blinds. I could understand it if i cant see a traffic light going green or red (even if green or red where given other positions on the trafficlight) Or if i could not see the grass is green. But in daily life i have no problem whatsoever with colour blindness. Neither do i have problem in the planning phase in steel beasts pro which uses colour a lot! one time while attempting to join the army the guy doing the test said that the problem would be for example in a UN mission that i would not be able to see the difference between a blue or a green helmet LOL! or that on exersize i would load sharp rounds insted of blanks! I mean i never had a problem seeing the difference between UN blue helmets and green ones. And there are other ways to see if ammunition or blanks or sharp round then to look at a colour on the end of bullet-belt or clip.

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