"Trespassers will be shot, Survivors will be shot again" - Why you should never trespass into this guy's ranch

This is Richard Marcinko.

And he is one, bad dude.

I’ll give you the short version.

He is a Navy SEAL who was so successful during the Vietnam war that the North Vietnamese army had a special bounty on his head.

His most notable credential though is that he is the founder and original leader of SEAL Team 6 (a team my dad led in the early 2000’s).

Part of founding this team involved securing high-level equipment and supplies for training and missions.

Years later, he was convicted of getting a $100,000 kickback from an arms dealer in exchange for getting them a contract on hand grenades. (Military contracts are huge, huge dollars in the US.)

He then went on to serve an 18-month prison sentence.

A few months after he was released from jail, I met him in a hotel hallway while with my Dad.

When I met Marcinko. I remember him being this burly, intimidating wild man. He came out of prison a bit different. He’s been in a lot of prison fights apparently. And won.

He’s relatively calm now. And I have nothing but respect for the guy.

Interestingly though, in that hallway I met him in as an 8-year-old boy, he was finishing his first autobiography:

Which went on to become a massively successful NYT #1 bestseller.

Long before all these Navy SEAL books and movies came out, Rogue Warrior was the Navy SEAL book.

That book was made into a video game and Marcinko went on to write a bunch of other novels about special forces operations.

He now has a ranch in Virginia which I’ve been to once. And hopefully will again.

True story - when you pull into his ranch, there is this sign on the gate:

Lifehack: don’t break into a Navy SEAL’s home. And definitely not Marcinko’s.

Story by John Kernan on quora.