In a stunning announcement that reverses 14 years of proud tradition, the US Army is pulling the popular energy drink Rip-It off of PX shelves and out of comfort pallets bound for overseas service members.
“It turns out that a single Rip-It has like 4000% of the recommended lifetime caffeine intake,” explained US Army Surgeon General Cal Ripkin. “That’s per serving. And because they come in those little cans, everyone thinks they can drink like thirty of them. A day.”
He is correct. A single infantry platoon of thirty men has been known to go through 25 cases of Rip-It energy drinks in a single day, especially when the day’s mission gets weathered out and the Call of Duty server is down again. Resupply for the one brigade-sized element in Iraq alone requires 17 C-5 cargo planes doing constant”turn and burn” operations from Rip-It’s warehouse in Connecticut into combat hotspots around the world. Rip-It has definitely left its mark on our warfighters.
But Rip-It has a dark side. One small can of Rip-It is supposed to provide enough concentrated energy for an entire 6-month deployment, but troops are guzzling them down like Jaeger shots at a sorority girl’s 21st birthday party. As it turns out, a single 8-ounce serving of Rip-It boosts testosterone, aggression, and ESP by as much as 200% in soldiers of both genders. In fact, in both composition and effect, a can of Rip-It is exactly the same as a hit of crystal meth. Because of this startling revelation, the US Attorney General, acting on the advice of the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FDA, is now forcing Rip-It cans to carry a drug warning for its active ingredient, “ripitol.”
“This is a dangerous drug, known to make troops who overdose combat ineffective,” said the sergeant major of the 75th Ranger Regiment. “Troops in my own unit are dangerous experimenting with ripitol, going so far as to hold inter-platoon “case races.” I don’t think I have to tell you how THAT ended.”
Not everyone is pleased about the announcement putlawing Rip-It though. “When I get home and tell people I survived seven tours to Afghanistan and four to Iraq purely on caffeine and hate, people think I’m kidding,” explained former US Army Ranger Tom Shergood. “But if we were getting to go on a two-week patrol inside Taliban territory and you had room in your ruck, you didn’t carry spare batteries or another belt of machinegun ammo. You carried a case of Rip-Its. ALWAYS. It’s THAT important. You know those vests they have for carrying a bunch of 40mm grenades? Well I carried a grenade launcher but all of my grenade pouches contained the squad’s basic load of Rip-Its. My team leader even made me dummy cord each can to my LBV so I didn’t lose any.”
Admiral William McRaven, former commander of SOCOM: “What, no more Rip-It? F-that, I’m out.”
Negative reactions to the news are not confined to the enlisted ranks, either. Admiral William McRaven, commander of US Special Operations Command and a notorious Rip-It fiend, was reported to have retired offered his resignation as commander of US Special Operations Command when he heard that the tasty beverages were about to be banned by the Pentagon. He is now the chairman of the board of Rip-It Solutions International, the private military corporation/beverage conglomerate dedicated to making the third world safe for Rip-It and democracy.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, conspiracy theorists have managed to tie this development to the historic graduation of two female officers from the previously male-only Ranger School:
“You think that those two girls graduated Ranger School because of hard work and perseverance, just like everyone else did? No way!” exclaimed Pete Basil, who did three weeks of basic training as a cav scout and is not only “basically infantry” but also considers himself an expert on all things Ranger even though he never earned the Ranger Tab or served in the Ranger Regiment.
Speaking to us from his trailer park in rural Wyoming, Basil explained, “I saw on InfoWars that during their time in the “gulag” those women didn’t do PT… they didn’t sleep… all they did was pound Rip-Its for like a week straight. OF COURSE you’re going to graduate Ranger School when you get that kind of special treatment. Have you seen the pictures of (US Army general and former Delta Force commander) Scott Miller carrying that big, heavy ruck? I’ll give you one guess what was in it… and it rhymes with “dip shits.” I bet he was tossing cans of Rip-It around like Mardi Gras beads while he was walking patrols, but I bet not a SINGLE male Ranger candidate got one from ol’ Scotty.”
Plans to include Rip-Its in the new lineup of “Class VI MREs” is now on hold pending a full investigation.
