[Nulgath]

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis was in Indonesia for a three-day visit that ended today. Besides the high-level talks on regional defense strategy with the Indonesian government, by far the highlight of his trip was an bonkers demonstration done by the Indonesian military in his honor.

While it’s customary for Pentagon chiefs to be shown military demonstrations during foreign visits, our soldiers upped the ante by several degrees of insanity. At Indonesian Military (TNI) headquarters in Central Jakarta today, Mattis was treated to a showcase of a rather unique set of skills Indonesian troops were trained in.

The demonstrations included men rolling in glass, walking on fire, and breaking stacks of bricks using their heads. There was also a blindfolded soldier tasked with shooting a balloon held between the legs of one of his colleagues, which miraculously didn’t cause any injuries despite at least one shot missing.

Perhaps the most insane segment of the show for Mattis was this snake killing demonstration. In this video uploaded by USNews National Security Correspondent Paul D. Shinkman, you can see about a dozen Indonesian special forces soldiers handling king cobras before killing them — with at least two of the troopers ripping apart the poor, innocent snakes with their teeth.

And, for no reason we can fathom, except perhaps for an over-the-top show of deranged manliness, the snake-killing soldiers fed each other the serpents’ blood.

On the snake killing demonstration, Mattis praised the Indonesian soldiers’ cold-blooded and expert handling of the reptiles, telling Reuters, “The snakes! Did you see them tire them out and then grab them? The way they were whipping them around – a snake gets tired very quickly.”

Mattis leaves Indonesia today to continue his tour to Vietnam.

Many Indonesian troops are trained in wildlife survival, and killing snakes is seen as a necessary skill for have for those who have to be deployed into jungles. In 2016, in a joint military training operation, Indonesia’s Marines taught US Army soldiers how to kill venomous snakes like the king cobra and cook large snakes like a python for sustenance, demonstrations of which were filmed.