Adaptive engineering, controlled-intensity programs, and AI systems built in partnership with Fiction Factory — on 160 acres in the Sierra foothills of Springville, California.
The Mission
Veterans were trained to operate in chaos, speed, consequence, and pressure — then handed systems built to flatten exactly those capabilities. We're not interested in flattening anything. We're here to redirect it.
Bombshell Discovery was founded by U.S. Air Force veteran Tommy Strader on 160 acres that became Strader Life Ranch — the place where every one of these programs gets tested on the ground before it goes anywhere near a veteran at scale.
Founding Principle
Complex problems don't always require complex solutions. They require different thinking.
Bombshell Discovery × Fiction Factory
Nonprofits in the veteran space run on small teams and long hours. The work that eats those hours — intake, follow-up, documentation, knowing who's drifting and who's doing fine — is exactly the work software should be carrying.
We partnered with Fiction Factory, an AI software studio whose automation already runs inside multimillion-dollar companies — quietly handling the repetitive, time-consuming work that used to tie up whole teams. We built on that same technology for one reason: to give nonprofits that efficiency, so their people spend less time on office work and more on the mission.
Not a therapist. Not a diagnostic tool. A teammate that notices something is off before you say it — a personal baseline over time, surfacing meaningful change.
The unglamorous half: intake, scheduling, records, follow-up, and reporting — carried so a four-person nonprofit can run like a forty-person one.
What works here shouldn't stay here. The intent is to make these systems available to other veteran-serving nonprofits rather than rebuilding the same tooling six times over.
The AI Crew Chief is a support and awareness tool. It is not a medical device, does not provide diagnosis or treatment, and is not a substitute for professional care or crisis services.
Programs · In Planning
Every program pairs physiological intensity with creative or cognitive processing. The pairing isn't incidental — it's the method. All three are in active planning at Strader Life Ranch and are not yet open to participants.
Concept rendering
Facility 01
A controlled environment for introducing stress safely — intensity dialed in, measured, and repeated without consequence. Confidence built on the ground before anything moves faster.
Concept rendering
Facility 02
A robotics and adaptive engineering division for veterans with physical limitations. A limitation isn't a failure — it's a design constraint. And design constraints get solved.
Concept rendering
Facility 03
A maker space where people with disabilities design and build custom projects that make their own daily life easier — with the tools, the engineering support, and the time to get it right.
The Method · Verification Loop
A repeatable cycle designed to move veterans from fear-dominated intensity toward controlled, confident capability. It is a system, not an event — and like any system, it gets checked one item at a time.
Deliberately activate the nervous system in engineered environments — professionally managed throughout.
Stay conscious inside the intensity — where fear ends and control begins. Clarity under pressure.
The body expects consequence. The consequence doesn't come. Intensity without harm rewrites the story.
Measure it. Heart rate, stress patterns, sleep, recovery. Systems tuned on data, not impressions.
One experience changes perception; a system creates durable change — carried by the AI Crew Chief.
Research · With CURE Medical
For many veterans the hardest injuries are the ones nobody can see. Recovery is real, but when you can't observe it changing, it's very hard to know what is actually helping.
Bombshell Discovery and CURE Medical are working together to assemble an Institutional Review Board (IRB) submission for a study of post-traumatic stress — building a longitudinal record, under physician oversight, of what recovery looks like over time rather than in a single snapshot.
A formal research protocol prepared for independent ethical review — participant protections, oversight, and methodology defined before any data is collected.
▲ Being assembledMeasurement repeated often enough, and for long enough, to show change over time — the difference between one data point and an actual trajectory.
▲ ProposedFindings intended to be shared, so what is learned here can help the next veteran and the next organization — not sit in a drawer.
▲ ProposedStatus: This research initiative is in the planning stage. The IRB submission is in preparation and has not yet been reviewed or approved. No study is currently enrolling and no participants are being recruited. Nothing on this page is a medical claim: Bombshell Discovery does not assert that any program, technology, or therapy diagnoses, treats, cures, or prevents PTSD or any other condition. The purpose of this work is to study and document recovery under appropriate oversight.
If you are a veteran in crisis, call or text 988 and press 1 for the Veterans Crisis Line, available 24/7.
Get Involved
Bombshell Discovery is in its early stage, and that is exactly when the right partners matter most. We're talking with organizations, funders, engineers, clinicians, and veteran-serving nonprofits who want to help build this — or who want these systems for their own mission.
Or email us directly at tommy@bombshelldiscovery.com