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6 Things You Don't Know About Life on a Submarine

6 Things You Don't Know About Life on a Submarine

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by: FoFa Active Indicator LED Icon 17 OP 
~ 10 years ago   Feb 4, '14 12:31pm  
Written by a Submariner. #1. Even the Surface SucksWhen the sub is submerged, everything stays nice, level, and calm. You might as well be tied up in port.Submarines are meant to be submerged. Now take that brilliantly engineered tin can and put it on the surface. The damn thing wallows like a pig in mud. And since you're inside, you have no frame of reference.Inside the sub, it's basically a carnival fun house, with everything liable to tilt wildly at complete random and with no warning.#2. Boredom Leads to PrankingWith that many guys dealing with nothing but each other for weeks on end, you can imagine the sort of Jackass-style shenanigans we'd get into. I once saw two guys taking turns beating each other with a stapler, dozens of staples sticking out of their backs, arms, chests, and necks."Why?""We're bored."#3. Everything StinksEverything stinks. It's not just the flatulence (didn't think of that, did you? Imagine your old dorm room, only there's 20 guys in there and you can't open the window for months) or the sweat, or the one guy who was allergic to the chemicals in the CO2 scrubbers, which gave him a skin rash that caused flakes of him to fall off constantly, but he was the only one technically qualified to operate it, flakes ahoy, good buddy. The whole thing is a machine, and machines need oil. Oil stinks. God, does it stink. I stuffed dryer sheets in my pockets just to remind myself that there were better things in the world.#4. It's Incredibly CrampedYes, yes, you probably assumed this one. But you do not know the extent of it. For the first two months I was on the sub, I slept in the torpedo room. Some jokers even shut me in one of the tubes once. Ha ha, pretty funny joke, guys, making me think I was going to die in the vast black abyss like that. I thought those sleeping arrangements were a bum deal, until I started "hot-racking." Three guys share two racks, so one person is always getting in as another person gets out. You know that super gross feeling you get sitting on a toilet seat warmed by someone else's butt? It's that, in a bed. But you're still in the military, so there are fitness standards to maintain. We had a stationary bike that was missing the seat. Just a little metal tube you were welcome to sit on if you enjoyed the sensation of being anally violated by a robot. We had a rowing machine that, at full extension, had your back hitting a steam pipe. Every stroke was a test in precision: "How far back can I extend before I burn the hell out of myself?"#5. They Mess With the OxygenThe oxygen levels on a submarine are kept dramatically low. This is primarily to keep the risk of fires at a minimum, but it has some side effects. Most submariners work with their hands and get injured a fair amount. You'd be surprised what a small drop in oxygen levels will do to your body's ability to repair itself. Constantly oozing wounds are the name of the game. It is not a fun game. Low oxygen levels also make everyone a) tired as all get out, and b) constantly **** off. The first time I went down the hatch, a guy broke a coffee mug over my head because I didn't move as fast as he would have liked.#6. The Training Will Drive You CrazyNuke school is a year and a half of white walls, PowerPoints, and fluorescent lighting. Some say that the ships actually ran off of the souls of Nuke students, drained through the ever-flickering lights. The base is like a prison for the first two months: You sit there studying for as long as you can, then march back to the barracks, shower, sleep, and do it again. Imagine 10 hours per day learning different components of alloys and engines, followed by exercise (if you're lucky) and then ... surprise, more studying. They cram four to six years of college-level information into a six-month period. It's an impressive system, in the same way watching a car get compacted in a junkyard is impressive. The SEALs encourage people in training to quit. They'll take a class of 200 and whittle it down until only the hardest, toughest bastards are left. But people who want to be Nukes are in short supply; the accepted ASVAB minimum scores are high, and Nukes rarely re-enlist. Civilian life can offer them such tantalizing foreign concepts as "having money" and "not living in a dank metal tube." The Navy doesn't want you to quit, so when someone does wash out, it's treated like a dereliction of duty. "How dare you betray your classmates -- nay, your country -- by wanting to live on the surface world? You don't want to be a Morlock, son? What, so a giant metal group coffin isn't good enough for you anymore?" 4951
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yarddogs5k Active Indicator LED Icon
~ 10 years ago   Feb 4, '14 1:21pm  
Son on submarines? 4951
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fcabanski Active Indicator LED Icon 16
~ 10 years ago   Feb 4, '14 1:41pm  
"#1. Even the Surface Sucks" - explains how submerged is fine, but the surface sucks.  That's like saying "even being healthy sucks" when explaining the problems with being sick.The Morlocks ate the Eloy, the surface people. 4951
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