
How a nuclear submarine officer learned to live in tight quarters - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/84/outbreak/how-a-nuclear-submarine-officer-learned-to-live-in-tight-quarters
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brandmeyer
> The full cycle was 18 hours, which meant the timing of our circadian cycles
> were constantly changing.

Living on an 18-hour day is rough, but I always felt that the worst part was
changing back and forth between a 24-hour day and the 18-hour day. There are a
couple of strong feedbacks to help you with the 18-hour cycle.

> The bunk rooms are sanctuaries where silence is observed with monastic
> intensity.

Not merely silence, but also lighting. The bunk rooms are always lit with dim
red lights, and the working spaces are lit to nearly full daylight. On the
older boats you would also operate the control room at periscope depth with
dim lighting, but newer ships with electronic masts probably don't.

Diet-wise, the ship serves four meals a day, every 6 hours. Midnight rations
or midrats is the fourth meal. So in a good rhythm you can eat when you wake
up, go on your 6 hour watch, eat once more, work/train for 6 hours and
sleep/personal for 6 hours. Eating your prior meal about 12 hours before you
wake up also helps keep a decent body clock.

~~~
i_am_proteus
And then there are drills. Simulated equipment failures, fire, flooding, etc.;
all of the alarms sound as if it were real, and the crew responds as if it
were real (except that no extinguishers are discharged, no SCBAs lit off, no
hoses pressurized). Scheduling drills without detrimental effects on the
crew's sleep, but still making the drills a surprise and a challenge, is (like
the reactor) critical.

~~~
brandmeyer
Drill days were especially rough. We called them Vulcan Death Watches,
although I have heard other nicknames as well.

There's a lot of nukes in this forum, but for the all the non-nukes out there,
drills use all three of the ship's shifts. The on-watch shift is normally
assisted by the off-going shift in emergencies. The on-coming shift then
supervises, runs, and observes the drills.

So one way or another, all three shifts are going to be up and awake during
the drill cycle. The typical rotation for us packed 3x 4-hours shifts in to
the same time that would normally be occupied by 2x 6-hour shifts. So the pre-
dawn shift and evening shift would have both of the off-watch thirds of the
crew taking personal time while all three of the morning and mid-day drill
shifts have everyone awake.

It more or less takes your body clock and smashes it with a sledgehammer.

It also prepares you mentally for just about anything.

~~~
_curious_
"It also prepares you mentally for just about anything."

I bet. Sounds badass!

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Makes me wonder why we're having such a hard time accommodating the social
distancing rules mandated by the current pandemic. Humans are capable of a
lot!

I think it says something pretty impressive about our society that just being
cooped up with our families in our McMansions, not being allowed to go out to
the bar, seems to be the worst thing that many of my neighbors are capable of
comprehending. Our ancient ancestors, many impoverished people around the
world today, and some of our peers in jobs a little more extreme than a
cubicle farm are making epic efforts on a daily basis, and you are incapable
of just staying home for a month?

~~~
brandmeyer
There's a lesson to be learned here, but I don't think that this is it.

The nuclear power training program takes about 2 years for enlisted sailors
(which I was). Those two years are set up to deliberately filter out people
based on their ability to endure various stressors. Academically, the most
grueling stage packs a 2 year engineering technology degree into about 6
months. They start the process of flunking people out 4 weeks into this
particular stage of training. Overall, roughly half of all the enlistees who
start that program end up doing something else for Uncle Sam.

Even after passing through that filtering and training function, life at sea
is difficult and occasionally someone cracks. I recall an incident that
happened in the mess deck. Its a compact room that can't serve more than a
fraction of the crew at any given time, so folks have to go through it in a
pipeline. Early in the pipeline, you pick up your silverware. One day, several
months into a long deployment, a sailor forgot to pick up his fork. No big
deal, right? He asked his shipmate a little ways back if he could pass up a
fork for him. So of course, being a tight-knit crew, the shipmate was happy to
oblige. But instead of being grateful, Petty Officer Exhausted became enraged,
"This is a _bent_ fork! What the hell is wrong with you!?", jumped back in the
line and proceeded to assault his buddy! Its a packed space, so several people
grabbed both participants and pulled them back immediately. Nobody was
injured. A Chief got involved and helped straighten out Mr. Exhausted without
ending his career.

Humanity covers a pretty wide spectrum. Each of us is the the integral of all
of our experiences leading up to this moment. As something of an introvert
myself, I don't mind the social isolation all that much. But I can empathize
with my colleagues that are having a rougher time right now. Its better to
support each other through tough times than to berate each other for not being
tough enough.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Interesting. To what extent do you think these programs filter a population
with an innate distribution to find a subset versus train people to develop
these characteristics?

A friend of mine is a nuclear engineer, she's not been deployed yet, but has
gone through the same filter process. A similar though less extreme filtering
happened in my engineering college, there were 250 people in my EGR 101 class,
by second semester EGR 110 had 140 people, and I graduated with a class of 61.

I found this article from earlier this year about the "Fremen Mirage" or hard
times/strong men/good times/weak men/hard times trope and thought it
interesting. Seems topical.

[https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-
mirage-...](https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-
i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/)

~~~
brandmeyer
> To what extent do you think these programs filter a population with an
> innate distribution to find a subset versus train people to develop these
> characteristics?

I think the bias is very strongly towards training. The recruiting pipeline
sucks up everyone with enough intelligence to pass some standardized tests.

However, everyone who enlists knows that they are going to be facing a hard
life. The fact of the matter is that if you are smart enough to become a nuke,
you're probably also smart enough to work as an engineer.

The vast majority of enlisted nukes got there in order to get a second chance
at life. Most of my shipmates either flunked out of college or couldn't get
into college due to shenanigans in high school. I was in the latter category.

------
BTBurke
I'm a retired submarine officer and spent a lot of time on an LA class fast
attack submarine, a bit older and smaller than what the author experienced.

When my parents came to visit one time, I gave them a tour and my mom
described living on a boat as like "opening up the hood of your car and
crawling into the engine." That's not too far off.

~~~
Gibbon1
I liked walking into the SS Jeremiah O'Brien. You don't so much as walk into
the engine room as much as you walk inside the engine.

Reminds me I need to go see the USS Pampanito when the current madness blows
over.

~~~
facorreia
USS Pampanito is great! And the audio tour is very good. It was recorded by
sailors that server in the same class of sub.

~~~
rsync
Agreed - I have taken all of my children 2-3 times each and I have been there
perhaps 10 times.

I also very highly recommend touring the aircraft carrier that is in San
Diego.

------
krenzo
> [In Nuclear Power School,] I was below the line enough to earn the
> distinguished dishonor of 25 additional study hours each week

My man, welcome to the club! Reminds me of the time I was punished for being
just 30 mins shy of meeting my mandatory additional study hours because my
friends dragged me out to go see Star Wars Ep 2. Nuclear Power School had a
rule where if you were scanned in (everyone had to scan in and out of the
building with a badge) for study hall less than 30 mins, all of the time was
invalidated. I clocked out at 29 mins. It was not worth it!

~~~
brandmeyer
We really do want that kind of attention to detail in our nuclear force,
though. Its the combination of engineered safeguards and cultural safeguards
that has kept the nuclear navy relatively incident-free all these years.

My default position of trust in a nuclear energy startup starts off very low
specifically because I have yet to see that kind of detail-oriented and
safety-oriented culture in the people behind them.

------
canada_dry
> It’s unnatural to stuff humans, torpedoes, and a nuclear reactor into a
> steel boat that’s intentionally meant to sink.

Aptly put. I suppose only the ISS offers a more unholy accommodation.

~~~
Someone
I would rather be on the ISS, I think. The ISS has (tiny) windows with great
views and more room per person (about 150m³ per astronaut).

I also think its inhabitants have more of a sense of being blessed to be
allowed to be there. That helps, psychologically.

~~~
nabla9
ISS is physically more demanding.

Radiation damage, weightlessness, constipation etc.

~~~
baud147258
At least in the ISS, the astronauts stay connected to the rest of the world,
unlike the submariners on ballistic missile subs.

------
pferde
Wow, just reading about the cramped conditions inside a submarine got me
breathing faster due to my latent claustrophobia. And this was a fairly modern
submarine, I can't imagine how much worse it had to be in WW2-era subs...

~~~
hanoz
Don't watch Das Boot.

~~~
Diederich
Actually do watch it if at all possible.

~~~
dbcurtis
It is a great movie, but it is intentionally shot to evoke feelings of
claustrophobia -- it may be great art, but I would not recommend it to a true
claustrophobe.

~~~
ThePadawan
I had the great pleasure to walk through one of the original models used for
shooting exhibited at Bavaria Filmstadt [0].

I believe the guide said that it had to be scaled up by ~25% to fit the
cameras at the time and it was still incredibly claustrophobic.

[0]
[https://goo.gl/maps/uEKtGzQ4wHd78CWW9](https://goo.gl/maps/uEKtGzQ4wHd78CWW9)

~~~
Diederich
> it had to be scaled up by ~25%

Wow, that's kind of nuts.

------
renewiltord
Something I never thought about with being a submarine officer is that there
aren't weekends. I never even thought about that. I could work the hours but
not even a Sunday?! I can't do that for the time they do it.

------
adaisadais
Phenomenal. Reminds me to count my blessings and enjoy the sunshine.

~~~
KineticLensman
Hence the jokey UK naval slang for submariners: 'sun-dodgers'

------
WalterBright
“Admiral, an officer should be a gentleman of liberal education, refined
manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor.”

Something we should all be.

------
bojo
Had a chance to tour a Trident submarine due to my uncle being its Chief
Engineer. Through the eyes of an 8yo it seemed pretty huge, but looking back,
the whole crew was packed into a series of tiny bunks between each of the
missile tubes. Reading articles like this give a much better perspective as to
how genuinely tight it all really was.

~~~
baud147258
I've got a friend who served for a short stint on a nuclear submarine and
because of the lack of available bunk space, he slept with a few other in the
torpedo room

------
bane
The Seawolf class has an interesting history
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawolf-
class_submarine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawolf-class_submarine)

------
RosanaAnaDana
>'My longest stint was 2 months'

Boomers and forward deployed out there having a good laugh.

~~~
lonelappde
Does "forward deployed" imply confined?

~~~
moandcompany
The role of an SSBN and a context for being forward deployed can be found by
reading about the Nuclear Triad:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_triad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_triad)

In the US context, SSBNs are one prong of this triad, and the platforms are
positioned to always be at the ready to carry out strike orders when called
upon by the Nuclear Command Authority. These hulls are equipped with nuclear
reactor power plants, so fuel for the sailors (i.e. humans) becomes the
biggest constraint for how long a submarine can remain underway.

~~~
kitteh
National Command Authority?

~~~
moandcompany
Yep --typo-- Thanks for pointing it out!

NCA is the National Command Authority (President as Commander-in-Chief and the
SECDEF)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Command_Authority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Command_Authority)

Boomers on the mind :)

