THIS IS NO SHIT!

Each branch of the military has its own particular version of the TALL TALE: Squids have the Sea Story, Grunts (Army and Marine Corps) have the War Story and the Air Force, well, I guess they have Stories from the Golf Course.

Of these tall tales, lies as they're referred to in the real world, the best ones all start with the same four words:

This Is No Shit!

During the mid 1990s, a morning drive-time radio show here in Atlanta had a segment they called "Shop Talk." In this segment, listeners would call-in and use job specific jargon and the DJs would try to guess what job they did. The only stipulation was the caller's jargon had to be used throughout their given industry, not just specific to their location (e.g. if an A-Ganger from USS La Jolla (SSN 701) were to refer to "the bomb" every submariner would know he was referring to the oxygen generator, where as if that same A-Ganger were to refer to "Christine" most submariners would be able to infer, since the guy is an A-Ganger, but only those qualified on La Jolla would "know" he was referring to that fickle bitch of a diesel generator).

If you stumped the DJs you won whatever prize they were giving away.

So, being an ex-submariner, NUC ET, and smarter than these particular DJs it became my goal to come up with a complete Sea Story full of NUC jargon that pretty much no one, except a submariner, would understand.

What follows is the Sea Story that won me some concert tickets (I've included [the pronunciation] of items that might not be intuitively obvious). I thought about adding something about the Electric Plant being in a full power line up with the tie bus tagged out for maintenance, but I didn't want their heads to explode from the onslaught of jargon I was releasing.

Without further ado:

So there we were: at 400 feet, 2F/2F [two fast, two fast], NOP, NOT, NOL [nop-not-nawl] and making turns for going home. The original plan was to do a calorimetric after midnight, but SGWLC [squiggle] was on the fritz, so we opted to do a TRPI TP&CC [tirpee trip-n-cal] instead.

Meanwhile, E-Div's nub was the AEA, he stood by the EPM controller and watched one of his fellow Wire-Biters and the Squat standing Upper Level screw with the Still; even on the best of days that was a bad idea.

As most everyone would have predicted when they fired it up for a smoke test it did just that, subsequently setting the NUCLAB on fire and killing the sleeping ELT. Which, in retrospect, sucked because as high-strung as he was he would have made a great Screaming Alpha.

So now we're sucking rubber and snorkeling. All I wanted to do was hit the rack; skip MID-RATS, skip the flick, just head straight to bed.

When I thought it couldn't get any worse, the RPCP lit up like a Christmas tree.

For those of you fortunate enough to not understand any of that, what follows is a [translated into English] version of the same tale:

So there we were: [the submarine was] at [a depth of] 400 feet, [four of the six pumps capable of circulating water through the reactor vessel are operating in fast speed], [the reactor plant was at its normal operating pressure and temperature, and the water in the pressurizer (the device that keeps the water inside the reactor from boiling) is at its normal level] and [going as fast as possible]. The original plan was to [calibrate the instruments that measure the reactor's power output] after midnight, but [the system that controls the water level in the steam generators] was on the fritz, so we opted to [check one of the systems that measure the position of the rods that control neutron flux throughout the core] instead.

Meanwhile, [the most junior person in electrical division] was the [Auxiliary Electrician Aft (a roving electrician keeping an eye on all the running electrical equipment)], stood by the [Emergency Propulsion Motor] controller and watched one of his fellow [members of Electrical Division] and the [member of Reactor Laboratory Division] standing [watch in engine room upper level keeping an eye on all the running mechanical equipment] screw with the [distilling unit capable of making 10,000 gallons of fresh water per day from sea water]; even on the best of days that was a bad idea.

As most everyone would have predicted when they [turned it on for the first time after maintenance] it [caught on fire], subsequently setting [Nucleonics (the lab where the Engineering Laboratory Technicians do their analysis)] on fire, killing the sleeping [Engineering Laboratory Technician]. Which, in retrospect, sucked because as high strung as he was he would have made a great [flaming human].

So now we're [wearing rubber masks and breathing via the ship's air system] and [at a shallow depth to allow the snorkel mast to be raised allowing the diesel generator to get air and allow the ship to get rid of the smoke in the engine room]. All I wanted to do was [skip the midnight meal consisting of left-overs from dinner and maybe beanies and weenies (or if we're lucky the fixings for PB&J sandwiches) and the after watch movie and go straight to bed].

When I thought it couldn't get any worse, [too many alarm lights on the Reactor Plant Control Panel lit up all at once].

An Epiphany In Sherwood Forest

I was in the Navy for six years. I was a NUC. Now don't get your tits in a flutter, I played with reactors not "special" weapons.

For those who aren't hep to military slang, the prefix "special" has variable meanings, depending upon the noun following it (e.g., "special" operations, typically mean "covert" operations and "special" weapons are "nuclear" weapons).

George Carlin said it best and I'll paraphrase: changing what you call something to make it more palatable to the overly sensitive dilutes it. Plain and simple!

But I'm not going to talk about all that, I'm going to talk about the day I became humble. I'm talking about utter humility.

I was trained to operate a nuclear reactor, so the only options were aircraft carriers, cruisers, or submarines. The phrase goes there are only two types of ships in the navy: submarines and targets. I volunteered for subs the first chance I got.

By design, submariners are a pretty strange lot. There is also a brotherhood among submariners that is universal, regardless of your country of origin, and at the same time unique because you won't find it in any other military community; certainly not among pilots whose egos are so big you wonder how they fit in their cockpits. If an American and Soviet fighter pilot met in a bar they'd be too busy trying to figure out whose cock was bigger to order a drink. If an American and Soviet Submariner met in a bar, they'd get drunk and become friends for life all without saying a single word to the other man.

There are two types of submarines: attack and ballistic missile. Once you volunteer for subs, you can request, but, for NUCs, you do not get to choose which type of sub you get stationed on.

When I joined the navy, there were a couple diesel subs in service, but they were on their way out, but, since I was a NUC, diesel subs were never an option. Missile boats hide with pride and play real quiet like so no one can find them. Attack boats look for enemy missile boats and the enemy attack boats looking for our missile boats.

Of the friends I went through my schooling with, only a few of us volunteered for subs (you have to volunteer for it, you can't just be assigned to a submarine) and I was the only one assigned to an attack boat, everyone else was assigned to missile boats.

At first I was a little bummed, because they were all going to the same place (different boats) and for them, their relationship would pretty much continue as it had for the previous two years.

For me, it didn't really sink in until a couple weeks later, as we were entering our final days of schooling before going off to the fleet that they were going to be stationed in Washington State near the Canadian border and I was going to San Diego, California. Once I had put things in perspective, I didn't feel so bad anymore.

Back in the day, attack boats had the potential to carry tactical nucs (cruise missiles with a nuclear payload). If you remember the flying into buildings "missile's eye view" video feeds from the first Gulf War, imagine that, but nuclear.

They used to exist. I saw them. I've even touched one. But those are just small potatoes.

One day a missile boat pulled into San Diego, it just so happened to be one that a buddy of mine was stationed on and I got a complete guided tour.

Missile boats are huge, nearly as long as two football fields and as wide as a three lane highway. My friend showed me all around his boat. One of the last places he showed me was the room where the missiles were launched. We went in there and I met a few of the guys who could potentially facilitate Armageddon.

We left a few minutes later and I stood in the middle of Sherwood Forest unable to move. "Sherwood Forest" is the nickname given to the Missile Compartment where there are 24 missile tubes, each possibly containing a D-5 rocket, and each D-5 rocket has 8 MIRVs (multiple independent re-entry vehicles, which means 8 separate nuclear warheads and each is capable of hitting a different target). Do the math, that's up to 192 nuclear weapons whose destructive power was (depending upon the type of individual warhead) either 500,000 or 1,000,000 pounds of TNT, each.

I was 22 years old and stood there awed by the enormity of what I just realized. It chilled me to the core of my being. Without me having said a word, my friend just smiled, and said, "Yeah, I know."

As I walked back past the room where we had just been in, I saw a small sign that I hadn't seen before. It read:

THE END OF THE WORLD STARTS IN HERE.