Tragic but expected. That thing was rated a death trap by James Cameron himself.

People yell, yes, and most of the time we don’t mind loud noises UNLESS it involves hard objects hitting either the deck or the bulkheads (floor or walls). The reason is that most of the time everything is padded and sound insulated anyways, so something like the fans, pumps, motors and so on can spin up and do their thing without exposing our presence. Something like a hammer or wrench getting dropped into a bilge, on the other hand, transmits straight into the water, and that’s when there’s a manhunt to find out who did it, since Sonar hears that instantly and reports it to the Officer of the Deck.

No brig, no space for one; if we need to confine someone, we just have them stay in their bunkroom in their rack, watched by an armed sentry, until we can schedule a BSP (brief stop for personnel) to get them off the ship and into the custody of the Fleet.

Yes, we can get a little kooky in the head after a particularly long underway, and there were times where a passageway of submariners waiting for lunch suddenly burst into nonstop hysterical laughter for no reason and couldn’t stop for almost ten minutes. We also had someone snap one time and get into a physical altercation which resulted in one submariner unconscious and the other BSP’d off the ship under armed guard.

Normally, however, we handle things at the lowest possible level first before escalating using the chain of command, and usually by the time it gets to a petty officer to petty officer discussion, the issue is resolved. Sometimes it has to get to a Chief first, which nobody wants. Worst case, the two are brought to a Disciplinary Review Board, and if necessary, the Captain’s Mast for Non-Judicial Punishment, whether that might be getting demoted in rank, confined to quarters, or given extra military duty for a month or two.

Outside of “field day” aka cleaning quarters, not often. During field day, every single time I crawl into a space that has a single speck of dust and thus needs to be completely overhauled according to the nearest Chief. They didn’t design these places for humans, clearly! Ripped a fair number of good coveralls doing it too, and lost an uncountable number of good pens.

No, I’m not much into horror games! But it does sound like fun from what I’ve heard.

Lol nice try China! No but seriously, the fact I get to work in a nuclear powered vessel by itself is the cool factor.

1. Unless there’s a swim call for some reason (which never happens on an SSBN), no.

2. Nope. Unless there’s some emergency, or we’re replenishing food or repair parts.

3. Alarms:

• General Alarm - some kind of general emergency like fire or security violation
• Diving Alarm - diving and surfacing
• Collision Alarm - collision or danger of collision, flooding
• Power Plant Causality - engine room emergency like radioactive material spill or steam line rupture
• Missile Jettison Alarm - something is terribly wrong with a missile and we need to jettison it.

4. Yes but only when we’re surfaced, for obvious reasons.

5. No, it’s not required, but I learned anyways in my own free time!

8 weeks of boot camp to become a sailor, 8 more weeks of basic submarining school, a month of rating specific apprenticeship school, a month of SSBN specific school, and then on the job training from there. The on-the-job training and qualifications process never stops, and you’re expected to be constantly working on certifications and qualifications for new roles, reading technical manuals and publications, memorizing regulations, and getting to know your equipment even better than when you woke up. Every year we get general naval training requirements, such as basic operational security and counterintelligence, and every time we return from a deployment we have to undergo recertification to return to sea as a crew at the training simulators.

SSBN stands for “submersible ship, ballistic missile, nuclear powered”. That is, the same overall type of ship as the Red October. ETV stands for “Electronics Technican, Navigation”, because N was already taken by Nuclear Electronics Technicians. I work with everything from interior communications and announcing circuits to Electronics, shipwide atmospheric monitoring, navigational inertial gyroscopes, strategic nuclear missile navigation, and tank level indicators to basic underwater submarine navigation using the voyage management system and even helming the ship itself.

I love the Hunt for Red October! It’s a classic, and great Hollywood to boot. That being said, as others have no doubt already mentioned, Down Periscope is more “accurate” as to everyday submariner culture when we’re not in some kind of dead serious situation. Can’t survive 120 days underwater stuck with 100 other people without a sense of humor.

Usually there’s a movie playing in either Crew’s Mess or Crew’s Lounge, or a videogame tournament like Super Smash Bros or COD2. Personally, I’d rather go to my rack (personal bunk the size of a coffin), draw the privacy curtain, and read a book or get some sleep in. Sleep can be a luxury after a long period of maintenance, and underway with all the pressure and salt water, there’s plenty of that. There’s also stationary bikes, free weights and other exercise equipment available on board, usually stowed in the aft machinery room or torpedo room, for people to work out if they feel like it, and snacks at the salad line in Crew’s Mess next to the galley.

I’ve been aboard when a fire was called away in the torpedo room, and once more when there was a fire called away in the forward machinery room. Fortunately, nothing came of either situation, as you can tell since I’m posting today. As far as cool things, other than drills in which we simulate the launching of thermonuclear weapons, not really - the SSBN fleet does everything in its power not to do anything cool or exciting, so as not to endanger the strategic weapons systems!

Yes! I’ve never played any of those although Subnautica is on my to-do list, but I really like underwater levels in games. The 3D aspect is the main draw for me, which is also why I like games that allow you to scale walls, like Assassin’s Creed games or the Tomb Raider series.

Professionally. No, there’s no screening, so we have to deal with one another professionally. In a submarine there is no time for petty squabbles. The mission is your life. Dissent is literally death, because every moment of every day, the sea and the ship wants to kill you. So if you can’t stand a person, deal with the sailor in a professional manner. Procedures are procedures. Regs are regs.

Food really depends on the cook, but in the whole, from what I’ve heard from surface sailors, yes, our food is still the best!