Ep. 74: Life Inside a Nuclear Submarine | Casey Murphy

Summary

Interesting Humans Podcast, Ep. 74 Summary

Title: Life Inside a Nuclear Submarine | Casey Murphy
Host: Jeff Hopeck
Guest: Casey Murphy
Date: May 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Interesting Humans Podcast with former U.S. Secret Service Officer Jeff Hopeck delves into the rarely-seen world of life inside a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine. Guest Casey Murphy recounts personal stories from his time serving onboard, offering listeners an authentic look into the psychological, technical, and leadership demands of this high-stakes environment. Key topics include the reality of underwater life, Navy culture, personal turning points, dangers faced by submariners, the use and training of marine animals by the military, and hard-learned lessons in leadership and resilience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Murphy’s Path to the Navy (02:15–06:32)

• Accidental Journey: Murphy never envisioned a Navy career; recruited for college football by the Merchant Marine Academy but initially dismissed the idea of life at sea.
• Academic Background: Studied math at the University of Georgia. Navy recruiters’ seminars focused on technical candidates, but Murphy still initially rejected the idea, quipping: "Hey, thanks for the free pizza. I’m never doing that. And I’m definitely never doing submarines." (03:09)
• Spiritual Call: While in Colorado post-college, Murphy describes feeling a strong, almost divine calling to join the Navy: "The Lord just hit me, you're going to the Navy. Here’s 15 reasons why." (05:50)
• Family Service: Some family history of military service, but nothing deeply ingrained or generational; decision was personal and faith-driven.

2. Navy Training & Submarine Qualification (06:42–10:31)

• Grueling Selection: Completed Officer Candidate School (OCS), followed by a rigorous technical screening process emphasizing physics and calculus for nuclear reactor roles.
• Choosing Submarines: Initially uninterested, Murphy was drawn by the culture, technical challenge, and leadership expectations: "You don't get to make excuses, and your enlisted guys will eat your lunch if you try to throw your rank around." (09:41)
• Cultural Norms: The submarine force expects high accountability; Murphy literally changed his contract at the last minute to request submarines.

3. First Missions & Initial Experiences (10:31–16:54)

• First Dive: Describes the intensity of the first time the hatch shuts before submerging: "Everyone is absolutely locked in, laser-focused ... you get out to that point, the hatches go shut, and everybody knows—it's game time." (10:46–11:19)
• Mission Role: Served aboard a "boomer," responsible for nuclear deterrence: "Our entire mission was to be the guaranteed second nuclear strike ... poke holes in the ocean until you come back home." (11:57–12:18)
• Depth and Boredom: Depths of up to 700 feet are routine (unclassified); much of the work is slow and repetitive.

4. Life Aboard and Submarine Culture (16:54–24:02)

• Qualification Process: Rapid qualification is expected; “nubs” (non-useful bodies) are under pressure until fully trained: "The faster you get qualified, the faster you support the crew." (15:42)
• Living Conditions: 170 crew, 13 officers; meals and space are tight but larger than most imagine. Laughter about movie portrayals—Down Periscope (comedic) versus Crimson Tide (closer to reality).
• Command and Oath: Swearing to the Constitution, not the President, is a crucial point for Murphy: "We swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America. That's why I could get behind it." (18:03)

5. Danger & Realities of Underwater Service (20:29–38:38)

• Truly Unique Experiences:
  • Seeing ocean depths of 18,000 feet and realizing the submarine is dwarfed by the sea’s expanse: "You're sitting in 18,000ft of water ... that's weird." (20:29–20:45)
  • Standing on a (shut-down) reactor: "You can see how small it is ... in 1g of uranium, you can get the equivalent of 3 tons of coal." (22:14–22:20)
• Physical Challenges: Minimal exercise options; tall sailors often banging their heads. Gym is makeshift—“stationary bikes tucked between missile tubes.” (22:57)
• Storms Below: Even at 300ft depth, hurricanes can roll the sub up to 20 degrees: "We were at 300ft, taking 20 degree rolls because a hurricane was over us." (25:01–25:21)
• Biggest Fear: Fire is the worst-case scenario—oxygen is limited, and heat travels fast. Every sailor is also a trained firefighter: "You have a very, very tiny window to put a fire out before it sucks up the oxygen." (37:34–38:38)

6. Military Use of Marine Life (41:27–43:44)

• Dolphins & Sea Lions: Naval programs train these animals to detect divers and protect ports: "They actually trained dolphins and sea lions to detect divers below the surface ... their sonar is far superior to anything else we could do." (41:57–42:53)
• Remarkable Results: Marine life can mark and help apprehend unauthorized divers. Navy SEALs even train against them due to their effectiveness.

7. Leadership Lessons & Navy Culture (48:28–53:10)

• Learning Authority: Murphy grappled with the officer's role—more about responsibility than power: "Our job as officer was never about power. It was about playing the role that we're given ... empowering our guys to do the work." (50:23–51:30)
• Empowering Juniors: The Navy's culture requires junior sailors to speak up; the “forceful watch team backup” principle is critical for safety (46:44).

8. Health, Medical, and Selection Standards (56:33–63:12)

• Medical Personnel: Only one Navy corpsman on board—trained as "doctor-ish," but major surgery means improvising with available resources: "You literally turn [the officer's mess] into a surgery table." (57:14–57:26)
• Medical Washouts: Strict rules on medications (e.g., no narcotics allowed); colorblindness or dependency on specific medications can exclude you.
• Personal Adversity: Murphy nearly failed due to a color vision test but passed on a retest after a mentor’s encouragement: "If it wasn't for my uncle ... I actually failed ... he said, go force them to retest you." (59:21–60:38)

9. Reflections & Human Behavior (48:47–53:10)

• Team Dynamics: The highly professional, all-male (at the time) crew displays adaptability, focus, and mission alignment: "You just don’t think about where you are ... when you've got a mission set in mind ... everybody knows the stakes." (49:23–49:49)
• Leadership Takeaway: True leadership is about communication, context, and supporting others in their specific expertise.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The Lord just hit me, you're going to the Navy. Here’s 15 reasons why." – Casey Murphy (05:50)
• "You don't get to make excuses, and your enlisted guys will eat your lunch if you try to throw your rank around." – Murphy on submarine leadership (09:41)
• "When the hatch goes shut and you go underneath ... it's game time." – Murphy (11:09)
• "You have to be ruthless about prioritization." – Murphy on handling sub stress (27:54)
• "The fastest you can get qualified, the faster you support the crew." (15:42)
• "Every submariner is also a firefighter." (40:04)
• "They actually trained dolphins and sea lions to detect divers below the surface ... their sonar is far superior to anything else we could do." (41:57–42:53)
• "Our job as officer was never about power. It was about playing the role that we're given ... empowering our guys." (50:23–51:30)
• "If you haven't surrendered to [the needs of the Navy], you'll drive yourself crazy." – Murphy on military life (54:11)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:15 – Murphy’s accidental path toward the Navy
• 06:42 – OCS and why submarines appealed despite initial resistance
• 10:31 – First moments submerging: intensity onboard
• 15:42 – Expectations for new crew and the pressure to qualify
• 20:29 – Unsettling realities (depth, perspective, reactor proximity)
• 25:01 – Experiencing a hurricane 300ft underwater
• 37:34 – Fire is the submarine’s ultimate danger
• 41:27–43:44 – How the Navy uses trained dolphins and sea lions for security
• 48:28–53:10 – Human behavior, leadership, and adaptability underwater
• 59:21–60:38 – Near exit from the Navy over colorblindness and the vital role of mentorship

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Tone & Language

The episode is candid, reflective, and occasionally humorous, blending technical insights with authentic personal storytelling. Murphy is direct, sincere, and often self-effacing, while Hopeck draws out both the emotional and operational nuances of life "below the surface."

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For Listeners

• A peek behind the classified curtain: The episode explores personal, psychological, and technical aspects of underwater service, emphasizing resilience, humility, and trust.
• Leadership and faith: Murphy’s experience illustrates the importance of self-awareness, teamwork, and doing one’s duty without ego.
• Quirky and astonishing facts: From marine life protection programs to why every submariner is a trained firefighter, the episode is rich with unknown details for civilians.

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To connect with Casey Murphy or pose follow-up questions, contact can be made via the podcast host due to Murphy’s absence from social media.

Transcript

[A]

This is Interesting Humans podcast. My name is Jeff Hopeck, your host. Where we go past the highlight reel and into the moments that actually shape a life. The struggles, the mistakes, the pivots. Because the real lessons aren't found in success. They're found in everything it took to get there. Folks, welcome back to another episode of Interesting Humans. I'm Jeff Hopeck, your host. I have Casey Murphy with me today. Most people will never step foot inside of a nuclear submarine. They may not want to, they may not have the opportunity to, but either way, it's most likely never going to happen. In today's episode, I have Casey Murphy. We're going to talk about what it actually feels like when that hatch seals shut for the first time and you know that you're about to journey out into water that's 600 plus feet in depth. Just truly remarkable. We're going to talk about the real danger of life underwater. What are the things that these guys just fear the most. Casey's going to talk about this thing called needs of the Navy, why the competent shall be punished. That's one of my favorite quotes. But he'll unpack that in the episode today how he almost failed out of OCS school. This is really interesting. Not only what caused him to almost fail, but a key mentor in his life pushed back. And it's probably the most pivotal point in his life that they pushed back against the Navy retested and he was able to get back in. And then one of the wildest stories that I've ever, ever heard is how the US government trains marine life. So dolphins and sea lions to help protect divers, seaports, the Navy, different missions that we have out and about. This story is unbelievable. And I've been around and have had a top secret clearance. I've never heard anything along these lines. So he's going to explain this one today. But this episode today, folks, pulls back the curtain on a world that very few humans will ever experience is. It's incredible. Is it something you wanted to do as a kid?

[B]

No, it wasn't even. Wasn't even on my radar. In fact, this is the funniest part. I feel like the Lord was like knocking on my door with this. For a while. The only place I got recruited to play college football was Merchant Marine Academy. And he called me up and he was like, but hey, there's a really cool thing. You get to go to sea after you graduate. And I'm like, why would I ever want to do that? And then second instance, this is crazy. This isn't even the first one. Second instance. So I got my math degree at University of Georgia, which everybody wonders why Georgia? I was like, one of the, I think five of us. Something like that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But they had the Navy recruiters came to UGA to do a seminar for anybody in a technical major. And if you can handle, you know, calculus based physics, and if you can handle the math, then you can get through a nuclear power school. You know, that's. That's sort of their. Their bottom line.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

But they came in, you know, dressed in their whites, gave the pitch on aircraft carriers and submarines, and brought free pizza. And I walked out of the thing. I was like, hey, thanks for the free pizza. I'm never doing that. And I'm definitely never doing submarines.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

And that was junior year of college. After college, I'm looking around being like, man, I just, I. I didn't really understand at the time. I didn't have a concept of why the economy mattered, why these sort of, you know, these jobs. Just going to make a profit, to make a profit. Like, that was my mindset around typical business. I just didn't understand how important it was until, honestly, until I was working in the Pentagon. But, you know, coming out of that, I went and played. I was a camp counselor. I was a brand new Christian. Trying to figure that out. Went and taught skiing for a year. Like, I just, I was trying to figure it out. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And as I was praying through, you know, after I finished that first season teaching skiing, I'm praying through, all right, like, what is the next step? Because I have no idea. And everything is on the table. My everything, you know, initially wanted to be a doctor. Actually, that was my, you know, I wanted to be a vet first, animals. Wanted to be a doctor second. And then eventually I kind of realized, like, if you want to be a surgeon, you're really cranking on the same set procedures that have existed for forever. There's not much creativity.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And once I saw that, I was like, oof, I don't think I want to do that anymore.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now, granted, that was my understanding of what that meant. It's not necessarily true. Could have gone into research, you name it, but I didn't. And coming out of that ski season, I was like, all right, I kind of need to get a big boy job. I don't know what. It had always sort of been in the back of my mind that it'd be cool to serve, you know, love this Country. I love what America stands for. Yeah.

[A]

And any family members serve?

[B]

My dad did for a short while, but he and his best friend were stationed in Italy for, like, three years, so they just had a ball. Yeah. Traveling around.

[A]

They didn't do real work serving, but it's.

[B]

Yeah. But the crazy thing is our generations of my family are pretty far apart. My granddad actually served in World War I, and he passed away from heart issues when my dad was 9. And so we've got. You know, and my uncle served. He was a C5 pilot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we've got some. But it really wasn't. It wasn't. One of those things was, like, ingrained.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Some of those military families you see, they are really, you know, generations on generations. And for us, it was like I was the only one to really consider it. And as I was praying through it, I'm sitting out there in Colorado, you know, at a picnic table. I remember exactly where I was sitting by the stream outside the Vail Library. And the Lord just hit me, you're going to the Navy. Here's 15 reasons why.

[A]

That's it. What age?

[B]

23 at that point.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So I was a year out of College. It was 2008. Sorry, 2009.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And took me a year to get in, by the way.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Horribly efficient, inefficient process. But I was commissioned in September 2010.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And those 15 reasons, I mean, I've got them all written down. But things like, you know, the chance to serve my country, the, you know, the opportunity to learn leadership, the opportunity to put my technical skills to work. There's a whole bunch of them.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Every single one of them absolutely came true. Every single one of them.

[A]

Incredible.

[B]

And so the Lord delivered. I mean, he is faithful. When he tells me to go somewhere, it's. It makes it an easy call.

[A]

You trusted, you followed, you walked.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Okay, so you. You get. What was the word you use? You get. Not commissioned. Commission. Okay, so you get commissioned.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Do you. Are you commissioned Saying, I can't wait to be on a sub or you still didn't want to do it?

[B]

At that time, getting commission was like, thank God that's over. You're not even thinking, and you're just beginning. Right. There's a. The commissioning process, I think it was 12 weeks, was basically the summer of 2010. And it's just Marines playing mind games. Those guys are so good at what they do. It's. It's ridiculous. But they're just putting you through the wringer, and they're doing it on purpose. I mean there's a level of, there are folks who wash out, that's by design. And their whole, their whole purpose is to raise your level of stress, to make sure you can handle it and you can function when you're really getting beaten down, screamed at, you know, you name it. Put under physical and mental stress. Yeah, that's, it's, it's because you're not going to have that backstop when you're out doing the job. And once you get done with OCS now you've got about a year and six weeks of training between power school, prototype and sub school before you even set foot on a boat.

[A]

Do you, did you start that right out of the gate? You start sub school right out of the gate? Or do you have to like get in first and then decide?

[B]

So what's interesting about that is you actually have to go. So in March of before I got in, even before I went to ocs, I had to go up to naval reactors. And this is, this is a Rickover principle. Admiral Rickover is the father of the nuclear Navy and he basically said he made it a rule that he will meet every single officer that sets foot on a submarine or on their, any nuclear powered entity. And now the four star at naval reactors does a five minute interview with every single one. And that's after you interview with two naval reactors engineers. So that whole physics and calculus thing, they test you, they'll put you through and make sure that you can do the math and you can do the physics, you know, your stuff. Because at baseline they don't want to shove you into that pipeline for you to just wash out and fail. Yeah, it's too expensive.

[A]

So there's a lot, obviously a much lower if any, washout rate.

[B]

Yeah, it sounds like now there still is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And a lot of that is the stress and some of that is they're just, you know. Yeah, it's by design.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They want to, you know, they need this many, so they allow this many.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And sometimes you got better than others. But it's crazy. I mean, you had. The funniest part is some of these academy guys were voluntold to go in and they exhibited sufficient technical skill because they have to take engineering courses.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But some of these guys were like political science and English majors and they're in power school.

[A]

What am I even doing here?

[B]

Like, I never signed up for this. I want to be a pilot.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, so those four guys, like they had a dream and they, they lived it out for me. I chose submarines because I heard about the culture and I heard, you know, the intensity, the responsibility, the things you get to do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I actually crossed out surface and wrote in submarines on my contract.

[A]

You did?

[B]

Because that was at the interview.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And that was specifically because somebody started talking through it. I told you earlier, I never wanted to do submarines.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And once I found out that like the. It's a pressure cooker. Right. And you have to be a solid leader. You don't. You, you don't get to make excuses and your enlisted guys will eat your lunch if you end up being a bad leader who tries to throw his rank around. And so all of that ends up being just better. You have more, more jobs to do, more responsibility. It's just to me, that sounded. I don't know why, but it sounded more attractive.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

[B]

And so, you know, now granted, they brought back a clean copy and said, well, we're not going to turn you down for submarines, but you can't just cross it out. I'm sorry, sir.

[A]

That's great.

[B]

Assigned that.

[A]

That'.

[B]

But yeah, that was the story. And it was like the 11th hour that I signed up for subs and like I said, it ended up being the exact right move for me.

[A]

So when they closed the top for the first time, try to get me there, the first time they ever closed the top, was it the feeling you expected it to feel or was it a whole new feeling?

[B]

It was a new feeling. It was interesting. It was. There's a level of intensity and focus when the hatch goes shut and you go underneath. I mean, it's dead silent, in control. Like everybody is absolutely locked in, laser focused. Honestly, until you asked the question, it didn't really. I never really thought about it. To me, it was. Again, it was just, this is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it.

[A]

Yeah. The checklist item or something.

[B]

But you get out to that point where you can dive and the hatches go shut and everybody knows it's. It's game time.

[A]

It's game time for a while, not for a couple hours. Now, what was the longest you've been out so long?

[B]

As longest I did was about two and a half months. There were some guys who did. There was one boat that did four and a half months and the CNO said, don't do that again because it's a bad idea. But I mean, two and a half, you know, it's. It's doable.

[A]

So what happens down there? You go Underwater. Okay. You're. You gotta, I guess, go out far. How far do you go? Is it steps? Do they step you down? Like, take me through a mission?

[B]

So you. So I was on a. I was on a boomer, and our entire. Our entire mission was to be the guaranteed second nuclear strike. And so we were. We were 100% into the deterrence mission, and our job was disappear and stay gone. Poke holes in the ocean until you come back home.

[A]

What does that mean? What's poke holes?

[B]

It means you're going five knots to nowhere, and it's boring. And you're training, and you're sometimes wondering, why the heck am I out here?

[A]

How deep are you?

[B]

We are. So you start. You. Actually, the first thing you do is you test your systems. You pressure test everything. And so you go figure out and make sure that the boat doesn't have any holes in it, you know, and the systems are sound.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, you know, the unclassified depth is 700ft. And so you're doing at least that.

[A]

And there's a classified depth. Is that. Is that.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Oh, my goodness.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

I can only imagine what it would be. So, yeah, so you. So on your first mission. So you go out when you're starting to go 100, 200, 300ft. Is the thought ever. Oh, my gosh. What would happen if this screw pops off? And what, like, what's going on in your mind?

[B]

So it's funny because that's when I'm saying that everybody's laser focused. That's exactly, in fact, the cadence you just did. There's a guy in control that's calling it out, just like you just did.

[A]

No way. Yeah. Are you serious?

[B]

That's pretty appropriate. And, you know, and it's funny because, like, you see in some movies, they do that thing where they put the string on either side of the hull, and as you're going deeper, you see it bow down. And that's real. That's true. Yeah. And. And what they are doing, to your point, the whole purpose is you have all hands up, awake at their stations, and they're looking for that screw to pop loose.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

You know, you're verifying everything. And here's the thing, like I said, we've only. We've only lost two submarines in the. In the history of the nuclear Navy, the Scorpion and the Thresher.

[A]

How many years is history, Navy? How many years are we talking at this point?

[B]

70. Gosh, when did I. I honestly don't remember when.

[A]

Okay, so inside 100. But still, let's, let's. That's still a long time.

[B]

Like 50. I think it was late 50s when Rickover started the nuclear Navy, when the submarine went out. In fact, that submarine's still in New York. You can go see it. Yeah, that one was a trip. They literally had to like go at an up angle to launch out the front of the boat to put a cruise missile onto. You know, the enemy's on the enemy's forehead. Of bad design but not the worst design. Yeah, the worst design. If you ever get a chance to look up the Davy Crockett, that's the worst nuclear design.

[A]

The Davy Crockett.

[B]

It was a, I think it was a, it was. The army had it. It was a nuclear launched grenade or. Sorry, it was a nuclear grenade and pretty sure the guy launching it was in the blast radius. So they mixed that idea. It's a fun one. But yeah, to your, to your point, you know, you're looking for anything that's going to come loose, shake loose. And we, we didn't have many concerns. Everything is redundant down there. I mean they are so laser focused on safety and a lot of that came out of those submarines that went down. You know, there's amazing stories there, but they are phenomenal at maintaining those subs.

[A]

Yeah. So in your. So mission one, let's stay. We'll stay on mission one. Did anything happen that completely just blindsided you or blew you away or was different than what you expected or is it pretty straightforward?

[B]

It was exactly what you would expect. I mean the first thing they want you to do is qualify. Faster you can get qualified, the faster you can support the crew. But there's how do you qualify? So qualifying, you get this. It's basically a stack of sheets where every single topic that you can think of for all of these various watch standing things that you need to do, you've got to work through knowledge of every system on board and that's eventually to get your fish right. That's when you put on submarines. That's when you're qualified everything but you start off in the engine room because that's where your training is and interesting. You know, within six months or so you get engineering off the engineering office of the watch qualified. And as a 25 year old you're running a nuclear power plant and you know, you're overseeing all this stuff. I think that was what really hit me is that the starting off, it's just academic. You're just studying and crushing your checkouts and you're trying to get Time. You're trying to train, you're trying to learn as much as you can, as fast as you can and make sure you can support the crew because they don't use the term anymore, but they call you a nub. So you'll hear a lot of get qualified nub. Yeah. Useful body.

[A]

Non useful body.

[B]

Yeah. And so. And these guys, until you get qualified, you're basically on board as a warm body that does not have any use on the watch bell. And those guys are getting crushed because they're just. They're in either, you know, port and starboard or three section rotation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's hard.

[A]

How many guys in the wardroom?

[B]

There were 13 total.

[A]

The whole sub. How many on the whole sub?

[B]

On the whole sub. 170.

[A]

170? Yeah.

[B]

170 guys.

[A]

Imagine it's like shift work.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That's exactly what it is.

[A]

At certain times. Eating at certain times.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Is it like what we see in the movies? Is it pretty similar or you got a place to eat? Yeah.

[B]

I mean, the best analogy I've seen is down periscope. The whole thing is, it's. It's a lot of comedy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But our mission was exactly like Crimson Tide. And that's actually pretty true to form, what they did. Not with the debate and all that stuff. I mean, you're just not going to run into that issue.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

This. This whole notion, it is funny to hear. You see the news stories of like, you know, what if. What if the President orders a nuclear launch? He can't. He doesn't have the authority to.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, yes, he can, but we actually have a say in the matter. And we're not, you know.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah, we're not. We don't swear an oath to the President of the United States. We swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America. That's why I could get behind gang in the Navy. I had to pray hard about whether or not it was the right thing to do because you've got effectively a secular government who gets to tell me whether or not I pull the trigger. And we're talking big weapons.

[A]

Right. So big, big weapons.

[B]

Right. And so, you know, when I'm looking at that, I'm like, man, I don't really want to sign up for doing something that's unjust or immoral.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so when I saw, you know, what I was swearing the oath to and realized, especially now, reading through, like, how John Adams, who was an amazing Christian man, how he put together the Massachusetts Constitution that was the foundation for the US Constitution. You read through all that stuff and you realize this is something I can get behind because you understand human nature, you understand checks and balances, and you understand the corruption of power, too. For me, that led all the way down to, if I'm on the boat and we've got to pull the trigger, am I going to be okay doing that?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Do you think there's any misconceptions out there of. Of submarines, sub life?

[B]

That's a big one. That one that I just mentioned. That's. I'd say that's the number one thing that lands in the news all the time is, you know, oh, my gosh. The nuclear trigger. And it's because nuclear's sensationalized.

[A]

Like that word.

[B]

The other word. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the other piece. And this actually has civilian implications, too, but, you know, nuclear being inherently unsafe. One of the most trippy things. There are a couple of things that were particularly trippy, like really kind of got in your head on the sub. One was when we had to send our torpedo men into the torpedo tube because the torpedo door, outer door, like the one that was between you and the sea, was fouled by the tube that, you know, you used to launch torpedo. So you're watching, like, seawater come in and, like, that's supposed to be outside. That's not supposed to be. Oh, my God.

[A]

Like, at what rate?

[B]

Not big enough to matter. But it's still.

[A]

But it's.

[B]

It's.

[A]

It's supposed to be happening.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, it's still freaky.

[B]

It's not supposed to be happening, but that is the right procedure, and it's not dangerous. But it's still weird because you're like. The whole point of these doors is supposed to keep the water out of the people tank. And I'm in the people tank and I'm looking at the water. So that was weird. That was one trippy thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The other trippy thing was when you. When you go off the continental shelf and you realize that as deep as we are, you're not even hitting a fraction of the depth of the ocean. You're sitting in 18,000ft of water. And that was kind of a. That's weird.

[A]

So explain that term real quick for I'm sure a lot of people won't know the. The actual number. The continental shelf.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What is. What has how many feet?

[B]

About 600.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It's. Right. So it's a gradual slope as you come off of the Atlantic coast, and then There is just this massive.

[A]

How far out off the coast is it, roughly?

[B]

I actually don't know. A few miles. Yeah, it's not that far. I know. It's closer than you think it is. Yeah, it's closer than you think.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So it's not. It's not that far.

[A]

So you go. So you're going off of 600. Does anything feel differently when you get into the. What is a non continental shelf area called the deep area? Is it out like a bench?

[B]

I mean, there's, there's various. I guess there's various areas.

[A]

Does anything feel differently? Pressure? I don't know. Is it just business as usual? But you're probably going deeper.

[B]

That's the thing. There's not. It's funny because the job itself, you know, it's not that exciting. I mean, you're. Like I said, you're poking holes in the ocean. You're doing a mission that's being done for 75 years now. Yeah, the deterrence mission. It's fully baked. So you're out there operating and it's stressful and you got too many jobs to do, not enough time to do it, and you're getting four hours of night. Oh, third trippy thing, though, is this is one of the biggest misconceptions. Sorry, I totally got sidetracked.

[A]

No, please.

[B]

The third misconception is that nuclear is inherently unsafe. And the trippy thing that I got to do was actually go in the reactor compartment and stand on top of the nuclear reactor when it was shut down.

[A]

No way.

[B]

And that was one of those, like, I'm. I mean, it's right here. You can see how, honestly, how small it is.

[A]

Just a small.

[B]

And you realize how much power is in there. I read the stat yesterday. In 1 gram of uranium, you can get the equivalent of 3 tons of coal in terms of the power generation. Oh, my gosh. Anyway, so that was, that was the third trippy thing. But yeah, to your point, you know, despite all those sort of trippy experiences, everything else is just business as usual. You don't even think about the fact that you're underwater. You're just doing the job because you have to.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Your biggest, your biggest choice is like, do I, you know, do I sleep, eat, and occasionally work out? And you're really trying to occasionally get those work.

[A]

You got a gym.

[B]

Gym is a strong word. You have, you have stationary bikes and you have stationary bikes tucked between the missile tubes. You've got, between the missile tubes, you got treadmills that are sitting in the back. And if you're in rough seas, you're like, you're kind of swerving, trying to stay on the treadmill. And you've got a light that's sitting right here because there's just not much space. So me being a taller dude, I'm trying to run, stay on the treadmill and not hit my head on that.

[A]

Not in your.

[B]

And so I just. I got. I was done with that quickly. So I went to the outboards. There was a rowing machine. I'm like, all right, I'm strapped in and I'm on a track. I can at least do this.

[A]

Beautiful.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Don't have to watch your head better.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And I had to watch my head everywhere.

[A]

The whole sub, I would think, oh, what's ma. Like, what's average max in a sub?

[B]

Six.

[A]

So here's six feet.

[B]

Yeah, it's about. It's about six. Like, I was right at the max height. And there were guys that were taller than me.

[A]

Oh, my goodness.

[B]

You know, my exo and my fellow jos. They were 6, 4, 6, 5. But that was about as tall as you can be and still be even

[A]

remotely comfortable hunching over all the time.

[B]

And the hard part is not. It's not even just vertical. It's actually when you're. When you're getting into compartments, you're getting into tanks, you're doing all this stuff. You make one wrong turn, and you're gonna hit your head on something, and it's gonna clean your clock. There's one time where I, you know, I turned one way and hit my head on it. I got frustrated and turned the other way, hit my head on something else. At that point, I was just like, just sit still. Just sit still. Because I was in a rage. That's crazy. So mad at that point.

[A]

So I know how massive the waves can be above. What is it, like, hundreds of feet under.

[B]

So this was a really interesting experience. It's typically extremely quiet, but one of the craziest things that we ran into when we were on mission is we actually. We ended up. That's a good question, because we ended up underneath a hurricane. And what's. What's wild? I just don't think. I think folks have probably seen that Instagram reel where you see the massive tanker just disappear into the wave.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then come into the other side.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The power of the ocean is crazy. So we were sitting at 300ft, and we're taking 20 degree rolls because the hurricane over us is.

[A]

You mean, like, left to Right, Yep.

[B]

Okay. Yeah. And you're doing your best to keep it steady.

[A]

Gosh.

[B]

But you think about. You think about 50ft from. From trough to peak on a wave. I mean, that's. That is just massive.

[A]

Massive.

[B]

Yeah. So the power of a hurricane, like, it's just. You really can't wrap your mind around it. And at 300ft, that's typically supposed to be steady going, period. If you're taking that. Bigger rolls in a submarine, as big as the one that we have, 300, that's some serious movement beat.

[A]

All right, give me this, Give me the dimensions of the sub.

[B]

So. So keel to the turtle bag. 44ft. And that's about the length of D5 missile. And that's. They had to add a little bit on top of the actual hull to make sure that you poke those things through. They had to adapt it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

That's to increase the range of the missile. It is 534ft long. I think that's correct. Basically, if you take the Washington Monument, turn it sideways, that's the length of the submarine.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Of an SSBN. The fast attacks are only 365ft long, give or take.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I might be getting that number wrong, but that's about right.

[A]

But range. Yeah, range. Range, yeah. Oh, that's enormous.

[B]

Yes. It's four floors. So that was actually the thing is, you don't realize how big they are. You know, most folks think it's claustrophobic. It's super cramped and to some extent. Yeah. But it's. It's bigger than you think. You can walk around.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

My captain used to do runs in missile compartment, upper level.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Did you ever have. Did you ever have moments of claustrophobia?

[B]

Doesn't bother you?

[A]

It's just not you.

[B]

I mean, the closest I got, I almost got seasick one time because we were taking rolls at periscope depth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the issue, like, if my eyes couldn't catch up with what the boat was doing, and so I was feeling the boat rock in a certain way. I was looking at the horizon doing this, and I'm walking in circles on this, on the periscope. And it was, it was awful. I was, I just, I asked relief to come and get me because I'm like, I gotta go lay down. But that was. I mean, that's.

[A]

I think I'm seasick right here just listening to that. Yeah.

[B]

I mean that was the worst case scenario. But like I said, for the most part it's kind of Boring.

[A]

Yeah. You know, has it. Did you ever meet anybody that became claustrophobic during the job?

[B]

Claustrophobia wasn't the issue, it was the stress. You, you had guys who had been pushing themselves so hard for so long. I'd say the biggest principle that you really got to run into is you have to be ruthless about prioritization. And you also, without saying no, you have to set the tone and set your own pace in a way where you can, you can sustainably get qualified, add value, do the right things.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You had some guys who, you know, they're going to. No chief is ever going to tell you that you can take your time and no chief is ever going to take their foot off the game gas when they're telling you to get qualified or in my case, my, you know, my department head or my captain.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But everybody is pressuring you to no longer be that non useful body. And as, as such you don't necessarily push back but you just do what you can in time. There are gates that you have to hit. You just hit the gates.

[A]

You just hit them.

[B]

And so the thing that really washed some guys out, I ran into one guy where we had to send him off board. It's a kind of an ugly story. But he got, he got really stressed out, was getting zero to two hours of sleep a night and was pushing himself too hard because he really took that to heart and started doing some self harm things to stay awake. And it was not, you know, just not good. So you occasionally see that. But like I said, it's never the guys who end up on the boat. You just, you don't care that you're on a boat. You care about the fact that you're getting no sleep and that you've got too much to do, not enough time to do it.

[A]

Yeah. And you really like your brain gets to a point you said where you don't even really know you're on the boat.

[B]

Yeah. You're just doing the job.

[A]

That's incredible. Yeah.

[B]

And there's some cool moments though where like you know, you know like when you're going at periscope depth and you're about to come up. I mean that to me is one of the coolest experiences being on the mid watch on the periscope. It's pitch black outside, you can't see anything in the ocean and all you've got is your sonar readings to figure out where everybody is.

[A]

Oh my gosh.

[B]

And you're coming up and you're trying to figure out where the Horizon is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To make sure that whatever you're seeing is not a star and may actually be a surface ship. So making that distinction is tough, but once you're up there, it's just so, like, quiet and peaceful. You're just doing your thing, you know, Like I said, we're out in the middle of the Atlantic. Not a lot of boats around.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so it's. It's pretty cool. And you can see every star in the sky at that point. That's kind of cool. But beyond that. Yeah. I mean, you just don't have any contact with the outside world. It's. You're just doing the job.

[A]

Yeah. You know, so when you. When you surface, is it just at the beginning of the mission, at the. Or in the end or there periods throughout it that you come up and down.

[B]

You'll come up and down to do. You'll pick up, you know, food.

[A]

Right. Or personnel where at, like, somebody delivers it out to the ocean. Yep.

[B]

They'll bring it to you. And it is kind of funny in that case because if the seas are a little bit rough, I mean, they'll literally. They'll take a prowl and they'll just drop it between the two ships. And you're going side by side. It's pretty dangerous. And you've got a whole line of guys. There's nothing automated. You don't have a conveyor belt. You've just got an entire line of guys going all the way down the hatch where they're just passing stuff across. And it's. And it's comical because once you finish up, you look down there and you see there's just like, eggs and heads of lettuce and all this stuff because guys dropped it. It's just scattered all over the bottom of the. You know, below the let. Yeah.

[A]

So, wow.

[B]

You know, stuff like that. But like. But yeah, I mean, it's all. It's all manual. And you're just passing that stuff across, trying to get fresh stuff because you haven't had fresh food and, you know, weeks.

[A]

How do you stay safe around. Or does that not matter? You know, that's.

[B]

That's the purpose of the. The. You have an escort and they're. They're the ones who keep you safe.

[A]

Okay. Is that a government kind of escort? Military escort of some sort? They're in the water or they're up in the air?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it depends on the situation. Depends on where you are. There's different security protocols for different locations, all that stuff. You know, sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's not, but you basically come up, you get your stuff, you go back down as fast as possible. We're not meant to be on the surface.

[A]

Right. Are you. You're detectable when you're on the surface.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And you're not. You're made to be under because that's

[B]

where you're, you're a big hard target. You want to put out a radar pin, you can find us.

[A]

So, so, so that, then you finish that mission and when you get, when you get back to. It's Kings Bay, Right?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And you come up for the first time. Do you really get that? Like when you come outside of the sub, you just can't wait to get up there or does it not even matter? Okay, so tell me about that. What.

[B]

Oh my gosh.

[A]

What do you miss most? Like, what do you want to get up there for the most other than.

[B]

Excuse me. Other than the fresh air and just getting to be outside, seeing the sun, being in it, like. Yeah, there, there's a level of satisfaction of driving on the surface. There's just nothing like it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And especially when you're the only one up there with your, with your lookout. I mean, it's.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

You finally feel like the world is just kind of beneath you.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like everything down there just doesn't matter and all you're doing is just staying the course and keeping the boat safe. Yeah. But you just don't have as many factors to think of. When you're, when you're submerged, you're thinking in 3D, constantly vigilant about everything. That stress level, it's, it's not even low grade stress the whole time. It's, it's what's going to hit me next, what's going to break, which drill are we going to have to pay attention to, which alarms are going to go off and you know, am I actually in the water I need to be in? So you're paying attention to navigation, communications, engineering systems. And everything on the boat is interconnected. And so you've got to know the thing front to back. The reason you have to do all those checkouts and get qualified. You've got to know how every single interdependency operates on the boat.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because one of the most comp. It's one of the most complex machines on earth and you're learning everything from physics to chemistry to navigation to, you know, rules of the road. You've got to learn surface, submerged, import, out of port, all of it.

[A]

How do you not Hit something like what's. What goes off. If you have a huge sunken ship ahead of you, when does it go off? How does it go off? Is there a. Will the whole sub shut off? If you're in danger of really, truly hitting something, how does all that, like, so that stress is unbelievable.

[B]

Thank God. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

In black water. We're in black water.

[B]

Correct. And, and you've got, you know, and because we can't make noise.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You can't be putting active out in the water to figure out what's in front of you. There's, there are some, some rough incidents that have occurred. I mean, you can see what happened to the USS San Francisco.

[A]

What happened.

[B]

It got the entire, the entire sonar dome got crushed because they had an underwater mountain going flank and it was uncharted. You know, you go back and every, every postmortem reveals some thing that you could have used as an indicator. But in that case, I mean, you're talking a huge ocean. The amount of time it's going to take us to map the whole ocean is crazy. Even with today's technology, they're not even close.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so these guys were booking it to get back to, I think San Diego. I can't remember. And if you've got an underwater mountain, that thing just rose up. You can't find that fast enough. So in some cases you just don't.

[A]

And what happened to this? What happened to it?

[B]

I mean. Well, here's the crazy thing. This is how resilient these submarines are, is they were able to surface and get back home. They had tons of injuries and once they passed away. But for them to only have suffered that in that level of a catastrophic event was crazy. And so for us, you know, that goes into your chart preparation, the navigation, the navigator and the captain, they're certainly, they're responsible for making sure that they mark out every single hazard. And so you know full well exactly where you can and can't go. Every time you go up there and every time you turn over the watch, you're doing checks to make sure you know where you are, what's around you and.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

All these other, all these other sort of things that are in place to make sure you're staying safe.

[A]

What are some things that are like, crazy that are in the water on those charts, is it like. I know, like sunken vessels and stuff like. But what, what's crazy? Is there any.

[B]

Those are the. Honestly, we stay away from anything that might even resemble a sunken vessel. Right. Like, because we're operating in the depths that we're operating in.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like I said, the crazy thing is looking down and realizing you're in 3,000 fathoms of water. That's 18,000ft. That, that is the craziest thing that we operate under now.

[A]

Crazy. When you're talking, that's crazy.

[B]

If you ever get a chance to talk to a fast attack sailor, those guys did, those guys did the crazy missions. They were off the coast of country access listing the communications from A to

[A]

B in crazy deep water or crazy shallow water, depending. Oh, my gosh.

[B]

They had to pay. They had to pay attention. We, as far as navigation goes, Boomer, sailors have it easy. You know, a lot of guys talk about being fast boat tough and, and they earned it. They really did. Yeah, we had two crews. You know, we had a fairly easy mission.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Fairly simple and straightforward, I should say. I mean, it's still stressful, but a

[A]

lot of times very stressful.

[B]

You know, you're, you're playing for peacetime. You're not necessarily doing the hard work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, those guys are like, they're, they're operating where there's 30 ships around you. You're trying not to get hit. You're in shallow water and you're still trying to do the mission. And it's, it's hard.

[A]

That's hard. That sounds hard.

[B]

So that's way more. You take our stress level, you take it up a notch. That's where those guys have to be.

[A]

What's, what's the thing when you're hundreds of feet underwater? The absolute biggest fear. Just one

[B]

a, a bad out of control fire, one that somebody doesn't catch in time. And I wasn't even thinking about that fire. You're operating on borrowed oxygen, right? You're making your own oxygen. You're clearing your own CO2. You've got AC units that are cooling everything down, which even for that. That's kind of funny in the engine room.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you shut down the AC with all that heat from all the, you know, steam systems, it'll get to 110, 120 degrees.

[A]

Can anything shut the AC down? Or is there like backup after backup after backup, after backup.

[B]

There's a backup, but at some point you just kind of tolerate it until you can get it back up. It's weird. I told you about all those redundant systems and how interconnected everything is. The AC units are pretty dang important for everything else that's going on. You really don't realize how many things require it. Electronics, all Kinds of stuff.

[A]

Things you take for granted.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. But to the point about, worst case scenario, you have a very, very tiny window to put a fire out before it sucks up the oxygen and all that heat rises up to basically, oh my gosh, boil whatever's there, bread. So we drilled, we drilled that over and over and over and over again to make sure that that wasn't going to happen.

[A]

And is that just physically looking like.

[B]

Like you've got watch standards in every space. The manning requirements on a submarine are well above and beyond what you would have on like a typical commercial surface ship nowadays.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

I mean, those things are crazy. You can, you can run a surface ship, a massive surface ship on a skeleton crew on a submarine. You've got guys touring these spaces all, all the time. And we are constantly trained where, like noticing what types of fire could occur, noticing if you smell an acrid odor to call it in immediately.

[A]

What's interesting, do you ever smell anything? Yeah. Really?

[B]

Yeah. And you. And what's interesting is the first thing you do is not go address the fire. The first thing you do is get on the horn and tell everybody what's going on so that you can spread the word and get everybody involved. And you swarm the thing. You swarmed the problem.

[A]

What'd you smell?

[B]

It's like a acrid metallic, like it's a nasty odor. I don't know if you've ever smelled like a wire burning or insulation burning, but that's what it smells like.

[A]

Yeah. And did it turn out to be a fire?

[B]

Yeah, it was small and we caught it in time, thank God. And is it just now? Usually with electrical fires, all you have to do is just shut it off, but you still, you just don't take chances because that thing can flare up. And what's interesting is every. They kind of say like, you know, it's cool. On surface ships, they've got divisions that are dedicated to damage control. On submarines, every submariner is also a firefighter. So we suit up, get in the full fire gear, know how to man hoses, know exactly how to check for hotspots.

[A]

Like a trained firefighter. You have that. Wow. Things we would never know on the outside. I would never have known that.

[B]

Yeah, no, and it was, it was interesting because we didn't. We did coordinate with the fire department at one point to see if we could actually do it. And the comms were a mess. But we did figure out how to work through that. And. Yeah, I mean, you realize it's important. You gotta know what's going on. And that's where that hyper vigilance comes from. Because if you're not on top of it, you can just really screw up. Not just you, but the whole boat.

[A]

Right. Right now for the craziest thing I've ever heard. And I've been around. I've been in the clearance world myself. Yeah, Right. But this takes it up another notch. And it's not classified. We talked about this before. The training of marine life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To keep our Navy, and I'm sure other branches of the military safe. What is this all about? This is crazy.

[B]

It's. It's one of the coolest features. It kind of shows you like, God's design is superior every day.

[A]

Yeah. Wow.

[B]

And in port, you know, one of the fears is that you've got a diver who may swim in undetected. You can't hear them. No matter how good you think the human systems are, you can't hear them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they. They actually trained dolphins, and I believe it's sea lions, dolphins and sea lions to detect divers below the surface.

[A]

So. Incredible.

[B]

And they're. They are amazing. And they literally have. They have trainers who are taking care of these animals, and they're phenomenal. What they do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, some of them, like, you know, there was one that came in from Sea World and your animals, your animal. So she trained it to do all kinds of tricks and fun stuff, but ultimately, yeah, you're training that animal to mark the diver so that they can pull that diver up. And, you know, the ones who really lose out in that situation are the Navy seals who have to train against it. They'll send in. They'll send guys in to test them. And these animals are not gentle. So, yeah, so they're. But they're out there because they are sonar. Their ability to detect divers underwater is far superior to anything else we could do. So, yeah, they train them.

[A]

So this is more of a question. So that a sea lion, a dolphin, they can detect for the good, but we're also training them to detect for the bad. And that's a. So we're doing both.

[B]

That's their purpose. Exactly. Yeah.

[A]

That's.

[B]

They're looking out for anybody who wants to do something malicious to submarine underwater.

[A]

And that could come in the form that's opened my eyes now. So that can come in the form of diver coming to use Kings Bay, or. Let's just use Kings Bay, coming through that channel right underwater with anything on them, it could be to cause harm. And you know, that animal is going to detect that. And then they'll mark them, they'll tell

[B]

them where they are and they'll find a way to go get them.

[A]

So awesome.

[B]

But it's, that's one of the, that's one of the crazier things. When I learned about that, it was pretty cool.

[A]

What, what is it like being a kid, just in general. Kings Bay. So if anybody out there that's listening to this doesn't know Kings Bay. There's two nuclear submarine bases. Did you tell me? In the country.

[B]

Oh, I'm sorry, no, there's, there's multiple. So you've got, okay, so you've got two Boomer bases and one of them is out in Washington and at Bremerton.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then one of them is in Kings Bay.

[A]

Kings Bay.

[B]

There are, there are, I want to say four other fast stack bases.

[A]

Okay. Boomer being. What's, what's Boomer?

[B]

Boomer is an Ohio class. Right now it's Ohio class, about to be Columbia class. They're turning them over soon. Okay, but those are the ones that, that are capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

[A]

Okay. Capable of carrying. Okay, so what is Groton, Connecticut? What would that be considered?

[B]

That's attack. So those are the ones who are doing the, you know, the big sexy mission, you know, not. They are nuclear powered. Not nuclear armed.

[A]

Not nuclear armed.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

You were on nuclear powered and nuclear armed.

[B]

Nuclear capable.

[A]

Nuclear capable.

[B]

We may or may not have had nuclear weapons.

[A]

Okay, got it. Makes sense. What, what's it like going on Kings Bay?

[B]

The base itself, it's.

[A]

Oh, it's a lot of security. Incredible security. I know from boating up and down those waters between there and Jekyll island many, many times.

[B]

Yeah, you got signs up there that say deadly force is authorized.

[A]

It's frightening when you look over and you see the gun, the gun boats out there. Yeah, because you know, they're, they'll use it.

[B]

They're, they're bored 19 year old marines. And the good news is these guys are, they're extremely professional. You know, they know what they're doing. They also, they know what they're about. And so you'll always have somebody who ignores the sign. They'll lock down the base and they'll, you know, you gotta pull the hatches shut and all this stuff. But it's some kayaker who ended up on someplace they shouldn't. Yeah, and that poor guy is in for a surprise because he's about to have, you know, a 50 caliber gunboat coming his way from the Coast Guard with a Bunch of marines surrounding him.

[A]

So how do you know this is what always blew our mind, going up and down. And I'm talking. We've been up and down a hundred times. Not once or twice.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I never able to figure this out. They have to know my vessel before I even get up there. Right. From a distance. Let's call it a mile, a half mile. Okay. So let's just say they could see by binoculars and they can run my. Run my numbers. Okay, got it. But I would have to think with all the technology out there, they know even more than that. Do they know what like. So let's use the kayaker for a second. Yeah. Looks harmless, but that's how they present. They look to fit in, but. Right. That kayaker looks innocent coming in there. But who makes the final decision to go. Okay. He has no bomb on board.

[B]

So that's what's interesting now. That's going to go up the chain where they finally clear the area. But what's cool. And this is actually a submarine principle, too. No matter how junior you are, it is your. It's not on submarines. We call it forceful watch team backup. And this is. I think this is one of the coolest things about it is you empower your most junior person to speak up if they think something is wrong. If they're wrong, they learn. But if they're right, they're right and it matters. And in that case, you've got, you know, if somebody sees something, it's their duty to go out there and get it. So there's nothing complex. To my knowledge, there's nothing complex. They keep a perimeter. You come inside the perimeter, you can get in trouble.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Generally speaking, it's, you know, not a big deal. But, you know, there are some. There's some interesting calls to where even with folks who are, like, protesting, there are some folks who have ended up in classified areas that should not be there. Not classified areas, but restricted areas.

[A]

Restricted. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And these guys do have to make a judgment call. And then typically, the judgment call for sure. One.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But you've got protesters who are out there just being crazy and irresponsible.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And so that's what they have to contend with. We don't. I mean, we're, you know, we're. We're on the boat. Right. That's.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, but the. The marines and the guys who. Who in the Coast Guard to keep us safe.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They've got a hard job too, you know, and it's typically pretty dang boring. That's what's hard is you got to stay vigilant. 3:00am and you're looking at nothing. It's quiet.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that's all you're doing. It's boring. Judy. But if you don't do it well and you don't do it right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's. It's. You only have to fail once.

[A]

Only have to fail once. That's right. Yeah. Then they've got to only be right once, you know, the attack. So. Okay, what's something you learned about human behavior in confined spaces. With all men, I would guess. Right. 100% male.

[B]

Ours was.

[A]

And ours was everybody's type A, Right.

[B]

I mean, it's a driven. It's a driven, but.

[A]

But everybody's mission focused.

[B]

The most professional guys I've ever worked with.

[A]

Okay. Incredible.

[B]

You know, wow. You know, and I came through with the first female submarine officers. They were equally amazing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But bottom line, they're the most. They're the most professional men that I've ever worked with. They are phenomenally knowledgeable. When it's time to go heads down, they go heads down.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You really realize that, like, I keep making this point about how you just don't think about where you are, what you're doing. And I think what you figure out about human nature is you're just extremely adaptable. You can handle way more than you think you can. And when you've got a goal in mind, when you've got a mission set in mind, you know, like, to some extent, yeah. It's boring sometimes, but everybody knows the stakes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you find pretty quickly that when you've got everybody marching in the same direction and everybody keyed in on what needs to happen. And more than anything, you realize this is actually one of the interesting lessons I realized as an officer, I stepped on board, I'm like 25 years old, I know nothing. And they immediately give me a division that I'm responsible for not only holding accountable, making sure they're on schedule, all that stuff. They know more than I do. They can walk circles around me. They're submarine qualified. Like, what are you giving me a division for?

[A]

You're in charge of guy.

[B]

Really? Yeah. And what's interesting is you realize that our job as officer was never about power. It was about playing the role that we're given with the authority that we're given to make sure that we are empowering our guys to do the work that they need to and making sure that we are the conduit from, you know, top to bottom. Whatever that looked like, Whatever. So communication was everything for us. The separation did matter. And eventually you get to know what to look for, because they will always know more about their systems than you do, and they'll always be able to. You know, they just. They can run circles around you from where they stand, because they've been doing this for 10 years on the same systems. But you get a really good eye for what to ask and what to look for. And it's that sort of think like CEO discernment, where you've really got to key in on the right question, to ask at the right time with the right tone to make sure that everybody's aligned and moving in the right direction. You'll never be. If you're a CEO, you'll never be as good as your best accountant, but you don't need to be.

[A]

You don't need to be right.

[B]

You need to maintain the right perspective. So what I learned about authority, what I learned about being an officer, is it was completely and totally about playing your role well. Because I was reticent at first to give orders. I thought that was like, that's. That's a little uppity of me, you know?

[A]

Sure. 25 years old.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Sure. And what I came to realize that was so key was these guys not only expected it from me, in fact, they would. Our chiefs, the best ones, would prompt me and say, sir, I need you to give me an order. I need you to tell me where we need to go right now. They may even have the right answer. But until I said the word, they would not move. And it was specifically because in that role, where I was conduit, I had the big picture in mind. I understood what was going on more broadly, and these guys needed to know what they needed to do in that context and trust that I knew what I was doing so that when they were working on their individual system, they were doing so with somebody else keeping overwatch on the broader big picture. It was a cool lesson to learn. It was really cool because it taught me what that looks like where it's not about being more important. Their role was arguably more important than mine was, despite the fact that I was an officer in the big picture. Yeah, but we all had to do exactly what we were put there to do, right? And obviously there's an analogy as a Christian walking in your calling. You know, you. You play your role whether it's at the bottom or at the top, but you play it well, and you play it to the glory of God. You realize, like that, that is your job in life. You know, it's not about reaching and it's not about grabbing for more power, money, you name it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's about walking in that calling and in that role you're designed for.

[A]

So incredible how, how long is the, is the station for the responsibility, the duty? Is it. Do you have to get out after a year, two years?

[B]

So you do a three year tour, three year seat tour.

[A]

Do you have to do three?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Can you do more than three?

[B]

You can, but you don't. I mean, you gotta get a break. There were guys where, you know, phrase was the competent shall be punished. And so if you were, that's great. If you were good at your job, the door, you're staying around. Sorry. And because there are constantly personnel issues with like getting enough folks into the submarine community finding a relief. It was especially hard for the good engineers and the department head positions because those guys, like, if you're good, you'll stick around for four, eight months more. And a lot of times it's promises made, promises not kept. Needs in the Navy.

[A]

And that is Navy.

[B]

Exactly. And so, you know, if you don't, if you don't understand your why and you don't understand that you, and you haven't surrendered to the fact that you really don't have a say in that. I mean, you do, right? You have some say, sure, but not ultimately. It's up to them. If you haven't surrendered to that, you'll drive yourself crazy.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And so. Yeah, but 36 months is a typical sea tour.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And as far as emergencies, so can anything happen underwater that you would have to go up for? And what are those? Are there only 1, 2, 3, or is it sort of.

[B]

There are, there are a few. Typically that's where you want to land. You know, I mentioned the fire, I mentioned some other, some other situation.

[A]

Did you go up for the fire or you handle that down, down at a couple hundred feet?

[B]

It depends.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It totally depends.

[A]

So if it's bad enough that you go up or what dictates going up,

[B]

I guess the severity, the timing, and whether or not you can get whatever the casualty is under control. There are so many contingencies. So here's what's interesting is that you know, to some extent, I'm not sure how much I can answer with that. But what I can tell you is there has, there are books upon books of casualties, emergencies, and every single sailor on board knows their role and their immediate actions. So first thing you do is understand You've got to identify the casualty, notify everybody on board of what's going on, and then immediately you're on your immediate actions, and you don't open the book for that. You do them automatically. So if you don't have them memorized, then. Or if you misidentify the casualty and go down the wrong path, it can be pretty serious, pretty fast.

[A]

Yeah, for sure.

[B]

It just complicates everything, and it's already complicated.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

So what's cool about that is there are dozens of things that can go wrong with hundreds of. Of systems and things in place. And so it's. I mentioned that these guys are the most professional people I've ever worked with. They're just phenomenal. You know those by heart. And looking back on how extensive, like, you know, how extensively we knew the boat front to back and do all those immediate actions, it was.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

It was a lot. You know, it's kind of a wonder we survived it.

[A]

Yeah. Is there a doctor on board?

[B]

Ish.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You. You have a. A Navy corpsman, so we had an E7, a Navy chief, so he's a doctor. Ish. And this. My mom finds this fascinating. I think it's hilarious. But if. If you needed to do some kind of a surgery or whatever, typically you try and get that person off the boat. But if you're on mission and you can't do anything about it, he's trained to do essentially, like, think like nurse practitioner.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So knows as much as he needs to to kind of keep everybody safe. But the. The piece about my mom, the thing she found most fascinating, there's nowhere to do an operation, so what you actually end up doing is you take the officers eating quarters. Right. The.

[A]

The. The.

[B]

The officer's wardrobe, you pull off the Naga hide cover, and there's a stainless steel table, and you literally turn it into a surgery table. And those lights over her head are powerful enough that you can actually do it there, so.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

You need to do what you need to do, then That's. That's how you do it.

[A]

So stitches, all that stuff. They're doing all that. There some things they'll take you up for.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

What about something major like, hopefully it's never happened before. Anybody ever suffered, like, a heart attack down there?

[B]

People have died of underwater.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I don't know about a heart attack.

[A]

I haven't heard anything like dying from an injury from. Or. Or dying of a health.

[B]

Both. Bottom line is it's happened.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's weird, but you stick them in the freezer until you can get them home. Yeah. You know, and it's because it's a safety issue, too, right?

[A]

Sure. Oh, absolutely.

[B]

But, yeah, you've got. You've got one corpsman on board, and they're taking care of everybody and whatever it is. And, like, you're extremely limited in what you can prescribe, too. And you can't give narcotics. Right. You can't give any sort of painkillers, et cetera, et cetera.

[A]

Like, why is that?

[B]

Because you've got to be able to operate the sub. I mean, there are so many restrictive medicines that you just can't touch.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

And so, you know, you go through this whole questionnaire of what are your required meds? And certain things will wash you out. Just for medical purposes.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, like, what. What would be something that would wash you out?

[B]

Oh, gosh. I want to say, honestly, off the top, I can't. I want to say things like Adderall. I. I think.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But I. You know, I didn't have to deal with this, but I knew that there were some guys who. That was just the nature of.

[A]

Let's just say you have blood pressure medication.

[B]

Sure. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So if you're. If you have certain things that you're absolutely dependent on, certain things I think you're okay with. And honestly, I think this list changes over time, too. Sure. So I'm honestly not even the best person.

[A]

What about, like, vision and stuff like that? You know, the. The guys that are flying have to have. I don't even know if that's verified. They gotta have 2020.

[B]

I don't know. They can now get Lasik. My understanding is they can actually get Lasik, and as long as they don't have to wear glasses, they're good.

[A]

That's what it was for us. So we had to get Lasik be. You had to be 2060 or better, uncorrected. Did you have to do that?

[B]

So this. This is actually an interesting story. I almost washed out of ocs, and if it wasn't for my uncle coming back to me and telling me like, they're full of crap, you need to go press them on this, and you need to get tested again. I actually failed. Really? I failed the DOT test, and then I also failed what's called the Phalan test. I am blue, green, colorblind, but only in some shades for, like, very, very limited. Right. But, you know, at ocs, under stress and with no sleep, my eyes, I guess they just weren't Working. I don't know what the deal was, I gotta be honest, but a requirement for the Navy is you have to be able to see red and green because port and starboard, you need to see the aspect of a ship at sea. That's right. And if it all looks gray to you, you can't tell if the ship's going that way or that way is a huge safety of ship issue. So I almost washed out and I went back and got retested. Passed. Good to go.

[A]

But you failed that.

[B]

I failed it initially. They almost put me in an intel shore bound duty.

[A]

Oh, my God. And what? So I don't understand. Your uncle helped with what part of it?

[B]

I called him and he basically, what? He kicked me in the tail and said, go get him. Go force them to retest you.

[A]

And just a retest, like, don't let.

[B]

Don't take it is what he said.

[A]

It was a false negative. Whatever. False positive.

[B]

I guess it might have been a false positive at the time, to be honest. I knew that. I'm not red, green, Colorblind.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm sitting here looking at, you know, again, if the Navy has a say, you're just like, well, you know, what am I gonna do now?

[A]

Right.

[B]

So that was. That was actually a gut check. I forgot about that until you just mentioned it. But it was kind of a gut check for me where I'm like, man, I was in this to do submarines and now I'm gonna be, I don't know, sit behind the desk.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so my uncle kicking me in the tail and saying, go tell them to test you again and make sure they do it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That was a game changer.

[A]

What was he in your. In your life? Was he like just a mentor or was he more of a.

[B]

He commissioned me. He. I mean, I swore my. My oath of office. He committed. He was. He's a C5 pilot or was a C5 pilot.

[A]

Oh, yeah, the galaxy. Yeah.

[B]

So he was always doing that. He just. He's somebody I just respect immensely.

[A]

Yeah. Okay.

[B]

Amazing man. High integrity.

[A]

So he knew being in and around the military to tell you to go. And I would think almost every human being on earth would have accepted a

[B]

failed if it was just up to them. They would have think, well, this is my fate.

[A]

Well, that's a huge pivot point in your whole life.

[B]

Yeah. Agency.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

It's a game changer. Turns out you have a say.

[A]

What else did you have to get right to get on there or pass? What other kind of physical did you Were you able to have, like, metal in your body? What if you. I have metal plate in my foot. Would they let me on there?

[B]

So I believe, yeah, you'd be fine.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You know, I actually had to. I had a back injury when I was 21 from water skiing, of all things. Herniate ruptured two discs in my lower back, and I had to get a waiver to get into the Navy in the first place.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

My. You know, it was a. My orthopedic surgeon, you know, he gave me the waiver and basically said, you're cleared for everything, but seals. And I'm like, well, I wasn't gonna be a SEAL anyway, so. But, yeah, no, I mean, you can. You can generally get through. I don't think it's that restrictive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But, yeah, there are certain things you just can't tolerate. I mean, interesting was sleepwalking. You're not allowed to be, you know, if you sleepwalk. If you're known for sleepwalking, you can't be on a boat. Surface ship is more dangerous because you could go overboard. But subs, if you're sleepwalking, doing operations that you're not supposed to do, you know, I guess that's the danger. I'd never met anybody that. With sleepwalking, but that's one of the

[A]

things they ask about rough water, sleepwalking. Sure. Hitting your head. That's all steel and. Yeah. Okay. Incredible. Yeah.

[B]

Super cool stuff.

[A]

Thanks, man.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

You have a great story. Appreciate you coming on.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

You will get people that want to ask you questions. Can I put your handle on here? Instagram or and everything.

[B]

I'm not even on social media, so. But I'll, you know, we'll have to drop it in the comments.

[A]

I'll feel them and get them over to you. Especially with these niche government positions. I find we'll get tons of DMS and stuff like that. Hey, can you ask him this? Can you ask him that? My son wants to get in, but he has this. What do you suggest? All those kind of things. Because, man, your federal government time was awesome, so. And thank you for your service.

[B]

I appreciate it.

[A]

Always overlooked that.

[B]

You can't overlook the fact you do the Secret Service for a while. It's. It's a grind. It's totally worth it. But there's something to it. I got way more out of it than I gave.

[A]

I can hear you miss a. In an area. You miss a part of it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That structure, that leaders, all that just goes together.

[B]

So, yeah, it's. It's the intensity and the mission. You know. You know, you're doing something very real and it's. Yeah, there's a part of you that misses it. But right now, the mission is take

[A]

care of the family kids.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Raise them.

[B]

Take care of the wife first, take care of the kids second. They need dads, but 100% trying to make that work and do it in a God honoring way.

[A]

Yeah. Appreciate it, ma'.

[B]

Am.

[A]

Thanks.

[B]

No, absolutely.