How a nuclear submarine officer learned to live in tight quarters

When you don't select or train, getting discipline is sometimes a smidge more challenging.

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

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

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

I know some people who are going out and drinking and hugging (they told me this) in Michigan (we're not supposed to even visit other houses). This is across the entire wealth spectrum.

They have expressed a belief that the virus is not very dangerous, as well as a belief that the government/their neighbors should not be able to tell them what to do.

Being raised in middle america, I strongly identify with the latter sentiment, but not as much as I do with a numbers-based approach to "keeping grandma alive".

Wow, that's kind of nuts.