Troubled Sleep in the Arks of Doom

It’s hard enough to sleep just knowing that dozens of nuclear ballistic missile submarines haunt the oceans, each containing the means to rain nuclear annihilation on the world. But what’s it like to sleep aboard these arks of doom? It actually ties into long-term military study, and the results may help us send humans to other planets. Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick explore... 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert,
I got a question for you. Hit me. What do
you think is the most isolated and confined work space

(00:26):
in the world. Immediately, you want to think about the
International Space Station, right, yeah, I mean that's that's pretty isolated. Um,
you think about going into orbit, you think about maybe
going to the North or South Pole, or perhaps being
on a ship in just the middle of the ocean,
just leagues upon leagues away from shore. But you know,

(00:47):
when you think about it, if you say, are on
an Antarctic research station that's overwintering at the South Pole,
maybe you're doing neutrino research or something down there, you
might in some cases have the build to say lookout
windows or at least maybe go outside for short periods
of time. Yeah, Or even if you're just stranded in

(01:08):
the middle of the ocean, you can at least look
up at at Albatross, right, yeah, you get a sense
that there's something traveling somewhere. How about how about the
International Space Station. That's got to be the most isolated
and confined and maybe claustrophobic, right, because you're in a
can flying around at super high altitude around the Earth.
There's no way to get back down quickly or easily.

(01:29):
But then again, I think about the windows when you're
on the International Space Station. Apparently they say lots of
the astronauts up there, it's been huge amounts of their
free time just looking out the windows, looking at the
surface of the Earth, kind of letting that work on
their consciousness and massage their brains. What would it be
like to be on the International Space Station if there

(01:52):
were no windows? Yeah, because because a lot has been
said about looking out, seeing the Earth from above, experiencing
what has been what do we know now is the
the overview effect in almost a semi religious experience. But
if you didn't have those windows, if you're just sealed
up within a tube in this extreme environment, well then

(02:14):
that would be a lot like another extreme environment that
we sometimes send people, not outer space, but inner space. No, wait,
you mean that movie where they inject you into the
blood stream. That's right, We're not talking about entering the
blood stream of Martin Short, he's the one they go into. Yeah,
he's the he's the subject as our call. I don't
think I've actually seen them. Oh what, You've got to

(02:35):
see it. It's it's tremendous fun ahead, you know. It
has these I remember watching as a kid, has all
these uh these these cool little submarines that that move
around inside the blood stream. The action scene where Martin
Short suddenly eats a cheeto and they have to fight
it off. Yeah, but no, no, no, you're talking about
another kind of environment that's more confining, more of a
crushed can, of an existence without any ability to make

(02:58):
contact with the world below or the world above. You're
talking about life aboard a nuclear submarine. Yes, and you're
certainly not going to get the overview effect as well.
Discussing this episode, perhaps you'll get something more like the
underview effect. Now, Robert, you have used this metaphor for
submarines in our notes here, calling them the arcs of doom.
I don't know where you got that or if that's

(03:20):
just out of your brain, but I love it. Well,
that's there's arcs with the k start thinking like Noah's
arks Novah's ark here. Uh so, yeah, I mean the
idea is it it's hard enough for us to sleep
just knowing that dozens of nuclear ballistic missile submarines haunt
the world's oceans, each containing the million means to reign
nuclear annihilation down on the world. But what's it like

(03:42):
to sleep aboard these uh, these arcs of doom? If
you will? Uh, it actually ties into long term military
study and the results may actually help us send humans
to other planets one day. Right, So today we're gonna
be talking a little bit about life and sleep and
a little bit about psychological health aboard these deep arcs

(04:02):
of doom. And I want to throw in a quick note.
I know we've covered a fair amount of underwater episodes
this year, have we Yeah, we have under underwater humanoids, uh,
the bathmosphere, etcetera. We keep returning to the ocean and uh,
and really, I guess that's unavoidable because we live on
a water world. The ocean is where we encounter all

(04:25):
these various mysteries and all of these fabulous stories of
scientific exploration and and mythic dreaming. It's the part of
space we explored that actually has aliens, right, And so
we couldn't we couldn't decide on the show not to
cover the underwater realm even if someone demanded that we
we do so. But one of the reasons that that

(04:46):
I've been drawn to a lot of underwater topics this
year is because I've been writing an upcoming sci fi
underwater podcast for How Stuff Works. Yeah, congratulations, Robert, Oh
thank you. This is where we're saying it in public.
That's right, We're we're we're letting it leak out a
little bit here. Uh. And Joe, you're gonna actually be
on it as well. We've got a wonderful little part
lined up for you. I'm sure it'll be magnificently dehumanizing.

(05:11):
All right, Well, speaking of de humanization, let's let's get
back to this world of nuclear submarines and uh and
why we have them to begin with? Yeah, what are
nuclear submarines? You've heard the phrase, but why do we
have nuclear submarines? Is the Cold War still going on?
Well that's a loaded question, is um? So we should

(05:32):
we should talk just a minute about submarines. So I
have to admit, when I was a kid, uh, my
understanding of submarines was largely based on World War Two
era books and documentaries and movies. Uh, you know, stuff
like Doss boot about the German submarines boats you're thinking
about like an attack you boat, like sinking a cargo
ship or something. Yeah, you know, they're also called hunter

(05:55):
killer submarines. So they're gonna be taking out enemy war
vessels or cargo ships or occasionally, uh, interacting with other submarines.
And certainly various nations that are still employ attack subs.
And some of these are nuclear powered, uh and they
and they can go out for prolonged unprolonged missions and
spend a lot of time beneath the waves. But then

(06:19):
there's the nuclear powered ballistic missile sub and this is
a different beast all together. Yeah, these are sometimes referred
to as strategic submarines. They're not. They're not made for
battle tactics and combat. They are strategic as part of
the nuclear triad, that's right. The nuclear triad is essentially
a defense slash offense strategy concerning the possibility of nuclear war,

(06:45):
right as part of the mutually assured destruction deterrent system. Yeah,
if you hit me with nuclear weapons, I will hit
you with nuclear weapons and then everybody loses. That sort
of thing. But in order to fully offer that vision
of doom, you have to essentially have these three things
lined up according to the nuclear triads. You need strategic bombers, okay,
so those would be flying around in the air. You

(07:08):
need intercontinental ballistic missiles or i C b M. So
these would be launched from launch sites right and then
contravel ideally anywhere in the world or at least far
enough to reach the key targets of interest. And then
there are the submarine launched ballistic missiles or s l
b m s, and that's what would be launched from
these submarines. Now, these are really key for a very

(07:30):
specific reason. Imagine you've got a bunch of intercontinental ballistic
missiles and the reason you say you have them at
least and by the way, I don't want to say
we're necessarily advocating like the goodness of nuclear weapons or
the correctness of nuclear weapons defensive strategy, but this is how,
this is how the mutually assured destruction system is supposed
to work. In theory, the ideas you have all these

(07:53):
nuclear weapons to prevent anyone from attacking you, because they
can be assured that if they attack you, then you
will respond with devastating force. And that's supposed to prevent
nuclear war from ever breaking out in the first place,
nobody can strike first because they would get hit back
so hard. Um. But under that logic, if that's actually working,

(08:13):
there is a problem with the idea of there just
being ground based launch areas because what if one side says, Okay,
so we've got really good surveillance and we've got spies,
and now we think we know where you know, at
least nine percent of their launch sites are. So what
if we can launch a first strike and take out
all of their launch sites to begin with. And likewise,
the same applies to the strategic bombers, because you could say, well,

(08:35):
we know where their airfields are, and or we know
where the planes are in the air that are out
on regular maneuvers. Yeah, we can use radar, we yeah,
so we can figure that stuff out. What if you
get one side saying we think we could launch a
first strike and mostly get away with it. You know,
we can prevent their ability to strike back. So then
submarines really become important to maintain the deterrence, as the

(08:58):
theory goes, because if you have marines capable of launching
nukes from all over the world and the enemy can't
really know where they are. They're hidden under the ocean somewhere,
and you can't find them. Then it ups the deterrence.
It basically makes it say no, you can't launch a
first strike and just get away with it. It's like
in a in a crime movie where one character is is,

(09:19):
you know, basically at gunpoint or at knife point, and
they tell the villain, you can't kill me because if
I die, I have a mysterious friend who will deliver
a letter to the newspaper. Right, it's in a safe
deposit box. You know, you can't know where it is,
but if I die, it's going to become public. And
that's the basic concept here now s lb ms. They
emerged during the Cold War as a reality, but the

(09:43):
idea goes back to World War Two. The Germans were
actually working on a submarine launch platform for their V twos,
their their vengeance weapons, these large rockets that could be
used to attack other countries. It's one of the very
commonly contemplated nightmare scenarios of allternative history is imagining what
what would have happened in World War Two if the

(10:05):
Nazis had had greater technological advances in their weaponry, right
and they already had significant technological advances, but a lot
of these ideas they were not able to really get
outside of the testing zone on and this was one
of those. They never tested it. But the architects of
this and other weapons systems, of course continued their work
in the US and in the U s s R. Right,

(10:25):
which led to a not alternative history, but the real history,
terrifying scenario of mutually shared destruction. And you know, the
constant sort of hair trigger alert system on which we
kept all these nuclear weapons and nuclear strategic submarines throughout
the Cold War. Yeah, and I had anyone who's really
interested in this topic definitely go check out our episode
there but for Science, because that was an episode where

(10:48):
we talked about communication with nuclear submarines and how we
actually do it, and then this one alleged scheme to
try and carry out secret communication with nuclear subs via
essentially blood magic. That was a weird episode, but I
like it was. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, the idea is that maybe,
according to some anecdotes, the Soviets were working on tests

(11:13):
to use psychics to communicate with strategic submarines. I mean,
who knows if that's exactly true, but that's at least
what was alleged. I'll make sure there's a link to
it on the landing page for this episode, I feel
like it kind of fell through the cracks for some listeners. So, um,
we have these vessels out there, and again we have
nuclear power on board, so you know, they're not having

(11:33):
to worry about about filling filling up with the local
gas station. But they require a human crew. Uh. The
crew has to work in a very confined environment and
they have to stay submerged the entire time, for months
at a time. The main restriction, apparently on such a
nuclear powered subs is food, and I've read that the
meals get kind of interesting towards the end of the

(11:56):
mission when they're running out of out of, out of
out of stuff to cook. There's a straight Dope message
board user who mentioned quote chili mac with a side
of canned beets as an example. I read another example
from some users somewhere about going for like weeks at
a time at the end of the mission just getting
pancakes every meal was pancakes for weeks. Well, you know

(12:19):
how it is when you make pancakes, You know you
have all that leftover batter so do you put the
batter away, do you throw it out? Or you just
keep making pancakes. Clearly the answer is just keep making
pancakes until you return to board. I mean, I hope
they were real buttermilk pancakes. Buttermilk makes a difference. Yeah. Yeah,
Now all that said, I've actually also read that when
it's fresh, submarine food is supposed to be about the

(12:40):
best food you get in the armed forces? Have you
have you read about this round? Yeah, I've seen that.
Sided is one of the reasons UH sailors actually go
after the submarine assignment is that there's going to be
great food. Yeah. So, and that's supposed to basically be
an incentive, one of the incentives to draw sailors into
the US in many ways very undesirable task of serving

(13:04):
for months at a time on a deep see submarine
where you're not going to get to see the sun
or look at a tree, or see your family or
any of that good stuff. At least you'll get some
tasty food, hopefully for as long of the trip as
that's possible, though you know, who knows. If you're out
there too long and the supplies haven't been planned quite right,
then you might get some weird stuff. Later on, I

(13:24):
read an article in the l A Times about how
good submarine food is supposed to be. This was by
a writer named Peter pay Just to read a quote
from this. He's talking about a specific meal being served
within the submarine. Quote onque mess specialist Richard Yeowen began
slicing a twenty five pound prime rib roast into half
inch thick pieces, before gingerly transferring the second entree, baked

(13:48):
lobster tails with spicy old bass seasoning onto a serving tray.
Sauteed mushrooms, baked potatoes, and beef rice soup come next,
with baskets full of hot oven baked bread. It was
made from scratch. For dessert, you hand, a petty Officer
third class and former French pastry baker from Cypress has
prepared chocolate and lemon cakes made with real chocolate and

(14:10):
freshly squeezed lemon juice. That is not what I would expect.
I mean I would have thought, if okay, you're on
a submarine, you'd want to pack a lot of extremely
non perishable, calorie rich, dense foods. So a lot of
like canned meat and stuff, right because space is at
such a premium. Yeah. Absolutely, they're just packed in there,

(14:31):
so you would think that the food would be something
that's very conducive to that environment. But on the other hand,
the psychological well being of the crew is really important
in a deep sea submarine. You don't want your strategic
submarine to be full of people having deep sea madness
because they've been eating spam for months, right. You don't
want that spam sandwich to be the straw that breaks
the camels back for their sanity. Yeah, it will not

(14:53):
be your ice cream bar because obviously you're stuck in
a very contained environment with the same people and of
course the same air. Yeah. Oh well, that's a good question.
So you might be thinking, wait, wait, maybe so you're
saying that this nuclear submarine gets into a strategic launch
launch position that's a secret. It can't come to the
surface or it might be detected, so it's got to

(15:15):
stay down for maybe months at a time, at least
weeks at a time, and that the main problem is
running out of food. Why wouldn't they run out of
air first? That seems obvious, right right, Yeah, you would think, oh,
I'm gonna be stuck underwater. I want I want to
get the air situation uh taken care of before I wondered,
I wonder about my lobster tail. It seems a little important, right,

(15:36):
I mean, if it's like you have to choose between
eating and breathing, I mean, I love food, but I
would probably pick breathing. Uh. So, obviously it would be
difficult for submarine to bring along enough oxygen tanks for
and it could be dangerous to bring along enough compressed
oxygen for crew members to breathe for nine d days.
So how do the humans on board a submarine get fresh,

(15:56):
breathable air. Well, think about it. What do you have
in a undance that you can work with on a
deep sea submarine with a nuclear reactor inside of it. Well,
you've got power, that's right, You've got electricity, and you've got,
of course plenty of water. So nuclear submarines have the
power to actually create fresh oxygen using oxygen generators. And

(16:17):
this is done through a process known as electrolysis. So
a water molecule is H two oh, it's two parts hydrogen,
one part oxygen. And if you will apply a strong
chemical current to a container of water in the right way,
it'll split into its atomic constituents. Those water molecules will
break up under the influence of the electrical energy, and
they will release oxygen gas and hydrogen gas. This is

(16:39):
actually sort of the inverse of what happens in a
hydrogen fuel cell, right. Fuel cell combines hydrogen and oxygen
to produce electricity and water. This process combines electricity and
water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Now, of course, if
you think about things like the Hindenburg, it can sound
kind of scary to have pure hydrogen and pure oxygen

(17:00):
and your submarine, right, Yeah, that sounds explosive. Yeah, I mean,
and we can actually think back to tragedies in the
history of space exploration where uh, you know, enriched oxygen
environments lead to deadly fires. Right, So you want to
be careful when dealing with pure hydrogen or or high
oxygen content in your environments. So you've got to get

(17:22):
rid of that excess hydrogen for one thing, so the
oxygen is preserved for atmospheric circulation, but then the hydrogen
byproduct of the electrolysis is purged into seawater or burned
in a controlled system. And of course that's not the
only issue with breathing breathable air. Right, you also have
to worry about the toxic byproducts of human respiration like
CEO two and there they use chemical scrubbers, right, like

(17:45):
a monoethanol amine can be used to absorb carbon dioxide
and then that can be purged. This would of course
be a more robust system than what we saw in
the bathosphere, where you just had trays of chemicals lining
the top of the sphere. Yeah. Just what did they have?
It was bayly, just like a tray of lime or something. Yeah,
something to that effect. I don't remember exactly what it was.
It was something like that. Um, but yeah, so you

(18:07):
clearly start to get a sense of the the delicate
balance that one must maintain in a pressurized environment in
a submarine deep under the ocean, where, of course, if
there was to be a leak or something like that,
you know, you could have you could have the depths
and compression of the sea water kill you. You could

(18:27):
have contaminants in the atmosphere inside the submarine kill you.
You've also just got super cramped conditions. Everything's tight everywhere.
So it starts to make you wonder what's it like
to be one of these people aboard the submarine. What's
it like to be a submariner? How does that get
to your psychological health and how does it affect your

(18:48):
your daily patterns of behavior and things like sleep exactly.
And that's what we're gonna be talking about the rest
of this episode. We're gonna look at a few different
papers that have come out over the years that try
and get to the autom of just what's going on
with the submariner's sleep. So we're gonna take a quick
break and then we'll be right back. Thank alright, we're back.

(19:08):
So one of the sources we looked at for this
episode is a nineteen nine paper titled Human Adjustment to
an Exotic Environment the Nuclear Submarine by Jim h Earls,
m d. Of Oklahoma City. And this was based in
part on his observations as a doctor aboard to nuclear
propelled Polaris missile firing submarines. And this is it's a

(19:30):
very readable paper and uh and while it's nearly half
a century old at this point, we have to we
do have to recognize, uh. And it doesn't attempt to
speak to the conditions on all subs. It's still worth discussing.
It still makes some uh in a way, it's it's
one of the more useful papers that's come out because
he's willing to just sort of observe the submariner in

(19:50):
its unnatural environment, almost like it's an animal, yes, and
a passionate animal at that. So, I mean a lot
of this is it's almost borderline Freudian. And he's talking
a lot about how different types of mood affects but
also urges and things like that and how they get
elevated or sublimated. It's it's a really interesting read, all right.

(20:12):
So we're gonna we're gonna move through the paper here
in touch on some of the high points. So he
pointed out that, to quote the U. S. Navy and
apparent recognition of man as the limiting factor, has elected
to man each Polaris submarine with two complete crews. These
crews alternate between being on the submarine for about ninety
days and receiving refresher training at the U. S. Navy base.

(20:33):
This method of manning the Polaris submarine has apparently been
adopted to obtain the maximum submerged patrol time on a
continuing basis. So the idea here is people are going
down for months at a time on this, but then
they have to bring it back. They have to bring
the submarine back, they have to put in a new
crew and also do some maintenance on the vehicle before
it goes back out again. Yeah, and apparently something that

(20:55):
was true both then and now is that if you
want to be on a submarine crew, you have to
go through a lot of training and screening ahead of time.
That's right. They're screening for intellectual level, emotional stability, physical status. Uh.
And they just run tests on you, right, you know,
for you basically your submarine competence. Yeah. And each of
the the subs that that the author here discusses would

(21:18):
have been crewed by a hundred and forty men and
they would live there sixty days at a time, and
then there would be this twenty eight day upkeep interval. Yeah.
But of course, one thing when you think about on
a submarine is you just mentioned like length of days.
So you imagine you're on a submarine at the bottom
of the ocean for sixty days. What does sixty days

(21:38):
mean at the bottom of the ocean. Obviously there is
still a measurable length of time, like you could count
out the hours, and it's not like a general relativity issue,
like it's still the same number of hours that the
surface would measure. But if you're never seeing the sun
rise and set, and you're never seeing the moon, you're
never hearing the crickets chirp at night, you never hear

(21:58):
the rooster crow in the more warning, and nothing happens
to mark the sort of the daily milestones of the
passage of time. What do days mean? Well, this is
a This is where Earl's describes it as a quote
some loss of circadian and geographical orientation. So you'd imagine, yeah,
so your body is not really sure what what time
it is, and and so you're getting into this um

(22:21):
what I've seen referred to and some papers as diurnal flattening. Uh,
And then you're you have no idea where you are really,
I mean, you know you're under under the under the sea,
you know you're deep in the ocean, and perhaps depending
on you know who you are in the crew, perhaps
you know more specifically where you are, but it doesn't
how much does that? What does that mean to you
if you can't actually observe it. Yeah, so you're operating

(22:43):
somewhat independently of the passage of days and nights on
the surface. So if you still want to operate on
the basis of days, there being such a thing as
a day, and that mattering, what do you have to
judge that by. Well, Earl says, you have the meals,
your three meals a day, and then you have the
evening movie, and these become the pillars of your understanding

(23:07):
of time. I wonder what movies they were showing on
submarines in the nineteen sixties. Oh, man, i'd have to
I'd have to really dive into IMDb, but I'm guessing
they were probably they probably weren't watching submarine pictures that
that much, I assume. I'm guessing they were watching, you know,
stuff with some nice beach scenes, maybe some beach comedies.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the

(23:28):
submarine brought along one movie. The movie was Monster Ago Go,
and they just watched it every night. Oh that that
is not something It is a legitimate psychological experiment. I
don't see that going over well. I mean, it's about
the right time period. I think it works. Yeah, Well,
I can see monster movies as being the type of

(23:49):
thing that would go over well, oh, I would love
to watch monster movies on the submarine. I just would
want to be able to leave the submarine afterwards. Yeah. Now,
on top of this, Earl's points out that you're in
a very stationary world, but one where these just constant
white noise. It's like being in a white noise machine.
And then the only but the only time you really
notice what's going on is if there's some change in

(24:10):
the white noise, and then you might wonder, what's wrong,
let's change exactly? I mean, he describes the white noise
as being sort of part of a larger background of
not just the sound, but a white background, like a
totally unchanging environment. That your environment is just static and
nothing happens to it. There's no weather, there's no day

(24:32):
night cycle. That it's just it's like living a purely
artificial existence, right, And then you have almost no private space.
The points out that like the room you watch the movies,
and it's not like they have they would have had
a dedicated movie theater. No, that was some other space
perhaps where you ate that got converted. Uh. If some
sort of medical procedure needed to be uh conducted, that

(24:55):
would take place in one of these uh these these
rooms as well, so everybody sharing the same space, spaces
are being used for different purposes, and he paints a
picture of like basically just crawling all over each other.
I think one of the problems for us surface folk
trying to figure out what it's like to be in
a submarine is we have all these submarine movies and

(25:16):
the submarine sets. I've always enjoyed this, like watching an
old submarine movie especially and seeing how large they make
the space appear, because you need in this space for
a fistfight. Usually. Yeah, oh, they seem quite spacious. I
think about scenes in The Hunt for Red October where
people are like running around and there are these rooms
with all this like empty floor space. Yeah, It's been

(25:38):
a long time since I've seen dos Boot, so I
could be completely wrung, but I seem to remember there
being a lot of really cramped uh sets in that movie.
But unsure some movies do it better than others. Yeah,
I met some of them just really go wide, like
let's basically have a basketball court in there. What's what's
that room? In the Hunt for October, I remember there's
a scene on the Soviet sub where they starts singing

(26:00):
the national anthem, and it's in this like if my
memory is right, it's this like echo e hall. Wow,
it's been too long since I've seen that. Well, I've
maintained for years that they should turn The Hunt for
Red October into a Broadway musical. Seriously, I've got it
all planned out. I think like I've got some of
the songs written. I think it could be really good. Wow. Well,
that that's how I want to see this movie again.

(26:22):
And as a as a musical. All the songs are
written by Jim Steinman, so they're very funny. One called
like a lesson in tactics, alright, very rock oriented as well.
That's all I got right now, Okay, you're not gonna
sing anything? No, okay, um. Now on top of no wait,
starring meat Loaf is Captain Ramios. I've done. I'm done, alright,

(26:44):
so on to on top of of all this we
discussed so far. H Earls also mentions that, I mean,
at the heart of this, you have this terrible purpose,
like every day is pretty going to be much the
same rule by routine. Nothing is really happening aboard one
of these subs. But if it does happen, if the
if the submarine's key purpose comes into play. Uh, that

(27:05):
is because it is involved in a in a in
a nuclear exchange, he says. He the submariner is also
aware that these missiles are to be fired only in
retaliation to a nuclear attack on the United States. So
if they do the job that is sort of like
their primary potential job down there, it's only because something

(27:27):
terrible has happened to the world. Yeah, something just horrifying
has occurred, and and and it of course raises all
these questions like the family that you're potentially separated from
the world, the daily life that you are a dreaming
of in the sub what has happened to it, you've
had to act, and what kind of world are you
going to surface to. Earl says this sort of leads

(27:48):
to this feeling of avoidance about the idea and also
the idea that the quote payload is referred to in
in highly technical terms, like they don't necessarily talk about
the nuclear missiles, right, they talk about an abstracted, euphemistic
technical type words. Now, one of the cool things he
does in this article is he he divides up the

(28:11):
mission into into four phases. Yeah, I like this Yeah,
he talks about like the opening weeks and how people
are are feeling about things, and and then how their
psychological condition seems to change. Basically, what what is the timeline,
what are the ups and downs from departure to return
and so a lot of what we've been talking about
here occurs during that initial phase, the first week or so.

(28:34):
But he says that during the second week of submergence,
the crew members begin to experience sleep disturbances, and this,
he says, can range from insomnia to hyper insomnia, so
not being able to sleep or sleeping way too much.
It seems like normal kinds of reactions you might expect
from being confined to an artificial environment without natural light

(28:56):
or changes in light. Yeah, you're just your circadian rhythms
all over the and this is what he calls the
first quarter syndrome. And there's another interesting aspect of first
quarter syndrome that he points out, and that is gang behavior. Specifically,
he says quote adolescent gang behavior. Because he talks about
how the parts, you know, the different cruise within the

(29:16):
submarine sort of the sub cruise like you've got the
sonar crew, you've got the weapons crew, or the missile crew.
You've got the navigation crew. They all they all sort
of break into their own natural tribes because they work
with one another, and that they will essentially behave like
gangs against one another, pranking one another, stealing totemic objects

(29:37):
from the other gangs. That's what you want to hear
about adolescent pranks on a on a nuclear submarine. It's
tactics within strategy, and strategy within tactics. So the mission continues,
and you're going to reach the point where what Earl's
calls halfway syndrome kicks in. And this, he says, is

(29:57):
going to be characterized by depression comp lanes, very subjective complaints, right, Yeah,
he says, the major portion of the crew experience changes
in appetite, changes in bowel function, headaches, muscle leggs, difficulty
and concentration, and sweet disturbances, on top of just general pessis, pessimism,
and boredom. Now, before this stage, Earl's mentions that there

(30:21):
is a lot of joking among the crew, especially sexual jokes,
and this would I guess coming into play during the
pranking period as well. Yeah, I mean it's not I
guess that's part of the cliche, right, is that sailors
are going to tell dirty jokes. But he says that
this stage the humor actually changes in tone, right, and
in content. Yeah, it goes from being mostly sexual to

(30:43):
being sarcastic humor. There was an interesting section I just
wanted to read from Earl's about this. He says, quote
this change in humor style appears to serve two functions.
One is the discharge of hostile and aggressive affect, which
is personally and culturally unacceptable, in which my it otherwise
be physically acted out. The second is the keeping of

(31:04):
the other shipmates at a comfortable distance, resulting in the
temporary expansion of an individual's personal territory. I thought that
was really interesting about the the idea of changes in
just types of humor playing these very important psychological roles,
one of which is that obviously, when you're living in
a cramped space with a bunch of other dudes, especially

(31:25):
if they're doing adolescent pranks and stuff, you're gonna start
getting mad and you want to display anger. But that's
not acceptable under the command structure for for Navy officers, right.
And also it's just such an enclosed, tight environment, like
there's no there's all there's almost literally no room for
that kind of response. Yeah, exactly, So you you can't
you can't lash out in anger at your crewmates. So there,

(31:49):
so you have to sublimate the anger somehow, and it
turns into this this sort of hard edge sarcastic humor,
and the other part being if you're sarcastic with people,
you psychologically keep them in an arm's length. When you're sarcastic,
it's sort of makes you more invulnerable and keeps people
more separate from you. Discourages emotional vulnerability and and this

(32:10):
feeling of closeness with others which actually helps make you
feel like you've got a bubble of personal space around you,
even if it's only imaginary and psychological. Now, he says
that occasionally during this period, you'll have some individuals who
begin to complain about the loss of normal circadian clues
and may eventually report quote brief de realization or depersonalization

(32:33):
like episodes that's creepy. And then three quarters syndrome UH
sets in, and he says this is a sudden but
short lived elevation of the mood. I guess that the
idea is, hey, we're over the hump. We're on the
we're essentially on the way back sort of. And in
this point we'll see the sexual humor return, he said, Okay.
And then in the final weeks we say an elevation

(32:55):
and mood. There was some anxiety about a return to
the surface, lie, if you know, without the structure of
the submarine world, at least for some of the individuals. Uh.
And then also a diminished need for sleep amongst some Yeah.
I also thought the section was interesting because Earl's talks
about the stresses of the environment in a way being
offset by a kind of strange set of psychological circumstances,

(33:19):
fostering a mindset of childlike dependence. He writes, quote, the
sailor has been living in an emotionally stressful environment, but
an environment which also regularly, reliably and abundantly met his
physical needs, with the singular exception of sex. The sailor
has not had to employ even the normal terrestrial maneuvers

(33:41):
needed to obtain food, shelter, clothing, etcetera. By necessity, all
has been provided for him. It is not uncommon during
the submerged patrol to hear the submariner make joking references
to returning to the womb, and he is capable of
recognizing the omnipresent justification for his aren't. Yeah this was

(34:01):
that found this really interesting as well, because I feel
like I can relate to a certain extent, like there
have been time. I don't get sick that often, but
when I do get, like truly sick, there's almost a
comfort at times in this becoming your sort of prime
adversary in life, this being the prime battle. You know,
I have to to stop puking, and when that is when,

(34:24):
when that's accomplished, then I can worry about all the
other paper tigers in my world. Well. Also, it might
be the case, I mean it might not might not
be the case, but it might be the case when
you're sick that you have other people doing more to
take care of you directly than you normally would. Normally
these are things you need to take care of yourself,
but when you're sick, sometimes family members or friends will

(34:46):
do things to to take care of you and watch
out for you, and it can create this feeling like
almost not wanting to return to the self self responsibility. Yeah, yeah,
like you. You You you've been able to at least get
one leg out of the adult world and back into
the world of childhood. Yeah. One interesting point of comparison
I thought was that it was in observed patterns of

(35:06):
adaptation to wintering in the Antarctic. So you imagine you're
in an Antarctic research station and you know you're trying
to get through the winter. It's sort of like being
in a submarine. Not maybe not quite as confined as
being totally submerged in the submarine, but you're basically stuck inside.
And so when you're in that environment. Apparently military subjects
showed very similar types of symptoms to what Earls is

(35:30):
reporting from the submariners, like depressive symptoms, but the civilians
apparently did not show similarly depressive symptoms and instead showed
symptoms of anger and wrath lashing out that the military
subjects basically couldn't display because it was not acceptable as
part of their culture. Here's a quote from Mullen quote.

(35:52):
We were impressed by the relative absence of overtly expressed hostility.
Group and individual tensions and irritations are ever present. But
the most important lesson a wintering over man learns is
that he cannot afford to alienate the group that in
this tight little society. He is dependent in large measure
upon the goodwill of the next man and of the

(36:13):
group as a whole for his vital feelings of security, worth,
and acceptance. Makes you think about the nature of small
group tribal existence as well, like how to group dynamics
change when the people around you are essential for your
survival and you know you can't get away from them. Yeah,
I mean it almost feels like a team building exercise, right,

(36:33):
and instead of doing icebreakers, you just need to, you know,
get your I t UH team and just put them
in a submarine for three months. Now. There are a
lot of reasons that this research we've been talking about,
that this sort of set of case studies from nineteen
sixty nine might not be applicable to what life could
be like on submarines today. I'm sure a lot of
the same conditions are present, but things have probably changed

(36:55):
a lot too in technological ways, in social and psychological ways.
One thing I I definitely wonder about is the extent
to which these symptoms would remain the same or change
in a mixed gender crew environment as opposed to the
all male cruise of the late sixties. Yeah, that's a
great question. So we did look at some other information
about about sleeping upon a military submarine. There was a

(37:19):
nine Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory Report on Work and
rest on nuclear submarines, And I'm just gonna roll through
the key findings here. This this paper was was not
nearly as delightful as the Earl's paper. More clinical. Yeah.
So they pointed out that the workload of of the
average of submarine or averages about twelve hours a day,

(37:40):
with considerable individual variation. Uh the smallest thirty day average
record was seven point four hours in the largest was
fifteen point six hours. The sleeping habits were affected by
the eighteen hour activity cycle created by the six hours
on twelve hours off watch schedule. Said sleep may be
considered mildly fragmented in that men average one point three

(38:02):
sleep episodes of somewhat less than six hour duration in
twenty four hours, but the total daily quantity of sleep
was considered adequate, and subjective sleep quality was slightly lower
on patrol than in a post patrol period. They said
that want there was a lot of sleepiness reported fifty
of the time. They do point out that the stability

(38:22):
of their environment actually seems to make them sleep better
and report less sleepiness than other active duty environments on
the surface. Yeah, this is the thing that I wouldn't
have considered before I read about this, But that when
you're on a surface vessel, of course you're dealing with
the rocking of the waves and all that. You've got
to get your sea legs basically right. But when you

(38:43):
are on a submerged submarine in the deep, apparently it's
it feels very stable. You might as well be on
the surface, that's right. Uh. The paper says, quote sleep
on submarines may be considered mildly fragmented in the sense
that daily sleep quota is not taken in a single
episode at a usual time of day, even from men
standing uh six eighteen watches. Shipboard sleep is considerably more

(39:07):
irregular than in most shore settings. The quality of sleep
is somewhat lower unpatrolled than at home. By the sleep
quality indices do not suggest that sleep quality is so
poor as to be considered a problem. The slight reduction
in sleep quality may be related to the eighteen hour cycle,
or simply to shipboard living conditions. Now, considering sleep on
modern submarines, one thing I've read about in multiple sources.

(39:31):
Is uh. Specifically, it's a slang term in that's used
in British Royal Navy subs, but apparently crew members have
a slang term for a common type of nightmare, or
possibly based on the reports, what seems to me like
maybe a hypnopompic hallucination state just would be a hallucination
you experience as you're in that that netther world betweens

(39:52):
being awakened, being asleep as you're waking up, specifically, as
opposed to the hypnogogic hallucination, which tends to be when
you're falling asleep. Yeah. Um, but yeah, they're called coffin dreams.
So just a few things I've read about them from.
For example, from a two thousand three Telegraph article I
was reading about life aboard Royal Navy submarines, quote the

(40:12):
men grab what sleep they can racked three deep in
dark cabins with barely a foot of space between the
opposing rows of bunks. They quote hot bunk sharing the
use of Iraq with a shipmate working on an alternate watch.
Sometimes they get quote coffin dreams nightmares from which they
come to in the close dark, not knowing where they

(40:34):
are and panic. And so I've read that, for example,
the coffin dreams can be triggered by a sense of claustrophobia,
maybe even actually thinking you are waking up in some
type of coffin or container, because, according to the Friends
of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, basically in a sleeping
condition on a typical submarine bunk, you've got another bunk

(40:55):
maybe close above you, or or a flat surface like
a roof right above view, with like an inch or
two clear all around your body. Basically, I mean it
just it just doesn't sound like there's much room to move. Uh,
And I can imagine waking up in that state, would
you could be terrifying? Oh? Absolutely, yeah. I imagine if

(41:16):
you just come to you're just you're just gonna go
face first or the back of the head first, right
into the into the bulkhead exactly. Or the person below you,
if you're stacked on bunks, might be kneeing you and
stuff while they wake up having a coffin dream on
a on a totally unscientific online poll I found on
the Friends of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum website. So

(41:37):
you know, unscientific poll, but for what it's worth, thirty
eight percent of respondents on this online poll claimed to
have had coffin dreams when they were aboard submarines. And then,
from a article in The Guardian by Stephen Moss, in
which he experienced his life aboard a nuclear submarine, he
writes quote, several men mentioned coffin dreams nightmares in which

(41:57):
the sleeper shouts out that the control room is flooding
or he's being pursued by a torpedo. I sympathize. I
have no nightmares. I don't sleep deeply enough for that.
The racks do feel like coffins. Now, I've definitely personally
had the experience of my environment to the environment in
which I'm sleeping seeming to affect my dreams or maybe

(42:19):
hypnopompic hallucinations as I'm waking up. But but yeah, I've
never experienced anything like this, nothing this cramped, nothing, this strange,
and pile that on all of the strange environmental stresses
that exist in normal life while you're on a submarine.
So these experiences are piling up while you're awake throughout
the day, and then you go sleep in the coffin,

(42:41):
It's not hard to see why you would get certain
types of nightmares being very common and recurrent. Yeah, and
depending on during a which era you are sleeping. You're
talking about all sorts of repressed anxiety about torpedoes seeking
you out of of depth, charges of of the actual
terrible purpose that these uh, these a nuclear weapon equipped

(43:02):
subs are tasked with. All right, Well, on that note,
we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be
right back. Thank thank Alright, we're back. All right. So
we've been talking about life aboard nuclear submarines, especially when
the remains submerged for long periods of time, and how
that affects the psychology of crew members and especially the
sleep of the crew members. But I thought we maybe

(43:25):
should look at a couple more sources before we wrap
it up for today. Yeah, and these are far more
recent sources. Um. There's one titled three decades of Nuclear
Submarine Research Implications for Space and Antarctic Research, And this
came from Benjamin B. Way Brew. Uh, and he pointed
out some of the following points. Uh. He mentions that
it's sometimes called inner space as opposed to outer space. Okay,

(43:46):
so we're back to Quaid territory, right. And he also
mentions that bathaphobia is very real as opposed to the
fear of de pressurization in space. So would this be
fear of what of the submarine being crushed like a
tin can? Yeah, just knowing all that pressure out there.
He also points that it points out that is the

(44:08):
submerged missions of thirty to eighty days progress. Uh. There
also is this tendency to to to worry more about
the possibilities of atmospheric contaminants. Yeah, I mean you gotta
worry if your air is clean. Right. Well, you think
of like a lot of the things we fear in life,
we fear change, and you have such a static environment,

(44:28):
you have to look to the areas where change can occur,
such as air quality or machine failure. Now, when we
were talking about William bb in the bathmosphere, I remember
one of the creepiest thoughts I had about it was that, Okay,
this is a heavier than water vessel. Uh, that that's
being lowered down basically on a chain. What were to happen,

(44:49):
What would happen if it were to have its connection
to the surface vessel severed? Well, this bathosphere, it just sink, right,
It just sink to the bottom of the ocean, and
you'd be done all right. But they're similar concerns in
place with the with the nuclear submarine, loss of power
could prevent the subsibility to blow ballast and return to
the surface, at least in the examples at this time,

(45:11):
at least in these examples, and during all this way,
Route points out that the individuals may experience sleep problems
and UH and diurnal flattening. So again we're just coming
back to the idea that circadian rhythm is disrupted by
the environment. And then there's this point that he makes.
This was interesting as well. Quote psychologists specializing in vision

(45:34):
demonstrated in the late nineteen forties that the close viewing
distance and subs caused the lateral fourias to become s aphoric.
In response to this finding, it was recommended that landscapes
and seascapes with deep depth cues be installed on the
bulkheads of selected compartments. So s aphoria is the tendency

(45:54):
of the eyes to want to turn inward more than
they need to when focusing on something close up. So
if I'm interpreting that correctly, that seems like there could
be a risk of sub mariners going cross eyde. Yeah,
I mean, because again you have to realize that we,
of course did not evolve to live within a submarine,
within a confined to. We evolved to to live in

(46:15):
a much more open world. And that's that's what our
eyes are designed to take in. Right. If you're just
constantly looking at stuff close to your face all the time,
like say, maybe you're a person who's always staring at
a computer screen, or you're in a tightly closed environment, yeah,
I mean, you've got to wonder if that's messing with
your vision to some extent. And so it sounds like
here they're saying, we need to put in place something

(46:37):
that at least gives them the feeling of being able
to look at something far away. Let's put a motivational
poster up on this bulkhead. This also seems where movie
night would have become essential, you know, and it might
have dictated the type of movies that they would have watched.
You get something with some night's wide open countryside, maybe
some Westerns. I recommend orson Welles movies for those the

(46:57):
deep focus scenes right where you can see the folk
us way in the back of the field of oh,
of what they're shooting. Yeah, let's have a few showings
of touch of Evil for the ship now. The author
also identified quote effects of absence of circadian cues upon sleep,
noise level, work overload and underload, and environmental conditions tending

(47:18):
to produce boredom and fatigue. However, there's good news. He
says that the incidents of acute or chronic psychopathology during
UH during long missions is incredibly low, between only one
and four percent. But wait a minute, if you've got
a crew of a hundred and forty, that that means
you've got at least one statistically, well, ok, it's not
doing great. Yeah, I guess that's when you have a

(47:39):
dock on board right to to mitigate that those situations. Uh.
He also brings up something that was that that was
apparently introduced as a way to to mitigate some of
these other effects, and that is periscope liberty. What does
that mean? So this is the idea here, is that
you would let crew members glance at the outside world
through the periscope for the purpose of quote cognitive anchoring.

(48:03):
And this is also interesting as well. He he points
out that errors and time perception tend to occur in
the direction of overestimation of time intervals, which makes sense
if your board and your fatigued, you might say, oh, man,
I can't believe we've been down here three months, and
then Greg turn student says, this is day three. And
in closing, the author points out a few key areas

(48:23):
of concern for that we can take away from all
this when we consider Arctic, submarine and space mutant missions
of the future. Uh. He points out atmospheric revitalization and
contaminant control, development and validation of procedures for the medical
and psychological screening of recruits, identification of techniques for initiating

(48:44):
and sustaining individual motivation and group morale, stress or identification,
assessment of the severity of p O s R or
patterns of stress reactivity for person, and development of effective
stress coping strategies. Now, I wonder to what extent those
actually do get mapped on to how we deal with life,

(49:06):
Say aboard the International Space Station, Yeah, I mean, obviously
we don't send just anybody up to the I S S.
There is a rigorous screening and then training U regime
in place to get you there. I have heard a
lot less about issues of motivation relating to astronauts. Maybe
it's there, but I feel like I've read a good

(49:26):
bit about what life is like aboard the I s
s and accounts of the astronauts who were there, and
I don't remember hearing a lot about problems with say,
individual motivation or group morale. Yeah, And as far as
the idea of a lazy astronaut, that's that is his
science fiction concept is as we can possibly bring up
on the show, because at this stage in space exploration,

(49:50):
you've really got to want to be there. I guess
maybe things would be different if we were talking about
about crude orbiting satellites that were there for the purpose
of maintaining in a nuclear deterrent right right well, and
or forcing somebody to watch bad movies. But you can
you can do both. That, you could do both. I
see you there now. There have been some recent changes,

(50:12):
is reported by the Associated Press. In two thousand fourteen,
the Navy began experimenting with fourteen hour days as opposed
to the eighteen hour activity cycles that had been the standard. Uh.
The article says, quote, submarine crews are not big enough
to support more than three watch rotations, and beginning in
the nineteen sixties, the Navy cap shifts at six hours

(50:33):
in part to limit fatigue as sailors manned the vessel's
nuclear reactors. But the study by the Naval Submarine Medical
Research Laboratory at the Submarine Base in Groton UH documented
weariness that can set in every third cycle as sailors
are working when their bodies are accustomed to sleeping. So
the Navy Laboratory in Groton conducted experiments beginning in two

(50:55):
thousand five looking at sleep patterns, melotonin levels, and all
this through very IS monitoring devices and UH saliva swabs. However,
it's worth noting that when the attack subscrant and tried
out this new activities cycle during a seven month deployment,
the new schedule initially caused laundry backlogs and frustration over
laptop and exercise equipment availability. Laundry backlogs, Yeah, I'm what's

(51:21):
the what's the causal connection there? I'm not that one
is not as as clear to me. I mean, I
can imagine the laptop and exercise machine right, because suddenly
there's more overlap in UH, in in in wakefulness, and
there's more demand for these uh, these devices, and of
course the mention of laptops also brings up the idea
like your your modern submariner has an entirely different situation

(51:43):
compared to the submariner in the past, because in addition
to the evening movie, you've got I mean, certainly you're
not connected to the Worldwide Web, but you have the
you know all the potential of a laptop computer, maybe
even episodes of stuff to bow your mind to get
you through the trip. Are you listening to us on
a nuclear submarine right now? If so, let us know

(52:04):
when you come back to uh, when you come back
within radio range. Yeah, obviously we would love to hear
from anyone out there who has served on a nuclear submarine. Now,
if a lot of the stress of the submarine environment
is due to isolation from the outside world and sort
of a lack of exposure to nature, lack of exposure
to sunlight and the cramped claustrophobic conditions, I wonder if

(52:25):
this is not a really prime opportunity for virtual reality therapy.
We've talked plenty of times about virtual reality therapy on
the show before UM and there are lots of ways
it could be used, right One of the important ways
that I often think about is most interesting about virtual
reality is the sense that it can give you that
your body is different than what it is, and this

(52:47):
can be used for all kinds of medical therapies. But
of course, on the submarine, I would imagine the main
thing would be the more traditional type of virtual reality,
which is that your environment is different than what it is.
It could give you some depth of field to cat
that's full of nice and nurturing kind of natural environments.
So the same way the crew of the Enterprise can
go to the hollow deck right and hang out by

(53:08):
a cool running stream in the forest, maybe the members
of a submarine crew on deep submerged time could get
convincing doses of surface time through VR. That makes sense
because also this is technology that would not take out
much space. It's not like installing a holo deck on
your submarine. I looked for research testing this out, and

(53:28):
I wasn't able to find anything. But I would kind
of be surprised if somebody wasn't trying this, or at
least talking about trying to try it. Yeah, yeah, I
mean you obviously you don't want a lawnmower man situation.
On your nuclear submarine. But but it seems like there's
a lot of positive potential here. Yeah, keep Jeff Ahy
off of that thing. All right. Well, there you have it. Uh.

(53:50):
I think this is a pretty delightful episode. We got
to talk a little bit about the nuclear submarines and
the prospect of nuclear war, but we got to bring
it down to just the base a relatable situation of
trying to sleep in strange places and trying to sleep
through your various worries. If you want to check out
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(54:34):
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(55:05):
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