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Comment by NathanielBaking | Hacker News Reader

Safety guys always ruin the fun. I was in the Marine Corps and every time we got to test some new piece of gear the safety officer was like "No, you can't live fire it off the flight deck of the ship" or "No, not here, that village is down wind of the dust you will kick up when it goes off." No, that has a kill distance of 6 miles, you have to fire it into a hill." Blah, blah, blah.

So after I got out I joined the National Guard.

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I may or may not be aware of hull damage being caused or not caused by a rifle being fired from the flight deck of a ship. My point being, your safety officer had a point.

I think they know that. I read their comment as sarcastic.

It's really, really close though. The kill distance of six miles is what tips me over the edge of reading it as sarcasm.

Really? To me, it is a very clear instance. Amongst my cohort, saying "The safety officer won't let us do anything fun" is going to generally always be sarcastic, unless the point is that some rules seem excessively and obviously pointless, which these aren't. It's more a backhanded way of saying "thank goodness the safety office stopped us / those boneheads from doing something that would have been incredibly stupid."

It depends totally on how you read it. In this case, my first thought after reading that was "play stupid games, win stupid prizes". There are plenty of people (especially on the internet) who actually do think that way -- by which I mean people that are serious when they respond with "you guys ruin all the fun" to others who bring up genuine concerns that will most likely have wide-sweeping ramifications.

> There are plenty of people (especially on the internet) who actually do think that way

Sure. That's why these safety officers exist. I think some other funranium posts state.that (paraphrased) "safety rules are written in blood."

That said, I suspect folks like that would tend to phrase the rule in a way to diminish the implied impact/likelihood, rather than enhance it or state as-is, as (afaict) the original did.

like finishing a comment with, "we walked away with all our fingers -- perfect to flip the safety officer the bird"

OK, you have a bunch of kids, who, under different circumstances, might be playing grabass on campus, instead, are in charge of incredibly deadly stuff.

What could possibly go wrong?

> hull damage being caused or not caused by a rifle being fired from the flight deck of a ship

How did that happen? Our MarDet would occasionally do live-fire training off the flight deck (CVN-65); they naturally pointed their weapons away from the ship ....

Or are you talking about hitting the hull of a different ship, e.g., one of the tin cans in plane guard, or alongside during an UNREP? Seems like that would ... get noticed by a lot of folks.

Hypothetically, someone could have left a guest (like say an engineer from the shipyard doing sea acceptance testing) fire a rifle and an unlucky wave reflection might have bounced a round back towards the bow.

Wow what an incredibly unfortunate hypothetical situation. 1 in a million ricochet that one.

Draw a ship. Draw some waves. Note the angle from Crayon Eater those waves.

Also note how wide an angle "ship hull" represents both vertically and horizontally.

Not so 1 in a million.

Sure, if it bounces that's a very big angle.

But what's the chance of a bullet that hits water bouncing back the other way at high speed? I would have thought it was zero!

Would love to see someone fire a Phalanx for four hours just to generate enough test data to assess that probability

Seabees doing seabee things.

"A wave? At sea? Chance in a million."

I am reminded of the "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space" speech from Mass Effect 2.

https://youtu.be/hLpgxry542M?feature=shared

Compton is a bitch for astronauts too.

It's all fun and games until you walk in front of a live AESA radar and sterilize yourself.

Save $300 on a vasectomy.

They're about twice as much where I live!

Most US insurance will cover this at 100% even if you haven't met your deductible. Something about how babies cost more than a 3 digit outpatient procedure....

Mine was $750 :(

I guess if you only do one testicle, you may get half off.

I'm guessing there are other adverse effects beside sterilizing.

Is it scientifically proven though? If it that powerful wouldn't it cook your brain as well?

If the radar is located on the ground, the chances are it's consuming enough energy to cook a turkey from the inside-out.

Yeah, but one that immediately make you sterile will likely burn out your eyes and cook the brain. In any case I was just pointing out this is urban legend of sorts.

I always thought "make you sterile" was meant to be pronounced "burn your dick off".

> that village is down wind of the dust you will kick up when it goes off.

I'm always happy to hear that there are people saying these sorts of things in the military. I'm sorry it wasn't fun at the time, but the Safety Officer really was looking out for you. You really don't want to be the unexpected cautionary tale, like Bob.

> I was in the Marine Corps and every time we got to test some new piece of gear the safety officer was like "No, you can't live fire...

I thought the whole point of the Marines was to cause maximal amounts of damage. Are you implying there is a constraint on that?

But now I understand why the marines hate the navy: I had a buddy who'd been in the navy and he said they kept the kids busy by cleaning and painting everything but frequently they'd let 'em blow off steam by tossing cardboard boxes and stuff off the end the flight deck and shooting at them with the 50 cal machine guns.

We were good friends, attended MIT together, but if I thought the Navy would take many people like him I'd doubt their ability to fight a war. He was only in the navy because it would pay for school and AFAIK he managed to avoid getting any rank advancement at all. MIT requires, or used to, a lot of all nighters and he once said "I'm probably only sane with these all nighters because I did so much extra sleeping in the navy"

> I thought the whole point of the Marines was to cause maximal amounts of damage.

I thought their point was to expose themselves to maximal amounts of damage.

> I thought their point was to expose themselves to maximal amounts of damage.

I hate to be pedantic, but technically the whole point is to expose the enemy to maximal amounts of damage. Whoever that is. Anything else is incidental.

I'm referring to them being the tip of the spear, but yes, you are not wrong.

> But now I understand why the marines hate the navy: I had a buddy who'd been in the navy and he said they kept the kids busy by cleaning and painting everything but frequently they'd let 'em blow off steam by tossing cardboard boxes and stuff off the end the flight deck and shooting at them with the 50 cal machine guns.

If anything this should be why the taxpayer doesn't like the navy.

I’ve always assumed this kind of stuff is cheaper than the damage they’d cause if they were idle.

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