How I Would Have Died--If I Lived 100 Years Ago

[The following post is on the blog Periodic Tabloid. I will be writing weekly about how I would have died if I lived 100 years ago.]

In honor of Veteran’s Day, which was yesterday, let me explain how I could have died at 9:30 a.m. on November 9, 1973 had it been 1873 instead:

I enlisted in the Air Force in January 1972. After eight months of school I was assigned to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. My job was live-fire testing of missiles. We were 8,000 miles from the war in Vietnam, but several days a week we bolted rockets into test -firing rigs and set them off.

Our job was officially aging and surveillance testing. We froze missiles, heated them, shook them in 750,000-watt machines, put them in altitude chambers and humidity chambers, then fired them.

Most of the missiles burned just as they are supposed to. Occasionally, the mistreatment we gave them caused the propellant to crack. The air gap could make the missile explode rather than burn. We hated that. When a missile blew up a test pad we would get behind schedule and be out on the range longer. Some actually worried about the concrete and steel raining on the bunker we waited in—mostly the older guys. The single airmen, most under the age of 20, only worried about their weekend plans.

On Friday, November 9, 1973, we were testing inter-stage detonators on a Minuteman 3-stage missile—the kind that carry several warheads across the poles to the other side of the world. Back then they were aimed at Russia and China.

In a multi-stage missile, detonator cord separates the stages. When the first stage burns out, the detonator cord burns through the skin allowing the spent stage to fall away before the next stage fires. I was connecting test wires to the detonators when I saw a blue-white flash and flew back against the wall of the test bay.

I stood up and saw my crew chief lying on the floor. I could see, but I could not blink and my vision was tinted red. A wire was sticking out of my right eye, holding it open. The first two fingers of my right hand were hanging at a strange angle. Bits of wire, screws, and aluminum from the test clamp peppered my body from my waist up.

After six eye operations and surgery to reattach my fingers, I recovered months later. If the same accident happened 100 years ago, infection would have left me blind, or dead. And without the high-tech eye surgeons who cleared their schedule to operate on me, I would have been blind just from the injuries.

Modern medicine depends on chemistry. Not just drug development, but the materials that make high-tech surgery possible and the instruments that make labs so accurate and efficient.

Iraq Bike Stolen on Veterans Day

Today I went to lunch with a friend in Center City Philadelphia.  I rode my bike to lunch.  Chained it to a u-shaped metal pipe for locking bikes and went to lunch.  When I came out from lunch the bike, my helmet and the lock were gone.

Which bike?  The one I bought for Iraq and rode for almost my whole tour--a red Trek T-1 single speed.  If you ride in Philly, bike theft is going to happen.  I'll miss that particular bike like an old friend because I rode it in Oklahoma for the train up and for almost the whole deployment--I broke the crank with a month to go on my tour, but Bike Line of Lancaster fixed it when I got back.

I don't suppose I'll ever see it again, and I do have other bikes.  But I really liked that bike and will always remember the looks I got from turret gunners in MRAPS and Humvees when the say me riding with my rifle on my back.

Homesick for the DFAC

Three times in the last two weeks I stopped for breakfast on the way to work in Philadelphia.  Usually I don’t eat breakfast.  I drink coffee at home.  I drink coffee when I get to Philadelphia and sometimes buy a loaf of bread from Fork (a local restaurant that bakes its own bread). 

Today, I stopped at the buffet in The Bourse in Philadelphia.  It’s just any buffet.  It is an American buffet run by an Chinese family.  They have creamed beef, fried potatoes, bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, bagels, toast and all the greasy starchy stuff anyone could want for breakfast on the hot line.  But they also have six or seven different kinds of just-cut fresh fruit:  watermelon, honeydew, mango, kiwi, pineapple slices, grapes and then everything mixed together in fruit salad.  Its all fresh and bright colored on an immaculate serving line.

I miss the cut-to-order fruit every morning at the DFAC.  I only eat a little of several things because it is expensive.  If I ate breakfast in Iraq DFAC quantities, it would cost $25.  But for $5 I can get enough to remind me of one of the really good things about Iraq.  The best thing here is when I walk outside there is no sand and no dust storm.

Maybe around the holidays if I am really hungry, I’ll eat like a soldier one morning.

Happy Veterans Day!

Late Update on Half Marathon

Reached my goal Saturday.  I finished in 1:58:18--under two hours.  To go any faster I will have to train specifically for the the run--intervals, hills, etc.  This one also made me wonder if I should go for a full marathon.  But again, lots of training.  At the end of the half marathons I can speed up.  My lungs feel great.  My legs don't.  I think a full marathon will likely end in injury.

But I might do another half if I can find one close by.

The best thing about this event was the water stations.  Every two miles or so, a dozen Amish kids were lined up handing water and Powerade to the runners.  This event could not be held anywhere but Lancaster PA.

"This Job is for Young Men"

As some of you know, way back in 2007 when I re-enlisted I thought I would join a WMD detection team as some kind of chemical weapons detection specialist.  It never worked out at the time, but when I got back from Iraq, I started getting weekly listings of full-time jobs available at Fort Indiantown Gap.  One of those jobs was the job I was looking for four years ago.

I looked at that job every week and thought 'Do I really want to be full time?'  It turns out that the team members have to be full time, which makes sense.  I called the office last week and talked to a senior officer in the unit.  He told me that the job involved a lot of travel, a lot of chemistry and was physically demanding.  He asked how old I am.  When I told him he said I could apply if I wanted to, but almost everyone else on the team was in their 20s.

I suppose I could apply anyway, but the unit gets to decide who they interview from the applicant pool.  And when I joined, I was thinking I could do this kind of thing part time.  Since that's not the case, I'll sty where I am.

Infection is Getting Better

At least that's what the doctor said tonight.  It is still more swollen than two days ago, but is less swollen than last night.  He took a culture so in a couple of days I should know what kind of bacteria were swelling my arm up.

They switched antibiotics and the second one seems to be working.  They gave me the first one because I had a MRSA infection in June.  But this one is likely to be a strep infection for which Clindamycin works better--which is what I have now.

For the last two months I have been writing the Friday post in the blog at the museum where I work.  Up to know the posts have mostly been about events.  They are a complete pain in the ass to write because our company uses a CMS system for posts.  They take 15 minutes to write and another hour to do all the crap necessary to enter the post into the system.

YUK!

But starting Friday, my posts will be under the new heading "How I Would Have Died if I Was Alive 100 Years Ago."  Breaking my neck, shrapnel in my eyes, seeing inside my knees after a motorcycle accident and all of the infections that go with my less-than-safe lifestyle mean I would have been dead at least a half dozen times if I did not have the good fortune to be alive today in America.  I send links.  My doctor thinks I am the perfect candidate to write these blog posts.

It may even make CMS easier to deal with.

The Model Scientist? | Books and Culture

I just had a review published in Books and Culture

The Model Scientist? | Books and Culture