| As with most of the things in our day to day lives that were dangerous, stressfull, and exciting, nuclear power and its potential side effects
found its way into our cartoons, jokes, and sea stories This cartoon was inspired by the nuclear reactor just beyond the aft bulkhead in Radio. We had training drills, inspections, exams, etc. that kept us in constant awareness of what was powering our submarine. "Radiation Levels" was unsigned and undated so it was probably done during our transit from Norfolk to Pearl or during the operations in '78 and '79 prior to WESTPAC 79. The USS LOS ANGELES (SSN 688) is a nuclear powered submarine. As you might imagine there are a few rules, regulations, safeguards, etc that keep the radiation in the reactor and out of the people tank. Each of the crew must wear a TLD (radiation monitor) on our belts to monitor the amount of radiation we received from being in such
close proximity to a nuclear source. Those of us in the front of the sub,colorfully tagged "forward pukes" by the Nukes, were not allowed to go beyond the main water-tight hatch separating engineering from operations. We didn't get nearly the amount of radiation the Nukes got. Or so they kept telling us. The Nukes, the guys in the back of the sub that kept the nuclear fire burning, were exposed to a little more radiation than those of us up front. They wore radiation
monitors that didn't melt as quickly. Check out Reactor Rat by Pablo Pickasshole for the Nuke perspective. | |
