brian_castner

Take a shit on the side of an armored truck in the middle of a firefight in Iraq. Sometimes you just gotta go.

Actually, I tell people that's the #1 rule of EOD work. ALWAYS cut the red wire. They usually laugh, and then ask if I'm serious.

Yeah, never red or blue, sometimes yellow or green, but bomb techs aren't allowed to be colorblind (for other reasons having to do with identifying ordnance), so if every bomber in the world went to a standard system, it would actually help.

I'm actually kinda mad I'm missing Knoxville.

Military guys go to a longer school and learn about all kinds of ordnance, from hand grenades to nukes. The civilians go to a shorter school and focus on IEDs, but in some ways, have a much more delicate job once they start working. They are protecting Americans in American cities, have a lot more ownership over the place and the people than a military guy does working in a foreign country. The Boston PD bomb techs told me over again how responsible they felt that a bomb went off at the marathon. They said their job was to stop that from happening in the first place. I never felt like I could stop every bomb from going off in Iraq.

I manage somehow.