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forlasanto15 karma

Check your instrument in a case that is also built for (and contains) a firearm. It will always make it to the destination, and it will always be undamaged. Nobody at the airport (TSA or airlines or baggage or ANYBODY) wants to lose a firearm in transit. Of course, you'll have to deal with everything that goes with transporting firearms. But you'll always have your instrument at your destination.

forlasanto5 karma

Source: 11 years enlisted. I didn't break it down to BAH, but effectively, your spouse/children get a paycheck for putting up with you. I qualified for food stamps all the way up until E-6.

You do get great bennies; the military has a vested interest in keeping you and your family healthy, for instance. They do not have a vested interest in paying you even remotely competitively. The same job I did in the military pulls several (>5) times more compensation in the civilian world, even when you factor in benefits. And that's for a regular 40-hour week. When you do 80+ hours, as you most often do in the military , you make a fortune. (80-hour weeks are the military norm. Anyone who tells you different is a liar, or else rode an absolute gravy-train-with-bisquit-wheels)

When you are a single soldier in the military, you have no bills at all. You have your own barracks room, with kitchen and bathroom, at no cost to you.

Crap. It costs you, just not monetarily. That's when you get your own barracks room. Which often doesn't happen until you're halfway up the ranks. You have very narrow windows in which to grab meals, or you're going without. The image you're painting is not exactly false, but it isn't true either.

I'd not recommend the military to most people.

forlasanto4 karma

Keep in mind that a submarine is a sealed metal cylinder...underwater. The kind of radio signals that can penetrate both the metal hull AND the water require a Really Long Antennaâ„¢. Wifi is more in line with your microwave oven's radio waves, which don't even penetrate that mesh thing in the microwave door. At that frequency, the hull of the submarine basically acts like a mirror. The signal just bounces around in there until something absorbs it. Probably that something is a bag of 80% water that moves around the ship pulling levers and pushing buttons. I am very certain submariners get more radiation exposure from their laptops than from the power plant.

forlasanto3 karma

12 hour shifts? Assuming she's only doing 5 days a week (unlikely, but possible) that's 60 hours. Add to that time spent working out, which is a job requirement: lets say 5-10 hours a week. Add to that time spent messing around with uniforms. 5 hours a week. Your wife does 70 hours a week, easy.

In-port, only at home, I worked from 5-6 a.m. until 5 p.m. every weekday. Before workouts or uniforms or any other thing is factored in. On top of that, every third day I had duty, which meant no sleep or if I was really lucky 2-3 hours sleep during that 24-hour period. Which isn't to say I didn't get a few minutes break here or there, but the days were long. At sea, and inport anywhere else but home, it's 12-hour shifts, 7 days a week. Or alternately, 8-hour shifts: 8 hours uptime, 8-hours downtime, forever and ever amen. Except, you don't really get 8 hours off; you participate in every drill and do extensive amounts of planned maintenance during your "off" time. Effectively, you get 4-6 hours sleep in a given 24-hour period if you are damn lucky, and often 2 hours sleep is a luxury which brings the envy of your peers.

Barracks. As if. As often as not, I had to share a bed with 1-2 other people. If they were sleeping, well, then I couldn't. That's only when on submarines, but when on a surface ship, you still have to rack less than 2 feet from Seaman Snoresalot.

Often, when you pull into a port, it is a time of rest. Usually in-port you can expect things to calm down and only spend about 75-80 hours a week working. Not for everyone, though. A radioman does not get rest like that, except in homeport. We'll still be doing 8-on, 8-off or 12-on, 12-off, and then pulling two or three 4-hour deck watches every third day on top of that.

That is norm. On top of that, you can't talk to anyone about your job. You know whose wife is in jail, you know whose mother just died, and that person won't know for 2 weeks; you can't tell them or show any sympathy. Stress levels were always high. I pretty much stayed an inch from breakdown for 11 years. I made lots of friends, sure. But if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't. I may not have been irradiated by depleted Uranium bullets or poisoned by oil dispersants in Oil War I and Oil War II, but I did not escape unscathed.

I would not recommend the military to anyone.

forlasanto1 karma

any time you pull a 24 hour duty you get the next workday off

Not ever. Not once in my military career did that occur.

No, I'm not insecure. Bitter? Yeah, some. I call it Oil War I and Oil War II because that's what it was about. I knew that at the time, and I knew going into the military what the score was. I didn't care what it was about then, and I only mildly care about it now. But I don't hold any illusions that it was about anything else but control of oil resources.

Laundry as a civilian is a couple hours a week, tops. Laundry as a serviceman is an hour a day, normally, once you iron tomorrow's uniform and shine your shoes. It's part of work. It's work you take home with you.

Excercise as a civilian is freeform and fun-time. Excercise as a serviceman is fairly rigid in it's requirements and monotony, and is not fun-time, but work.

I'm glad your time in service was more laid back. The god-awful hours are my main complaint about the military, honestly. I'm dead serious about the hours I worked, no lie. Can I get a witness up in here?

Heck, even when attending schools, it was 16-18 hour days, 5 days a week, and 24-hour duty every 4-5 days. (with NO day off afterward. I never even heard of such a thing! How wonderful that would have been!)