Home > Work > Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
1 " Heroism doesn’t always happen in a burst of glory. Sometimes small triumphs and large hearts change the course of history. Sometimes a chicken can save a man’s life. "
― Mary Roach , Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
2 " What sort of person experimentally infests a child with maggots? A confident sort, certainly. A maverick. Someone comfortable with the unpretty facts of biology. Someone who is perhaps himself an unpretty fact of biology. "
3 " US government button specifications run to twenty-two pages. This fact on its own yields a sense of what it is like to design garments for the Army. "
4 " How about suicide rate. And what a shame to lose them after they’ve made it back. We keep them alive, but we don’t teach them how to live. "
5 " Sometimes courage is nothing more than a willingness to think differently than those around you. In a culture of conformity, that’s braver than it sounds. "
6 " The M16 has a scope with a small red arrow in the center of the sight. You align the arrow with what or (jeez) whom you wish to shoot and squeeze the trigger. Both “squeeze” and “pull” are exaggerations of the motion applied to this trigger. It’s a trivial, tiny movement, the twitch of a dreaming child. So quick and so effortless is it that it’s hard for me to associate it with any but the most inconsequential of acts. Flipping a page. Typing an M. Scratching an itch. Ending a life wants a little more muscle. "
7 " Riddle traveled a lot in his twenties and recalls being hit by a realization. So much of people’s lives—their opportunities, their health and longevity—comes down to where they were born. “It’s so random,” he says. "
8 " I am not, by trade or character, a spotlight operator. I’m the goober with a flashlight, stumbling into corners and crannies, not looking for anything specific but knowing when I’ve found it. "
9 " This book is a salute to the scientists and the surgeons, running along in the wake of combat, lab coats flapping. Building safer tanks, waging war on filth flies. Understanding turkey vultures. T "
10 " Navy personnel began clamoring for it. To the embarrassment of many, the current Navy working uniform is a blue camouflage print. Unsure whether perhaps I was missing the point, I asked a Navy commander about the rationale. He looked down at his trousers and sighed. “That’s so no one can see you if you fall overboard.” No "
11 " A wedding gown entails multilayering of expensive specialty fabrics for an outfit whose useful lifespan may come and go in a single afternoon. Much like a bomb suit. "
12 " Caffeine is safe and effective but not without a downside. Depending on one’s sensitivity, it has a half-life of six to eight hours. Even if you have no trouble falling asleep after drinking coffee late in the day, you may wake more easily during the night because your nervous system is still aroused, your brain attuned to sounds and other stimuli that would otherwise go unheeded. The more poorly you sleep, the more caffeine you tend to consume the next day, and the more lightly you sleep the following night. And so on. "
13 " Every now and then in life, a compliment is tucked so seamlessly into a insult that it’s impossible to know how to react. "
14 " You mean like a small silicone breast implant?” I wasn’t actually thinking that, but sure. "
15 " If you’re dying of thirst in the desert, drinking your urine won’t help you. The proteins and salts are by that point so concentrated that the body needs to pull fluid from the tissues to dilute them, which puts you back where you began, only worse, because now you are saddled with the memory of drinking your own murky, stinking pee. Rhabdomyolysis "
16 " A few words in defense of military scientists. I agree that squad leaders are in the best position to know what and how much their men and women need to bring on a given mission. But you want those squad leaders to be armed with knowledge, and not all knowledge comes from experience. Sometimes it comes from a pogue at USUHS who’s been investigating the specific and potentially deadly consequences of a bodybuilding supplement. Or an army physiologist who puts men adrift in life rafts off the dock at a Florida air base and discovers that wetting your uniform cools you enough to conserve 74 percent more of your body fluids per hour. Or the Navy researcher who comes up with a way to speed the recovery time from travelers’ diarrhea. These things matter when it’s 115 degrees and you’re trying to keep your troops from dehydrating to the point of collapse. There’s no glory in the work. No one wins a medal. And maybe someone should. "
17 " On top of its other charms, the maggot breathes through its ass. It "
18 " If you don’t have a pair of cadaver shoes, you’re not doing enough research. "
19 " The driving aesthetic of military style is uniformity. Whence the word uniform. From first inspection to Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers look like those around them: same hat, same boots, identical white grave marker. They are discouraged from looking unique, because that would encourage them to feel unique, to feel like an individual. The problem with individuals is that they think for themselves and of themselves, rather than for and of their unit. They’re the lone goldfish on the old Pepperidge Farm bags, swimming the other way. They’re a problem. "
20 " If you don’t have a pair of cadaver shoes, you’re not doing enough research.” In "
