SSBN. ETV. Will not respond to questions about sensitive or classified subjects. My views are my own and I do not represent anyone.
Hi there!
Edit: since this has been asked several times:
SSBN stands for “submersible ship, ballistic missile, nuclear powered”. That is, the same overall type of ship as the Red October.
ETV stands for “Electronics Technican, Navigation”, because N was already taken by Nuclear Electronics Technicians. I work with everything from interior communications and announcing circuits to Electronics, shipwide atmospheric monitoring, navigational inertial gyroscopes, strategic nuclear missile navigation, and tank level indicators to basic underwater submarine navigation using the voyage management system and even helming the ship itself.
Have you heard or seen someone experiencing a panic attack on a sub? What was the training like to filter through candidates prone to claustrofobia and other unwelcome mental sensitivities?
One person started laughing in the lunch line for no reason and couldn’t stop for 15 solid minutes. We just stood there and let it happen, and nobody judged him for it.
As far as screening, the first thing you notice upon going to sub school is that there’s no windows in the classroom or the hallways outside, and you’re stuck there for a hot minute every day. The second thing are the tours and trainers. You’re required to take a guided tour of a “fast attack” submarine, to show you what the inside is like.
Then, at the flooding trainer, they lock you and your classmates in a room and start slowly filling it with water, and you can’t get out until you either stop the flooding, or the instructor deems you too incompetent to continue. They run the trainer until you pass or fail. Then they put you in a firefighting ensemble and put you in a room and set the room on fire.
Add onto that constant memorization, tests, and inspections, and by the time you graduate you’ve mostly weened out all the people too sensitive to come aboard.
No, no panic attacks. You get the standard navy medical screening, plus when you volunteer for submarines they ask if your claustrophobic. Other than that nothing special. Majority of the screening is informal, and done by the crew. Submariners are a pretty crust bunch, and have a tendency to “eat our own”. When you report to a sub as a brand new nub (non-useful body) you begin a year long process of proving to everyone on board that you have the knowledge and emotional toughness required to work in that environment. If you can’t, you are asked to leave (reassigned, usually after some disciplinary counseling). It’s not always a pleasant experience, by design. Your shipmates want to see what your limits are, since if you will crack under some “light” abuse, how are you going to cope with a real emergency? Not everyone handles this well, and some people leave. Like I said in another comment, they leave through suicide sometimes. Hopefully the Navy has gotten better about it, but in the 21 years I was AD, it didn’t change, and I don’t have much hope it has since then.