Seeking adventure, Humphreys tried to join the French Foreign Legion, but was turned away because he was too young and couldn't get his parents' permission. When he got a little older the Navy seemed a good alternative and the submarine force, as an elite, even more attractive. This is a skeptical and clear-eyed look at the process of becoming a submariner and what it was like to live and work in a submarine.
After some rather harrowing training, he discovered that leaving port in a submarine during rough seas (the best time to remain hidden), leads to rather extreme sea-sickness and given the fetid air the boat soon filled with everyone's previous meal. Life on board was boring, claustrophobic, all-consuming, and nerve-wracking, all at the same time. Amusingly, one of the most frequent questions asked by visitors to the boat, was "Where are the windows? How do you know where you are going?"
Circadian rhythms get completely discombobulated with watches on a 4-on, 8-off cycle, no natural light (high intensity lights are on all the time), no sunrise or sunset and never knowing whether it's morning or night except by the clock. That leads to instability and being thrown together with people you may not like, for months at a time, becomes another source of tension.
Humphreys finishes the book with a meditation on MAD. As he says earlier on, one misstep and its WW III that no one wins. If you have any interest at all in what it's like to be an ordinary seaman on a nuclear sub, then this is the book for you. Expect some claustrophobia.
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