Mary Roach

Grunt

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grunt • n. informal a low-ranking soldierAt a converted movie studio amputee actors prepare army medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds, while at a base in East Africa diarrhoea threatens national security. Beyond weapons and strategy, this is about the other side of war — how scientists protect soldiers from panic, exhaustion, heat and noise.Setting about her task with infectious enthusiasm, the incomparable Mary Roach sniffs archival World War II stink bombs, tests earplugs in a simulated war zone with the Marine Corps and burns the midnight oil with the sleep-deprived crew of a nuclear submarine. Speaking to the scientists and the soldiers, she learns about everything from life-changing medical procedures such as testicular transplants to more esoteric innovations like firing dead chickens at fighter jets. Engrossing, insightful and laugh-out-loud funny, Grunt is an irresistible ride to the wilder shores of modern military life.
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300 printed pages
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Quotes

  • Evgenia Shuyskayahas quoted7 years ago
    Why not prescribe antibiotics more widely? First, there’s the issue of antibiotic-resistant strains developing, though this is less of a concern with some of the newer regimens that wipe out infections in a single day—likely not enough time for a resistant strain to evolve and thrive. More worrisome, perhaps, is recent research showing that the colons of overseas travelers who treat their diarrhea with antibiotics, particularly in Southeast Asia, tend to become colonized with two species of “bad” bacteria that they then carry home and can spread around town. Both bugs may inhabit a traveler’s gut only briefly and cause no problems while they’re there, but they are dangerous to patients with weak immune systems. Here again, with the newer single-dose regimens, it may not be an issue.
  • Evgenia Shuyskayahas quoted7 years ago
    Counterintuitively, overheated people sometimes pass out not in the midst of their exertions but when they stop and stand still; this is because contracting the leg muscles helps keep blood from pooling down there.)
  • Evgenia Shuyskayahas quoted7 years ago
    The average police officer taking a qualifying test on a shooting range scores 85 to 92 percent, Siddle told me, but in actual firefights hits the target only 18 percent of the time.

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