We're glad to have you watching! If you need anything, please reach out.

I hope you enjoy studying & retaining difficult subject matter comes naturally to you.When I was in,I became an MT (missile tech) and was a crewmember on a ssbn.I went from sub school to Bert (basic electronics rate training) to swse A & C school.Nukes went to school day and night. Longer hours at school & also studying on the side more than any other rate I saw.

The people that you get to work with are really what makes it fun/entertaining. There are fun things that pop up occasionally, port calls, swim calls, ceremonies, half way nights... things like that. Those are few and far between but the guys you work with every day can definitely make things significantly better (or worse).

I guess they are pretty steep 😂 Compared to the ladders though... nice and easy.

And even then it's often only from culture shock through "food service duty" and working parties 😅

@@2F2FPod is getting to your first boat really the first time a sailor discovers that no one cares about them?

I was just commenting on what the training video said; that sailors would only experience that once they're met with the realities of food service duty, cleaning, and working parties. That being said, I think most sailors (specifically, enlisted) really do join thinking that they, individually, will make a difference and be an important piece of whatever their personal motivation was. Further, I think most training pipelines and schoolhouses do a pretty good job of making you feel important as an individual. When we were in Nuke School, we were constantly being told that our school was harder than BUDS (lol), and how much money the Navy was spending on each and every one of us as an investment. I think it can be a culture shock when you get to the fleet just how inconsequential and replaceable every individual is. Whether or not that has a dramatic impact on someone probably has to do with lots of other factors. I think we always understood that we were nothing more than cogs in a machine that would never stop turning, but tried to utilize any power or influence we eventually gained to make that machine a less painful ride for the next guys and the guys in the bilges with us.

We did shellback in the late 2010s on our transit from Portsmouth to San Diego (through the Canal). I can't imagine the differences between your ceremony and ours, it was very obviously watered down by then. Blue nose a few years earlier still went pretty hard, though. I think most of us felt exactly like the kid in those training videos. It also seems like something that hasn't ever really been addressed by big Navy. "Have a sponsor program" seems to be about as far as they've ever gone. Thanks for watching, we're glad to have you!

@@2F2FPod I was a shellback in 2005 so it was probably very different. There was only a few submariners on my boat that didn't go through the ceremony. I wish I could have gone through the canal, but we were fully loaded with nuclear weapons so that was never happening. Fun thing about the southern tip of South America.... the water is so cold that I could see my breath in the engineroom. I had to wear a winter coat even with the heaters on.

It is pretty wild how their personnel issues always come full circle. In my lifetime I have seen 3 or 4 complete cycles of, "we have too many sailors" to "we desperately need sailors".

@thomashanke6750 lol, well what are submariners good for if not whining? Joking aside, I'm sure the differences in Navy (and American) culture made the training pipeline, and the expectations of it, much different in the 80s than it was in the 2010s and it's probably much different now ten years later. I don't think it's so much asking to be spood-fed, just to stop wasting so much valuable time of staff and students with something that can be entirely replicated with simulators and/or OTJ training. But, as said in the episode, it's difficult to argue with such an impeccable track record. Also, for what it's worth, I think the differences in the experience of prototype between wire rates and mechanics is pretty stark. In our time, mechanics only learned a specific subset of their watches. We had "feed path" mechanics, "lower level path", etc. We will always welcome dissenting opinions and appreciate yours! Would love to hear more about how our experiences differed if you'd be interested in connecting.

Ok, loaded questions! Unless things have changed recently, you will be living in housing as soon as you arrive to Goose Creek for A-School since you are married / have dependents. It probably wouldn't hurt to try to find the phone number for their quarterdeck and make sure - if you need help with that, let me know. As far as being hard on families... yeah, it's hard on families. The military as a career is always going to be hard on families, that's part of the sacrifice of service. Being a Nuke is only specifically worse when considering normal working hours in port. When you're deployed, everyone is deployed. Nukes and conventional mechanics typically work more than all of the other rates while the ship is in port, by a lot. The navy knows this, which is why nukes get paid more money and have significantly higher bonuses. There are lots of resources the military offers to aid military families. If you or your spouse want more information on that, I can point you in the right direction. If being able to communicate more regularly with your family is important to you (as it would be to me now that I also have children), I would strongly recommend you do not volunteer for submarines. Good luck and let me know if you need anything, either here or at 2fast2fastpodcast@gmail.com and I will do what I can to help

Absolutely! The more we learned about that day the crazier it got 😂

The majority of us struggled through some point of the pipeline, too. I learned later in my career that teaching something made me gain a much more concrete and thorough understanding of it. I'm sure that doesn't work for everyone, but if your son has tried the "nuke school" way of learning where you just write the same thing over and over again until you can remember it for a few days and that hasn't worked, I would recommend getting some of his classmates to let him "teach" them the things he's having a hard time grasping or remembering. Also, it isn't the easiest conversation to have, but it would probably worth asking one or more instructors for extra time outside of class. In my experience as an instructor in the navy, a motivated student got 100% of the extra time and energy I had to help them. As far as students being rolled back, that wasn't something they did when we were students. It might be in place now because they are desperate for nukes, but I can't speak to it. Typically, if students couldn't maintain a passing GPA, they were given an academic board, where they had a chance to present knowledge and instructors decided if they would stick around to try to raise their GPA or not. The last hurdle is the comp exam at the end of Power School. If you fail that, you either get an extra week to study and take it again (like Kenny and Mike) or you have an academic board at that point. I think that destinction depends on your GPA at the end. Some of my knowledge may be outdated. But if there's anything else we can help with please let us know. Also feel free to email 2fast2fastpodcast@gmail.com if you have need more personal or private guidance!

Oh yeah! In the 2 years before EOH in 2016 it was something in the 90 percents. Were you on the ol' good boat before us or after us?

@@2F2FPod I was there from 2010 to 2015 as part of E-div. I actually remember when Matt showed up to the boat. Lol

@@2F2FPod Side note, I subscribed to this channel however long ago, but it wasn't until I watched this episode that I found out a good portion of y'all were on the Hampton. Small world.

It really can be brutal. Sounds like you made it through, though! There is something to be said about the way Nuke School can change the way we think and learn... sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

@@2F2FPod I did make it through. Then came back to prototype as an instructor

I am debating trying to do the Nuke program, ive heard that its super stressful even after schooling, but im not sure, would you say its worth it?

@@NoFace237 that depends completely on your personal motivations. Are you motivated by money and future career prospects? It could be worth it for you. Are you motivated by free time or feeling like you're truly making a difference in the world? You might find this work unfulfilling and awful...

@@NoFace237 TBH if I were to go back and do it all over again, I would have went with my original contract which was CTN. Nukes have a poor quality of life in the fleet and you are really limited on shore duty options. It's not all bad and definitely opened many doors for me but other rates in the Navy (such as CTN) would open many doors too. The people are awesome and I really miss that but that also has to do with the trauma bonding of us all going through the suck together. I can talk about this for hours but that's the shortest to the point answer I have.

Oh, wow! Talk about a last minute decision. I wonder if anyone ever even knew or cared on the Navy side.

@@2F2FPod The guy figured out he had gotten duped into 2 years of Undes after talking with other shippers. It was easier to do that before the internet. What can they do? Drag him kicking and screaming to RTC?

@@poemarnan5498 Got out of being an undes?? Wise choice to bail haha

Absolutely! I think re-enlisting will be a major topic 2 episodes from now. When we discuss shore duty pros and cons. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask them here or email 2fast2fastpodcast@gmail.com and we can make sure we get the most up to date information to you!

That's so awesome! They were called Section Leading Petty Officers or, "SLPOs", when we were students there. Are you saying that the students who were on the longest required study hours turned into the best operators?? That's really interesting considering, in theory, the material didn't come quite as easily to those sailors. Why do you think that was/is the case?

That's true... but NNPTC seems to operate just fine with almost an entire command of E-6 and above, no?

@2F2FPod Nuke Power School doesn't have any steam valves to lap, slip rings to polish, or SG level transducers to calibrate.

Yeah, fair point. Interestingly, Dakota shared that very few SPUs are actually allowed to do maintenance, at least when he was there. Maintenance was always my favorite part of the job so I guess I wouldn't mind!

@2F2FPod Well, then that's changed a lot. We had SPU's doing a lot of maintenance. Not saying sea returnees didn't turn wrenches. We did. But I always wanted a SPU or two with me to at least watch an learn at a minimum. New SPUs were supervised closely. We had to keep in mind that when a SPU did finally get to their first boat, they were only a year short of time-in-rate for E6. As a sea returnee, I was training SPUs for the fleet just as much as I was training students. The only difference was a SPU didn't have a qual card.

It has to be so unnerving to get a peak behind the curtain like that. I could tell that my own training wasn't adequate. Largely still had no idea how to nuclear power for a while even after reporting to the boat.

Couldn't agree more. Unless major overhauls to the very structure of the nuke pipeline happen, it seems like staff quality of life has to be a top priority. The less attractive prototype is as a shore duty, the fewer nukes will stay in, and that will just compound.

@jeffplumblee6376 MM1/SS, 1987-1997. Shore tour at MARF '92-'96. Prototype or IMA have almost always been the only shore tours available for nukes.

@@stevebriggs9399 that's what I said. Another thought I had: imagine the quality of instructor you would get if people were doing it because they wanted to and not because it was their only option. I see a very big difference in my own work, I bet it would show up there too.

@nanux99 That sounds brutal! Im not sure how long ago you were in, but Naval Instructor School harps pretty heavily on the fact that environment (a/c, distractions, etc.) can be a huge barrier to learning. Leave it to NNPTC to take a full summer to fix one of those issues 🫠

@@pyayaXC I can't believe I forgot about FOK!! Thank you for those!

WTF = Wrong Trig Function

@@elapidpython4378 That's a great one!

???????

Yeah, fair point! Getting to speak with someone that has your rate is good in theory - but so much of the potential benefit of that idea is up to the sailor on the other end of the phone.

Great episode! Having a son in bootcamp right now means our perspective is fresh. I think we had a couple of great recruiters who tried to be as honest as they could be. We did our homework and tried to get our son the best info we could, as did he. They did get him in contact with another kid in the pipeline from his high school and with the regional coordinator for the nuke coordinator who was pretty honest about the suck factor and why he wasn’t reenlisting. One of the things they told when we asked - because he subvoled when he did his original DEP paperwork - was that he would somehow go to BESS. I think they just said yes because that’s where they teach a mother’s son to get out of the sub if something catastrophic happens😂 If you’re have a listener questions segment, can you answer why Nukes don’t do BESS? I would imagine that it’s because they’ve already spent so much time in the pipeline. So then I guess my next question would be do Nukes just learn all of that on their first underway or some in prototype? Or Naval trial by fire - or I guess more appropriately by submersion? Thanks!

@@jmtjw5 episode 12 of this podcast features an A-ganger who attended BESS, and I feel an answer to your question was given somewhere in the conversation relating to the Prototype phase of training. Maybe they could ask this question more directly with some help from the next “Coner of the Month?”

@jmtjw5 Thank you for your support! It always makes us really happy when we hear from people we help in some small way. For your question about BESS: Prototype is supposed to be the part of the nuke pipeline that fills the high-risk training portion of BESS for us. Flooding, fire, and, to a lesser extent, submarine escape are all theoretically learned at Prototype via drills and checkouts (with some VERY basic classroom training). We have previously discussed that this part of the training is largely inadequate, especially compared to BESS. However, Nukes are very good at learning new information, and casualty response is one of the very first things sea-going commands teach new sailors. Hope that helps! Feel free to reach out on our subreddit reddit.com/r/2Fast2FastPodcast or email 2fast2fastpodcast@gmail.com if you'd like to have a back-and-forth chat about anything! Or, of course, keep the comments coming! Engagement certainly helps the videos get pushed to a broader audience.

Thanks for both of the replies. Now that you say it, your podcast was how we knew for sure he wasn’t going to BESS. My mom brain probably tuned out after the “not nearly adequate” part. Both of our other sons went the college route so it’s been a steep learning curve with this one going Navy. Thanks again and keep it up

It's really difficult to say without a more complete understanding of your situation. I think, in general, enlisting as a Nuke will provide you with a clear path up and out of whatever situation you are currently in. There has never been a more financially beneficial time to enlist as a Nuke than right now; the enlistment bonuses are absolutely massive. That being said, the path isn't an easy one and it can be more difficult depending on lots of variables that you don't have very much control over (rate, class/platform of ship, duty station, etc.) I would encourage you to watch our videos where we interview future or potential Nukes to get a better idea of how your situation compares to their, and apply the advice we give selectively to your own situation. If you want to discuss it with us further, feel free to make a post on our subreddit at www.reddit.com/r/2Fast2FastPodcast/ or email us at 2fast2fastpodcast@gmail.com

​​​@@2F2FPod Thanks for the reply. I do like the schooling as a challenge along with learning some skills. Don't care that much for the bonuses tho. I have talked to 3 nukes over the phone and all recommend it. I will admit im scared for the recession so I have to pick a safe post-navy rate. However the one thing that I am not sure about is that I have always dealt with mild suicidal ideation over dumb things, I would never do it but I don't know how I'd react to the nuke life. Obviously i can't bring these doubts over the phone or to a recruiter 💀 Or maybe the whole experience would be good for me I dunno

@@akfkodm Sorry to hear about your mental health struggles. It might be in your best interest to try to get that sorted out before starting a career as intense and stressful as the military. The Navy, in particular, doesn't exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to mental health - as discussed in this podcast episode! It's interesting that you've spoken with other nukes and they've all recommended you take that path. For what it's worth, I would say that if you aren't motivated or interested by the financial advantage you gain being a nuke vs other rates - you probably shouldn't be a nuke. There are plenty of other rates that offer significant civilian job opportunities - and no matter what, you will have the G.I. Bill to get another degree in anything you want afterwards. When most nukes are stuck in the impossibly difficult and outrageous daily grind that is a sea tour - the only thing that makes it even close to worth it, is the fact that you are making a decent amount of money more than those who have an easier time. You mentioned that you're worried about a recession; the reality is that the United States isn't a very pro-nuclear country. Even in the best of times there's no guarantee that nuclear jobs will exist in the next couple of decades. Most technical rates in the Navy will transfer to the civilian side fairly well. While it is true that nukes tend to have an easy time finding employment post-navy, it certainly isn't true across the board and it's much more difficult to get a non-technical job if you haven't gained leadership/administrative/instructor skills by staying in beyond 6 years. Hope this is helpful. -Kenny

That's so awesome! Wishing your son and you the best of luck. Thank you very much for the kind words and support!

Can you IMAGINE if any of this actually happened 😅

Oh that's true. We didn't really get into the logistical differences between the two. I'm sure those differences can be much bigger or smaller in the other branches, too.

Very well said! BAH really is THE thing that makes military pay competitive/livable. Hopefully, all politicians continue distancing themselves from Project 2025 and it is a non-issue... time will tell.

Glad to have you watching! We are hoping to not get too out of touch too quickly, but father time is undefeated, after all 😅

Oh yeah, Godsmack for sure! Unfortunately the audio got cut out, but Mike explained that Sully Erna (the lead singer) made a comment that even though their song was being used for Navy recruitment, they are vehemently anti-war! Lol

That's awesome! Good luck and if you have any questions feel free to reach out.

Dealing with medical problems while active duty is very Dickensian. "It was the best of times it was the worst of times." Onwards and upwards, friend. Thank you for watching!

@@2F2FPod 🔥🙏🔥

Will do!

The frozen chicken cordon bleus look like hamsters.

Terminal Leave. 30-60 days before the official end of your contract you get to go on "terminal" leave and essentially get out before you officially get out.

Yes, exactly that. Being a highly paid technical specialist/operator is a dream job for lots of people, and the Navy doesn't really offer that.

Yep that sounds about right. So absurd.

It's our pleasure! Thank you for watching!

Thanks for watching! We have no plans on slowing down!

Every time. Gotta shut it down! Pull-ins are cool either way though. We always laughed amongst us nukes when they would auction things off like "first liss" or "brow-down liberty" because everyone knew they were really only talking to half the boat

That's an awesome idea!