How Eggs Give Away the Location of Nuclear Submarines 

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I served in the Royal Navy as a Sonar operator. Out of all the sounds we were taught to identify, I was never taught how to identify the proximity of a submarine by the cracking of eggs. There are a lot louder things than eggs imploding on a Nuke Boat. Maybe this vid should only be shown on April 1st. 😂😂😂

As a submarine veteran, I can attest the eggs never lasted long enough to spoil. Plus, the U.S. Navy does not store our trash. We deep six it through the TDU while underway.

Great story. Urban mith, I'm afraid. The sound of a cracking egg isn't going to escape the soundproofing of a modern submarine 😅. Think about it . Over a hundred men and women talking operating machinery, dropping tools, and such . Yet an egg can give away its location 🤔. I don't think so.

Hold up.. So the hydraulic pump that that drives the trash compactor on a sub is QUIETER than eggs breaking???

This was not an issue during the cold war. Eggs were preserved by irradiation, a wax coating, and refrigeration. We always ran out of eggs long before any could go bad.

It has been some years since I served onboard a submarine as a sonar tech, and this is a first, so don't know how much faith I can put in this video. We had a number of things going that were much louder from air compressors to steam turbines and more without issue. Aside from a sound short, I have to wonder. I did notice in the video that trash is separated and wonder if the disposal procedure has also changed.

spent lots of time in submarines ... we didn't have enough reefer/freezer space, so we stored all the eggs in the bilges of the torpedo room ... they stayed cool throughout the deployment and i recall having fresh eggs for 2-3 months.

This shows just how important and dangerous navy cooks can be. Never underestimate a navy cook, remember Casey Ryback, lead cook on the USS Missouri.

This is intriguing in that back in my day we never saw an egg go bad. We had fresh eggs for 3 - 4 weeks and it was on to powered eggs.

If a sub was worried about running silent, they wouldnt be running the gd trash compactor.

Eggs that haven't had their protective wax layer washed off with hot water can keep for weeks unrefrigerated. Eggs aren't refrigerated in Europe, where eggs are processed naturally. My Grandma had chickens at her home in Virginia, and the eggs I ate there were never refrigerated. I think the USDA should reevaluate egg processing standards.

I gotta ask my buddy about this. He spent some time underwater. When they were hunting, there's a lot of things they couldn't do.

Can we just appreciate that in the entirety of the earths ocean in all 3 dimensions and the 2 submarines still managed to hit each other.

After reading comments from so many submariners, I think this video has imploded loudly!

For the experts- is there ever a scenario where an explosive fart would compromise your location and everyone's safety?

On surface ships, after about a week we were out of fresh eggs. From then on the joke was how do you want your eggs. They would be scrambled made from powdered eggs.

I called my buddy, he laughed an said well, I guess I could see that. He was in propulsion/nuke/ electrical engineer. Asked him about the trash compactor, "Oh yeah, used the hell out of it but shot it out most of the time unless they were on a mission or maneuvers then they stowed it. Told me a fun story sitting in a port where a civil war was going on gathering intel. So yeah, quiet is a big deal. I looked at the port, and that's balls to sit there, really narrow.

I did six patrols and one DASO on a FBM in the early eighties. I don’t know who wrote the script for this video but they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

I am happy to see that many of the submariners are wearing camouflage clothing. I am sure that this helps with the stealth.

But what happens when they serve beans and everyone is farting?

Being a former submariner myself, I would say that the toughest job in the Navy might be working on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier or something like that. Life on a submarine is relatively peaceful, quiet and safe, although it can be tough on the psyche. But there are ways to deal with that, like keeping busy. And the great chow helps - until you run out of fresh eggs!

I was a seaman for a while. We had a cook that looks like Salvador Dali. The hair, the mustache, the crazy eyes, the flamboyant behavior. It was fun.

4 minutes and 23 seconds of my life I'll never get back.

As a former Sonar Tech on Fast Attack subs. This was very inaccurate. We shoot our trash off board in a vertical tube and it’s not stored and eggs are not a problem as indicated here 😂

The Australian Navy (RAN), is, so far as I know, the only navy that drafts non volunteers into submarines, against their express wishes and leading to a huge number of “non re-enlistments”. The result is a chronic shortage of trained submariners and a high cost of training. Why? Because the RAN Officer Corp isn’t up to the job.

After reading several comments. I wonder how much noise s trash compactor makes when compacting? My opinion is the eggs aren’t going to explode because the compactor moves very slowly. I would think slower than a home unit. Compacting slowly is quieter than fast therefore an egg will crack and compact like regular egg shells. Also just how quiet is a garbage compactor on a sub.

Also a submarine Veteran, and I will also attest to most of this being made up. Only thing that was true is we do have some damn good cooks, think I even saw one of the cooks from my old boat in one of the clips they used. Hi Steve.

The story of the two subs colliding is just one big John Cena meme waiting to happen. "You can't see me!! You can't even hear me!!" 🤣

I went camping years ago in the hot Australian bush .. no refrigerator.. even after 2 weeks all the eggs were ok.

As a bubble head from the cold war era, I can testify that this is inaccurate. Fun, informative stuff, just not reality. Those mess cooks really do a great job and bust their asses! Better food on a US sub than many 5 star restaurants. As I remember it, we had fresh eggs for about 6weeks. After the fresh eggs were gone we ate powdered eggs, which contained salt peter. For Peter. So’s the berths didn’t look like a tent city, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down!

We never had eggs go bad... we ate them first. Then we had powered. Yu could still order OE, but you're getting scrambled. (STS2-SS: six years, four 90+ day deployments and weekly ops)

The Enigma machine was never cracked. The Allies simply listened for cracked eggs on the U-Boats.

if the eggs were coated with mineral oil, they wouldn't need to be refrigerated at all. they'll stay good for months and months.

The toughest job in the Navy, and I always thought it was the SEALS.

On my first patrol, we ran out of everything but ground beef, tomato sauce and elbow macaroni so we had chili mac, goulash or American chop suey whatever you want to call it four meals a day for the last week or so.

I mess cooked on a boomer back in the late 1970s. We had a machine to roll our own narrow garbage cans replete with holes in the sheet metal to admit sea water so they were not at all buoyant. We also placed heavy discs in the bottom to ensure that they sank. Then we filled them in a trash compactor. And then finally we stacked them up in the vertical trash disposal tube in the scullery, sealed the hatch on top, and then finally ejected them to descend to the sea bed. Since we were stationed in Guam the seabed could be in excess of 4,000 fathoms.

There is egg powder, and there are processed eggs without shells. Way longer shelf life and less space needed to store those. If the US Navy seriously has a problem with fresh eggs, I could sell them this information.

They do make powdered eggs, powdered milk, and powdered potatoes….all of which I encountered during my stay in Uncle Sam’s yacht club

I had a buddy decades ago who was a sonar operator. He told stories that as they left port there was almost no room to move as every open space had food stores. They didn’t refrigerate the eggs so after a week or two the guy cracking eggs would be wearing a gas mask. Lol

I think submarine’s thermonuclear weapons are more frightening than eggs.

So the two subs that ran into one another in the beginning of the video couldn’t hear one another with their passive sonar but can give their location away by a egg popping? I don’t think that’s correct imho

3:01 "If they forget to smash the eggs, they will implode. On Sonar it will sound like a firecracker." What about an *explosive fart?* Can also be picked up on a Sonar? Or submarine sailors doesn't fart?

Nothing else in the trash compactor makes noise as it's being crushed.

"It's not what you think!" - "I think, eggs make them fart and this can be heard over enemy sonar." "Eggs make people fart." -"I knew it!" 😂

I don’t understand, don’t they have some tech way to make the compactor and egg cracking silent?

Dehydrated or Freeze Dried Eggs would solve that problem! They may not have the taste of fresh eggs, but some manufacturers as I understand it come very close.

Serve powdered eggs instead or liquid eggs...no more noise

Are there any submariners out there that have been court martialed for farting ? Asking for a friend. 😂

I just wonder how much noise an egg makes when it implodes under presser now, something I never thought about before watching this.

Six crewmembers prep the food? Maybe on a SSBN/SSBN. On my boat, (Permit), one cook on watch plus two mess cooks.

I love reading through a comments section where people dismiss the premise while ignoring the actual points. True or not (and I've never heard the supposed "well known fact" of "you don't mess with the egg"), the majority of comments dismissing the concept make it very clear that they either didn't watch the video, or lack the comprehension to understand it. Again, that doesn't make it true or real, but suggesting that "the sound of cracking egg shells inside the hull is less than other human noises!" is, umm, SERIOUSLY not related to the claim made in the video, at all, in any way. If you want to argue that a claim isn't real, then argue the actual claim made, not something else. I'm embarrassed on behalf of every idiot who claims to be a submarine veteran and then promptly displays an absolute inability to actually pay attention to the claim they're trying to debunk. (I totally agree, however, that you're unlikely to have many, if any, eggs spoil before you use them in a modern US submarine. Perhaps that was an issue previously, or with eggs that are not treated and therefore require refrigeration. But in a modern American context, you're going to run out of eggs before they go bad.)

Today the chinese sonars are so sensitive, they can pickup an english submariner' fart noises after eating stale eggs. 😂

I was the commander of 2 classes of Nuclear submarines throughout my career. I never had any issues with Eggs or... We had a big chicken and Duck farm onboard ,producing sufficient eggs and a dairy farm with buffaloes for fresh milk. It was fun feeding them and watch them grow.. Our scientists also developed a system to power the vessels using their poo as an alternative fuel. Missing those lovely days...😢

Sonar operators who got the moniker of "golden ears" will certainly hear this - especially with the help of multi-million dollar listening gear with a state-of-the-art Fast-Fourier-Transform.

The boys on the old diesel electric boats would laugh their asses off to hear the narrator claim the two nukes were so quiet they couldn't hear each other lol. More like they were so noisy they couldn't hear each other.

So Navy switched to using eggs in bags for food service?

I was waiting for an egg to pop out with a knife!

Someone has an active imagination.

Refrigerated eggs never go rotten. Once I moved into a house, the new roommate. Not having gone shopping, I asked Johnny if I could use a couple of his eggs. When I cracked them, they were extremely viscous, but still edible. I asked him how old they were and he couldn't remember....months? What happened is that moisture left through the shell. But they never rotted.

I believe that once upn a time, they would dump the trash in weighted bags through a special tube designed for the job.

British Astute class submarines are nuclear powered hunter-killer submarines that do NOT carry nuclear warheads. They have torpedos and cruise missiles only armed with conventional warheads. British Vanguard class submarines are nuclear powered and do carry Trident ICBMs, each of which is armed with multiple nuclear warheads.

Somehow an egg implodes out at louder decibel than a nuclear powered turbine? 😒

i used to delv tanker loads of syrup to m&m mars candy they would have tankers that would unload eggs wonder if having all ready cracked eggs solve the problem im sure the brass has already thought of this so it must be a weight /room issue

but when they crack the eggs outside the compressor, that isn't audible? [Why not?]

If the crew is enjoying the food, it seems implausible that eggs would be so likely to go bad. Even if they did, could they not be cooked, and then not go bad for even longer?

what about talking, something falling, stuff being moved around? if cracking an egg would give away you position, then the submarine crew would have to be the quietest people on earth

0:38 “…to detect its present” I guess submarines usually have the power to see what’s wrapped under the Christmas tree?

WOW. Did I ever learn a lot from this video. These producers must have the highest security to know so much classified stuff I never knew. Boy do I feel stupid. MTC(SS) 1962-1984

All they would have to do is cook all the eggs hard-boiled just before disposing of them. Send the cheque in the mail!😎

Hum, you learn something new every day!

What they don't tell you is the "Battery Hen" array , 50 mother hens lined up at the front of the SUB in cages, specifically trained/traumatised to "point" to any sounds of eggs cracking!

Wait what??? Then how does the kitchen staff crack them??

At the start of our Patrol we would "re-purpose" one of our depth control tanks as a Food Storage locker for canned goods such as dehydrated apple sauce and other such "delicacies". 🙂 During the Patrol, as we consumed our ready available food, we would open the tank and remove the food to other more accessible shelves for the cooks. And YES, we had eggs for a LONG LONG TIME. In 1972 we were eating eggs with a 1949 date code on the package !@@! (of course they were frozen !)

My father was an RAF pilot in the Western Desert.... fresh eggs don't last long enough to go off.

Wouldn't the sound of compacting the trash in and of itself, be louder than the egg shell?

As a 92G dealing with food waste is a hassle.

I am an Active Duty STGC, smarter than most, and I am saying this is an absolute non issue for submarines. The background noise of the Ocean itself, is WAY louder than eggs cracking, and THAT'S without even going through the hull of a heavily sound dampened US Submarine. Plus, the crushing of garbage is such a quick sound transient, that there would be no realistic way to identify it, let alone track it. But, cool story.

You have to take a silent Dump as well.The splash could be picked up by an enemy sub.

It's not really that, it's because officers are given the same meal as the crew. So it has to be better than normal.

Cool story bro. I highly doubt the exploding eggs are louder than the sailors farts from eating eggs.

Wouldn't they pick up the sound of the compactor anyway?😂😂

Begin by taking all the eggs out of the shells, and placing them in vacuum sealed bags. Sterilize at 135 degrees f. for 45 minutes, then refrigerate. Problem solved, and no rotten eggs.

I think breathing or snoring is the problem. Btw how do u let of gases ?

What if the egg contained some mutant bird who hatches and takes over the sub?

They say food quality a huge moral booster. I swear feminism about demoralising familys. I feel sorry for kids today whose mothers grande mothers dont cook well.

They should install sound proofing materials around the galley and the trash compactor.

I guess powder eggs from now on boys.

The question is can you fart during stealth mode?

The cooks are the backbone of suibmarine fleet.

Galley, not kitchen.

No research was done for this video. Eggs went into the wet-bag and got crushed in the Trash Disposal Unit (TDU) like everything else. Then loaded with weights and dropped to the bottom of the ocean. Imploding does not happen as the video suggests, nor would a cracking of eggs give away a sub's location. [Retired U.S. sub vet, SME on SONAR and ACINT]

I thought that all countries agreed to stop arming themselves with nuclear munitions years ago. I guess I thought wrong

So crushing a metal can is fine but cracking an egg can be heard? The machinery itself would make more noise than the egg but the machinery is isolated. Therefore the egg is isolated. Did you just need to fill space to get a video out?

you can make eggs last a long time without cold. Glass watering eggs is easy, and keeps them ready to use.

On my old boat, a million years ago, the toilet in the crews head was oriented fore and aft. On post overhaul sea trials while changing depth the toilet lit slammed down producing a lovely transient. The Chief of the Boat had the toilet seat removed for the remainder of the 5-day underway. Problem solved. I think the detailer hated our boat because he sent me 5 cooks that were the absolute dregs. Those cooks were representative of why they no longer allow officers to carry sidearms. 🙂 We ran out of TDU weights before on local ops (again stupid cooks) but I can't ever recall having problems with eggs, although we knew that could happen.

This doesn't pass the "basic common sense" test. The sound of an egg cracking due to a hydraulic pump gives away the location of the sub, but the sound of them being cracked by hand does not?

Those cooks are gods!

a little-known dilemma... good video!

False! They dont always have to be quiet and when they do their definitely not going to run a trash compactor! Dropping something on the floor will make way more noise than an egg ever could!