Sadly, like Yuri Orlov, Boris Novikov and Georgy Alexeyev, I’ve lived through the nightmarish experience of being in a serious committed relationship with an amazing woman and learning, stunned, that she cheated on me. If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that a relationship that is failing should have a timely close-out meeting to disassemble it under mutually agreeable terms. Being an adult should mean ending one thing before beginning the next, no matter how painful that is. And I’m not just preaching to you — this could be me giving advice to my younger self.
The lore of the ultra-secret projects executed by so-called “project boats” is real. Their missions are rarely spoken of or memorialized, even half a century later. The current project boat is the Seawolf-class submarine USS Jimmy Carter. What it’s up to right now, no one can say except a fraction of the crew, the National Security Council, the CIA and the president.
Next, regarding my comments regarding the Kilo’s supposedly dangerous liquid metal-cooled fast reactor — the nuclear industry goes to great lengths to state the fact that civilian reactors can’t explode like nuclear bombs. Military reactors, on the other hand, with bomb-grade uranium or plutonium, are not quite so tame, and in particular, fast reactors. It still should not be possible for one to explode in a nuclear explosion, but a prompt-critical rapid disassembly with a steam explosion, flash of radiation and scattering of radioactivity can happen, as it did at the U.S. Army’s SL-1 reactor, at Chernobyl and as fictionally depicted in the Kazan reactor. The baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater — reactor safeguards can be designed that eliminate most of the risk and operator training can ensure reactor safety. That said, I’d prefer they be far out at sea and not in my backyard.
About the discussion of “decision theory” and “bias” that Quinnivan and Catardi talked about — none of that is true. I confess I made all that up. And yet, I use that philosophy in my private life every day. So I list it here as an element of the truth-in-fiction theme.
And about that philosophy of the simulation theory, that all of this life is a digital simulation, and that every decision causes a new reality, and that somewhere, sometime, our base soul in the afterlife examines the results of every reality — I suppose all that comes as close to a religion as I can imagine for myself. Having died and gone halfway to the afterlife, I believe I may be on to something. So I’m tossing it in with the other truths, knowing full well many will differ with me.
A final word about my depictions of the Russian submariners — were the scenes with the Russians realistic? As a Cold Warrior, I often wondered, despite the conflict between America and the Soviet Union, what it would be like to hang out with Russian submariners. I suspected that we’d have more in common with a Soviet sub crew than with our own countrymen. We both went to sea in ships designed to sink, closer to death than any surface warrior. Working in stealth, going to secret hazardous places, dealing with stress, canned food, lack of sleep, in an environment where there are no weekends or vacation days for months on end. Where communication with loved ones is restricted. Where entertainment is truncated. Where the food progressively gets worse until it runs out. And on a submarine, there are a thousand things waiting to kill the crew, as the incident on the Voronezh demonstrated. Many years later, as social media bloomed, I became friends with former Soviet submariners including commanding officers and senior officers, and I found that my theory would prove true. One former-Soviet submarine captain posted photos of the interior of his Victor-class fast attack submarine at Christmas. There were several decorated Christmas trees, evergreen ropes, group photos of the crew smiling in the crew’s mess or at their work stations — which looked startlingly like our own — all reminders that the Russian crews were just like us. I believe the lesson is in complete agreement with the first quote listed before the prologue:
“The great lie at the heart of all states is that other people are not the same as us. It is the excuse for violence, the rationalization that makes it possible to wield a weapon in the first place: it’s okay to kill them, they would do the same to us, they’re different than us. It’s the foundation of every atrocity small or large throughout history. The lie that the others are different. And once that lie is used to justify violence, it can’t be relinquished. The ends become the means, and violence must be called down not just for the reason of the lie, but in defense of the lie.”
All that is a long way to say, the way the Russian submariners were depicted in this book is real.
Thank you for reading this. I hope you enjoyed it. I also hope you will go through my backlist and read them all. You can reach me by messenger on the Facebook dot com.
Michael DiMercurio
Undisclosed Location, USA
http://facebook.com/michael.dimercurio.author
Author of:
Voyage of the Devilfish
Attack of the Seawolf
Phoenix Sub Zero
Piranha Firing Point
Barracuda Final Bearing
Threat Vector
Terminal Run
Emergency Deep
Vertical Dive