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There’s a Disaster in Your Future
Are you ready for it?
Earlier this week, I told a story about resilience and how it helps us get through bad times. Check out my post When It All Comes Crashing Down to understand the psychology of resilience. There I told the story about a situation that I faced at the end of my active-duty career, and today, I want to talk about something I learned toward the beginning of my career. Fortunately, I didn’t have to learn it from experience.
Back when I was in Navy boot camp, one of the things that we had to do was watch a disaster that happened on the USS Forrestal back in 1967. Seemingly “unimportant” missteps caused the disaster on the aircraft carrier killing 134 and injuring another 161 sailors. The damage exceeded 72 million dollars or $509 million in today’s dollars.
The lessons that they learned about “what not to do” when there’s a fire onboard a ship, we learned as we watched this video. In addition to helping us view these lessons that the crew learned, this disaster also changed a lot of general operating procedures making the formerly lax crews aboard ship more regulated. Things like discipline, wearing uniforms properly, and general quarters drills were among the lessons that are helping future sailors prevent future disasters on board ships.