Rudy Eckstein

Rudy Eckstein always dreamed of working on a submarine.
“Before I went in, I thought it was going to be like [the movie] ‘Hunt for the Red October.’ We were going to go out and find commies and shoot them down with torpedoes and shoot guns and kill people.”
Instead, Eckstein was in charge of monitoring the nuclear radiation on the submarine and making sure it stayed at the appropriate level.  
“It’s extreme boredom most of the time, but then you get two or three days of absolute going crazy. And that’s normally because we’re all about to die.”
There were a couple times when the oxygen generator broke down or the submarine sprung a leak and the ocean started seeping in, he said.
In the end, when he realized the dangers of his job, Rudy decided to leave.
Three of his close friends got cancer in their early twenties.
The Navy insisted that it wasn’t from the radiation that they and Eckstein were exposed to every day, but still paid for their medical bills during cancer treatment.
Two  of the three died before reaching their 27th birthdays.
“Just watch your best friend die over the course of three years and you won’t want to do whatever it is. Even if it has nothing to do with it, if you think there could have been something you’ll just walk away. Now I’m going to go be a teacher, which is significantly less radiation, although I think a little scarier.”