sus
Moderator
I think separating the conflict from the nerves, the way the opening does, is well-played too. All these soldiers throwing up on themselves, freaking the fuck out, panic spreading in the barracks, "like ducks on these fucking boats," a buncha men in tin cans on an open ocean, can't swim, readying themselves for hellfire, and then nothing comes. They just land calmly, no casualties. Sorta surreal.
I remember they did these studies on rats and stress, using ulcers as a proxy for stress-load. They found that the environment which reliably caused the most ulcers was a field of electrical wires between rat and food source, that inconsistently and semi-randomly shocked the shit out of them. If the rat gets shocked in the same place every time, no problem, he tenses up, expects it, lives with it. But if he never knows when it's coming, if it could come any time at all...
I remember they did these studies on rats and stress, using ulcers as a proxy for stress-load. They found that the environment which reliably caused the most ulcers was a field of electrical wires between rat and food source, that inconsistently and semi-randomly shocked the shit out of them. If the rat gets shocked in the same place every time, no problem, he tenses up, expects it, lives with it. But if he never knows when it's coming, if it could come any time at all...