Garrison Davis

Now, I don't want or really expect anyone to pour out their sympathy for sailors on a warship that has helped to kill a minimum of 1,500 Iranians so far, including 200 children.

But you don't need to feel bad for all the lost birthdays and weddings and missed funerals to understand the deleterious effect that this has on morale.

Fighting spirit isn't just a buzzword.

When soldiers are exhausted and pissed off, they're likelier to fuck things up.

And I'm not just talking about grand acts of sabotage.

When it was still off the coast of Venezuela earlier in this deployment, the Ford suffered massive recurrent issues with its plumbing system, which was ripped off a design used in cruise ships and works very badly.

I can't exaggerate how bad the sewage systems on the Ford work.

They are broken fucking constantly.

And per the Alameda Post...

Some crew members may be intentionally exacerbating problems with defective toilets aboard the ship by flushing T-shirts and other objects, as documented in an email from the ship's engineering department obtained by NPR.

Our sewage system is being mistreated and destroyed by sailors on a daily basis, that March 2025 email stated.

My whole maintenance technicians are currently working 19 hours a day right now to keep up with the demand.

It's a lot of flushed shirts.

Now, what I'm building to is that there's a perfectly good chance this fire didn't even start as an act of sabotage, but because somebody fucked up.

Maybe because they were exhausted.

Maybe because they've just been running the machines too long.

The laundry is always going while this thing's underway.

And if it's going for months longer, the normal shit like lint is going to build up.

In fact, I want to read a quote from that article in the National Interest.

If the ducts haven't been cleaned out properly, it is easy for small lint particles to catch fire, potentially leading to a larger blaze, not unlike a house fire caused by lint buildup.