Jake

A minigun is so loud that if you're not wearing hearing protection, it's going to ruin your hearing.

And I was at peace all day.

We always were hearing protection.

I just sat there and meditated, looked at the ocean, talked to the other guys I was waiting with, got to know them a lot better.

Our communications, the way that we communicated through radios and stuff, have built-in hearing protection.

And then when it was finally my time, I headed down.

But if that would slip off while I was shooting, it was a wrap.

Before...

It would ruin my hearing for at least the rest of the day.

I left.

I read a bunch of books, and I've already talked about one that was profound on me.

And obviously, that's taken a toll on me hearing-wise.

So, yeah, I was a minigunner.

And the other one that had a huge impact on me was, it's called The Immortality Key.

That was my expertise, and that's what I worked on the whole time.

And it talks about the pagan continuity hypothesis, which is that early religions, like Christianity, had to take aspects of pagan religions to have followers.

And putting all those rounds through that gun definitely left a mark on my brain.

And then besides that, you know, knocked out a few times, normal things that I guess come with any job in the military.

So, yeah, that's kind of the conditions I was put in, and yeah.

Because