Everybody cheats. No, we're not talking about in a sexual way -- this ain't Cosmo. We're talking, say, fudging a few cents on your tax return or sneaking some notes into the exam room, or maybe making sure your friend got the shitty controller when he came over to play Smash Bros. But there's a momentous difference between finagling your way to the top of your fantasy football league, and defrauding your way into a job where you're responsible for other people's lives.
Yet, in positions that decide life and death, you still find people cheating their way into the job. And it's way too fucking easy.
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The People Babysitting Our Nukes Cheat on Proficiency Tests
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Chances are you don't give nukes a whole lot of thought -- the Cold War is over and done with, after all -- but by some estimates, the U.S. is still sitting on over 7,000 nuclear warheads. And when you've got that many apocalypse rockets sitting around collecting dust, you've also got to employ a well-trained staff to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't, you know, stop sitting around collecting dust.
Department of Defense
"If our B83s can't drown in cobwebs in peace, then by God, the terrorists have truly won."
Manning an air force nuclear launch station may not have ever been the subject of a badass Tom Cruise movie, but standards and expectations are still somewhere way up in the clouds. These bases aspire to a "zero defect" culture, meaning that the officers at the station are subject to monthly proficiency tests. They're expected to score 100 percent, and anything below 90 percent means failure and getting relegated to polishing the ol' warhead, which is a punishment we just made up because it sounded funny. These extremely high standards, plus low morale led to nearly half of the launch crew at Montana's Malmstrom Air Force Base saying "fuck it" and simply texting each other all the answers -- a fact that only came to light when, holy shit, those very same officers were being investigated for illegal drug use.
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"Aim high ... real high."
And if you're not huddled beneath your desk just yet, widespread cheating on security exams also compromised the safety of nuclear materials at the Y-12 National Security Complex near Oak Ridge, Tennessee (aka one of the places that produced the Big Ones we dropped on Japan during World War II), where an 82-year-old nun was able to stroll right up to a building containing bomb-grade uranium and splash blood all over it, because apparently when nuns vandalize things they do it in the creepiest manner possible.
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"The blood of Christ be with us. The blood of diseased pigs and rats be with you."