Sea Control - Sea Control 216 - 2020 Fiction Contest Winners with Mike Burke & Nick Nethery

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Links1. America’s Sergeant Majorby Michael Burke2. "Crowdfunded," by Michael Burke and Nick Nethery3. “Prepare to Fight in Megacities,” by Nick Nethery4. “Preparing to Fight and Win Underground,” by Walker Mills5. Starship Troopersby Robert Heinlein6. Armor by John Steakely7. Legacy of Aldenata by John Ringo8. Automated Valor by August Cole9. Burn-In by PW Singer and August Cole10. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu11. Death Traps by Belton Cooper12. Starfist Seriesby Dan Cragg and David Sherman13. The Veteran Wargamer podcast14. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi15. “9 Simple Rules for Owning the Zombie Apocalypse,” by Nick Nethery16. “‘The Walking Dead’ is Full of Useless Idiots, Says a USMC Sgt. Maj.,” by Michael Burke17. CIMSEC Fiction Contest Week

Hey folks, Jared here. Very excited to be doing the intro for Walker Mills' first episode as host today. He's got retired Sergeant Major Michael Burke and Major Nick Nethery, the winners of the USNI SimSec Fiction Contest. They're going to talk about their story crowdfunded. As always, we want to advertise and strongly recommend our friends in the SimSec Podcast Network and our second podcast feed, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Drack, Jamie, and a pile of empty iron brew bottles on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, and wherever else you download. It's a more low-key, slightly less serious approach to current events in the maritime domain and naval history. Check them out wherever you download your podcasts.

Finally, from Sea Control to Bilge Pumps to Project Trident, 2020 has been a banner year for SimSec. We need your help to carry that momentum supporting our Right Fight Win holiday donation campaign via direct donations on our website or by making SimSec your preferred non-profit on Amazon Smile so you can support us while you shop. With that, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security.

I'm your host today, Walker Mills. This week, we're talking to Michael Burke and Nick Nethery about their award-winning short fiction, Crowdfunded, that won first place in the U.S. Naval Institute in the Center for International Maritime Security contest. First off, congratulations, guys. I love your story. Mike, can you introduce yourself to our listeners? Yeah, hello. I'm Mike Burke, 26 years in the Marine Corps, retired Sergeant Major. I'm currently walking around in the grass with my hands in my pockets and loving every minute of it. Nice. Nick, welcome, and same to you. Can you go ahead and introduce yourself as well?

Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. My name is Nick Nethery. I'm a major currently in the United States Army, Explosive Ordnance Disposal. I'm currently stationed at NATO Joint Forces Command Brunson as a counter IED officer in the protection branch. Awesome. And I also have to ask, so what's your connection? Obviously you wrote the story together, retired Marine Sergeant Major, active duty counter IED, a major in the U.S. Army. What's, did you all work together previously or what's going on here? No, we kind of met through some mutual friends online in like a writer's group and me and nick and a couple other guys kind of we saw that we were all kind of the same mind and we kind of

broke off and started our own little slack thread if you will and where we chat about different things and writing professional articles and science fiction and things of that nature and we just kind of we saw the we've actually seen the past couple years that contest come up and this summer we both had time and we're like hey you want to go for it yeah let's do it well we're glad you did nick do you agree with that or is our major over here spinning uh tall tales no no no yeah that's accurate yeah we've we've uh spitballed ideas back and forth for a few years and then yeah we just we happened to both to have a some time to do it so we went for it and this is is this your first joint writing project and first try at fiction or have you all

written things in the past well we've both written i guess professionally you know for us and i we've both been published in us and i i've been writing on a blog for years uh americasartmajor.com i haven't put anything on there recently but uh things of that nature this is the first time we've had anything published as far as like a fiction story so this is kind of a big deal for me and nick as far as that goes and nick i think you have a you've got one other piece published with the the naval institute is that correct uh a couple i had a big article about mega city combat and then i had another just short short one about uh taking care of chaplains all right let's talk about your story mike do you want to can you summarize for our listeners what what the story

was you know i'm probably not everyone that's listening to the podcast has uh has read it unfortunately they show no spoilers we don't want spoilers okay um no big spoilers well essentially what happens there's a marine platoon and sometime in the near future and the company is advancing and they're about to advance on a you know major attack or what have you advance into the city and uh the marine platoon just happens to run into something unexpected and uh you know all the things that typically go wrong go wrong and uh and they have to basically do what marines do they kind of adapt to the situation and and have to be creative and with their with their answer to how to solve the problem i think that's a basic summary and there's cool power armor and

you know genetically modified enemy and cool techie things that happen in the story as well nick anything you want to add to that no that pretty much sums it up yeah a marine assault on a enemy position in the city of iran in algeria okay so nick i'll give you the next question the story has a lot going on there's i think there's a lot of different themes that we could pick up on. But definitely something that stood out to me is urban warfare and knowing that you've written a little bit about that in the past, the story set in 2038 in Iran. Why did you pick that as the setting? Well, we knew we wanted to do something set in a dense urban area. That's been an area of interest of mine for a few years. Took the urban warfare elective at the staff college

and then was lucky enough to get selected for in the army, what we call broadening fellowship, where i got to go to new york uh city for for a few weeks and like crawl around in the subways and sewers and stuff i think it's a theater that we have been uh not giving enough attention to a setting environment a combat environment that we haven't been giving enough attention to for too long i'm really afraid what's going to happen when we have to fight in a city next time so uh anytime i can remind people that that's the thing and we really need to focus on that or you know not totally, but we need to have it in our kit bag. I like to do that. And I chose Oran because I wrote my master's thesis in college about the Battle of Algiers. So I kind of have a

soft spot for Algeria. So that's why we went with that. I love that you highlighted tunnels and the subterranean piece. The first piece of writing I ever wrote professionally was about tunnels. I had been a lieutenant doing some training in 29 Palms where the Marine Corps does a lot of this large-scale training and there was a tunnel system and you know i was with the my platoon and we're like well what do we what do we do or i think someone asked me you know what what do we do now and it was like the the typical what do you do now riot foam riot foam is the answer yes so have riot foam in the story is that a real thing did you are you inspired by something or did you just look that up a lot of the tech we use actually either either it exists in one form

another it's in development right and if you look up riot foam there it it exists but i think it's it's used uh it's fired like out of a device that sprays the foam um and it apparently doesn't work that great yet you know it's not a great piece of gear but when it comes to the foam you know when i was on embassy duty we had these canisters of cs they're about the size of coffee cans that that we could use to defend the embassy with and i just like the idea of a of a of that technology being used in a hand grenades coffee can size you know way to dispense the ordinance not only did we want to have cool tech we were thinking about well how would the marines misuse this right right you know uh how you know what could go wrong with you know what's the problem

with having this there's advantages but there's the disadvantage you know billy riot foams his bunkmate into the his wall locker you know what i mean because marines are marines but yeah that the the idea of the foam exists just how we use it doesn't right it's not that developed yet yeah that's an interesting way to think about new technology right now how do we want to use it but also how is somebody gonna misuse it you know how is it not going to be idiot proof in the future Right. Well, and some of the ideas for that actually came up. My last duty station was Yuma, Arizona. And that was interesting for an infantry guy to be stationed in the air wing. But there was a drone squadron there. And the drone squadron got their hands on this big, like industrial 3D printer. And the squadron commander had no idea to do with it. So basically, he installed it in the barracks and told his Marines, hey, play with this thing, come up with some ideas. And the Marines actually started printing out drone parts and assembled a working drone in the barracks using this 3D printer.

And so I was like, hmm, how could this go bad? You know, I'm a sergeant major, so I'm like, okay, what could possibly go wrong with this? But to me, it was a fascinating idea and to take that a step further, you know, in the story. that just that that kind of intrigued me i think that's the the messaging from the the all the way up to the con of the marine corps where they want to go and they start seeing 3d printing and you know that kind of fabrication and and some of the new uh documents that are coming out so i think you guys are definitely definitely onto something what's what was the exoskeleton and it seemed like i like the way that you wrote it i don't think you ever described up front

exactly what it was it was like bits and pieces a little bit of description about it so i'm had in my imagination what it was but maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what you you all imagined without i don't know describing it so much that you're putting it you're putting it in our mind and nothing's left up to the imagination right yeah so uh i'm a huge power armor fan from way back when i first read starship troopers of course and uh and armor by john Stakely. The Legacy of the Aldonata series has power armor. I tried to work in a little bit. Also, the Marines being new to the armor, maybe not being as good with it as some of their fellows, and tried to think realistically. Any new piece of gear that you get is going to have

some bugs and kinks, and you're just not going to get used to it as the same as everybody else. so we wanted that in there and then also uh i'm i'm really frustrated uh was hoping as a young lieutenant that this thing called future combat system was was actually going to end up happening and you would uh you would have a helmet with a monocle with a hood and you could uh you could see where your guys were even through buildings with the you know little indicators on your on your eye screen that didn't really end up ever happening although they they did field test it I don't think they could ever get the battery small enough, but Hey, this is a future fiction and I can have whatever I want.

So I decided that they figured out that problem. And, and so these, these Marines are able to take advantage of that. And yeah, we didn't really want to get nitty gritty into detail because, you know, some, some of this is the viewer imagining what they want it to be. You know, I think that's good, good sci-fi and, and good writing. And you, you said it in 2038. So, you know, you've got 18 years, We've got 18 years to figure this, figure out riot. Get hot on it, America, come on.

Figure out exoskeletons. Something else in the story that I thought was interesting was some of the, we'll just call them enemy, enemy fighters are, you call them jennies, or at least that's what the Marines call them. So can you explain, Mike, that a little bit, what was going on there? Yeah, well, one of the technologies we wanted to explore was the genetic modification of humans we kind of don't we don't we allude to that there's the chinese and the iranians have been experimenting and you know the chinese are the idea is the chinese are field testing their

stuff by giving it away to these other groups right to fight the americans um we don't explicitly say that we imply it because you know the americans are investing in technology more and we don't say it in the story but you know me and nick talk and we kind of came up with the idea that the americans don't want a bunch of genetically modified super soldiers coming home right you know and so they're investing in technology vice modification whereas you know the chinese government has no moral problems doing that to people right and using that resource so jen jenny is just the the marine slang for a genetically modified soldier a genetically modified combatant and we just thought that was a fun way to for them to

articulate that no i think that makes sense right of course everything everything's going to be shortened and acronymized and you know it's like you know speaking their own their own language but i really appreciated that there was a pretty oblique that pretty oblique reference to to china or russia i don't think either of them were named and i haven't read all of the other essays that we put out on on sims like yeah i absolutely will because the the other ones are really good too but my hunch is that almost all of them are going to be about russia china pacific great power competition um and and i'm guilty of of doing that writing too but i did think it was really refreshing that that you all at least touch that more tangentially and that was kind of a

an interesting an interesting take but at the same time maybe a little depressing that it's still kind of like greater middle east well and you know we and we've been thinking about the story for a while frankly like uh one of the ways we've been we've had tossing ideas for a long time and august cole wrote was an automated valor and we read that we're both like dude we need to write about that that's awesome and uh that was one of the things that kind of inspired this story was his story you know from a literary idea you know ernest hemingway has this philosophy of the iceberg theory and there's more under the surface than they than you're showing and as an author you know he's saying like the more you omit from the story the better it is and let the reader kind

of figure those things out and uh that kind of really worked well for us in this in this story because you know you're able to imagine other things about the power armor and oh yeah that must have been the chinese you know what i mean without us telling you those things the reader's able to kind of figure that out definitely and i think it you know it's like you're teasing the reader a little bit even in a short piece of fiction that can be more difficult to do so can i ask how how long ago this idea came nick and and how how long did it take you guys to write this so it's been probably a year or 18 months that we've been tossing around you know a similar idea where uh where a unit on the battlefield needs a resource from higher needs a need you

know support from higher and and for one reason or another denied it and the ways that they could kind of on the spot innovate a way to to actually make it happen we didn't know exactly how the end would go down really even when we really even when we started writing it and uh and that kind it just happened organically i i really like to just let the characters do what they do and be surprised when i'm when i'm writing it down and then uh so uh i uh we basically just back and forth since about february or march we'd uh send it back to each other maybe once a week and add a couple of paragraphs or tune it up here and there with notes and i don't know took us maybe a month or six weeks to get it where we we were at a good what we felt like was a 90 product and then

luckily i was worried because i was pcsing up here to holland right at that right at the time we had to submit um but luckily i was never in a place without a without an internet connection so um that it ended up just falling into place pretty pretty nicely time wise then to be clear this was something that you had in the works before uh sim sec and and proceedings released their their call for papers call for submissions for the contest this was already in development we had played with a couple different ideas like one version of the story actually involved the pmc and we were just kind of playing with we were like serious we're just playing around with ideas and then like like said kind of you know over the year we were just kind of like what about this and what

about that we'd start writing something and kind of put it away and then when we kind of committed to this contest, we were like, okay, we really got to produce something. And I keep joking with people. It felt like, like we were trying to do a term paper and turn it in on time, right? That's the kind of pressure you're under. Yeah. The deadline actually worked for us. So. Okay. And when you say PMC, we're talking private military contractor, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Not to give away, you know, the ending. So one of the other things that I thought was really interesting or that I appreciate about the story is there's, I think I counted

three female Marines in the platoon that were explicitly called out as female, including one of the squad leaders and the Lieutenant herself. Obviously that was intentional. So what was, what was the thinking there? Well, honestly, it just served the story better that that's who they were. You know, there's no, we're not trying to make a statement or anything it just made it a better story with those characters being the way they way we presented them that's the long answer man like we there's no agenda there's no you know it was just a better story with them in it so no that makes sense that's as that's as good a reason as any uh you know to to make the story better i mean that's you're really i guess you say that's your only

responsibility as the authors right to write a good story and it worked for you you know you won that you won the contest well i'm getting like i don't like the whole pandering thing i would hate to give that impression if it works with a story i want it in there anything else you want to add there nick no no totally agree that they they felt right in this place and time for this story so they worked so i want to pivot a little bit and ask about the uh the crux of the story you know and i don't know how much we can do this without giving it away but obviously the title is crowdfunded was there something that inspired that or did you guys come up with this organically or that kind of intersection with pmcs where did that come from

i went to i did a rotation at the national training center at fort irwin back in wow i'm dating myself this is 2016 or 17 and uh they were having a huge problem with soldiers having their cell phones there was a guy that almost got backed over actually in the motor pool by a by a tank because the because the kid was on his the driver was on his phone and that made a big impression on me because it was i saw i saw how fruitless it was to try and get those away from the soldiers soldiers are going to have cell phones soldiers are going to have internet connection they're going to have either through satellite or what they are going to use and as mike mentioned earlier They're also going to misuse technology to try to make their own lives easier and to try to save their own lives if they can, to try and help each other.

So that's just what I was thinking about. I couldn't speak for Mike, but that's kind of what started it for me is they are going to find a way to get things done that they want to. And as leaders, we're going to have to plan with taking that into account. That's really an interesting angle. So you saw it more as the, it was inspired more by the technology that would make that possible rather than the intersection of the regular military and private military contractors. For me, it was. Yeah. Same thing for you, Mike?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, Nick's spot on. I can't tell. As I was retiring, the technology, that whole Pokemon game came out and people rocking around base with their phones up their nose. Here we are with F-35 squadrons and everybody's got this device in their pocket. It's only going to get bigger and the problems are only going to multiply as the technology advances and you know one of the things we even talk about is how in the story is how okay none of the marines are able to even access the internet unless they're the it guy of the platoon or whatever right because there's lance corporal

hadley who's like the com he's one of the important characters because they aren't able to accomplish mission without this lance corporal who's able to do all this stuff right so do you imagine that is is maybe there was a time when everyone in the platoon could could connect to the web and they had to scale that back and limit it to only one only the the rl for me the idea came from when i was in the air squadrons they were talking about you know when people ask them questions about well why don't we just have an all drone air capability and the comment was there's not enough bandwidth on planet earth for us to fly entire air forces of drones and so that kind to spark the idea is if we use up all the bandwidth with the drones start falling out of the sky like

at what point are we gonna okay you know all right marines you're deployed no netflix no you know you know you're done you know when we get to the rear you can skype your girlfriend or whatever you know otherwise they'd be ordering pizzas in the battlefield right like amazon would be delivering you know new socks to marines that you know uh in the city of iran and we just you know we wanted to kind of kind of allude to that like hey there's problems here we're going to have to think about. I agree and I think that's probably some of the stuff that's going on you know if you looked at recent after actions from from 29 Palms and major field exercises that are you know these guys are admitting all over there's people are taking selfies you know and you can use open

source methods to figure out you know who's doing what and where they're operating. So we've got an Army major and a retired Marine Sergeant major. Obviously there's a leadership angle here I think There's a lot of ways you could cut it, but it seemed like one of the themes of the story is that, is this, this tension between, and I think you mentioned it, Mike, people who want to get something done at the tactical edge, at the battlefield, at the lower level and higher, you know, whatever level higher, whether company or platoon or regiment or division that's pushing back and trying to hold these guys back a little bit. And how did you see that? And is there anything specific that you're thinking of that inspired that? probably a lot of things right probably 25 years of experience because there's always no matter what level you're at right in that chain of things you're always going you're responding to whoever's higher than you by thinking in your mind don't they know I'm trying to get this done right and if you're higher than somebody you're like why aren't

you giving me more information right in the meantime that guy below you is trying to do his job like leave me alone and that's just the nature of you know organizations and institutions really and you know guys that are on the cutting edge hate the people that are in the rear right because i make a remark about a self-serve ice cream machine right and and i may have said that in real life a few times but i'm sure and you know the in this case you know those guys and those commodity billets they have their mission they're trying to get something done and they don't I used to say this about the Marine Corps once I got into a headquarters company, as I realized that each commodity thought their slice of the pie was the Marine Corps. No, we have a mission. We have to support the mission. Your thing isn't the thing.

And so that just happens. So I think military readers will see that and recognize that in their own careers, right? Like, oh, yeah, it's happened to me, you know, where there's just a misunderstanding or lack of cooperation. So, Nick, I'll pose that to you, I guess, in a slightly different way. Is there anything you wanted readers to take away from the story? I mean, is there like a moral to the story or were you really just writing something that you thought was fun to write and was interesting and readers can make of it what they will? my main goal was to entertain to write a story that i would want to read as a science fiction lover and as a fiction lover i don't there's not a i'm not uh wearing a beard on top of a mountain i don't know i don't have the answers to anything profound really but i i do think we are ignoring

the mega city problem at our peril there are people doing some real good yeoman work like john spencer at west point and uh retired sf colonel pat mahaney um who was at fort hamilton last i knew there are some of those guys doing that where it's not that it's not that the issue is being ignored or that those people are being told to shut up i just man we we really need to we really need to all of us think about how we're going to attack this problem because i don't think we're going to be able to avoid combat in a really dense urban area so if there's any less than maybe it's maybe it's just that but mostly i just wanted to entertain that makes a lot of sense yeah and and to our listeners i would definitely recommend if you're interested in the urban

warfare or megacities type problem um we'll post a link to the article that that nick wrote in us and i proceedings and and i would pair it off nick and say there's some really great work coming out of west points modern warfare institute and john spencer i think heads up their group that does urban warfare and we post some links in there yeah i hope it's not being ignored uh like you're saying i know they just closed or shut down the army's asymmetric warfare group and i think those guys were leading the charge on at least some of the subterranean and uh and tunnel type type fight that was one of the reasons that was the the the whole point of the story contest you know i mean like nick and i aren't really science fiction guys we're not necessarily into near

future stuff but you know that was what simsec and us and i were asking for is like hey what's a near future concept what are some of the issues we're going to deal with in the near future so we really wanted to put as much as we could hey think about these things you know and and that was that was kind of our goal you know entertain us entertain ourselves and hey these are the problems that are coming up think about i think that's a lot of the value that you can have with with good fiction like the story that that you all wrote is you know you don't have all the answers but just some please somebody be thinking about this um so i also want to ask what what fiction i think both of you have said you're you're into sci-fi and fiction what are you

reading i know you mentioned automated valor is a big i don't know would you say an inspiration what yeah what do you like to read that kind of prepped you to write this or that you're just reading and is not related to this project excellent question go nick so right now i am on the second book of the three body problem uh series which i don't remember the name of the book but it's that it's that series and then uh and then non-fiction oh i just finished or i just finished rereading uh death traps by belton cooper about uh armor maintenance in world war ii oh yeah i was like what have i been reading i've been joking i'm laughing because uh i've been reading a lot of textbooks because i'm using up that gi bill so i've been taking like uh english lit and creative

writing courses and i'm a theater minor as well so most of the stuff i've been reading is about storytelling which works yeah i mean i guess that's that's one way to uh to approach writing science fiction is to think about it from a storytelling perspective you know the only other thing i would add to that is um one of the things that kind of intrigue us right now is the ai stuff and that's one of the themes in automated valor as well nick and i are one of the stories without giving too much away exploring that artificial intelligence capability and like how that might be used and again misused or what could go wrong is kind of without turning it into lawnmower man i might be dating myself by making that reference yeah i have no idea what that is

oh it was Skynet way before the Terminator how's that um okay okay but that's kind of one of the things that interests us is interesting us right now and we're talking about and kicking back and forth is something along that line you know and then again that's I think in the I don't know what's how's the word the zeitgeist is that the right use of the word like that's something that's kind of out there that everybody's talking about and interested in and it's interesting to us right now so you mentioned automated valor can you tell us a little more about that i'm not familiar and i you know i'm sure some of our listeners are not familiar with that story uh august cole wrote that for us and i for proceedings and it's about if my memory

is serving me correctly i think it's a british platoon british army or british command i'm not sure if they're british marines or british army but um in a uh an armored personnel carrier uh that has a kind of a, it's, it's really advanced. Uh, let's just say not, not to spoil it for you and, uh, to kind of the way that they, um, conduct themselves in a battle. It's a, it's, it's very good. He's August. Cole's the one that wrote, um, Pete Singer wrote ghost fleet. He's got a new one, uh, out also, uh, recently this year, but yeah, so we, we read that story and just really liked it. And, um, so maybe,

maybe some seeds for crowdfunded were planted when we read that that story so i know uh august cole and pw singer when they do ghost fleet and they do um burnin i think was their most recent one they footnote or they use notes in the back of the story um to show the reader that their ideas are not so crazy and they're not just making them up did you guys consider using that same kind of style in the story that you wrote so i actually stuck some in and we ended up taking them out because of a to get under word count um there weren't there weren't a ton but when i you know when i found something interesting either about the city of oran or you know a particular drone technology that we mentioned or something uh it wasn't every paragraph like those like those

gentlemen when they write um with it with you know with a lot of footnotes but we did have some we just ended up taking it out for for space our listeners can know that it is not just from the minds of from the minds of you guys it's an imagination there there is some actual uh history and fact and science behind some of that stuff that y'all are coming up with yeah i think i said this earlier but all the technologies were referenced actually exist or are in development in one form or the other we just made you know the clap back array at the beginning of the story you know is the technology it's not called that but you know it's just made smaller and fits on the power armor you know the exo armor of the marines as they're using it as opposed to being

mounted on the vehicle or something i appreciate that i think vaguely remembering reading something um i can't remember which news outlet that said that in china they are interested in genetically modified soldiers and i think i read it like two or three days after i read your story so yeah you guys are you guys are right in the middle of it and it's definitely uh definitely interesting to see those links back to the story. I think August Cole and P.W. Singer, I think they call those like burn-in moments or something when they wrote something in fiction and then it shows up a week later or a year later in the news. Awesome. Well, we're going to have to try that again then. You know, you just told us what you've been reading. What are you not reading or what

have you read that you thought was not very good that you, I don't know, can you say negative inspiration? What did you, did you read anything that you learned from that you were not inspired from and you did not want to emulate oh wow that's a good question i've got one immediately that comes to mind i don't want to throw shade but there's a particular zombie series uh where the main character and a lot of the main characters military and there's it's it's so bad it's so terrible that i i was like i i hope i never write something like this uh he got all of the customs wrong you got all the phrasing wrong a lot of like privileges of rank and stuff i i just i think it's it was clear to me that the author had never known anybody in the military

been in the military and uh which is fine but like do your research you know that's uh that's the one i think about when i think good lord i hope i never write like that if i'm not mistaken nick you've written something about that right i think i saw something uh online that you you took some shots in writing against that particular zombie series yeah so i wrote an article for jesus years ago now for task and purpose about uh tips for surviving the zombie apocalypse really is a really kind of as a tongue-in-cheek way to get into talking about disaster prep yeah yeah i did i did throw some shade in that article yeah i actually wrote one for task and purpose about uh the walking dead and like they changed the title to like you know uh you know

basically the idea was like the walking dead is is a is an instruction manual on how to die horribly during the apocalypse like rip apart all their decision making you know we have issues people who don't get us right you know oh man i'm trying to think of books like i really enjoy uh what was it old man's war by john scalzi i love that series but and i think he does some research but he doesn't have a like a military mind like the soldiers don't think to me like soldiers um i don't think it ruins the story for him but i think there's even a comment he even makes a comment where they're if you're familiar with the story they hate marines they hate recruiting marines because they think they know everything and all this stuff and i personally

took over no i didn't the bottom line is when they say i have soldiers or military people who don't do or say things the way military people do that kind of bothers us no that's fair and i'm sure all of our all of our listeners that are that are active duty or retired know you know there's that one movie or that one book or a lot of books and a lot of movies that they've seen and read that get it not quite right or like very not right and it doesn't always ruin the the movie You can definitely enjoy some movies and books that get it wrong, but yeah, it's definitely better when it's gotten right. It doesn't have to be, like you were saying, it doesn't have to be a retired or active duty author, but there's a research component. Nick, did you find it difficult to write from a Marine Corps perspective? Was there any tension between the two of you in deciding whether this was going to be a story about a Marine platoon or an Army platoon or something like that? No, I figured we'd go Marine Corps because it's for USNI and CIMSEC, you know, that just made sense to me. And I don't really, I don't think at least there was any tension. I have a soft spot for Marines because in the EOD community, we work really closely with other branches, probably unlike a lot of other MOSs.

So I've known, and Marine EOD techs are incredibly good. I've never met a bad Marine bomb tech. They're all really, really, really smart and good and tough. And so I have a lot of respect for Marines and probably more experience working with them than your average soldier. But so I figured we needed it to be a Marine Corps platoon or unit. And then, yeah, I mean, other than a couple of times I used a slang term that Mike was like, no, no, no, Marines wouldn't say that. I referenced I had the platoon leader call her grunts Joes at one point. And Mike was like, what is what? What is that?

And I was like, what do you do? Do you guys not say anything? No, no. So he helped me fix some of those little things. But but other than that, no, I didn't see any tension from my end. No, I definitely appreciate it. I felt like the language was pretty good. And I was, you know, not reading somebody that was not a Marine writing about Marines as a grunt myself. Mike, did you feel similarly? I mean, did you have to do a lot of coaching to get the Marine-isms just quite right? no you know what nick said is pretty much on point there's just a couple times i'm like hey you know that's not something we would say you know just retranslating into something we don't say platoon leaders right we say things little things like that and really we've never had that kind of we really don't even joke around with each other too much like that you know what i mean like that

email reply i sent to you is probably like one of the first times we've ever given each other a hard time about you know our service so yeah that's never really been a huge deal between us and yeah it was it was pretty seamless other than little cultural differences between our services that we figured out in the writing and I really did like some of the humor I found myself laughing a couple times during the story which is I feel like a lot of times you read a story and it's either funny or it's a good you know near future sci-fi and this one was was really both and I I really appreciated that. And I guess, Mike, you know, are you just illustrating that with your own working in your own sea stories

or, or where, you know, where's that humor coming from? It comes from the fact that I'm a smart ass, which got me in a lot of trouble over 26 years. But at any rate, no, you know, the thing that makes a good story is the human, you know what I mean? That's the story. The human beings interacting makes you identify with the characters. And I think in putting in good dialogue like that, it really, again, helps the story, serve the story. There's a great series of books by, was it Dave Sherman and Dan Craig called Starfish Series.

And they're about Marines in space. The best way to describe their stories is it's like Vietnam era Marines in outer space adventures. And it really has to do with the way the Marines talk to each other and their stories. So I kind of wanted to capture that kind of feeling because that's the stuff you miss when you leave, right? That's the stuff we talk about. No one's talking about the MRAP, right? And the cool gadgets that were on it. They're talking about the time Billy threw up in his helmet in the back of

the MRAP, right? You know? So that's the kind of feeling we wanted to capture is that familiarity that we kind of all have in our experience in the service. And I think that really came across. And so I, I appreciate that. And it just, it made it really enjoyable to read. And I hope anybody listening to this goes and reads it. You know, I've already read it, I think two or three times in preparation for this podcast, but also just because I thought it was a really cool story.

The last thing that I'll ask you guys, what are you going to do with the prize money? It was 500 bucks, right? That you got from USNI and like a year long subscription. We're kind of nerds. I'm going to guess Nick's going to spend his on video games. and uh we're friends with a guy named jay arnold who's got a podcast called the veteran war gamer and he's a big war gaming guy and he's got me painting tanks so i'm probably going to spend the money on nerdy war gaming stuff i guess that comes with the territory when you're writing

award-winning science fiction nick what are you what are you going to spend it on i'm embarrassed to admit mike's right cyberpunk 2077 is about to come out and uh that's that's where some of that money's going and the rest, you know, I got to feed and diaper kids and that's where the rest of that's going to go. Fortunately, that's all the time we have for today. So I'd like to thank our guests, Michael Burke and Nick Nethery for a really interesting conversation about sci-fi and fiction and their award-winning story. You can read it online at both SimSec and in USNI Proceedings. But before we go, I want to ask them both what they're working on and where we can find them online. So Mike, over to you first. Oh man, it was an election year,

so I've been off social media mostly, but you can find me on Twitter, America Sergeant Major, Facebook as well. If enough people start clicking on it, I suppose I'll have to start producing content. And right now, you know, I'm using up the GI Bill, working on my degree, and hopefully when I get done with that, we'll start producing more. We're already kicking around ideas for another story so stand by for action all right standing by nick over to you what what are you working on and and where can we find you online yeah i'm i'm still active duty so i maintain a little bit of a smaller online footprint just because this job and my last job they're uh you know they're real worried about being collected on so i just i kind of limit my exposure online

but we are kicking around ideas like mike said for another story or two and then uh yeah maybe maybe when i get out in a few years i'll i'll be a little more visible to the public awesome yeah we'll look for your next story and we'll make sure that we throw up some links to the blog that you've got going and some of the other stuff thanks again for joining me and to our listeners thanks for tuning in we'll see you next week sea control is produced and edited by keegan ingersoll ed sallow and william mcquiston © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Help me, Bob, I'm bullied in the alley.

Why are they bullying me in the alley? Help me, Bob, I'm bullied in the alley. Put it out of the chamber now.