 This is a moment in time that may never come. The telephone won't be answered. Nobody's home. Not here. Or here. Or here. Not many hours ago, these streets were alive with people and sound. Now there is silence. A loud absence of sound that follows a total evacuation. This is the geographical center of the evacuated area. At the bottom of that hole in the ground is an enemy nuclear device, a bomb. It was intended for a target some miles distant, but a malfunction delivered here. Perhaps it was a second malfunction that prevented detonation. But it is also possible that a time delay fuse is still working perfectly. Either way, this is now a potential ground zero. From now on it becomes a guessing game. Will it go off, and if so, when? How long? A day? Hours? Minutes? Seconds? We don't know the answers, and neither do these men. They do know the destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons, and they do know that survival and safety exist only miles from where they're standing. But with these soldiers, the instinct for self-preservation is not an individual matter. Their efforts are directed toward preserving property and other lives, and in the process, they must invariably gamble with their own. And at best it is always a gamble. They come equipped with knowledge, with intelligence, with experience, and with highly developed skills. There's a good chance they can pull the enemy bomb's nuclear teeth, render it safe, if the malfunction doesn't suddenly correct itself, if it isn't time to go off too soon, if it doesn't detonate before they've had a chance to test their talents on it. At best it will be a gamble, but they'll take it, looking ahead in time to a moment that hopefully may never arrive. It could happen in the future. It may happen in the future. As of this moment, however, what we have been looking at is pure fiction. But it is a fact that there are men like these, and it is a fact that they are ready and willing to take such chances to risk their lives almost every day of the week. This story has roots that extend back centuries in time. It begins with an invention. Then, to a chemical discovery, a little imagination is added. A device has been created. A device which delivers the first man-made explosion is also the ever-present element of imperfection. And imperfection breeds a new problem. Uncertainty. It is a problem that grows with the passing centuries, expanding slowly at first and then in the mid-1900s, demanding action by announcing itself with explosive fury. Early in September 1940, during World War II, many of the bombs dropped on London with guns, and many contained something which added a new sophistication to terror, the delayed action views, time to detonate anywhere from one to 80 hours after impact. By late September, there were over 3,000 unexploded bombs buried in metropolitan London, and the threat of sudden death and destruction which was posed by these unexploded bombs provided the military with its first clear view of the extent of a problem of the aftermath of military action, a deadly heritage of explosive devices that for one reason or another failed to detonate. This threat must be neutralized. It is a job which must be done by men in uniform who have to be nothing less than experts. Explosive Ordnance Disposal I am here for Explosive Ordnance Disposal duties and training for such duties. I realize and fully understand that this duty is hazardous and involves the use and disposal of explosives, including materials that may be highly volatile or radioactive. Explosive Ordnance Disposal E-O-D The United States Army officer or enlisted man who signs this paper must be above average in intelligence. He must not be unduly allergic to high explosives. He must qualify for a top-secret security clearance and he must be in perfect mental and physical condition. A good brain, steady nerves, a strong back, and a willingness to risk all three. If he can muster this combination of assets, he gets to sign this volunteer statement and his story begins. We'll meet him first in the state of Maryland at a place called Indian Head. He is about to become part of a student body that wears a variety of uniforms. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. All E-O-D volunteers come to Indian Head for this is a unique, highly specialized installation. Inside this building, which is part of the United States Navy's Explosive Ordnance Disposal School, the E-O-D volunteer begins the process of learning his trade. His subject for today and for each and every day of his future life in E-O-D is explosive ordinance. An estimated total of well over 50,000 different destructive devices are now potentially his personal business. Devices big and small, simple and sophisticated, seemingly innocuous but actually deadly. The range is vast, from a blasting cap to an artillery shell, a hand grenade to an aerial bomb, a mortar shell to a landmine, a rocket to a guided missile, a stick of dynamite to a nuclear weapon. And since he will be working not with these devices, but against them, he has no choice but to become an expert on his subject. In its early stages, the process of becoming an E-O-D expert is simply a matter of teaching the student every category of explosive ordinance with which he may someday come in contact. He must know what they are, what they are made of, how they work, and above all how he can stop them from working. He must absorb facts about a thousand and one different explosive devices and a thousand and one different methods by which they are made to detonate. Fuses, mechanical, chemical, electrical. Instantaneous and delayed action. Fuses activated by impact, by magnetic fields, by sounds, by vibration, by heat, by light. And fuses activated by a disturbance as slight as the approaching footsteps of an E-O-D man. Explosive ordinance, when the E-O-D man gets to it, rarely carries a clear, easy to read label. This adds another mandatory prerequisite for E-O-D work, an excellent memory. Captain, can you tell me about this item? This is a 1-5, 5-millimeter howitzer with a VT fuse. How about you, Sergeant Boylan? Can you name this round? 90-millimeter heat round with a P-I-B-D fuse. What about this one, Stephen Smith? A 75-millimeter HEP round with a base fuse. Lieutenant Lewis, a 1-22-millimeter Soviet mortar, HE with a P-D fuse. Sergeant Clark, a 3-inch HVAP without fuse. Sergeant Cleary, 4.2 HE mortar with a P-D fuse. His memory must be quick, it must be accurate, and it must be capable of storing an abundance of entries. This is Stumpneck, another part of the E-O-D school. We're still in Maryland, but not in the immediate vicinity of any sign of civilization. It is here at Stumpneck that the student receives his first practical taste of actual explosive ordinance disposal. You might say that it is here that he really meets the bomb, but known or unknown reasons it has failed to detonate, and that makes it his business. This exercise, part of a period of practical training, allows the student to try the most common method of disposal, which is to detonate the bomb, destroy it in place. This method involves the usual hazards of handling high explosives, but is not particularly delicate or tricky. Why then so cautious? Because it's a dud, and duds are unpredictable. A slight jar could activate its fuse, and even without external prompting, there is always the possibility that a malfunction could suddenly correct itself. The most unlikely, improbable, but still a possibility. The one dubious constellation is that should the unexpected detonation take place, he will never hear the explosion. The practical training phase continues. A prediction of future duties in the field, occasions when success will be more difficult to come by, occasions when the hard labor of excavation work is only a prelude, a relatively easy and uncomplicated first step. This exercise anticipates such an occasion. It assumes that there are critical installations in the vicinity, making deliberate detonation impossible, leaving the EOD officer in charge with just one alternative. He must now perform what is called a render-safe procedure, and it is now that his work becomes extremely delicate, decidedly tricky, particularly hazardous. In any render-safe operation, much depends upon environment, the conditions under which the device is found. What render-safe procedure will he follow? The recommended one, or possibly a new one, devised on the spot, necessitated by some new unforeseen circumstance. He makes the final evaluation, the final choice. The decision, the responsibility, the authority, and the one life that will inevitably be lost if failure results are all his. A render-safe procedure is a recommended method or technique for disarming a particular device or type of device. There are many such procedures for use against explosive ordnance of the United States and our allies, and where possible, against foreign ordnance. Sometimes it's a matter of removing the explosive filler. Sometimes it's a matter of deactivating the item, by removing the fuse, by stopping it, by disabling it, by... by countless methods. We won't be seeing any render-safe procedures. They're all classified, and with good reason. If the procedure applies to one of our weapons, it is information we do not wish to provide for a potential enemy. If it applies to weapons used against us, it is usable only so long as the enemy doesn't know about it. If he learns just how we are rendering his weapons safe, then he can easily make one or two simple changes. And a render-safe procedure becomes certain depth for the next EOD man who tries to utilize it. There are many render-safe procedures, all theoretically sound, and utilizing many ingenious tools and devices. But no procedure is mandatory. They can only be recommended as the best method known. A study of the render-safe requirements is made by an EOD research and development team under the direction of the United States Army Munitions Command. This study is conducted during the development of new weapons, and therefore can avoid the need of a special set of render-safe tools and procedures for each new weapon. During development, great emphasis is placed on standardizing render-safe tools and the recommended procedures. This building houses the Schools Division 6, which offers an intensive six-week training session. Here the EOD man is prepared for what might well be his ultimate assignment, for the subject is NWD, nuclear weapons disposal. Now he has completed 19 weeks of highly technical training, including NWD, and he is no longer a student. He is a soldier who has demonstrated that he is mentally, physically, and psychologically equipped to handle a job the Army classifies as hazardous. He is now ready for a field assignment, ready for EOD field duty. The EOD field detachment consists of nine enlisted men and one officer. There are a number of such detachments in the continental United States and overseas. Every man in the detachment has been through the Navy School in Maryland, and each is a fully qualified EOD technician. Each detachment is in every positive sense of the word, a team. One of the reasons men volunteer for EOD is to escape the monotony of routine work. But routine, even in EOD, is unavoidable. There are reports to be made, and there is equipment to be maintained. The tools of the EOD trade are many and varied. A detachment's equipment storage room packs everything from a screwdriver to radiation detection instruments, and all must be kept in perfect working order. Standardization of render safe tools keeps to a minimum the amount of special equipment that must be on hand and avoids the confusion of having a specialized tool for each weapon. So routine, but of great importance to our national defense, are training sessions offered to civil defense and local police personnel. They are taught explosive ordinance reconnaissance, how to locate, identify, and evaluate unexploded ordinance. Over 100,000 people have been trained by Army EOD personnel, and the number is increasing daily. If the need ever arises, they will constitute a civilian army that may well save thousands of lives in EOD work. The disposal of highly volatile rocket fuel has it, certainly, but nonetheless it qualifies as routine. A day-to-day job, a regular repeated procedure. Another routine is the standby alert. This occurs whenever nuclear weapons are escorted in or through the detachment's area. Bridged safety measures make an accidental nuclear explosion as unlikely as a cosmic collision. But should a rail accident or any other transportation disaster involving nuclear weapons occur, the EOD team would still be left with the problem of rendering the weapon's conventional high-explosive charges safe and of safeguarding the nuclear materials. Even in EOD work, routine exists, but it can be shattered quickly by a telephone call. On the other end of the line, an incident is being reported, the discovery of an unexploded device that is threatening lives and property. What it is, where it is, we cannot predict. We can visualize some of the possibilities, though, by referring to EOD files of past incidents. It might be a recurrence of an incident like this one, a group of children playing with an object which is being used as a toy bomb. The object they are struggling over is a 37-millimeter World War I shell. Fortunately, the shell's existence was reported to local authorities and it found its way into the hands of an EOD officer. It's harmless now because the officer removed the charge of explosives that he found in it. Misguided souvenir hunters contribute quite a bit to keeping the EOD man's job free of routine. A five-inch shell found in a nursing home. A 155-millimeter howitzer projectile found near a housing development. A Japanese 70-millimeter high-explosive mortar shell. A Japanese hand grenade. A 20-millimeter projectile. And then we have the five landmines that were picked up at low tide near a power and light company plant. The three blocks of explosives found in a private home. The 75 pounds of assorted detonators. And so on. We can round out the picture by adding the bomb that was reported to be ticking away in the basement of the supermarket that turned out to be a quite harmless can of fermented fruit juice. And the century-old Civil War cannonball which was displayed in the Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street in New York City which turned out to contain a very live charge of black powder. And this is it. Minus the black powder which was removed by EOD men. This is a typical workload. The ordinance items handled by one EOD detachment in the course of one year of operation. 146 blasting caps. 500 small arms cartridges. 61 sticks of dynamite. One rifle grenade. 35 flares. Two bombs. 10 rockets. 43 grenades. Numerous Civil War items. And 44 artillery projectiles. And during the year the same EOD unit was also called on 87 bomb scares. Incidentally these incidents took place in and around Washington D.C. There are 863 items on that table. 181 of them can blind a man or a maim him. The remaining 682 were designed specifically to kill. This is the insignia worn by the soldiers in Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal. There aren't many of them but they're doing quite a job both here and overseas. There are EOD detachments operating in many parts of the world wherever our troops are stationed. These men have the responsibility for neutralizing all military explosive ordnance, domestic or foreign, that by accident or during wartime is fired, dropped or clandestinely placed on United States territory and has failed to detonate. The only exceptions to this are underwater incidents which are handled by the Navy and incidents occurring on Marine or Air Force installations which are handled by EOD personnel of the service involved. But even that rather formal statement doesn't cover the whole picture. They are also called on by local law enforcement agencies for assistance. They are also ready to face the grim possibility of enemy delivered ordnance containing warheads loaded with chemical or bacteriological death. This is not a nuclear weapon. It carries no bacteria, no chemicals that kill. Just the conventional high explosive filler. Of course to him it really makes no difference. At this range all bombs are fatal and this is his working range. But in time of war in the combat situation it is more important than ever that he stake his life, that he gamble against time in the unpredictable mechanical device. For upon his ability to remove an obstacle depends the success or failure of a critical tactical maneuver. It can kill him instantly if he makes the slightest mistake, the slightest slip, the most minute error, the excitement, a lack of monotony, the desire to save lives, the satisfaction of working with a proud small group of men, all these reasons and one more. That one is the age-old motivation, the challenge. He knows the thing is designed to kill him. He knows it's supposed to detonate and blow him to kingdom come. But he's damned if he's going to let it be the winner. Testimonial to the training, the intelligence, the skills and courage of these men that in the vast majority of incidents recorded in army explosive ordnance disposal records, the bomb has been the loser.