Under Pressure

Living Life and Avoiding Death on a Nuclear Submarine

By: Richard Humphreys

Narrated by: Richard Humphreys

This is the world of the submariner. This is life under pressure.

What’s it like to spend three months without sunlight, sharing what little space you have with over a hundred fellow crewmen and more firepower than all the bombs dropped in World War II combined? This is the world of the submariner. This is life under pressure.

As a restless and adventurous eighteen-year-old, Richard Humphreys joined the Royal Navy submarine service. For five years during the Cold War, he served on the nuclear sub HMS Resolution. Nothing could have prepared him for life beneath the waves. He existed in a world without natural light, surrounded by 140 other men, all eating the same food, breathing the same air, smelling the same putrid smells and surviving together in some of the most forbidding conditions imaginable.

Based on Humphreys’ firsthand experience, Under Pressure is the candid, visceral and incredibly entertaining account of what it’s like to live, work, sleep and eat—and stay sane—in one of the most extreme man-made environments on the planet.

Another World

I like being transported to world I have never and could never experience, and this book does that very well. Excellent! A word about the narration; yes, it is wooden and flat. The only thing that could make it worse would be to have someone else narrate it. As it is, it is thoroughly authentic. You really feel like you are sitting in a pub over a pint with the author while he reminisces about his time as a submariner. Well worth your time to listen!

Great Book!

The author has a great sense of humor! He liberally uses sarcasm, which is not “whining” as another reviewer said, and I personally think he’s hilarious. Not everything suits everyone, and ihe is honest about what doesn’t suit him. What was he supposed to do, lie and pretend to love it? The military can be a goofy, pretentious institution that takes itself too seriously. And who wants to read a book which says “I got along with meveryone and it was great and we were all best friends.” Generally speaking, the most interesting people in the world, the 1/1000th of 1% of people who tend to write books, don’t play well with others. They are oddballs, outcasts, misfits, freaks, weirdos … they are different, and thank god for them because they make the world a far more interesting place. They don’t tend to get along swimmingly with the normals. If this guy were like everyone else, we’d wouldn’t;t be reading or listening this book, after a,l, the other sailors on his boat didn’t write one, He was also quite young. It takes awhile to find your place in the world sometimes.

So whine on my friend, just promise to let listen along because I totally get it. Maybe it takes one to know one?

Anyway, great book, very interesting, and pretty funny too.

Thanks for publishing this!

Not for me

Any resemblance to an American Submarine is a figment of one's imagination. This book is nothing but continuous Whines, served with no cheese. I believe the author's statement that he did not get on with the rest of the crew says all that needs to be said about his attitude. I spent 30 years in the navy, with all my service on or in support of Submarines. We had whiners like this and we did not bully them, we just ignored them, as long as they did not put others in danger or put the boat in danger. In the Navy I was in, people that were as unhappy as the writer was, had the courage to walk out and stand on the pier, and not make life hell for those around them. He whines continuously about stink on the boat. I will agree with him, as the British boats I visited in the late 60s and early 70s were stinking filthy hulls, that I could not get off of fast enough. I do not recommend this book to anyone that wants to find out what life was like on an American Submarine.