Sep 8, 2015

“I’m sure it’s not. No EVA ever is, but we don’t have a choice. I’m going to have to dig us out. If I can do it so that I can get the hull patched under cover of these rocks than that’s even better.”

This line from Cloning Freedom points out a realization that I think comes to anybody that works in emergency services or other high risk professions. Some things are simply not safe, necessary, but not safe.

I was a lifeguard for a very long time and was disgusted when in training a young pup ridiculed me because I used a reaching assist to do a rescue. He went on that we were trained to ‘a higher standard.’ I pointed out that we weren’t there to look macho but to save lives as efficiently as possible and that a dry rescue was a safe rescue. I’ve done rescues both wet and dry, real and in training, but my guide has always been minimal risk.

On another occasion, while I was training for the ambulance, I stood in a pool of gasoline as we extracted a potential spinal injury. We worked fast but not frantic and there was a Fireman with an extinguisher who had us covered in case something happened. Again, the situation was inherently risky, but we did what we had to with what safe guards we could arrange.

This realization of risk is part and parcel of life in general. We are all always at risk, by accepting it and minimizing the risk we create a modicum of safety even in the most dangerous of situations.

In my opinion embracing unnecessary risk is foolish. This doesn’t mean you don’t climb the mountain, it means you check your ropes. It doesn’t mean you let the person drown, it does mean you have the tools in your skill set to do the least dangerous rescue that saves the person.

In Cloning Freedom I have my protagonists doing a host of risky things but always in the sense that what they do is the best of a bunch of bad options.