Eric Schlosser Quote

The cable and the X-unit both had female plugs. Somehow the cable had been installed backward. It would take a couple of days to disassemble the layers of spheres and explosives, remove the cable, and reinstall it properly. I felt a chill and started to sweat in the air-conditioned room, O’Keefe recalled. He decided to improvise. With help from another technician, he broke one major safety rule after another, propping the door open to bring in extension cords and using a soldering iron to attach the right plugs. It was risky to melt solder in a room with five thousand pounds of explosives. The two men fixed the cable, connected the plugs, and didn’t tell anyone what they’d done.

Eric Schlosser

The cable and the X-unit both had female plugs. Somehow the cable had been installed backward. It would take a couple of days to disassemble the layers of spheres and explosives, remove the cable, and reinstall it properly. I felt a chill and started to sweat in the air-conditioned room, O’Keefe recalled. He decided to improvise. With help from another technician, he broke one major safety rule after another, propping the door open to bring in extension cords and using a soldering iron to attach the right plugs. It was risky to melt solder in a room with five thousand pounds of explosives. The two men fixed the cable, connected the plugs, and didn’t tell anyone what they’d done.

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About Eric Schlosser

Eric Matthew Schlosser (born August 17, 1959) is an American journalist and food writer. He is known for his books Fast Food Nation (2001), Reefer Madness (2003), and Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (2013).