"But head for home it must: So complex is the plane's technology, and so tightly is it cloaked in secrecy, that it must be based on domestic soil. Air Force generals say the logistical demands of basing B-2s overseas - a huge parcel of land, control of the airspace, dozens of warehouses for parts and machinery and thousands of Americans with security clearances - are prohibitive.

...

'My mind is clicking off...I try letting one eyelid close at a time while I prop the other open with my will. But the effort's too much. Sleep is winning. My whole body argues dully that nothing, nothing life can attain is quite so desireable as sleep. My mind is losing resolution and control.'

Maintaining Lone Eagle Mode may be good for national mythmaking, but for ordinary humans it can be disastrous. Investigators say that sleep deprivation of key staff members played a part in such landmarks in human error as the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, the gas leak in Bhopal, the Chrernobyl nuclear disaster, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the crash of Korean Air Lines Flight 801."

(excerpt from The Washington Post's "War and Sleep" by Dana Priest. November 2002 pg. W.17)

This story was left in the box under the bed by Steve Badgett. Most of his time in This Neck of the Woods was spent in the cabin, sleeping. Seen above is Badgett in an underwater half-daze brushing the sleep off his teeth.

 

Steve Badgett (USA) was an official resident in This Neck of the Woods from October 15-20, 2006.

 

(return to TNOTW)

(go to steve's website)