How to Feed an Army - Gastro Obscura
“Remember in the first Terminator movie, when they’re crushing the Terminator? That’s basically what this machine does,” says Wesley Long, an equipment specialist in the Combat Feeding Division. The machine in question is capable of applying 20,000 pounds of downward force—roughly the equivalent of piling on seven standard compact cars. It has an official name, but everyone at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM) in the Natick Soldier Systems Center refers to it as “the Crusher.” The Crusher’s objective is to determine whether the contents of cardboard boxes can survive being squashed beneath an avalanche of military gear. Should a box and everything in it make it past the Crusher, Long subjects it to other forms of abuse, from a vibration test simulating the jolts endured in the back of a Jeep bumping along rough dirt roads to a drop test that mimics falling out of an airplane. “They make it, I try to break it,” Long says. Even the tiniest crac