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Humans can survive nearly anything, and die to nearly anything. But injury is fucking easy. People pretend that anything short of death isn't a big deal, but death isn't why violence is scary. Every violent situation contains a distinct possibility of major injury for someone, usually everyone involved. The sort of thing that changes your life forever.
Even without death, a simple fistfight will almost certainly require months of healing and rehab, if you win. More if you lose. It is rare that a real fight ends without both participants having broken bones. Fingers and toes the most common, of course. Add weapons/vehicles and this risk skyrockets. There are a world of outcomes from violent situations, but few of them are as good for either party as before the fight. Even winning without injury has its psychological and social costs.
Yeah. Its like, unless you're being paid pretty handsomely, or defending your life or a loved one against an unavoidable attacker... why do you ever want to fight?
Break a limb and now you've got a medical bill and lost work, and that's assuming no permanent complications. Concussions suck. Brain damage sucks worse. To not even talk about para or quadriplegia, which we aren't yet able to really treat.
I could curmudgeonly blame the movies that VASTLY understate how much damage it takes to incapacitate a human. But it really must come down to people RARELY encountering physical violence in their life unless they're in a profession or lifestyle that demands it.
Fewer people working in factories seeing dudes get dismembered by heavy machinery. Drunken bar brawls are rarer, I'd wager.
Cars are safer, too.
White collar/service jobs really insulate people from this particular facet of reality.
That said, some of us grew up with access to liveleak.
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My mother and I recently visited a memorial to WWII submariners, and my mother looked at the list of lost ships and their crew numbers and said wow how on earth did you convince anyone to get on a submarine? And I pointed out that submarine service isn't SO bad, because for the most part you either sink or you don't.
You're much less likely to get grievously wounded, disfigured, crippled than you would be in the infantry. You aren't crouching in a trench in perpetual terror for months. Your moments of danger are intense but they last mere hours, and then generally you're dead or you aren't. Not a bad deal as war goes.
Though the WWI u-boats were pretty bad. But I guess so was the rest of WWI too. http://vlib.us/wwi/resources/archives/texts/uboatu9.html
Definitely pretty bad. In WWII, US Submarines were by far the worst deal in the US military for KIA. Worse than infantry, worse than bomber crews.
But in terms of the bravery required, it feels like it would be different and probably easier (for me) in nature. You get on the sub, and that's it, relatively little personal courage required after that. You'll have to act under pressure, of course, but no moreso than anywhere else in combat. Compared to sleeping in a foxhole under fire, day after day, seeing your friends wounded and killed and knowing you might be next. Jumping up to run into a bullet, over and over, seems much harder than "hope the ship doesn't sink."
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