Uninsurable & Untouchable: The Dangerous Jobs That Shaped The Hell Job Series

People have long been fascinated by dangerous jobs—the kind where there’s a very real chance someone might not come home that evening. That fascination is clear from the popularity of TV shows like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. The former dives into the perilous life of commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea (now in its twentieth season, with real lives lost at sea). The latter ran for ten years, covering truck drivers delivering vital supplies to far northern territories by using frozen lakes and rivers as roads.

Sometimes, the only way to make a living is to defy death

L. Ron Hubbard’s anthology, The Hell Job Series, taps into this same adrenaline-charged world of the deadliest jobs in history. These fifteen short stories were originally published in pulp fiction magazines. Each story spotlights a wildly different life-risking 1930s profession—and focuses on the men who are wired just differently enough to take these jobs on.

You might wonder how Mr. Hubbard came up with the list of these professions—he obtained it from insurance companies of jobs they would not insure! The Aetna Insurance Co. created the list from a study done by the National Bureau of Casualty and Surety Underwriters. Various professions were arranged in risk categories starting at A, the most preferred (safest jobs), and descending through increasing risk down to category K, the most perilous jobs of all.

Ron described it this way: “K is out completely. It’s the ban. They list Ks so that they can be certain a K will never come into the office. They don’t want to see any of our Ks at all. They almost have signs on the door telling them to beat it.” At the top of the K list were “Test Pilots, Animal Trainers, Race Drivers and Track Testers,” followed by a roll call of professionals Ron called “the cream of adventure heroes.”

LRH did his homework—and fieldwork—on these high-risk careers to ensure his stories rang true. And if you’re unfamiliar with the lingo of these thrill-seeking trades, don’t worry—a handy glossary will keep you afloat. And now for a list of the stories:

Sleepy McGee

“For ten minutes a dozen natives and I dug and scrambled and searched. And then I touched a soft spot, felt down inside it and pulled out an arm. Sleepy was all right. Being buried alive did not seem to worry him. When I had cleaned off his face so that he could see, he sat down and looked thoughtfully at the ruined fill.”

One of the things that distinguish an L. Ron Hubbard story is the unforgettable characters. The titular fellow in this story may be the laziest man alive—but somehow ends up tasked with building a road through a tropical jungle during the rainy season. You can almost feel the downpour around you as you read.

The realism of this story is aided by Ron having built a road through the Guam jungles in 1928 and he had studied civil engineering at The George Washington University.

Presently, see this video about roads you would never want to drive on.

And listen to an audiobook excerpt of this story here.

Don’t Rush Me

“There is a superstition among military men that coveted stripes are won through carrying out orders to the letter and file number, that all details must be effected with neatness and despatch, that recognition is gained only through close attention to duty.”

An army sergeant with big ambitions has a problem with orders. Instead of digging a protective trench, he ends up in the jungle fighting insurgents—exactly the threat the trench was meant to guard against.

Ron’s experience as a Marine Reserves top sergeant during college, and his extensive travels in the Caribbean gave him the background for this story.

Mr. Luck

 “‘Miracles’ said the weighty Juan Caboza, shaking a weighty finder, ʻhappen no more. Should I believe in them, then why do you think I worry out my heart, sweating at this desk. You, señor Kelly, expect miracles. You expect me to lend you money to accomplish that miracle of a railroad, which under your hands becomes more a miracle than ever.’”

Engineer “Shoot-the-Works” Kelly wagers everything on finishing a railway in remote South America. Flat broke, he gambles on a bit of luck and a scrappy young orphan who might just have a gambler’s mind and some luck of his own.

Test Pilot

“Engine still grinding our nerves to pulp, the man-killer streaked level. For an instant all seem to be well, and then, abruptly, the thing exploded in midair.”

Speaking of a job synonymous with “occupational hazards,” test pilot is one of the top ten. In this story, a test pilot faces a moral dilemma: fudge the results on a corner-cutting airplane design, or blow the whistle and risk losing everything. The builder wants his test pilot to hold back on the test so the plane will pass. But even if he does, the Navy’s test pilot will follow to a most certain demise.

Mr. Hubbard had all the experience he needed to write this story. Ron was a pioneer in the aviation field, having received the 385th Glider Pilot’s License issued in the US. He had flown both gliders and motorized aircraft, and written articles for the aviation magazine, Sportsman Pilot.

Presently, see this video about the Air Force Test Pilot School.

Deep Sea Diver

“Diving was dangerous; everybody admitted that. This was just another diving casualty. Joe had seen half a dozen in his time.”

This immersive tale dives deep into undersea life and gives you enough details to make you feel inside the underwater suit.

For this story, Ron interviewed a navy diver and also put on a diving suit and went down himself.  He confessed, “Never got so scared before in all my life. Something ghastly about it. And the helmet is enough to deafen you and the cuffs were so tight my hands got blue. But it was lots of fun!”

Presently, see this video of US Navy Divers working 2,000 feet deep in the ocean.

The Big Cats

“Clip knew there was no such thing as taming a big cat. You merely showed the big cat who was master around there and that was that.”

Working in the circus would be one of the worst jobs in the US—the constant packing and unpacking every week. Now throw in working with tigers who could easily snap off an arm and it would make most people never run off to join the circus!

This circus tale gives you a visceral glimpse of how the animal trainer does his job and what it takes to command respect in the ring.

Presently, see this video of a fearless lion tamer handling the huge beasts:

River Driver

“For two weeks, Christopher’s head was in a whirl. Life had become a mad, loud scramble. Boots, fists, sweaty clothes. Crashing trees, shrieking takeaway, yowling buzz saws, clattering timber, shouting loggers, and through it all, like a red thread, ran the agony of his aching body.”

Lumberjacks cut down trees and roll them into the river to float down to the place they’ll be cut. However, logs jam and rivers back up. It takes a nimble man with a pole—and nerves of steel—to keep the logs moving downstream. Enter one spoiled kid who must sink or swim.

Ron had this to say about the research he did for this story: “If you are going to write a story about logging, well, you’d better get in and log, man, you better get in and log. You do down and sign up on the logging crew. You know? And you decide you know all about being a sawyer now; you’d better be a feller. Something of that sort. So you’d tell some tall tales.

“You have to be awfully slippery, you know, to be able to do this, because it means you’ve got to acquire professional skill while walking up to the manager and then exhibit it after being hired.  Makes for a quick study.”

As for a glimpse of a river log drive and what is involved in this dangerous job, see this video:

The Ethnologist

“It happened time after time to traders. I’d lost plenty of friends that way. no wonder Dead Fish Bay had been marked off as dangerous. It was suicide.”

A scholarly Ph.D. studying cultures and races finds himself at odds with a native tribe steeped in superstition, demons, and witch doctors. He and his sailors are taken prisoner and it looks like there is no way out but certain death.

Ethnology combines both academic and field study of people and cultures. Ron’s research in the Caribbean first brought demonic possession and zombies to his attention.  And having real life experience with these subjects, he was able to impart a sense of bloodcurdling horror to this story about the work of an ethnologist.

Mine Inspector

“A long line of miners stood in the slush waiting … Underpaid, poorly clothed, leading a wretched existence and working at a very dangerous business, spending most of their lives below ground, dying from explosions, carbon monoxide, wild cars, breaking cables, falling coal, crushing pillars, fires, electric lines, suffocation, falling splintering timber or from miner’s disease …”

Imagine working thousands of feet below the surface of the earth with lights that are flames on your helmet. If any methane gas shows up in the mines, you have to get out immediately. The safety inspector is trying to get the regulations followed but some people don’t listen, making this profession downright deadly.

For this story, Ron drew on personal experiences such as the time he was trapped in a mine cave-in when he was performing a mineralogical expedition in Puerto Rico. He had also investigated Appalachian coal mines full of firedamp—methane gas which becomes combustible when mixed with air.

Presently, here are videos of visiting a coal mine in the Arctic and a miner working in Ohio:

The Shooter

“Mike went on working. He had a demijohn in his hand and was engaged in pouring nitric acid into a big crock of sulfuric acid. The fumes of this hellbroth were acrid and choking, and intermingled with them was the smoke from Mike’s cigar.”

An oil well blaster drops a torpedo of high explosives into an oil well and sets it off. This breaks up rock and built-up wax in the well and stimulates the flow of oil. You would probably have to be a little crazy to have a job doing this, but Mike, the main character of this tale is so reckless that even his friends steer clear of him.

For this story, Ron performed extensive research in Texas, learning and using the vocabulary peculiar to Texas drillers, while still being aware that other regions used different terminology for the same equipment and processes.

Here is a video of a crew shooting an oil well with 80 quarts of nitroglycerin and a video from Shell about the oil well drilling process.

Steeplejack

“For some peculiar reason known only to psychologists, people like to watch other people trying to break their necks.”

Working at extreme heights automatically makes a job dangerous, but even more so when neither a helicopter or a parachute is involved. Repairing church steeples, extremely tall roofs, or sky-high chimney stacks are all part of a steeplejack’s job. This story puts you right up there in the sky, defying gravity, knowing one slip means a very unhappy ending. Adding to the danger—most of the surfaces the steeplejack works on, have no permanent ladders affixed to the side.

When Ron researched this story, the steeplejack he was interviewing insisted that the author actually join him on the girders of a Manhattan skyscraper! Talk about having to walk the talk!

Watch the video below where a steeplejack builds a scaffold to work on, 200 feet in the air.

And a video showing how steeplejacks attach a ladder to the side of brick chimneys.

Flying Trapeze

“In the evening performance he did his act with a recklessness which made the band drop whole bars in unison. He hurtled through space. He gyrated with an abandon which stamped him as insane.”

Most trapeze acts are 20 to 40 feet above ground. A fall from 29 feet generally results in death 23.5% of the time, while increasing the height to 39 feet results in death 50% of the time. In this story, the ringmaster promotes his star acrobat, Prince Barin, as a real prince. The other circus staff don’t like false advertising and hype, and reject him. And the story unfolds.

Each circus character in this story is based on a corresponding real-life person who Ron met during his research for this story.

As for some reality, watch The Flying Trapeze of  Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.

Mountaineer

“Enthusiastic, undaunted, daring Chomolungma, mountain of the demons, they had clung pitifully to its slopes, trying with their last energy and more, to go on, to go up. I had seen them come back, frostbitten, yellow with weariness, broken and exhausted, ready for hospitals.… And some of them had never come back at all.”

Above 26,000 feet, you enter the “death zone.” There is too little oxygen in the air at this altitude for human life to be sustainable. You have a limited amount of time to get to the top of the mountain and back below this zone or death or irreparable body harm results.  This story pits two rival climbers against each other on a brutal summit attempt against these odds.

Ron had plenty of real-world experience to draw upon when writing this story. He had climbed in the Rocky Mountains and also ascended Mount Pelee, an active volcano on the island of Martinique.  He had also journeyed through the foothills of the Himalayas while traveling in Asia.

Presently, watch this video K2: The World’s Most Deadly Mountain to Climb:

A Lesson in Lightning

“Brent had left him here to die. Had left him here alone in a burning ship while the others were in safe boats, far away.…

“The combustion point of gasoline, whatever it was, would be low enough. In a matter of seconds he would be blown up with the Empress.”

A bookish college dropout finds himself working the radio on a ship run by a murderous captain. Fire, water, treachery—and a shot at redemption.

Ron was an accomplished sea captain, navigator, helmsman and radio operator, with thousands of hours at sea. He knew everything and anything that could happen on a ship and brings that knowledge to make this story true to life.

Nine Lives

“Are pilots superstitious? Mister, you’ve come to the right man to tell you. I could cite you instances where superstitions have driven the boys to drink, suicide and, what’s worse, marriage.”

The protagonist is the most superstitious person of all. When things couldn’t get any worse, his girlfriend gives him a black cat as a plane mascot and he is driven to the brink of madness.

In the story, one pilot crashes into the water and another ditches in the water to save him. Here is a video of planes landing in water:

Conclusion

Luckily, the only danger I faced reading these stories was losing sleep. These are jobs no sane person would want—but in these tales, we get to live them for a while. I’ve always been fascinated by scary jobs that I know that I could never do—even believing the men who do them are somehow wired differently.  And here were hazardous jobs I didn’t even know existed but got to experience vicariously from my armchair, safe from any real danger.

If you love Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers, or just want gripping, well-told fiction about real-life danger, pick up The Hell Job Series.

Available in hardcover format here or as an audiobook here.