One of history’s greatest technological marvels is actually thirteen in number. The United States Navy Aircraft Carriers. From the USS Kitty Hawk to the USS Theodore Roosevelt to the USS Ronald Reagan, it is almost as if America would never need to worry about mobilization. Aboard an Aircraft Carrier there are, of course, aircraft, but underneath, there is an entire city of cooks, janitors, engineers, flight-deck operators, air-traffic controllers, ship engineers, mechanics, radar and technology technicians, and a small town of people to merely captain the ship. After all, an aircraft carrier is a floating vessel.

The current class of carriers in the Navy are ‘Nimitz-class’ aircraft carriers. These modern marvels stretch of 1,000 feet in length and displace over 100,000 long tons. These boats are named after the first carrier of their type, which was commissioned in 1975, and the last of them was commissioned in 2009. They operate using two A4W pressurized water reactors and travel at speeds upwards of 56 kilometers an hour.

Because these ships are so massive, the require a massive amount of expense and expertise to construct, pilot, and operate. Aside from simply launching and landing aircraft, the carriers also have service elevators, hydraulic lifts, and miles of passages and chambers and other machines operating to keep the boat upright and afloat. A position aboard an aircraft carrier involves complex responsibility, but also injection into a self-supporting community.

Aircraft carriers also have weaponry aboard, both anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, incase the ship were to ever endure a direct attack. Sinking a carrier would be a task unto itself, but there are millions of dollars of aircraft, supplies, machinery, and most importantly, people aboard the ship, so even though the ship is designed as a monolith of mobilization, it is also well equipped to withstand even the most brutal of attacks.