Wise decisions. Catfish is a retired CO, and distinguished vet. I'd be willing to bet he's seen the dark side of aviation on a personal basis more times than you.
Ableone, Milky makes some very good points... you have NO idea the situations we put ourselves in on a daily basis. Life around the boat in a jet that has no gas to begin with is something you can't even fathom. I routinely (like this morning) return from the warning area with about 20 minutes of gas (2,000 #'s) left. Why? Because we have to squeeze every amount of training out possible, there's an inherent level of risk involved that we accept, that you would consider a serious emergency. To have someone that knows absolutely ZERO about tactical aviation start spouting off at the mouth second guessing a pilots decisions based on speculation and hearsay pisses off not only him but ALL of us. As far as an uncontained engine failure taking out the other, I've NEVER heard of it happening in the Hornet. This jet has taken direct surface to air fire, surface to air missiles, blown up engines, lost entire control surfaces, and made it home time and again. A wild compressor section taking a trip is MINOR.
And WTF are you talking about bleed air and sonic inlet flow? Playing too many video games?