In case they needed to fight cosmonauts would be my guess.

It looks like a kind of shotgun designed for use by astronauts.

A slow cooker helps. You can use random ingredients before they go bad easily enough, and you will have left overs so cooking one time results in not having to cook for multiple meals.

As an American, this is exactly correct. The last time I tried to take Amtrak the train literally did not show up and they told us they had no way to contact it and didn’t know where it was. After waiting many hours with no change in status I finally gave up. The last time I actually rode Amtrak it was multiple hours late and cost about the same as a plane ticket.