Talking from her home in Oakland, California, she describes how the British instituted fly-kill quotas in World War II; why Velcro is a sniper’s enemy; and how improvised explosive devices (IEDs) can blow apart a soldier’s sex life. (Meet the dogs who go into combat.)

I write about a particular military subset: white hat military scientists. I don’t cover weapons or strategies, building a better bomb or designing a submarine. It’s about the human entity: the soldier and everything that entity deals with—extreme heat, loud noise, fear and panic, food poisoning, and flies. 

I got interested in the topic in an odd way. I was reporting a story in India on the world’s hottest chili pepper and in the course of my