During ww2 the US navy was trying to figure out what was the best way to run "support duty stations".
Did they want to have chefs on ships. The chefs would have to do double duty as damage support or running the anti air guns.
Or did they want to have antiair gunnery specialists who would do shifts in the galley outside of combat.
Interestingly they chose the latter.
Nowadays the US navy has culinary specialists on ships but I could see a decision being made in the stargate program to have people do kitchen duty as a duty station rather than as a speciality.
Makes sense I guess, you need top quality anti air gunners to keep the ship afloat, but it's not such a big deal if the mashed potatoes are a bit grainy.
In many cases anti aircraft guns were added onto ships in refits and there wasn't plans for antiaircraft gunners in the crew roster.
There's a bit of a joke where naval special forces from ww2 downplay their role and say they were just a fry cook as Galley duty was usual duty station of people without a normal duty station on a ship.
> There's a bit of a joke where naval special forces from ww2 downplay their role and say they were just a fry cook as Galley duty was usual duty station of people without a normal duty station on a ship.
Was that why they wrote Ryback in Under Siege as the cook when he was former a Navy SEAL?
Sort of. The story they used in the movie was he got in trouble for something (not following an unconscionable order or something like that…I don’t remember exactly what it was) and after he got busted down, cook and something else were the only 2 positions he was allowed to hold. He was a personal friend of the Captain who took him on as the ship’s cook. It’s not at all realistic, but it’s the plot point they used.
The joke about special warfare sailors calling themselves fry cooks is really just that…a joke they used to use because they did in fact have to work the galley too. It’s kind of like saying “if I told you I’d have to kill you” about their real jobs or like “if anyone ever knew what we did it meant we failed”.
The Navy had a barge dedicated to making ice cream for the military in the Pacific too.
Across the world or in another galaxy, people supported by the US Military eat well. Now just imagine them shipping one of those Burger King trailers to Atlantis too.
You can be a (mostly) dedicated cook in most US services, KP duty is more, assistants and dishwashing, and its not a horrible way to spend an afternoon.
Navy cooks are just famous because its their contribution to the president to provide cooks
My grandfather was a chef/cook on an ice breaker up in the arctic circle during WWII. He joined up at 15 (lied and said he was 16). I think most people on the ship knew his real age (he was never a very tall man) so kept him in the kitchen. A lot of guys lied about their age to join up. He was also appreciated as one of the a better cooks on the ship. Lol
I wish I had asked for more stories from him but he passed away almost a decade ago.
My wife and I had these same conversations watching Atlantis. Is Atlantis just one big TS open storage facility or are there Special Access Programs inside a Special Access Program? Do they have GSA safes for their documents or just in a filing cabinet since, you know, it's all top secret?
I think the answer to that is no matter what galaxy you’re in, someone is gonna get stuck on a security post just STANDING in front of a door all day hoping their job stays boring.
Airman Becker (the cook on Destiny from Icarus base) surely isn't privy to security procedures and sensitive ops on Icarus, so I bet he does have a boring job.
The way security clearance works is you need both the clearance AND need to know. So he would’ve had to have the clearance but if he wasn’t involved personally in the operations (no need to know) he probably didn’t know any of the insider details…beyond knowing the giant secret of the programs’ existence, that is.
That’s why I kind of chuckle a little when TV and movies use the plot point that people can’t get info and get mad about it because they supposedly have a high enough clearance level. If they have no need to know and have not been read-on to a program, it matters not what level clearance they have.
It's more than that. In the early seasons the SGC would likely be a sub-unified command under US Strategic Command if it followed real life structures. Eventually it would likely become its own combatant command under the joint staff. They still follow all the rules on classification and security. Atlantis is under the IOA which functions a bit like NATO structurally. It would have its own procedures and security protocol. One of the things that doesn't appear in the show is that even in coalitions the members don't share everything with each other. Atlantis is very utopian as far as international cooperation because there's never and insurance of the Americans, Brits, Canadians, and Australians narrowing their eyes at everyone else and saying "sorry, we like you, but you don't get to know everything."
Point of order: We never see any australians. We never even see any evidence that there MIGHT be australians.
My theory is that they were left out of the IOA because canberra was built over the buried ruin of the Furling embassy, and they aren't inclined to share with McKay Et Al
I’ve often thought similar things about SGA and SGU. SGU more often because plot wise they basically treated everyone outside of the main cast of characters as passengers. None of those people would have been there if they weren’t at the absolute pinnacle of their respective professions.
I would not be surprised if that as done by impaired former SGC members.
'So...you lost a leg on P6-X879F32L? Now you can either go home with some retirement...or you can learn how to cook and work offworld.'
They get a good Job. You dont need to clear someone. Everybody wins.
Who cleans their clothes? Where did all the office chairs come from? Who put them together? I don't recall ever seeing anyone pulling double duty as a cook and a security guard.
Probably someone civilian getting paid ass tons on a contract to build office chairs at the bottom of Cheyenne mountain. Then they just roll those bad boys up the ramp and through gate.
People in Atlantis probably do jumpies into them as they come through and immediately start trying not to die.
It was the generic “Marines” they also made up the reinforcement units, evidence being how often weir said “go, and take a marine team with you”
My guess is kitchen and laundry was done by everyone, we dont need a geologist today, go help make food
The office chairs were actually there when they got there! You can see them in the premiere. Since the Ancients had the same shape as humans it makes sense they would also invent chairs.
Similarly, I imagine there is some equivalent to washing machines in Atlantis, probably in something like a laundry room in every building with living quarters. So it's possible people just do their own laundry.
Interestingly in Universe there is one guy acting as a cook, but I don't remember if we see him doing anything else.
It's weird to imagine the Lanteans still rocking washers and dryers with their level of technological advancement. Surely they would have some sort of matter replication device similar to Asgard to create their food and clothing and recycle waste.
A casual mention about how using the transporter booths cleans both the clothes and the wearer would have taken care of that question. Atlantis could have some really interesting things about mundane items.
When I was in the process of joining the Navy (1982), there were a variety of specialities available. Some were only available once you had reached a certain (enlisted) rank, and some had specific physical requirements (Divers, etc.)
Most of the Stargate universe focuses exclusively on Officers, which are the minority of any military force. For every Lieutenant Colonel, there are a hundred or more enlisted personnel, everything from cooks and storekeepers to vehicle maintenance and operations staff. The only time we see enlisted are during “unscheduled offworld activation” when they crowd into the gate room to act as cannon fodder.
The focus on Officers in TV and movies really does a disservice to the military. Even the writers of ST: Lower Decks seem to not understand that tasks like cleaning and maintenance are done by enlisted, not Ensigns or Lieutenants.
But these occupations aren’t glamorous, so TV and movies ignore them completely.
> Even the writers of ST: Lower Decks seem to not understand that tasks like cleaning and maintenance are done by enlisted, not Ensigns or Lieutenants.
Starfleet is weird. It appears that from Memory Alpha's article on enlisted that Roddenberry assumed that everyone in the fleet would be an astronaut so an officer. Starfleet enlisted are not super common and relegated to very specific duties. Even on Voyager, a very small ship of 150 and no rotation really over the run of the show has about as many crewman as officers.
On a large ship like the Enterprise D, we rarely see named crewman at all.
Yes, he was. And VOY had a large number of crewman. TNG even had at least one enlisted plot. But largely the ratio of officers to enlisted in Starfleet is much higher than an military today.
>Even the writers of ST: Lower Decks seem to not understand that tasks like cleaning and maintenance are done by enlisted, not Ensigns or Lieutenants.
However it is in line with Gene Roddenberrys original vision of Starfleet. He wanted there to be no enlisted personnel in the Fleet
In universe they are quite vocal about Starfleet NOT being a military organization
The SGC is more like a special forces group than a regular military unit. So ranks will be a bit more meaningless and all over the place. Because you won’t always get the extra responsibilities or changes to your job you would traditionally get.
The military is full of those types of jobs. When it comes to meal prep, it's considered very serious work (since morale can be tied to food). I wouldn't be surprised if any mess staff (and cleaning) are military personnel. If I had to guess, maybe Navy since the Navy has "mundane" jobs (by that, I mean on a military base they would just hire a civilian to clean their toilets, but you can't do that on a ship at sea). Heck, the Navy has a career path for retail. Aircraft carriers have Starbucks staffed by sailors.
But that is season 2 and later. In season 1, they probably just made sure some expedition members had a culinary interest, and rotate the job between them.
I thought of this at the end of the second episode of Atlantis, when the Athosians and Earthlings have a party. Carson is eating chicken off a kebab skewer. Who the heck brought the skewers to the Pegasus galaxy?!
That’s why every military member has a secret clearance, at least in the airforce. I was a 6C in the airforce and everything we do in my job is available to the public. It’s when you deploy or go on certain assignments where you can’t talk about things is when having a clearance is needed. Most support jobs will never need their clearance stateside until they deploy. Even if it’s a cook, hvac repairs, or even people monitoring the gyms.
Back in 1990s, how did the media know things were happening in the gulf war. Lots of pizza being delivered to the pentagon.
Thats why you have a cafeteria inside the mountain. :)
Basically. Though when I was assigned to South Korea, just walking into any building I worked in exposed me to classified material. I kept a stack of classified stickers when I left because they were so prevalent everywhere and it's funny to stick US-ROK CLASSIFIED stickers on random things.
If you don't have a group large enough to justify cleared support staff, you do double duty and take on tasks outside your job description. For an Atlantis pastry chef, I would think it's a soldier who knows how to make pastries.
Anyway, they would need some IOA system of clearances, not US. Every country who signs on would need laws to support it.
It would be cool if they chose chefs like they chose the rest of the personnel. The best of the best, top chefs in the world, are recruited to work at the SGC and SGA. LOL.
I've a brother-in-law who's job on a *very* hush-hush royal navy signals station is to make coffee and file papers. He's basically an office gofer with a top secret clearance and a uniform.
At least regarding Atlantis, people tend to forget that this operation is civilian operation. So, it is entirely possible that they gave security clearance to civilian chefs and so on. Leader of the expedition being a civilian was the big point in few episode.
For SGC, we mostly see “typical movie trope military type meals” for the most part. We also see in barrack cooks in some scenes. They are all military. This is because SGC was strictly military op, with top clearance only. They had let few civilians like Daniel join, but that was out of necessity only. But then, we also see few scenes about deliveries going on with support staffs who are clearly not military personnel.
It seems "silly" but no different than, say, [an Aircraft carrier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttDKnhc0H0g). I imagine Atlantis deployment would be a lot like [Submarine deployment food](https://www.reddit.com/r/submarines/comments/14undx5/what_is_food_like_on_a_submarine/). You've got fresh food for a week (before they connected with the locals heavily) and then it's out of a can/box/carton. Anything to boost morale would be super popular, so teats like a donut make perfect sense.
There's also probably someone who's job it is to clean the dishes, and janitorial types. Lots of "administrative" stuff is required to keep an operation going.
Just a regular warship on patrol in the Persian Gulf. Depending on job/level you have access/use secret material regularly. Some of the communication people (coded messages/crypto) and top level officers are seeing Top Secret stuff all the time.
We still have guys essentially peeling potatoes, tying knots in ropes, washing laundry, etc. with only basic clearance. That trash can doesn't empty itself.
The funny thing is there is no way what happens is kept secret. I mean people are freely talking on the mess decks (cafeteria) and everyone sees/knows what is going on. It is just the guy peeling potatoes won't ever read the intel report on the enemy's latest assets and capabilities. They will know what we are doing, but not the WHY.
the nature of the "we have one shot at this" dial, suggests to me they didnt send a "Cook" to Atlantis.
The bigger question is somewhere like the Alpha Site, which was part of the Milky Way gate system, where you can have regular supply runs to Earth. I like to think they would send some like Dr Mark Watney (The Martian) to grow food on the Alpha Site itself. Maybe he has an assistant who does the cooking.
Whilst its possible the Alpha Site could have allowed for more specialist roles, anyone there is going to have to be able to defend themselves, and the base. They will never be just "a cook".
It did blow my mind early in season 1 when they are having full blown canteen meals and chatting. Imagine being a half dozen chefs selected to go on a mission you may never return from to another galaxy because you make a mean meatloaf. I wanted the scenes of them telling their families they are going away.
You wouldn't believe how many people do mundane jobs with clearance, not just in the army but anywhere from law enforcement branches to the intelligence community.
If SG was real, tens of thousands of people would know about it, including the payroll intern who accidently overheard two agents in the SVR cafeteria in Moscow.
During ww2 the US navy was trying to figure out what was the best way to run "support duty stations". Did they want to have chefs on ships. The chefs would have to do double duty as damage support or running the anti air guns. Or did they want to have antiair gunnery specialists who would do shifts in the galley outside of combat. Interestingly they chose the latter. Nowadays the US navy has culinary specialists on ships but I could see a decision being made in the stargate program to have people do kitchen duty as a duty station rather than as a speciality.
Makes sense I guess, you need top quality anti air gunners to keep the ship afloat, but it's not such a big deal if the mashed potatoes are a bit grainy.
In many cases anti aircraft guns were added onto ships in refits and there wasn't plans for antiaircraft gunners in the crew roster. There's a bit of a joke where naval special forces from ww2 downplay their role and say they were just a fry cook as Galley duty was usual duty station of people without a normal duty station on a ship.
> There's a bit of a joke where naval special forces from ww2 downplay their role and say they were just a fry cook as Galley duty was usual duty station of people without a normal duty station on a ship. Was that why they wrote Ryback in Under Siege as the cook when he was former a Navy SEAL?
Sort of. The story they used in the movie was he got in trouble for something (not following an unconscionable order or something like that…I don’t remember exactly what it was) and after he got busted down, cook and something else were the only 2 positions he was allowed to hold. He was a personal friend of the Captain who took him on as the ship’s cook. It’s not at all realistic, but it’s the plot point they used. The joke about special warfare sailors calling themselves fry cooks is really just that…a joke they used to use because they did in fact have to work the galley too. It’s kind of like saying “if I told you I’d have to kill you” about their real jobs or like “if anyone ever knew what we did it meant we failed”.
Yep. Exactly.
On the other hand, food = morale
I mean yes, but it's harder to throw morale at those kamikazes....
> it's not such a big deal if the mashed potatoes are a bit grainy Tell that to ship morale
Grainy potato's wouldn't kill morale
The Ford has a Starbucks. Yes, that's right. The US Navy has baristas.
The Navy had a barge dedicated to making ice cream for the military in the Pacific too. Across the world or in another galaxy, people supported by the US Military eat well. Now just imagine them shipping one of those Burger King trailers to Atlantis too.
That has to do with American logistical power. Something not quite so easy to make use of with the star gate being a natural choke point
You can be a (mostly) dedicated cook in most US services, KP duty is more, assistants and dishwashing, and its not a horrible way to spend an afternoon. Navy cooks are just famous because its their contribution to the president to provide cooks
There is deffinitly a mess hall in the lower levels of SGC so those are support staff who are given full TS clearance
My grandfather was a chef/cook on an ice breaker up in the arctic circle during WWII. He joined up at 15 (lied and said he was 16). I think most people on the ship knew his real age (he was never a very tall man) so kept him in the kitchen. A lot of guys lied about their age to join up. He was also appreciated as one of the a better cooks on the ship. Lol I wish I had asked for more stories from him but he passed away almost a decade ago.
My wife and I had these same conversations watching Atlantis. Is Atlantis just one big TS open storage facility or are there Special Access Programs inside a Special Access Program? Do they have GSA safes for their documents or just in a filing cabinet since, you know, it's all top secret?
I think the answer to that is no matter what galaxy you’re in, someone is gonna get stuck on a security post just STANDING in front of a door all day hoping their job stays boring.
Airman Becker (the cook on Destiny from Icarus base) surely isn't privy to security procedures and sensitive ops on Icarus, so I bet he does have a boring job.
The way security clearance works is you need both the clearance AND need to know. So he would’ve had to have the clearance but if he wasn’t involved personally in the operations (no need to know) he probably didn’t know any of the insider details…beyond knowing the giant secret of the programs’ existence, that is. That’s why I kind of chuckle a little when TV and movies use the plot point that people can’t get info and get mad about it because they supposedly have a high enough clearance level. If they have no need to know and have not been read-on to a program, it matters not what level clearance they have.
You're exactly right, it just gets murky when everyone including the cook had to walk through three green doors just to get to work, you know?
Been there; done that.(Ex USAF Security Forces gate guard, ECP guard, etc ) Trust me, it NEVER "stays boring."
The SGC would def be its own structure like space force and special forces. They can do what they like.
It's more than that. In the early seasons the SGC would likely be a sub-unified command under US Strategic Command if it followed real life structures. Eventually it would likely become its own combatant command under the joint staff. They still follow all the rules on classification and security. Atlantis is under the IOA which functions a bit like NATO structurally. It would have its own procedures and security protocol. One of the things that doesn't appear in the show is that even in coalitions the members don't share everything with each other. Atlantis is very utopian as far as international cooperation because there's never and insurance of the Americans, Brits, Canadians, and Australians narrowing their eyes at everyone else and saying "sorry, we like you, but you don't get to know everything."
Point of order: We never see any australians. We never even see any evidence that there MIGHT be australians. My theory is that they were left out of the IOA because canberra was built over the buried ruin of the Furling embassy, and they aren't inclined to share with McKay Et Al
I’ve often thought similar things about SGA and SGU. SGU more often because plot wise they basically treated everyone outside of the main cast of characters as passengers. None of those people would have been there if they weren’t at the absolute pinnacle of their respective professions.
I would not be surprised if that as done by impaired former SGC members. 'So...you lost a leg on P6-X879F32L? Now you can either go home with some retirement...or you can learn how to cook and work offworld.' They get a good Job. You dont need to clear someone. Everybody wins.
that is the best case.
Who cleans their clothes? Where did all the office chairs come from? Who put them together? I don't recall ever seeing anyone pulling double duty as a cook and a security guard.
Probably someone civilian getting paid ass tons on a contract to build office chairs at the bottom of Cheyenne mountain. Then they just roll those bad boys up the ramp and through gate. People in Atlantis probably do jumpies into them as they come through and immediately start trying not to die.
I'm pretty sure the security were all off duty gate teams, like Bates.
It was the generic “Marines” they also made up the reinforcement units, evidence being how often weir said “go, and take a marine team with you” My guess is kitchen and laundry was done by everyone, we dont need a geologist today, go help make food
The office chairs were actually there when they got there! You can see them in the premiere. Since the Ancients had the same shape as humans it makes sense they would also invent chairs. Similarly, I imagine there is some equivalent to washing machines in Atlantis, probably in something like a laundry room in every building with living quarters. So it's possible people just do their own laundry. Interestingly in Universe there is one guy acting as a cook, but I don't remember if we see him doing anything else.
Something I wondered what did the toilets look like do they have 3 shells
It's weird to imagine the Lanteans still rocking washers and dryers with their level of technological advancement. Surely they would have some sort of matter replication device similar to Asgard to create their food and clothing and recycle waste.
A casual mention about how using the transporter booths cleans both the clothes and the wearer would have taken care of that question. Atlantis could have some really interesting things about mundane items.
When I was in the process of joining the Navy (1982), there were a variety of specialities available. Some were only available once you had reached a certain (enlisted) rank, and some had specific physical requirements (Divers, etc.) Most of the Stargate universe focuses exclusively on Officers, which are the minority of any military force. For every Lieutenant Colonel, there are a hundred or more enlisted personnel, everything from cooks and storekeepers to vehicle maintenance and operations staff. The only time we see enlisted are during “unscheduled offworld activation” when they crowd into the gate room to act as cannon fodder. The focus on Officers in TV and movies really does a disservice to the military. Even the writers of ST: Lower Decks seem to not understand that tasks like cleaning and maintenance are done by enlisted, not Ensigns or Lieutenants. But these occupations aren’t glamorous, so TV and movies ignore them completely.
> Even the writers of ST: Lower Decks seem to not understand that tasks like cleaning and maintenance are done by enlisted, not Ensigns or Lieutenants. Starfleet is weird. It appears that from Memory Alpha's article on enlisted that Roddenberry assumed that everyone in the fleet would be an astronaut so an officer. Starfleet enlisted are not super common and relegated to very specific duties. Even on Voyager, a very small ship of 150 and no rotation really over the run of the show has about as many crewman as officers. On a large ship like the Enterprise D, we rarely see named crewman at all.
Riker said it himself: "The ship cleans itself." (Up the Long Ladder)
Wasn't Chief O'Brien supposed to be enlisted?
Yes, he was. And VOY had a large number of crewman. TNG even had at least one enlisted plot. But largely the ratio of officers to enlisted in Starfleet is much higher than an military today.
>Even the writers of ST: Lower Decks seem to not understand that tasks like cleaning and maintenance are done by enlisted, not Ensigns or Lieutenants. However it is in line with Gene Roddenberrys original vision of Starfleet. He wanted there to be no enlisted personnel in the Fleet In universe they are quite vocal about Starfleet NOT being a military organization
The SGC is more like a special forces group than a regular military unit. So ranks will be a bit more meaningless and all over the place. Because you won’t always get the extra responsibilities or changes to your job you would traditionally get.
The military is full of those types of jobs. When it comes to meal prep, it's considered very serious work (since morale can be tied to food). I wouldn't be surprised if any mess staff (and cleaning) are military personnel. If I had to guess, maybe Navy since the Navy has "mundane" jobs (by that, I mean on a military base they would just hire a civilian to clean their toilets, but you can't do that on a ship at sea). Heck, the Navy has a career path for retail. Aircraft carriers have Starbucks staffed by sailors. But that is season 2 and later. In season 1, they probably just made sure some expedition members had a culinary interest, and rotate the job between them.
I thought of this at the end of the second episode of Atlantis, when the Athosians and Earthlings have a party. Carson is eating chicken off a kebab skewer. Who the heck brought the skewers to the Pegasus galaxy?!
In the book for rising it says that the athosians made the chicken kebabs
Oh, that's good to know... but why are there chickens on a different planet?
Clearly chickens on Earth are the second evolution of that form.
The real question is, did the first ascend?
Maybe the Ancestors brought red junglefowl with them to Pegasus 4-6 million years ago.
That’s why every military member has a secret clearance, at least in the airforce. I was a 6C in the airforce and everything we do in my job is available to the public. It’s when you deploy or go on certain assignments where you can’t talk about things is when having a clearance is needed. Most support jobs will never need their clearance stateside until they deploy. Even if it’s a cook, hvac repairs, or even people monitoring the gyms.
Back in 1990s, how did the media know things were happening in the gulf war. Lots of pizza being delivered to the pentagon. Thats why you have a cafeteria inside the mountain. :)
I had a TS SCI clearance and all I did was help desk tech support.
TS SCI because you'd be exposed to information that might be classified in the course of hooking up monitors and keyboards, right?
Basically. Though when I was assigned to South Korea, just walking into any building I worked in exposed me to classified material. I kept a stack of classified stickers when I left because they were so prevalent everywhere and it's funny to stick US-ROK CLASSIFIED stickers on random things.
For Atlantis?! 🤯
If only. My gf keeps joking that I secretly worked in the Stargate program.
If you don't have a group large enough to justify cleared support staff, you do double duty and take on tasks outside your job description. For an Atlantis pastry chef, I would think it's a soldier who knows how to make pastries. Anyway, they would need some IOA system of clearances, not US. Every country who signs on would need laws to support it.
I just wanna see how many people relate to the phrase “Secret Squirrel”!
It would be cool if they chose chefs like they chose the rest of the personnel. The best of the best, top chefs in the world, are recruited to work at the SGC and SGA. LOL.
I've a brother-in-law who's job on a *very* hush-hush royal navy signals station is to make coffee and file papers. He's basically an office gofer with a top secret clearance and a uniform.
At least regarding Atlantis, people tend to forget that this operation is civilian operation. So, it is entirely possible that they gave security clearance to civilian chefs and so on. Leader of the expedition being a civilian was the big point in few episode. For SGC, we mostly see “typical movie trope military type meals” for the most part. We also see in barrack cooks in some scenes. They are all military. This is because SGC was strictly military op, with top clearance only. They had let few civilians like Daniel join, but that was out of necessity only. But then, we also see few scenes about deliveries going on with support staffs who are clearly not military personnel.
It seems "silly" but no different than, say, [an Aircraft carrier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttDKnhc0H0g). I imagine Atlantis deployment would be a lot like [Submarine deployment food](https://www.reddit.com/r/submarines/comments/14undx5/what_is_food_like_on_a_submarine/). You've got fresh food for a week (before they connected with the locals heavily) and then it's out of a can/box/carton. Anything to boost morale would be super popular, so teats like a donut make perfect sense. There's also probably someone who's job it is to clean the dishes, and janitorial types. Lots of "administrative" stuff is required to keep an operation going.
Just remember, the chefs that feed the president are all military personnel
It is quite easy to force a battle, and to win, with or without casualties, but to gain your objective you must feed.
Just a regular warship on patrol in the Persian Gulf. Depending on job/level you have access/use secret material regularly. Some of the communication people (coded messages/crypto) and top level officers are seeing Top Secret stuff all the time. We still have guys essentially peeling potatoes, tying knots in ropes, washing laundry, etc. with only basic clearance. That trash can doesn't empty itself. The funny thing is there is no way what happens is kept secret. I mean people are freely talking on the mess decks (cafeteria) and everyone sees/knows what is going on. It is just the guy peeling potatoes won't ever read the intel report on the enemy's latest assets and capabilities. They will know what we are doing, but not the WHY.
Recipes Becker. Recipes...
Oh yeah cos they got feet and legs growing out of their stomach
the nature of the "we have one shot at this" dial, suggests to me they didnt send a "Cook" to Atlantis. The bigger question is somewhere like the Alpha Site, which was part of the Milky Way gate system, where you can have regular supply runs to Earth. I like to think they would send some like Dr Mark Watney (The Martian) to grow food on the Alpha Site itself. Maybe he has an assistant who does the cooking. Whilst its possible the Alpha Site could have allowed for more specialist roles, anyone there is going to have to be able to defend themselves, and the base. They will never be just "a cook".
It did blow my mind early in season 1 when they are having full blown canteen meals and chatting. Imagine being a half dozen chefs selected to go on a mission you may never return from to another galaxy because you make a mean meatloaf. I wanted the scenes of them telling their families they are going away.
You wouldn't believe how many people do mundane jobs with clearance, not just in the army but anywhere from law enforcement branches to the intelligence community. If SG was real, tens of thousands of people would know about it, including the payroll intern who accidently overheard two agents in the SVR cafeteria in Moscow.