I tended bar for 8 years at the height of the disco craze in the 1970's-1980's. The tobacco smoke alone could kill 'ya not to mention the myriad of ingestions which altered ones perceptions in a good way. 23 years later I dropped dead from an asthma attack which propelled me into the world of retired employment. I survived & went on to become a survivor of a dangerous profession.

I'm rerminded here of a guy named Pat, who was a member of a cycling club to which, twenty years ago, i too belonged. One day when we'd stopped at a cafe for coffee and the most effective doping available (which, as all North London cyclists know, is High Beach bread pudding), we started discussing the firefighters' strike for better pay which was at that time ongoing. Pat did not support it because, in his opinion, being a firefighter was "not a very dangerous job".

We all stared at him for about two minutes before someone said "Well, it is quite dangerous, if you think about it."

I was in the British army, served in Northern Ireland and Iraq after leaving went on to working with chemical weapons first in Germany and then with the OPCW which included missions in Libya and Syria currently I'm a Ceasefire Monitor in yet another conflict zone. Hard to say what I think at times of danger, usually too busy concentrating on doing the job! I have, so far, had no issues such as PTSD (I know a few who have though) and I'm enjoying life to the full.

Usually just with a terrible sense of humor,lots of booze and when possible a woman kind enough to let me do naughty things with her. Oh and coffee.

I was an on call volunteer firefighter for a small town years ago, never really gave it a thought. You had training and did what you had to do. The one thing they stressed was your safety, did not want you to become a victim. Did that for about 5 years with one fatality in a house fire who lived there. We had quite a few really bad accidents where we had to pry the car apart to get the person out and call the flight for life but all survived. Car accidents were the worse because the person was in a lot of pain and paramedics can only do so much.

You don’t. You just move ahead. If you stop to ponder the effect, it slows your reaction time.

Not sure if the underwater welder is still considered one of the riskiest jobs. When you are in a position of such caliber that you have a weapon you automatically consider the risk and compartmentalize the idea. If you have you have a mostly normal brain grief sets in and just like everyone else you need time to sort out the thoughts and memories.

Construction workers come in 3rd after Fishermen and Loggers who battle it out for the top 2 spots. I was in Construction Management for 3 decades and I can only say that I am a hybrid between a grizzly bear and a mother hen when it comes to my men, everybody works safe and everyone goes home at the end of the day. Accidents happen, it's a statistical certainty but I never lost a man, no deaths and no permanent disabilities which is not easy when you consider some of the stupid shit people do on construction sites. If someone is a threat to themselves or others I have a long talk with them about it and if that doesn't work then they are fired.

I'm an English literature prof, but I've always done dangerous things, such as doing bird photography alone in remote places, driving my motorbike off road alone into the desert to find a particular bird species, riding the waves at the beach alone, etc. When I taught in Mexico in 2001, it was so dangerous that our friends were getting killed by bands of robbers, but I still traveled around alone.

Since I moved to Thailand, I've taken teaching jobs in violent remote border provinces where people are constantly killed because nobody else would go.
My employer loved that I was willing to go places that nobody else would dare go, and paid me several times the going teaching rate.

Perhaps people who do these jobs are sort of daredevils who don't really think about danger.

Or maybe they are normal people who are just brave.

I am not one of those people but I would think they approach their work as just another job, they are too busy and focused taking care of business most of the times and the danger rarely enters their thoughts.

I started doing life and death stuff since I was a paramedic at 16 (yeah, I lied about my age). From there to the Navy to real medicine, I've been shot at, climbed up the sides of buildings, rappelled down the sides of others, been thrown out of helicopters and had too, too many children and adults die while my hands were covered with their blood. Not once did I ever pray to anyone to protect me or save the person I was treating or berate the god(s) for their failings.

I took care of AIDS/HIV patients, right from the beginning, through the mid 80-90’s. There were nurses, and others, refusing to care for them. It actually didn’t occur to me NOT to do my job. I knew there was risk, but I also knew what I did was important, especially to my patients and their families.
Not the same as police officers or firefighters.