Most Dangerous Job In The World?

In seven plus years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than five thousand American servicemen and women have been killed. The toll would certainly be much higher, were it not for a group of volunteers with a special brand of courage as CBS News chief national correspondent Byron Pitts reports.

Improvised Explosive Device attacks have killed more than 2,300 Americans and injured nearly 23,000.

Timothy Colomer suffered head and spine injuries when his vehicle ran over an IED in Iraq.

"We were blown up. It knocked us all out. Everybody in the vehicle was knocked out. However after a few minutes, we regained consciousness and we continued on with the mission," said Timothy Colomer, USMC retired.

Colamer made his living as a Marine Corp E.O.D. tech, or Explosive Ordinance Disposal technician.

His job? Dismantle bombs before they explode.

According to the Pentagon, it's a certainty: the casualty numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been much higher if not for the E.O.D. technicians.

"I did over two hundred calls but I know that I disarmed over 150 bombs," said Colomer.

It's the life of an E.O.D. tech that's told in gripping and often graphic detail in the movie "The Hurt Locker."

For Information on the "The Hurt Locker" Movie Click Here

Director Kathryn Bigelow said she wants to put a human face on the E.O.D. techs, and see "their heroism and their bravery and their courage and perhaps, the cost of that heroism."

At least seven E.O.D. Techs have been killed in action this year. Dozens more injured. It's dangerous work that "60 MINUTES" will document from Afghanistan next fall.

Journalist Mark Boal was embedded with an E.O.D. Team in Iraq. After he returned he said what he saw would make a great movie.

"You have to have the physical ability to wear the bomb suit," said Boal. "Even more importantly, they have to have a mind set that enables them to be calm under extreme stress."

Stress Timothy Colomer knows all too well.

"It's just like playing roulette. You really don't know when they are going to pop up or where they are going to pop up. But eventually one is going to go off one is going to detonate either injure or kill somebody," said Colomer.

Colomer, like every other bomb tech, volunteered for the job. It's not about the adrenaline rush or Hollywood he says. It's about saving lives.

"Until this war you could even argue that a lot of people in the military didn't know E.O.D. existed and then all of a sudden they became one of the most critical units in the war because of the role that they play," said Boal.

The movie gets its title from an old E.O.D expression. Get too close to the explosion, and you might end up in "The Hurt Locker."