M.A.D. and me

[Furunculus]

For all I know I may have thoroughly ruled myself out of contention simply by starting this thread. There are of course a whole slew of other more mundane considerations in pursuing such a career such as the associated security risk to myself and my family, the more general ethical issues around nuclear arms, since I feel there is no point in even considering such a career in the first place until I have made up my mind on exactly how I feel about nuclear weapons.

So, that is the question I am asking: Are nuclear weapons a good thing? Is it desirable for the UK to maintain a nuclear deterrent, or should we be pursuing nuclear disarmament? Is the MAD doctrine ultimately sound, or is it dangerously naive about the risk of nuclear holocaust? Do nuclear weapons, in short, make the world a safer, or more dangerous, place?

First of all; if you do pursue a career that involves nuclear weapons then the security services will read this post.
It doesn't matter if you mostly post from work, or if you mostly use a proxy to post here; if an IP address has EVER been used by you that links here then this site will be part of a background check.
And if they do that then you can guarantee a context sensitive search for words that include; nuclear, politics, weapons, violence, revolution, muslim, bomb, depression, will all be searched, and will instantly find this thread.
That is not necessarily a problem, it is not wrong to question and seek support for decisions of moral consequence, they will however make a judgment on how separate your personal life is from your virtual life, such as:
1) is the email registered at this site used for all other purposes, and does it reveal who you are.
2) are the other elements of your online existence similarly fire-walled.
3) do you have lots of questionable contacts in your IM clients or email, i.e. people who you cannot vouch for the character of via long standing relationships.
4) do you exhibit persistent moral uncertainty or personal vulnerability in ANY part of your online life.
5) do you seek out emotional attachment online that would indicate psychological problems in real life.
6) do you exhibit questionable moral character in you search patterns or download registry.
7) are there unexplained portions of your online life that would indicate a criminal evasion.
And the above completely ignores the numerous other elements of your personal life they will investigate, but provided they feel thy can answer satisfactorily the questions above then no, your question here may not be deemed a bar to this line of work.

As to my own feelings on nuclear weapons from my biased british pov:
In a world where nuclear arms exist it is a good thing for britain to maintain a nuclear deterrent, it has political value as well as the obvious military value.
It is a good thing that we ARE pursuing disarmament, a world without nukes is a better world, but that does not mean that our actions shouldn't be graduated in response to the actions of other nations.
MAD doctrine is essentially lunatic, but we hope that other nations beholden to representative government will confine their actions to the clinically sane, and we work to ensure that governments unbound by such restrictions cannot possess a viable second strike.
We don't know if nuclear weapons make the world a more dangerous place in reality, because we have no idea how devastating conventional warfare might have been in an alternate universe, but in the world we do exist within it is best for britain to maintain a nuclear within the framework of global disarmament.

i hope that helps.