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I'd bet they have pretty low personal risk. Where would the risk come from? I could see being close to radioactive materials as a risk - though hopefully there

I'd bet they have pretty low personal risk. Where would the risk come from? I could see being close to radioactive materials as a risk - though hopefully there is sufficient shielding to negate that. I don't see much risk from people attacking you to take the nukes. I feel like that doesn't happen very often. Maybe some risk from lots of vehicle miles traveled. It seems like an awesome job for someone with the right set of preferences. Spend half your time training, working out, going to the range. Half your time on long road trips. Huge responsibility, but extremely low chance you'll ever need to actually do much. Kind of like being a cop who never has to arrest or deal with people.

dylan604 5y ago
> I feel like that doesn't happen very often. It has been the plot of several movies/books/etc.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Any that were non-fiction?
  - bdowling 5y ago
    The documentary Command and Control [0] included a small part about the recovery and transport of a warhead after an accident in which they missile it was mounted on exploded. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(film)
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      That still wasn't an attack, though. (Though it might have been as dangerous as if it were...)
      - ALittleLight 5y ago
        And it was also caused by a maintenance accident at a silo if I understood the wiki correctly. Not a transport incident at all.
- Kye 5y ago
  Fiction writers often create a compelling story by making something reality-shaped out of low-probability dangers.
- mstade 5y ago
  Hate to burst your bubble but we don’t actually live in a movie. I think. That being said, the quoted line kind of raises the question: how do we know? I suppose given the use of the word “feel” the GP doesn’t actually know, but that’s not really my point anyway. My point is rather – if there in fact were incidents involving these nuclear material couriers, would it make the news or remain secret as a matter of national security?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    >Hate to burst your bubble Burst all you want, but it doesn't mean my comment wasn't true. You can want this conversation to only go one direction (real life), but it's the internet and conversations can diverge. The fact that it has been involved in plots is still relevant. Some people might actually find it interesting even if it steers the convo in a manner you don't approve.
    - scubbo 5y ago
      A: I wonder how often event X occurs? I imagine it's not very often. B: It happens in movies a lot. To me, as a native English speaker, B is clearly implying (with their "technically true" statement) the statement "Event X happens a lot in fiction, therefore I infer that Event X happens a lot in real life". Statements are read in the context of the preceding conversation.
  - rodgerd 5y ago
    > I think. I dunno, I feel like I'm living in a future designed by folks who looked at Robocop, Starship Troopers, and a few other bits of dystopian sci-fi and instead of treating it as a warning decided that it would make a swell instruction manual.
    - RalfWausE 5y ago
      Hmm... maybe its my german heritage, but i don't see Starship Troopers as THAT dystopian: Every politican has skin in the game (mandatory military service for gaining the right to vote or be voted for) No racism or sexism or other discrimination, at least there are no traces for that in either the movie nor the novel. If you don't want to join the military: No problem, you don't have any major disadvantages (besides no political participation), see the wealthy family of the protagonist. Science seems to flourish Ehm... sorry for the digression... what were we talking about?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  By "happen", most of us mean "happen in reality", not "happen in fiction". Although, it might be a bit relevant. You feel cooler when you tell people what you do if it's fictionally cool, even if in real life it's not all that great.
chiph 5y ago
From having watched lots of dash-cam videos recently, I would guess traffic accidents are the riskiest things they regularly deal with. If the truck is still operating afterwards, I expect they don't stop - they let another vehicle that is full of federal agents from the convoy deal with it.
- riffic 5y ago
  an aside but can we please stop with using "accident" as the default term to describe mayhem involving motor vehicles? This simply dismisses the many risk factors as being simply inevitable even though there are more than likely preventable causes to address. --- Excerpt of "'Car Accident' Or 'Traffic Violence'? The Way We Talk About Crashes Is Evolving", Fonseca, 2020 (https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-l...): Why do we talk about crashes like this? It didn't happen by accident. You may know the history of how early carmakers turned "jaywalking" — a term initially meant to shame pedestrians out of the street — into an actual crime. But the emerging auto industry also had a hand in influencing how the public perceived fatal collisions. In the early days of the automobile, reckless drivers were killing pedestrians, mostly women and children, at alarming rates. Newspaper coverage in the 1910s and '20s painted drivers as "remorseless murderers" and angry mobs reportedly dragged drivers involved in fatal collisions from their cars. So the industry went into damage control, with one national auto industry group even creating a free wire service for newspapers, which incentivized reporters to send in basic details of a traffic collision in return for a full, ready-to-publish article. What a thoughtful convenience! Except, unsurprisingly, the narrative in those articles largely shifted the blame to pedestrians and used the term "accident" to describe crashes, which helped embed the term in the minds of news readers across the nation. In the face of the rising death toll, a 1926 editorial in The New Republic titled "The Murderous Motor" proclaimed: "...much of the present waste of life is inevitable and will continue no matter what preventive measures are taken." Imagine if outlets today were publishing stories about data privacy from a free wire service run by Facebook, Google or Uber. That's essentially the ethical breach many newspapers allowed back in the '20s and '30s — and the echoes and effects can still be seen in news stories today. The auto industry exploited the power of the press because its leaders understood that language and perspective (and growing ad revenue) can shift culture — and recent scientific research backs that up.
trhway 5y ago
> I don't see much risk from people attacking you to take the nukes. I feel like that doesn't happen very often. given that Russia didn't lose any nuke in the chaotic 199x (didn't lose or they were quickly recovered) I think there is no credible/feasible/capable interest/threat for the nukes.
- pdabbadabba 5y ago
  > given that Russia didn't lose any nuke in the chaotic 199x Serious question (in more ways than one): do we really know that to be true? How?
  - chihuahua 5y ago
    Of course it's possible that some Russian nukes were stolen, and someone's been keeping them in a warehouse for the last 25 years, and we'd never know. But I find it likely that if someone had stolen a nuke, they would have sold it, and the kind of people that would buy it would have used it by now. I'm making two assumptions: 1. you don't steal a nuke unless you're going to sell it or use it 2. you don't buy a nuke unless you're going to use it (for blackmail or to blow something up) And (2) would have been easily noticed.
    - kamkazemoose 5y ago
      I think there's one other possibility. It could be stolen to study and reverse engineer. You're probably looking at state actors instead of random third parties, but enemies of Russia would probably want to see the level of technology they're using. And states trying to develop their own nukes might be able to learn a lot from having a first hand example.
    - zrth 5y ago
      I'd be quite surprised is someone who lost/had stolen and then recovered a nuc would admit to this taking place. I really don't think we would know if this had happened.
- shadilay 5y ago
malandrew 5y ago
> Spend half your time training, working out, going to the range. That right there makes it pretty attractive. Lots of people do those things for fun. If that's half your "workload", it totally makes sense to do a job like this, especially if you're not a city person since that's a solid salary if your not in a high cost of living area.

dylan604 5y ago

> I feel like that doesn't happen very often. It has been the plot of several movies/books/etc.

ALittleLight 5y ago
Any that were non-fiction?
- bdowling 5y ago
  The documentary Command and Control [0] included a small part about the recovery and transport of a warhead after an accident in which they missile it was mounted on exploded. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(film)
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    That still wasn't an attack, though. (Though it might have been as dangerous as if it were...)
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      And it was also caused by a maintenance accident at a silo if I understood the wiki correctly. Not a transport incident at all.
Kye 5y ago
Fiction writers often create a compelling story by making something reality-shaped out of low-probability dangers.
mstade 5y ago
Hate to burst your bubble but we don’t actually live in a movie. I think. That being said, the quoted line kind of raises the question: how do we know? I suppose given the use of the word “feel” the GP doesn’t actually know, but that’s not really my point anyway. My point is rather – if there in fact were incidents involving these nuclear material couriers, would it make the news or remain secret as a matter of national security?
- dylan604 5y ago
  >Hate to burst your bubble Burst all you want, but it doesn't mean my comment wasn't true. You can want this conversation to only go one direction (real life), but it's the internet and conversations can diverge. The fact that it has been involved in plots is still relevant. Some people might actually find it interesting even if it steers the convo in a manner you don't approve.
  - scubbo 5y ago
    A: I wonder how often event X occurs? I imagine it's not very often. B: It happens in movies a lot. To me, as a native English speaker, B is clearly implying (with their "technically true" statement) the statement "Event X happens a lot in fiction, therefore I infer that Event X happens a lot in real life". Statements are read in the context of the preceding conversation.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  > I think. I dunno, I feel like I'm living in a future designed by folks who looked at Robocop, Starship Troopers, and a few other bits of dystopian sci-fi and instead of treating it as a warning decided that it would make a swell instruction manual.
  - RalfWausE 5y ago
    Hmm... maybe its my german heritage, but i don't see Starship Troopers as THAT dystopian: Every politican has skin in the game (mandatory military service for gaining the right to vote or be voted for) No racism or sexism or other discrimination, at least there are no traces for that in either the movie nor the novel. If you don't want to join the military: No problem, you don't have any major disadvantages (besides no political participation), see the wealthy family of the protagonist. Science seems to flourish Ehm... sorry for the digression... what were we talking about?
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
By "happen", most of us mean "happen in reality", not "happen in fiction". Although, it might be a bit relevant. You feel cooler when you tell people what you do if it's fictionally cool, even if in real life it's not all that great.

chiph 5y ago

From having watched lots of dash-cam videos recently, I would guess traffic accidents are the riskiest things they regularly deal with. If the truck is still operating afterwards, I expect they don't stop - they let another vehicle that is full of federal agents from the convoy deal with it.

riffic 5y ago
an aside but can we please stop with using "accident" as the default term to describe mayhem involving motor vehicles? This simply dismisses the many risk factors as being simply inevitable even though there are more than likely preventable causes to address. --- Excerpt of "'Car Accident' Or 'Traffic Violence'? The Way We Talk About Crashes Is Evolving", Fonseca, 2020 (https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-l...): Why do we talk about crashes like this? It didn't happen by accident. You may know the history of how early carmakers turned "jaywalking" — a term initially meant to shame pedestrians out of the street — into an actual crime. But the emerging auto industry also had a hand in influencing how the public perceived fatal collisions. In the early days of the automobile, reckless drivers were killing pedestrians, mostly women and children, at alarming rates. Newspaper coverage in the 1910s and '20s painted drivers as "remorseless murderers" and angry mobs reportedly dragged drivers involved in fatal collisions from their cars. So the industry went into damage control, with one national auto industry group even creating a free wire service for newspapers, which incentivized reporters to send in basic details of a traffic collision in return for a full, ready-to-publish article. What a thoughtful convenience! Except, unsurprisingly, the narrative in those articles largely shifted the blame to pedestrians and used the term "accident" to describe crashes, which helped embed the term in the minds of news readers across the nation. In the face of the rising death toll, a 1926 editorial in The New Republic titled "The Murderous Motor" proclaimed: "...much of the present waste of life is inevitable and will continue no matter what preventive measures are taken." Imagine if outlets today were publishing stories about data privacy from a free wire service run by Facebook, Google or Uber. That's essentially the ethical breach many newspapers allowed back in the '20s and '30s — and the echoes and effects can still be seen in news stories today. The auto industry exploited the power of the press because its leaders understood that language and perspective (and growing ad revenue) can shift culture — and recent scientific research backs that up.

trhway 5y ago

> I don't see much risk from people attacking you to take the nukes. I feel like that doesn't happen very often. given that Russia didn't lose any nuke in the chaotic 199x (didn't lose or they were quickly recovered) I think there is no credible/feasible/capable interest/threat for the nukes.

pdabbadabba 5y ago
> given that Russia didn't lose any nuke in the chaotic 199x Serious question (in more ways than one): do we really know that to be true? How?
- chihuahua 5y ago
  Of course it's possible that some Russian nukes were stolen, and someone's been keeping them in a warehouse for the last 25 years, and we'd never know. But I find it likely that if someone had stolen a nuke, they would have sold it, and the kind of people that would buy it would have used it by now. I'm making two assumptions: 1. you don't steal a nuke unless you're going to sell it or use it 2. you don't buy a nuke unless you're going to use it (for blackmail or to blow something up) And (2) would have been easily noticed.
  - kamkazemoose 5y ago
    I think there's one other possibility. It could be stolen to study and reverse engineer. You're probably looking at state actors instead of random third parties, but enemies of Russia would probably want to see the level of technology they're using. And states trying to develop their own nukes might be able to learn a lot from having a first hand example.
  - zrth 5y ago
    I'd be quite surprised is someone who lost/had stolen and then recovered a nuc would admit to this taking place. I really don't think we would know if this had happened.
shadilay 5y ago

malandrew 5y ago

> Spend half your time training, working out, going to the range. That right there makes it pretty attractive. Lots of people do those things for fun. If that's half your "workload", it totally makes sense to do a job like this, especially if you're not a city person since that's a solid salary if your not in a high cost of living area.