A Monday night sighting of the convicted killer who escaped from an eastern Pennsylvania prison nearly two weeks ago jolted the surrounding community into high alert and prompted school closures Tuesday, after police warned the inmate now has a weapon.
Let’s say you’re a reactor engineer, and you’re safeguarding a package of plutonium being unloaded from a truck while some others go to get equipment to move it. You look at a particularly fluffy cloud in the sky for 25 minutes, then look down and the plutonium is gone. You apologize to your superiors about the oversight, not knowing what criminal might have trespassed in the area. Then, terrorists blow up a city with a dirty bomb.
Are you a terrorist directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people? No. Are you still partly responsible, enough that you should lose any potential jobs in nuclear engineering? Absolutely. Carrying dangerous items bears responsibility for their safeguarding.