Advice for a misguided young man

Yes and no. Maybe not nuclear warheads themselves, but Navy Nukes for example work with the nuclear power plants on ships and subs. It doesn’t necessarily launch you into the field itself, just give you experience that would be relevant. Can you get in without it? Absolutely, it just might be a different way to get in. If you break in as an engineer or physicist though, typically the want more experience with certain things. It’s not necessarily “can’t get in”, but it becomes harder without the background.

I was less saying, “It’s impossible unless you do this,” more saying, “This will help, but probably don’t bank on a very specific subset (in this case nuclear weapons) being your main plan when realistically you might not find yourself in that, at least without working in different and some similar areas.”

Regardless, I’d say OP should focus on the engineering aspect first. They’re in high school. If they want to be an engineer, I’d imagine pigeonholing themselves to a very specific field probably shouldn’t be the only way they are okay with that.

/r/AskEngineers Thread Parent