[m0zg]

All of the things you've listed aren't universally bad. Prisons keep bad people out of society (and yes, I'm aware that some folks shouldn't be in prison, and I wish that'd change, but majority are in the clink for violent crime). Nuclear weapons ensure superpowers can't attack each other - that's why we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years in spite of some pretty crazy tensions. Land mines make land invasions difficult and protect those who installed them. Harmful chemicals usually are not made just for the harm - they have their own useful functions. So I'd draw the line much further than that: somewhere near biological and chemical weapons which have no useful function at all, and do not help with maintaining peace.

[vasco]

The fact you can justify land mines says it all about the ability of some oath to ensure anything about the behaviour of large groups of people.

[m0zg]

Yes, soldiers on the battlefield are very thankful for the land mines, assuming they're the ones who installed them. With any luck a dude from the other side might not be able to cross the field and slit their throats in the dead of the night. Just as pilots are thankful for fighter jets not crapping out in mid-air, and nuclear submarine sailors are thankful for the engineering that went into the hull, and a gunner is thankful for the shells which don't explode in the barrel of a howitzer. War is hell, but if you're going to win it (or even deter it), you'll need engineers who know how to design weapons. And this is not the kind of game that you can just decline to participate in unless you'd like to learn a foreign language in a concentration camp.

[sekh60]

The big problem with landmines is they are not generally cleaned up after the war, leaving them around for innocents to trigger and get hurt, maimed, or killed.

[m0zg]

Yes. They can be deployed irresponsibly, but that's hardly the engineer's fault.

[ljm]

> we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years

This is of little comfort to the many victims of US foreign policy over that same period

[m0zg]

Believe me, things would be _a lot_ worse if there were no nukes and superpowers could go at one another. We're talking 100x the casualties. Most of the violent deaths in the 20th century were the fault of the governments, one way or another. The only reason they don't do that anymore is it'd be self-destructive.