Life--and other people's choices--can sometimes be very unkind to us, forcing us into situations in which we must make grim decisions in which no option seems like a good one. How are we supposed to choose between courses of action when every possible choice will violates a constraint? Sometimes every available path leads us to do something that in normal situations we ought never to do. 

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 Review the MDR

WATCH THIS (Additional Resources)

Video: Crimson Tide

Video: Extreme Measures

1. Catastrophe situations often force decision makers to choose between terrible options. Captain Rubel's essay introduces us to the practical process of "medical triage." The various cases he references, and the two video clips you have watched, offer another kind of triage--one we can call "moral triage." Such a process is initiated in circumstances in which constraints are in conflict. 
   1. How does the moral deliberation roadmap help us navigate moral triage cases?
   2. Is it possible in moral triage situations to choose not to choose? What would it mean for an officer to refuse to make a decision in a high-stakes, time-constrained situation--such as in combat--when anything you might do will result in what would normally be a constraints violation?
2. It's one thing to do something that harms those you would rather not harm, it's another thing to order someone else to do so. If you were the commanding officer in the Crimson Tide scenario, what would you say to the men you had ordered to close the hatch?