\indent are you curious as to the kind of work that is done at a national laboratory? have you heard of the field of operations research, or are you interested in learning about it and how it is applied to real problems? in this talk i will describe the kinds of math i use in my job at lawrence livermore national laboratory, as well as giving an introduction to the discipline of operations research. the talk will focus on three projects i have worked on: disaster preparedness, modeling an intelligent adversary, and downsizing the us nuclear weapons stockpile. these projects span a range of time frames, sponsors, and team sizes, and hopefully will give a flavor of the diverse work that is done at a national laboratory. this talk is intended for undergraduates or anyone interested in applications of math in the real world.