The show follows secret agent Angus MacGyver, played by Richard Dean Anderson, who works as a troubleshooter for the fictional Phoenix Foundation in Los Angeles and as an agent for a fictional United States government agency, the Department of External Services. Educated as a scientist in Physics at Western, MacGyver served in the U.S. Army Special Forces as a bomb team technician/EOD during the Vietnam War. Resourceful and possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of the physical sciences, he solves complex problems by making things out of ordinary objects, along with his ever-present Swiss Army knife, duct tape, and occasionally matches. He favors non-violent resolutions and prefers not to handle firearms due to the accidental shooting death of one of his friends when he was 12.