Apocalypse by Aerostar

Okay, I’m kinda speechless now, ever since I found out that the Pakistanis have taken to shuttling its hundred or so nuclear weapons around in ordinary cargo vans, in ordinary Pakistani traffic, without an escort.

These are, by the way, “mated” nuclear weapons, containing both the casing and the core, which are supposed to be kept separate for, um, pretty well-understood security reasons.

Now why, you ask, are the Pakistanis moving their bombs around?

To hide them from its ally, the United States of America.  Of course.

The raid on Bin Laden’s compound made the Pakistanis so batshit paranoid that they were worried that the U.S. would make a surprise raid on all their nuclear facilities and confiscate their weapons.  And the best way to keep your enemies from finding out where your stuff is, is to keep your stuff on the road and moving around.  Which is why there are all those Transits and Aerostars and Safaris and RamVans and Sprinters are stuck in Lahore traffic jams with intact nuclear weapons on board.

Of course, just because y0u’re paranoid doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to steal all your stuff.

Should any of the nukes go missing, an “Abbottabad redux” would likely occur, Ambinder and Goldberg report. An anonymous military official tells the pair that the Joint Special Operations Command “has units and aircraft and parachutes on alert in the region for nuclear issues, and regularly inserts units and equipment for prep.” Seizing Pakistani nukes during or after a military coup is a much harder mission, but the reporters consider it doable. “[I]t’s wise for the U.S. to try to design a plan for seizing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in a low-risk manner,” Goldberg and Ambinder advise, placing a lot of rhetorical freight on the words “low-risk.”

“Regularly inserts units and equipment for prep.”

Oh God.  Someone please tell me this just the plot of a movie with Arnold Schwartzenegger.  Please.