Though the details of Operation Safe Keeper remain classified, we do know that on September 3 a truck bomb killed President Yousaf Sadiq and the general in charge of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division Force, which is tasked with securing the country’s nuclear weapons.
“We’re certain the ISI was infiltrated by LeT sympathizers,” said Caperno. “And they took advantage of the opportunity presented by the flooding.”
In our VR interview, Caperno looked her unflappable self, as she did when defending her refusal to resign after the massacre in Washington. The grisliest events of the age appear to perturb her as much as a web page loading slowly.
“The coup’s primary aim was to gain control of the nuclear arsenal,” she said. “So we deployed the most deadly soldiers in the American military to stop them at any cost.”
By September 4, one of the riskiest operations in military history was underway. US Joint Special Operations Command launched a team of Navy SEAL units and army explosive ordnance disposal specialists over the Pakistani border. These technicians were tasked with dismantling at least two hundred warheads at seventeen different sites. JSOC units first disabled tactical nuclear weapons, then led “deep underground shelter penetrations” and conducted precision missile strikes on the bunkers. Yet there are three sites that were not vaporized and have come under occupation by JSOC with no explanation forthcoming from the Love administration.
Layers of blast walls topped with razor wire were quickly erected. Drones now deliver payloads of equipment and supplies daily while shooting down every antiaircraft munition either extremists or the Pakistani army lob their way. Fifty-five thousand additional American troops have joined the mission, making it the largest military presence on foreign soil since the Iraq War. The major question is why didn’t JSOC incinerate these bases like they did the other locations?
Secretary Caperno will say only that “we’re dealing with many warheads and fissile materials. We need to make sure we get this right.”
According to Dr. Dennis Rysher, the director of the Global Security Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, this doesn’t make sense. “The military appears dug in for the long haul. It’s possible they ran into a warhead they couldn’t render safe. Maybe a system of metaphorical tripwires that might lead to a detonation. Whatever it is, they’ve encountered something that all the best and brightest minds in the US military did not predict, and that is really frightening.”
IN 1811, AS THE AMERICAN EMPIRE CONTINUED TO EXPAND WESTward, settlers reckoned with a series of strange portents, beginning with massive spring floods in the Ohio Valley. The brightest comet to appear in the night sky in several centuries followed shortly thereafter. The summer brought a nasty fever epidemic and epic hailstorms while fall saw a complete solar eclipse. Animals had been behaving strangely all year. Pigeons took to the sky in vast swarms while people watched thousands of squirrels throwing themselves into the Ohio River to drown. Then came the massive earthquake on December 16, with a magnitude between 7.2 and 8.1, originating in northeastern Arkansas. Two quakes the following year would tear the land apart, collapse cliffs, destroy log-cabin homes, briefly suck the Mississippi River back from its banks, and completely level the town of New Madrid, then one of the largest settlements along the Mississippi.
Eighteen eleven was popularly dubbed “The Year of Wonders,” and it seems apt to resurrect the moniker for 2036. The differences are certainly obvious. Only a small group of settlers and the tribes they were pressing westward experienced the events of 1811. In 2036, the entire world has looked on in awe. Those people had little understanding of their wonders. We, on the other hand, grasp exactly what’s happening now.
The climate crisis is rapidly destabilizing the earth’s ecological systems. This, in turn, is causing extreme weather events, which are having an undue impact on our civilization, unleashing violence, misery, illness, chaos, and death for millions of the world’s most vulnerable. Globally, no one knows how many people are on the move, but estimates put refugee flows at more than eighty-five million people.
On October 7, Kate Morris led a blockade of a gas station in New York City, part of her so-called Seventh Day protests. The idea being that on the seventh day of each month, people will remove themselves from the economy—refuse to work, shop, or contribute—and instead use the day to “blockade, disrupt, or dismantle” part of the carbon infrastructure. These actions will supposedly escalate every single month, though her organization has been vague about what that means. October 7 saw perhaps forty different actions in fifteen major cities, all aimed at stopping traffic, blocking access to gas stations, and putting bodies in the way of construction projects. President Love dodged questions on the matter until a Florida newspaper board dragged this nonanswer from him: “If protestors remain peaceful, I don’t anticipate any problem.” Maybe it was this reporter’s imagination, but it looked as though he could barely get the words out, whether because of exhaustion, his rumored alcoholism, or, one might hope, remorse.
Victor Love—an authoritarian despot not even wearing his liberal sheep’s clothing anymore, whose presidency is driven less by any particular vision or ideology than by a sheer will to power—will surely capture his share of the electorate who see no other choice. The Pastor, who leads in several key swing states, and unlike his European right-wing brethren is polling very well among Blacks, Latinos, and other minority groups, may be the most dangerous political actor on the planet. Even as the GOP establishment reassures donors that he will be supervised once in office, The Pastor assures his followers that an apocalyptic war of the faithful is nigh. In the role of spoiler, Tracy Aamanzaihou is the only candidate with a platform to restore our long-degraded democratic norms and institutions, challenge the power of corporate money, and address inequality and the destruction of our climate. From the start of her campaign, members of the political class have begged her to drop out, lest she risk throwing the election to a man who promises theocratic bloodshed. It is an agonizing choice with no good answer.
After decades of delay, policymakers and the economic elite who support them have allowed this civilizational crisis to metastasize. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Hogan, Randall, and now Love—leaders with nothing in common except their failure to address the only issue that ever really mattered. In the sixty years since Wallace Broecker coined the term “global warming” in the title of a scientific paper and we began to understand the threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions, never have the implications been at our doorstep like this.
ON OCTOBER 25, JUST AS THIS ARTICLE WAS GOING TO PRESS, Tracy Aamanzaihou, far behind in the polls, stood in front of a crowd of supporters in a fever-hot Houston night and announced she was withdrawing from the race and would endorse President Love.
“The stakes are simply too high,” she said with sweat on her brow and tears in her eyes. Aamanzaihou has always looked as strong and solid as a statue, her wide cheekbones and prominent chin begging for immortalization in granite. However, that immortalization will not be for pulling off an improbable upset in this election. “All I ask is that no matter who wins, you must keep fighting. Do not give up, do not back down. The hope for a new and better world is in our hands, and never forget you have power. What we do now, in the months to come, will echo through the rest of human history.”
She left the stage. There was a power outage that night across southeast Texas as temperatures reached 105.4 degrees. A new October record.