My Disastrous 1st Attempt at launching a Nuke

I wanted to share this to get it off my chest with people who understand my frustration, as my wife nodded kindly but didn’t really 'get it'.
TL;DR: My nuke got stolen and then glitched after nearly three hours of play.

I had a whole day to myself yesterday, so after some house chores and walking the dogs, I set aside the afternoon to finally launch my first nuke. I’m a Level 179 and have been grinding to get Holy Fire with the napalm huge tank, and I bought myself a really nicely modded Handmade from a vendor a month or so back. I felt ready after watching MrWestTek’s video.

In I go, and I’m progressing easily enough when I hear more firing coming from somewhere behind me. A Level 50 has followed me in. Okay, no bother, I assume—along for the ride.

I spend about 45 minutes killing robots and turrets and doing what needs to be done, occasionally seeing Mr L50 in his PA, but I’m doing most of the work. (I’m mostly non-PA, as I find it clunky and loud, so I only really use it if absolutely necessary.) Weirdly, the red robots are sometimes showing visually as dead but still working, and I start to think something odd is going on.

Eventually, the little red guys get the nuke ready, and I head over to enter my Nuclear Key Card. Mr L50 is also there, and TWO key cards get entered—then Mr L50 hot-foots it to the keypad and launches the damn nuke.

Okay, possibly my fault. When I first saw him, I should’ve server-hopped to get a silo to myself, but I just never expected him to hustle me like that!

So, I’ve still got an hour and a half until my wife is home, still have ammo but now no key card, so I start again—all the way from requesting the key card. Damn game puts the cargo bot right on top of a fissure site occupied by a legendary Scorchbeast Queen, so I’ve got a long and draining battle to shoot it down whilst surviving being blasted by the SQ.

Back to the silo, this time ALONE. Grind, grind, grind through all the stuff to do. I get to the radiation room, so I need my PA. DAMN THING GLITCHES and won’t let me enter.

Okay, okay, no problem—it’s still letting me enter the menu, so I fast travel back to the silo, navigate my way (getting lost a lot) to where I was, get in my PA… and then, within five minutes, my damn fusion cores run out. I had six, but all of them are now drained.

So now I’m trying to do the hardest bit with no PA. (I have some SS armour but not the full set yet.) I’m running low on fuel and really low on ammo. It’s been nearly three hours, and I can hear my wife pulling up in the driveway, so I rage quit.

I’ll be back—after grinding to get lead and acid to craft a LOT more fuel and server-hopping for more fusion cores. But Jesus, what a shitty first attempt!

What disasters have you guys had that wasted a whole afternoon?