I served as a loader on my last deployment (they used to make up parts of the loading teams from non-ordinance specialties...I don’t recall why) and we would do the loading drills...I recall it was highly ritualized, reading checklists from manuals as we did it, and they had members from the Marine detachment standing guard as you did it in full combat gear (back when they still had Marine detachments on carriers)
Saw a guy get clocked with the stock of an M-16 one time by a Marine as he ran through the cordon...I think he was a damage control guy on the way to a fire alarm or something and he cut through the perimeter in a rush, not thinking, and the Marine knocked him on his ass. They were all business there.
Dang. That was a long time ago.
Back in the seventies on occasion I would fly over Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth in my aircraft at night. It was legal and I was under positive control from ATC. It was rather eerie to look down and see all those B52s on the ground with flood lights all around them. They were loaded with nukes and ready to go in an instant.