September 20th, 2019. A mob of people gather at the site of the mysterious government facility
Area 51. Today is the day - they’re going to storm the gates, get inside, and find
out what’s hiding in there. Is one of the greatest mysteries in American history about to be solved?
I wouldn’t hold your breath. But what’s the deal with Area 51 anyway?
If you ask most people, it’s the most secret facility in the United States - so secret that
no one even knows what’s inside. It’s frequently believed to be where the government keeps
classified things that aren’t supposed to exist, including proof of extraterrestrials. Located in
Nevada, it’s just close enough to Roswell, New Mexico for people to think there’s probably a
flying saucer or two hiding inside. And the people who believe the government is keeping proof of
aliens secret in Area 51 often think that even the President doesn’t know about it - because you know
one President would have tweeted out pictures of the aliens five minutes after finding out.
But the actual truth is a lot more complicated - and goes back decades.
Area 51 is one of the most secure government facilities in the United
States. How secure? Who’s asking? The government isn’t in the business of revealing the details
about top-secret security measures, so we have no way of knowing who has access and
who knows about this secretive site. What is known is that it’s a complex network of
government facilities located on the banks of Groom Lake in rural Nevada - and there
are a lot of bases in Nevada. Aside from Las Vegas and a few other cities,
much of Nevada is federal land - and the wide open space makes it easy to conduct secret business.
But we do know quite a bit.
The only awareness most people have of Area 51’s inner workings is the little we’ve picked
up from aerial surveillance. It started out as a rectangular base of six miles by ten miles,
and since then it’s massively expanded to a network of facilities ranging 23 to 25
miles across, connected to a larger road network in the Nevada Test Site - which
was used for nuclear bomb testing long ago. Filled with security checkpoints,
you’ll get stopped long before you get anywhere near Area 51,
but the surrounding area has become a bit of a tourist destination on State Route 375,
with locals filling the small towns nearby with kitschy alien-themed attractions.
And it turns out the truth goes back to flying - but maybe not saucers.
The source of the name Area 51 is unknown, but it’s believed to be part of the Atomic
Energy Commission numbering grid. It doesn’t match the rest of the system - but the number
is so high that it was unlikely to be used. Maybe this was part of it being
highly classified - being within the system but outside of it? We know the early history
of the site includes being used for lead and silver mining in the 19th century, but those
mines eventually died out in the 1950s, and the area had been used for an airfield in the 1940s.
Which made it prime real estate for Uncle Sam.
Until 1955, the area was a loosely developed unpaved airfield, but in 1955 the Cold War
was raging and much of it was going to be fought in the air. The CIA took over land on the Groom
Lake facility in 1955, and partnered with the Lockheed Corporation to develop the Lockheed
U-2 - the strategic reconnaissance aircraft that would provide decades
of key intelligence for the government. The aircraft was one of the government’s most
closely-guarded secret, and they needed a highly isolated location to test it.
And Area 51 would deliver.
Originally nicknamed “Paradise Ranch”, it soon played host to government workers and would
become a reliable testing ground for military projects in the decades to come. Four years later,
it became the host for Project OXCART, which specialized in antiradar technology,
aerodynamic structural tests, and other top-secret engineering projects. Much of
this has since been declassified, and we know that multiple top Lockheed planes were designed
here including the A-12 - A powerful Mach-3 plane that was key to the 1960s spy race.
And the government was gearing up for a long stay.
By 1961, the formerly deserted area had been transformed into a major military complex
with multiple hangars and enough facilities to support a small population of workers.
It looked more like a modern military base, but many of the residents were civilians and
their families - so the government soon built other amenities like a gymnasium,
a movie theater, and even a baseball diamond! No word on if there were any aliens present,
and if so, if they got to play a rousing baseball game of humans
vs. space invaders. A diagram from 1966 was declassified recently, and it shows us the
details of how Area 51 was structured - or maybe that’s what they want you to think!
So how did a simple military facility in the desert become a pop culture phenomenon?
Part of it is the increased secrecy. As the OXCART project began, the government started
locking down the area. Entry was strictly regulated, and the nearby mine was closed.
The government even created a restricted airspace region over Groom Lake, and top-secret aircraft
were brought in for testing. Those who were in the area would occasionally see a massive stealth
aircraft take off from the base - and there was an increased sense of mystery around the facility.
And the mystery technology based there would only get stranger.
Today, many of the United States’ wars aren’t fought with soldiers - but with drones. These
unmanned aircraft can track and identify a target and deliver a lethal attack without
putting any soldiers in danger. Some are controlled by soldiers back at base in a
process similar to video games, while others are programmed and sent into the field autonomously.
And the process to make these high-tech aircrafts possible began…you guessed it,
at Area 51. One of the most interesting projects in the 1960s was an unmanned
aircraft that would be mounted to the back of a plane and launched from there.
But some of the most classified technology at the base wasn’t American at all.
There was no bigger prize for a government during the Cold War than to capture an enemy
aircraft. When Soviet-built aircraft wound up in US hands, they were often brought back to Groom
Lake for testing and breakdown, so the US could gain knowledge on how to counter these weapons
if a war ever began. Most famously, in 1966 an Iraqi fighter pilot was ordered to bomb civilian
Kurd villages - and once he got those orders, he used a training flight to fly to Israel
seeking refuge. The Israelis gave him sanctuary, smuggled his family out of Iraq, and turned his
Soviet-built MiG fighter over to the government - after which it was flown at Groom Lake.
And the success of the site would continue.
Lockheed continued developing aircrafts at the site for the duration of the Cold War,
making it the top testing facility for the government. However, it wasn’t suitable for
operations due to its size, so some testing would move over to nearby Tonopah where a larger airbase
was developed. While the military moved many of its operations over there, more classified tests
continued at Area 51. The Cold War eventually ended, and things at Area 51 became quieter.
But they certainly didn’t stop - the government continued expanding the area around the base,
using eminent domain to take privately owned land in 2015 to boost its security perimeter.
And the information coming out of this mystery site slowed to a trickle.
So where are we now?
The US Government has always been cagey about Area 51, and no one is sure exactly what is going on
there right now. We do know that the lake area is off-limits - not just to road and foot traffic,
but to civilian and standard military aircraft. With many security checkpoints along the way,
including buried motion sensors and armed guards, anyone trying to get in will be
stopped before they see anything classified. The only ones who do get in regularly? The Air Force,
using their specialized Janet fleet of aircraft. These private planes are
used to transfer military and government personnel to classified facilities - and
we don’t know who’s on those planes or what their business is at Area 51.
And any attempts to get more information about Area 51 have been fruitless.
Officially, the government map only shows the mine area as being part of Area 51,
but declassified documents have shed light on the history of the area and revealed many of
its Cold War era secrets. But the site is still as secretive as it ever was - and there don’t seem to
be nearly as many test flights as there used to be. Satellites have provided more information on
the site, including showing runway markings, bases, and aircraft stationed there. Most
details have come from Freedom of Information requests leading to declassified documents.
But the government is still keeping its secrets.
In 1994, the government was hit by a lawsuit from a group of people who worked at Area 51. They were
five civilian contractors - and two widows of men who worked there and had since passed on.
They claimed that they had been exposed to massive quantities of unknown chemicals that were burning
at the site, and tests confirmed exposure to toxic chemicals including dioxin. The claimants reported
skin, liver, and lung injuries, and sued both the Air Force and the Environmental Protection
Agency. They had their day in court - and the government immediately petitioned to have the
entire thing shuffled away under the State Secrets Privilege. When the judge declined,
President Clinton quickly issued an order exempting the facility from disclosure in
the lawsuit, and the lawsuit had to be dismissed due to lack of evidence.
What is the government keeping secret at Area 51 - and has it killed people?
Whatever the truth is, every President since has extended this protective declaration
annually - including arch-political rivals like Barack Obama and Donald Trump. They
all seem to agree that Area 51 should be kept under lock and key - which naturally,
has only increased speculation from civilians. It’s kept highly secure,
and trespassers find out the hard way that the government means business. In January 2019,
a man crashed through one of the security checkpoints and was pursued by guards. He
led the guards on a wild chase for over eight miles before exiting his vehicle carrying an
unidentified object - and was promptly shot dead. Suddenly, Area 51 was in the headlines again.
And decades of conspiracies were about to come to a head.
So how did a standard military facility become such a haven for conspiracies? The place is
fairly secretive - but most classified government facilities are. The security
is standard for military sites, and we might actually know more about the activities going
on there than we do at other bases abroad. After all, most of the aviation testing has since been
declassified. But that hasn’t pushed away the conspiracies - it actually seemed to make them
more intense. And it’s not just one conspiracy - somehow Area 51 seems to have become the one
place where just about every mysterious rumor about the government takes place.
So what makes Area 51 special?
For one thing, it’s big. Really big. This isn’t just a building
or a network of buildings - it’s a massive swath of the desert bigger than some towns,
that’s been entirely locked down by the government for decades. We only know a little of the layout,
but it’s possible that the government has built underground facilities at the Groom Lake site
that are much bigger than what appears on the surface. If they have, it’s likely a
storage facility for military technology - but the theories people have come up with are much wilder.
So is there anything to them?
Many of the theories are really out there, with people bringing up secret programs like weather
control, time travel, or futuristic energy weapons. Most of these are in the realm of
science fiction and there’s no proof the government has anything to do with them.
Other theories are even more outlandish, like the idea that this is a secret base
for a shadowy secret government that is actually pulling the President’s strings.
Less out-there theories claim that US military technology is much further advanced than we know,
and the government is continuing to develop its war tech out of the public eye.
But there’s one theory that has more legs - or tentacles - than any other.
How did Area 51 become the supposed hub of extraterrestrial technology? While there
haven’t been any specific reports of UFO sightings or crashes near Area 51 itself,
the location is in the desert relatively close to Roswell and other sightings. The
southwest has an unusual number of UFO sightings, as the wide-open sky
means things like small planes or weather balloons would be far more noticeable in
the night sky. And that’s exactly what the government claims Roswell was - a weather
balloon. But if you ask conspiracy theorists, that’s exactly what they want you to think!
And there have been a few claims that have a bit more to them.
During the 1950s, civilian aircrafts could only fly half as high as military aircrafts could,
and the number of test flights in the area that broke what people thought was the limits of flight
led to rumors spreading that something odd was going out there. Imagine if you looked up, and
suddenly a gleaming metal object soared through the sky, higher than any passenger plane you’ve
ever seen. You’d think it was a UFO too, although the government justifies this odd phenomenon by
the silver wings of the plane reflecting the sun - giving the planes an odd shimmering effect. The
government believes this explains the sightings - although the Air Force did have their own project
investigating UFO sightings, Project Blue Book. They came up empty - or so they say.
And one man says it was all a lie.
Bob Lazar was not a reliable man,
usually regarded as a conspiracy theorist prone to fantastical claims.
And one of those claims was that he worked at Sector Four in Area 51. The only problem was,
Sector Four does not officially exist. To which Lazar said…you guessed it, “That’s what they
want you to think!”. The author claimed that he worked in a massive underground laboratory
where he tried to reverse-engineer a captured alien spacecraft. And that claim was followed
up on in a documentary by Bruce Burgess in 1996, where the paranormal investigator interviewed an
anonymous engineer who repeated the same claims. In 2004, a man named Dan Bursich claimed to have
worked on cloning alien viruses at Area 51, along with befriending an alien he called
“J-Rod”. Although his claims are shaky as he was a parole officer with no history of government work.
These aren’t the most credible sources - so how has Area 51 fascinated the public for so long?
Simple - Hollywood has put a lot of work into keeping the legend alive. The 1950s
were largely the birth of the American sci-fi genre, and the fascination with
aliens has continued ever since. The idea that there’s a top-secret base filled with
aliens - either friendly or terrifying - has created a whole host of entertainment
spin-offs that base their plot on the concept. No word on a wacky office comedy where a bunch
of hapless co-workers have to keep the aliens from escaping, but you know it’s coming!
But it’s appeared in one of the most popular movies of all time.
In 1996, everyone was going to see one movie - Independence Day, a thriller in which a
fleet of giant spaceships came to Earth and began attacking major cities. The aliens,
a hive-mind-like group of monsters, used planets for their resources and left them in ruins,
and the fate of humanity was in the hands of…Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. Those aliens
had better not say anything about Will’s wife. The President, played by Bill Pullman, was shocked to
discover that Area 51 had been secretly keeping an alien scout captive for decades and he never
even knew about the top-secret facility. It was a ridiculous movie - but it was
easily the biggest spotlight the world had ever gotten of the legendary secret government base.
And when there’s a success, there’s rip-offs.
Soon, pretty much everyone wanted to have Area 51 showing up in their media. The facility showed up
in the popular FOX conspiracy thriller The X-Files in 1998, and was given a more comic
twist in the action-adventure Men In Black starring Tommy Lee Jones and…Will Smith in
1997. That Will Smith will not leave aliens alone. And this was also the era that video
games were becoming more popular, so it was no surprise that a shooting game set at the
facility soon showed up. Simply titled “Area 51”, it surprisingly didn’t have any aliens in it,
but instead pitted the player against genetically engineered zombie soldiers.
And the facility would soon get even more starring roles.
In 2015, Area 51 would be the title of a found-footage horror film. Primarily
released on on-demand video platforms, it focused on a trio of particularly stupid
friends who decide to break into the military base using the tools provided by a friend whose
father works there. They find strange technology - and a carnivorous alien trying to kill them.
As the movie goes on, two members of the group get captured by a mysterious force,
and the surviving two get abducted by the government, never to be seen again. It was
considered a mediocre attempt to cash in on the found-footage craze that didn’t really
add anything more to the mythology of Area 51, but it provided a few good jump scares.
But maybe the biggest boost for the facility’s attention came in 2011.
Written by journalist Annie Jacobson, “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret
Military Base” was billed as the most in-depth look at Area 51 ever created, claiming to
featured countless interviews with scientists and engineers that worked at the base. Surprisingly,
it abandoned the alien connection entirely - and came up with a story that was even crazier!
It claimed that the deranged Nazi scientist Josef Mengele had been recruited by the Soviet,
and that they had genetically engineered mutant child-sized pilots to fly UFOs over the
United States for spying - and that they had been captured and kept at Area 51. Some people praised
the book as a compelling read, but others pointed out that it was well…kind of nuts. But hey,
points for originality. Mutant Soviet-Nazi dwarfs is a theory we’ve never heard before.
And with this level of conspiracy theories floating around,
it’s no surprise that things were about to get crazier.
After the shooting incident in 2019, Area 51 was back in the news, and many people argued that the
government must be hiding something really big there if it was willing to shoot any trespassers.
And into that void stepped - an internet troll. His name was Matty Roberts, and he was about to
go down in history when he posted on Facebook “If we naruto run, we can move faster than
their bullets. Let’s see them aliens”. This soon became a rallying cry of “They can’t stop us all”,
and his ironic post calling for everyone to meet and storm Area 51 suddenly went viral.
a few weeks later, over three million people were interested in meeting up at Groom Lake.
And Roberts started getting worried - exactly what had he kicked off?
He quickly issued a post saying that he was only joking and didn’t want a visit
from the FBI, but it was too little, too late. Soon, it was a sensation,
with music star Lil Nas X even releasing a remix of one of his songs celebrating the raid.
Soon, even the government had to step in - with an Air Force spokeswoman
saying that the government was aware of the plans and that anyone who tried to
break into an open training range for the airforce would be turned back, arrested,
or stopped by any means necessary. The FAA even stepped in and increased flight
restrictions over the area. When the military’s public relations office posted a meme implying
that any people who tried to break in would be vaporized by a stealth bomber,
they were forced to delete the meme and apologize. Apparently vaporizing your constituents is bad PR.
But not everyone was worried.
While the government was keeping a close eye on the situation, local small towns
prepared for an influx of business - and warned that their small hotels didn’t have the capacity
to handle all the visitors. They posted tips for camping in the harsh desert environment,
and waited for the best sales period of their lives. And on September 19th,
2019, people started showing up. While most of the three millions likely had jobs to go to,
it’s estimated that around fifteen hundred people did show up at the fences around Area 51.
And then…they had a party!
The event turned out to be less of a siege of the facility and more a selfie opportunity,
with a few people taking photos at the fence and then dispersing. The
only arrests were people nabbed for alcohol offenses, public urination,
and indecent exposure. The aliens don’t want to see that, Kevin. And after the initial event,
it turned into a music festival called Alienstock, where a bunch of people partied the night away in
alien gear. The only person not there? Roberts, whose creation had gotten far
out of his control and he really didn’t want to be associated with it anymore. The only
people disappointed were the ones who thought they were actually going to storm Area 51.
But what if a large group did? Could the government actually stop them?
In a word…yes! Area 51 is designed to be secure enough to withstand an armed invasion,
and the exterior security is top-of-the-line for the military. As for what’s beyond it,
we don’t know - because no one’s who wasn’t supposed to has ever made it inside! So if a
group of a few thousand people tried to storm Area 51, most of them would be stopped by
security. Those few that got further would likely find a secure base with no easy way
in - and much more serious criminal charges for breaking into a government facility.
So it looks like whatever’s in there, Area 51 will be keeping its secrets. Sorry,
Alf - we’ll be there to break you out soon.
Want to learn more about what COULD be in Area 51?
Watch “This Will Happen When The Govt Confirms Aliens Exist” or “Is
There Evidence That Aliens Did Come To Roswell” for all the mysterious details.