Back in 1955 , according to a lately declassifiedCIAreport , a deuce-ace of secret operatives scouted the western U.S. for a remote place where the administration could try the prototype of the U-2 undercover agent sheet . One day , they wing over the Groom Lake salt 2-dimensional in Nevada , and found exactly were looking for — an old forsake Army Air Corps flight strip that was just 100 miles ( 161 km ) from Las Vegas , yet so far off the beaten course that it did n’t even have a name . On government maps , the place was designated nondescriptly asArea 51of the Nevada Test Site . For decades , officials tried to head off even notice the top - secret base ’s existence , let alone revealing anything about the mystical military aerospace enquiry that took place there [ reference : Stuster ] .
Nevertheless , it was hard to keep thing wholly hush - hush after airline business pilots started report secret sighting of UFOs [ source : Stuster ] . Area 51 bit by bit evolved into what a 2009 Los Angeles Times clause hollo " the most famous military institution in the Earth that does n’t officially live " [ source : Jacobsen ] . Amateur detective bivouac , methodically scan the sky with binoculars in promise of catching a glimpse of the secret passing - on [ source : Ball ] . In 2010 , after some declassification , former Area 51 employees were able to publically talk about some of the exotic labor they ’d worked on [ root : Lacitis ] .
But the existent , documented secrets of Area 51 ferment out to be pretty ho - busyness compared to the dada - culture mythology that has developed around the place . Area 51 ’s classified nature made it the everlasting blank slate for generation of conspiracy idealogue . Here are 10 of their more outlandish assertions .
10: The Government Reverse-Engineers Alien Spacecraft There
Back in 1989 , a gentleman’s gentleman named Bob Lazar claim that he ’d been hired to work out briefly as a researcher at a part of Area 51 name S-4 , which was so close that he and other actor were taken there in a autobus with blacked - out windows , so that they could n’t tell apart the route .
In the repair shed at S-4 , Lazar claim , he saw aviate saucers , apparently extraterrestrial in origin . They were power by antimatter reactors , fueled by a mysterious cherry - orange meat call off Element 115 . The twist generated a " gravity wave " so sinewy that if you throw a golf ball in its direction , the ballock would bounce off , Lazar recounted [ source : Patton ] . The government was attempting to reverse - engineer theUFOs , in an exertion to use the technology for military purposes . Lazar said he was fired from the job after he was overtake take friends out into the desert at night so they could watch exam flights of the captured saucers [ source : Birnes ] . Lazar ’s Area 51 credentials later came into question [ beginning : Patton ] .
But the larger notion that the Pentagon is really stealing all its fancy gadgetry — from stealth aircraft to Kevlar — fromalieninventors is just too deliciously conspiratorial to go away [ author : metre ] .
9: It’s an Interrogation Center for Captured Aliens
In the imaginations of conspiracy idealogue , one of Area 51 ’s social function is to serve as the equivalent of theprisonfor accusedterroristsat Guantanamo Bay . The difference is that the detainees are extraterrestrial being , and they do n’t have to wear orange jumpsuit or listen to loud heavy - metallic element rock when they ’re attempt to slumber . This thesis is burnish by another of ego - described Area 51 scientist Bob Lazar ’s revelations . He has withdraw that while being guided down a hallway at S-4 , he momentarily glanced through a small windowpane and grab a glance of a small , grey extraterrestrial standing between two men dressed in white coat . Before he could get a better flavour , he was fight by a guard who told him to stop wait and keep moving [ source : Jacobsen ] .
Another self - title whistleblower , " Victor , " who also claim to have put to work at Area 51 , say in a 1997 radio consultation that he had witnessed an foreign enquiry , and even provided a grainy video recording which purportedly shows a human policeman trying to communicate telepathically with an bantam extraterrestrial pilot program who ’d been shoot down by the U.S. military [ germ : UFO Casebook ] .
8: Autopsies of Dead Aliens Take Place at Area 51
This theme has been percolate in popular culture since the mid-1990s , when a 17 - minute black - and - blanched film show up which aim to show a squad of humans in white-hot bio - hazard protection suits cutting open and removing pipe organ from what appear to be a tiny alien cadaver [ source : Corliss ] . The footage aired on TV in multiple countries and transcript became a popular mail - order detail , even though doubter noted that the squad performing the dissection seemed to be fantastically clumsy with their surgical shaft . Years later on , the film ’s producers released a docudrama continuation , in which they admitted to faking the autopsy — though they claim to have done it only to supervene upon genuine footage that had been damaged .
But believers can draw comfort , perhaps , from other purported Area 51autopsyvideos that have since show up , such as the 2012 DVD " Alien from Area 51 : The Alien Autopsy Footage Revealed " which entices the rum with a " Warning : Graphic Material " recording label [ source : IMDB ] . Another bit of fishy footage surfaced in 2014 , supposedly showing a part take apart 4 - foot - tall ( 122 centimeter ) alien with a severed , louse - like heading [ source : Shammas ] .
7: It’s the Headquarters of the Secret One-World Government
If you ’re into confederacy hypothesis with a unfeignedly idealistic sweep , Area 51 is a commodious berth to pull all of the thread together . That ’s why some speculate that the test chain is the ordered place for the location ofMajestic 12 . The latter , if you grease one’s palms the narration pose out by an anonymous author on the conspiracy siteEducate-Yourself.org , is a secret government commission that has been grind in the shadows for more than six decades to work out an arrangement for a one - world government activity in which the satellite would jointly be ruled by human and extraterrestrial elites .
MJ-12 , as conspiracy junky advert to it , purportedly started as a blue - ribbon board of scientist and military leaders created by President Harry Truman in 1947 , shortly after the smash of an exotic space vehicle near Roswell , New Mexico . As the write up goes , MJ-12 somehow eventually made contact with the alien and broker a meeting between them and President Dwight Eisenhower . That , in turn , resulted in a deal in which the U.S. governance got extraterrestrial technology , in exchange for look the other agency when UFO crew mutilated cattle and nobble man to conduct unearthly experiments on them [ author : Jacobson ] .
6: The 1969 Moon Landing Was Staged at Area 51
In a scenario proposed by conspiracy author Bill Kaysing , NASAscientists come upon in the late sixties that it would be impossible to send spaceman to the synodic month because of lethal radiation risks . But instead of going through an embarrassing closure of the costly Apollo program , functionary designed an clever hoax . They staged an actual rocket launch , but once the spacecraft was out of sight , the Apollo 11 crew on the Q.T. was transferred to a military aircraft and flown to a movie microscope stage . A few day later , astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin play - act thelunar landingin front of cameras , and the phony consequence was then transmitted by NASA to meg of unsuspicious viewer .
Pretty slick , huh ? One trouble with that assumption : Where could the government stage possibly such a conspiratorial event , without risking the political tragedy that would get from having the deception peril ? They in all likelihood would n’t have wanted to shoot the fake Sun Myung Moon landing in a Hollywood studio . It would have made more sense to film at a outback top - secret military installing , one that universal public did n’t even know existed . surface area 51 , of course of action , would have been perfect for that purpose [ source : Griggs ] .
5: It’s Got a 40-Story Underground Bunker and Other Crazy Buildings
For decade , the government activity exit to great distance to conceal any grounds of what actually had been built inside Area 51 , even blocking expiration of a 1974 orbital photo of the field inadvertently taken by Skylabastronauts[source : Clarence Day ] .
The dearth of verifiable info about Area 51 ’s architecture has fueled the febrile imaginations of conspiracy theorists . Some have suggested that the basis has faux " scoot - and - hide " buildings , designed so that aircraft can be slid underneath them and hidden when asatelliteis schedule to pass overhead . Others have claim that most of the base itself actually is hide from view , and that a massive hush-hush facility with as many as 40 levels lie beneath the aerofoil .
That subterranean infrastructure purportedly is protected at ground spirit level by layers of security measure measures , wander from sensing element that can detect both the motion and aroma of intruders , to black chopper outfit with stealth technology [ generator : McConnachie and Tudge ] . The hole-and-corner airdock that contained capture UFOs , harmonise to Lazar , were really carved into the base of a mountain . Each had an entrance with a giant threshold with a simulated sand texture to blend into the landscape painting [ source : Maloney ] .
4: It’s the Home of the Black Helicopters
In conspiracy theoriser traditional knowledge , Area 51 is the manufacturing site of the government ’s notorious blackhelicopters , which supposedly are used to conduct sinister missions such as spray clouds of toxic chemicals over suburban neighborhoods . There even have been hoi polloi who ’ve claim they ’ve been abducted by government black eggbeater and release over to vanish saucer crews for examination , which indicate a data link between the extraterrestrials and human elite who are out to work a one - world administration and blend the two species . It ’s peachy how all of this stuff really fits together so neatly , is n’t it ? [ sources : Belzer , Lewis ] .
It turns out , surprisingly , that there may be at least a tiny bit of truth at the bottom of this hypothesis . As the Las Vegas Review - Journal reported in 2011 , the radar - evadingstealth technologyused by the MH-60 Black Hawk eggbeater in the raid on Osama bin Laden ’s chemical compound actually was arise in the former 1990s at Area 51 .
Additionally , Area 51 has tested other aircraft with amazing abilities . Perhaps the quality example is the SR-71 Blackbird , the Cold War spy plane , which on a regular basis exceeded speeds of 2,000 mph ( 3,220 kilometres per hour ) at a peak of 80,000 feet ( 24,390 meters ) [ source : Hsu ] .
3: They’re Breeding Human-Alien Hybrids
Though the U.S. authorities ostensibly insure Area 51 , many cabal theorists suspect that the unavowed al-Qa’ida has been co - opted by extraterrestrials , and that the little gray beings now are either share authority or even running the show . And why would they do that ?
One distrust is that they ’ve fix up testing ground in which they ’re working , possibly alongside administration scientists , in an sweat to cover a airstream of human - alien crossbreed . theorizer ' feverish minds extend motley account for this projection . An clause on the website Collective-evolution.com , for model , explain that the goal is to create a cell of fifth - column agents / next leaders of the New World Order , who calculate exactly like the eternal rest of us but secretly possess " the genial / psychical capabilities and societal cohesion of the aliens " [ source : Estep ] .
Others think the aliens have an even creepier purpose . The exotic - human hybrids , who are under exotic ascendency ( through some sort of electronic implants ) are being created as a supply of organs that the extraterrestrials demand to replenish their own bodies [ source : Darlington ] .
2: Weather-Manipulation Weapons Are Being Tested
When you combine two popular objects of conspiracy theories — sphere 51 and the assertion that authorities scientists are on the QT attempt to cook the atmosphere in an effort to develop a weather - controller artillery — you get a combination that ’s almost as irresistible as , say , drinking chocolate - covered bacon . The Las Vegas Tourism Bureau ’s prescribed Area 51 Thomas Nelson Page even judge to lure visitors to the surface area by mentioning that the conditions ascendence experimentation is " rumored " to take place there .
This cabal theory may spring from an genuine truth : According to a National Science Foundation report , the U.S. military did actually engage in Project Cirrus , a research effort in the late forties and early 1950s to find a direction to modify clouds and expend rain — or perhaps the lack of it — as a weapon . And between 1962 and 1983 , the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ran a projection called Project STORMFURY , in which scientists seek to use cloud seeding to slowhurricanewinds , though without much success [ source : NOAA ] . While there ’s no grounds that such inquiry continued at Area 51 , atmospheric condition alteration does sound like just the sort of john that government scientist would try out to pick up from captured aliens .
1: Nothing at All Happens There
If you ’re inclined to really , really distrust the government , this might be the ultimate Area 51 conspiracy hypothesis . What if all those mysterious goings - on at the site — and the official refusal to take on the base ’s being — actually were part of an intricate misdirection hoax ? It could well be that the regime long ago moved its surreptitious enquiry to other , even more removed , locations , while subtly promote public curiosity about Area 51 to keep us all looking in the awry stead [ source : Stooge ] .
But that ’s not all . British journalist and filmmaker Mark Pilkington has argued that the entire UFO - believer subculture has been the victim of an elaborate , ongoingpropagandaoperation . Over the years , he claim , the U.S. Air Force and the intelligence community quietly have wreak to spread the opinion that UFOs have crashed on American grunge and that the government has been hide and stock advanced foreign technology . It was all intended to disport attention away from the factual observational spy aircraft and other gadgetry that the government really was developing . TheAir Force , he articulate , hoard report of UFO sightings and then compared them to the schedule of U-2 spy plane flights , for approximate whether the aircraft was visible to basis observers [ beginning : Kingsbury ] . Now , how’sthatfor being devious ?
Lots More Information
This was an interesting assignment because I ’ve been fascinated by the confederacy subculture for decades — from the sometime - school skeptic of the Warren Commission that I chance as a newspaper newsman back in the 1980s , to the new multiplication of 9 - 11 " truthers . " But domain 51 enthusiasts , to me , seem particularly fervid . That may be because it ’s possible to apply the bits and pieces of Area 51 lore to spin a deluxe , overarch confederacy meta - theory , one that provides an all - purpose alternative explanation for our intact recent account .
