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Selects: How Area 51 Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Chuck here, take me to your leader. Other
0:05
Speaker 1: things ets might say, Happy Saturday. This episode is called
0:11
Speaker 1: how Area fifty one Works. It's from June thirteenth, twenty nineteen,
0:15
Speaker 1: and you know, we get into it. We chop it up,
0:17
Speaker 1: as they say, all about Area fifty one.
0:20
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoy.
0:27
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:36
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
0:39
Speaker 3: there's Charles w Chuck Brian over there, and there's Dylan
0:42
Speaker 3: the guest producer again. And this is stop should Know,
0:47
Speaker 3: the podcast about Chuck some pretty heady stuff.
0:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
0:55
Speaker 1: I could have sworn we did this one. No, what
0:58
Speaker 1: do we do roswell no UFOs?
1:01
Speaker 2: Yes we did that at a comic con or something, right.
1:03
Speaker 3: Yeah we did. We did it live. I've never been
1:06
Speaker 3: satisfied with that one.
1:08
Speaker 2: I agree.
1:09
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll redo it one day.
1:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is good, this Area fifty one.
1:15
Speaker 1: I think this kind of covers some ground that I
1:18
Speaker 1: didn't think I was surprised by.
1:21
Speaker 2: This is what I'm saying.
1:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too, And I think the thing that I
1:24
Speaker 3: would wager you were surprised about, which I was definitely
1:27
Speaker 3: surprised about was just how mundane the explanations for what
1:31
Speaker 3: goes on at Area fifty one probably.
1:33
Speaker 2: Is yeah, secret government research the end.
1:36
Speaker 3: Right, but it probably doesn't have anything to do with
1:40
Speaker 3: reverse engineering, alien technology and the secret seat of the
1:44
Speaker 3: one World government, the Majestic twelve, probably isn't located there.
1:49
Speaker 2: No, probably just bombs and planes.
1:50
Speaker 3: Probably it makes sense. And if there is a conspiracy
1:54
Speaker 3: going on, the one conspiracy theory I saw for Area
1:57
Speaker 3: fifty one that made the most sense to me is
2:00
Speaker 3: that it's actually meant to be a distraction or has
2:03
Speaker 3: developed into a distraction for some other place that no
2:07
Speaker 3: one even.
2:07
Speaker 2: Knows about Area fifty Maybe, yeah.
2:10
Speaker 3: Maybe hopefully they're not quite that on the nose, but
2:14
Speaker 3: it's possible.
2:16
Speaker 2: All right. So let's go back in time, I guess.
2:20
Speaker 1: To World War two, and well, first of all, Area
2:24
Speaker 1: fifty one, just to geographically level set, it's less than
2:29
Speaker 1: one hundred miles from Las Vegas in.
2:31
Speaker 2: Nevada, South South Nevada.
2:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's six hundred square miles and it's basically if
2:38
Speaker 1: you look at it on Google Earth, it looks like
2:40
Speaker 1: a you know, big airfield with a bunch of buildings.
2:43
Speaker 3: So the I think the whole restricted airspace that's part
2:47
Speaker 3: of like the test range and the air base and
2:50
Speaker 3: all of that stuff. Yeah, the Area fifty one is
2:52
Speaker 3: located in. I think that's six hundred square miles. I'm
2:56
Speaker 3: pretty sure Area fifty one itself is no more than
2:58
Speaker 3: sixty square miles.
2:59
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, just like the It's not like they're
3:02
Speaker 1: six hundred square miles of buildings.
3:04
Speaker 3: Right, it's just what Yeah, the installation that people think
3:07
Speaker 3: of as Area fifty one is part of a larger, huge,
3:12
Speaker 3: big chunk of the American desert in Nevada.
3:16
Speaker 2: Right, So.
3:18
Speaker 1: Next to Area fifty one is what's what you were
3:21
Speaker 1: kind of talking.
3:21
Speaker 2: About, the Nevada Test Site.
3:23
Speaker 1: And this is where for about ten or eleven years,
3:26
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission was setting off nuclear bombs underground,
3:34
Speaker 1: above ground and really sort of figuring out how to
3:39
Speaker 1: kill a lot of people very easily and sort of
3:42
Speaker 1: the most dangerous way you could imagine.
3:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you could see this from Vegas, Like they
3:47
Speaker 3: would have parties when they were doing the test, because
3:50
Speaker 3: Vegas is like eighty miles away or something like that,
3:52
Speaker 3: and they would have like atomic cocktails and viewing parties
3:56
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. And people watch them shoot off bombs. Unbelievable, right,
4:01
Speaker 3: But this is obviously a part of the country that
4:05
Speaker 3: the government would be very interested in keeping people away from,
4:08
Speaker 3: not just for the bombs, but because of the fallout
4:13
Speaker 3: the radiation, but also the fact that they're testing like
4:16
Speaker 3: super sensitive military equipment and weapons, right, like atomic bombs.
4:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.
4:22
Speaker 1: Like previous to this, it was just land. There were
4:25
Speaker 1: silver mines, there was cattle and wildlife. But then in
4:28
Speaker 1: nineteen forty the government said no, this is ours, and
4:31
Speaker 1: we're going to train bombers here.
4:34
Speaker 2: And there was a big bombing range and they.
4:36
Speaker 1: Were split into different numbers, and that's where the number
4:40
Speaker 1: Area fifty one comes from, which seems I don't know
4:43
Speaker 1: about arbitrary, but no one knows if it really matters
4:46
Speaker 1: why it was named Area fifty one.
4:48
Speaker 3: No, I think it was. If you look at old
4:50
Speaker 3: bombing range maps, the area where Area fifty one is
4:54
Speaker 3: located was denoted as area fifty.
4:57
Speaker 2: One Between fifty and fifty two, it is probably the answer.
4:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's basically from what I saw, that was it.
5:02
Speaker 2: Yeah.
5:03
Speaker 1: So there's another part of this story. With World War two,
5:06
Speaker 1: and this is Germany. They were a bit ahead of
5:09
Speaker 1: US as far as jets go, jet airplanes, the United
5:14
Speaker 1: States is like, this won't do it all. So we're
5:16
Speaker 1: going to get kind of put the gas on our
5:19
Speaker 1: jet development. And in nineteen forty three, Lockheed said was
5:25
Speaker 1: tasked with developing a jet fighter plane you can use
5:28
Speaker 1: a British jet engine, and they tasked engineer Kelly Johnson said,
5:32
Speaker 1: get a team together. He got a team together and
5:35
Speaker 1: they delivered the P eighty Shooting Star, which is one
5:39
Speaker 1: of the coolest looking old jets.
5:41
Speaker 2: All these planes are just amazing looking.
5:44
Speaker 3: Agreed, very very cool. It's a good idea when we
5:46
Speaker 3: talk about a new jet or something, go look it
5:48
Speaker 3: up as we're talking about because most of them are
5:50
Speaker 3: pretty boss looking.
5:51
Speaker 2: Yeah.
5:51
Speaker 1: I've never been a plane guy, but I'm getting more
5:53
Speaker 1: and more into it.
5:54
Speaker 3: Is that right? Yeah, I want to do a stealth
5:56
Speaker 3: bomber episode one day.
5:57
Speaker 2: Okay, possibly the coolest plane.
5:59
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Kelly Johnson was just that right there. Delivering
6:05
Speaker 3: America's first jet on like undertime and under budget was
6:11
Speaker 3: huge and he became a legendary engineer right off the bat.
6:16
Speaker 3: And they I think Lockheed said, hey, how would you
6:18
Speaker 3: like to keep this pace up? We'll give you, your
6:21
Speaker 3: team of elite engineers, whatever funding you need, whatever resources
6:26
Speaker 3: you need, just ask you can have it, and you
6:28
Speaker 3: just keep developing stuff really quickly for us, and we
6:33
Speaker 3: will put you at the cutting edge of aviation research.
6:36
Speaker 3: And so Kelly Johnson and his team eventually became known
6:39
Speaker 3: as the Skunk Works, which is legendary in aviation engineering
6:44
Speaker 3: because they developed a whole bunch of really cool stuff.
6:48
Speaker 3: But also they had a pretty great name too that
6:50
Speaker 3: was fairly intriguing. But they were the first ones to
6:52
Speaker 3: kind of basically develop agile project management from what I understand.
6:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was all out of the what was
7:00
Speaker 1: own a Site one, which was in Burbank, California, just
7:03
Speaker 1: sort of a suburb of LA But then in nineteen
7:06
Speaker 1: fifty four they said, you know what we need now
7:09
Speaker 1: is a spy plane. The CIA wants a spyplane. We
7:13
Speaker 1: want something that can fly above radar and photograph Soviet
7:19
Speaker 1: military bases missile installations. We're going to name it, because
7:23
Speaker 1: we name everything Project aquatone. And that's where Johnson and
7:28
Speaker 1: his team developed the U two. The Skunkworks team, but
7:33
Speaker 1: they couldn't do this at Site one anymore because it
7:36
Speaker 1: had to be super super secret obviously because it was
7:39
Speaker 1: a spy plane, so they needed a different place, and
7:42
Speaker 1: that's where that sort of all converges onto this testing
7:45
Speaker 1: site in Nevada.
7:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, Kelly Johnson, CIA officer named Richard Bissel and a
7:52
Speaker 3: couple of pilots started scouting locations for where they could
7:56
Speaker 3: develop this in super super secret and they they went
8:00
Speaker 3: to look at the old Nevada Test Range and specifically
8:05
Speaker 3: the thing that attracted them was a dry salt lake
8:08
Speaker 3: called Groom Lake. And one of the pilots recounted taking
8:12
Speaker 3: some like sixteen pounds shot put balls and dropping them
8:16
Speaker 3: on the ground to see just how sandy the ground was,
8:18
Speaker 3: and he said it was solid as a tabletop. This
8:21
Speaker 3: lake was the dry lake. They were like, this will
8:24
Speaker 3: probably do. And there's a lot of reasons why it
8:27
Speaker 3: would do, not just because there was a dry lake
8:29
Speaker 3: bed that was as hard as concrete, but because it
8:33
Speaker 3: was in an area that was already off limits to
8:36
Speaker 3: the public. The airspace was already restricted, it was remote,
8:41
Speaker 3: there were two mountain ranges that shield the test site
8:46
Speaker 3: from view. So this area, what became known as Area
8:49
Speaker 3: fifty one, was just perfect for developing a super secret
8:54
Speaker 3: spy plane in Super Secret and so the CIA and
8:58
Speaker 3: the skunk Works team say this will do. Let's take
9:01
Speaker 3: this place over.
9:02
Speaker 1: Did I ever tell you about one of the most
9:03
Speaker 1: fun things I ever got to do as a PA?
9:06
Speaker 3: What wait, didn't were you arrested by Eric a Strada?
9:09
Speaker 2: Is you're gonna say, oh no, that's stop. Ten Okay.
9:13
Speaker 1: We did a car shoot on a dry like bed
9:17
Speaker 1: and death Valley nice and they had like a big,
9:20
Speaker 1: huge line of cars in a row, all driving in
9:23
Speaker 1: perfect synchronicity, and the director wasn't happy, and they were like,
9:26
Speaker 1: we want all the dust is behind them. He went,
9:29
Speaker 1: I want dust in front of them. So the ad
9:31
Speaker 1: ran and grabbed the keys to a Mustang, threw them
9:35
Speaker 1: to me, and he said, get in that Mustang and
9:38
Speaker 1: drive one hundred feet in front of them as fast
9:40
Speaker 1: as you can, fish tailing and doing donuts and stuff.
9:43
Speaker 3: Awesome.
9:45
Speaker 1: I was like me, yeah, oh man, it was so
9:48
Speaker 1: much fun because this is a dry lake bed. It's
9:49
Speaker 1: like there's just no fear of hitting anything or flipping,
9:54
Speaker 1: like you.
9:54
Speaker 2: Could just do whatever you wanted. It was wonderful.
9:56
Speaker 3: That's cool.
9:57
Speaker 2: It was so much fun.
9:58
Speaker 3: Did you didn't hit a jack rabbit or anything, just
10:01
Speaker 3: a couple.
10:03
Speaker 1: No, it was fine. It was a lot of fun.
10:05
Speaker 1: So what was the last thing he said.
10:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last thing, Well, I was talking about how
10:11
Speaker 3: amazingly perfect Area fifty one is for developing a super
10:14
Speaker 3: secret spy plane.
10:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they called it Paradise Ranch, and the locals
10:18
Speaker 1: around there they were used to because of all the
10:20
Speaker 1: atomic bomb testing. It kind of worked out because they
10:23
Speaker 1: weren't gonna First of all, I was in the middle
10:25
Speaker 1: of nowhere, but even the nearby communities, the ones that
10:28
Speaker 1: were close enough, it just wasn't on anyone's radar because
10:31
Speaker 1: they had always been doing weird things out there, so
10:35
Speaker 1: it's not like it pricked up anyone's ears. So it
10:38
Speaker 1: was kind of the perfect cover to be there at
10:41
Speaker 1: Paradise Ranch doing these development of these spy planes and.
10:44
Speaker 2: Stuff, right right.
10:46
Speaker 3: So, but in addition to that, the cover story initially
10:49
Speaker 3: that the CIA produced was that they were a team
10:52
Speaker 3: of bomb experts, yeah, who were cleaning up unexploded munitions
10:57
Speaker 3: from the time when it was used as a bombing range.
11:00
Speaker 3: So that was why that was the story they used
11:03
Speaker 3: for why there was a sudden appearance of like trucks
11:05
Speaker 3: and people when there hadn't been really much of anything
11:08
Speaker 3: there before.
11:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were also natural barriers. There were a couple
11:12
Speaker 1: of mountain ranges that kind of shielded it from view.
11:16
Speaker 1: It was already remote, the airspace was already restricted. And
11:19
Speaker 1: then Eisenhower came along and signed Executive Order one zero, six, three,
11:25
Speaker 1: three and nineteen fifty five, which basically extended the airspace
11:29
Speaker 1: over Area fifty one, and then in nineteen fifty eight
11:32
Speaker 1: a public Land Order made this basically said that this
11:37
Speaker 1: area doesn't exist anymore. Right, it's not on maps, it's
11:41
Speaker 1: not acknowledged. And this is one of the huge reasons
11:45
Speaker 1: why cite to the ranch Area fifty one has been
11:49
Speaker 1: so And we'll see later things have changed a little
11:53
Speaker 1: bit in recent years. But just for the government to say, like,
11:57
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about, over and over again,
11:59
Speaker 1: it's sort of crazy making it is.
12:02
Speaker 3: But like they would, as we'll see later, they will
12:05
Speaker 3: they would say an open court, the place where this
12:08
Speaker 3: person claims to work does not exist, like in court,
12:12
Speaker 3: and the judge would just be like, what do you what?
12:16
Speaker 3: How are we going to get around this? This is
12:18
Speaker 3: a real problem. But from what I read, Chuck originally
12:23
Speaker 3: Area fifty one was a CIA installation, and around nineteen
12:28
Speaker 3: seventy it transferred hands to the Air Force. But from
12:33
Speaker 3: what I could tell, up until that point, or at
12:35
Speaker 3: least the first several years in the mid to late
12:38
Speaker 3: fifties and early sixties, no one had any idea that
12:43
Speaker 3: Area fifty one existed. They did a really good job
12:46
Speaker 3: of keeping that place a genuine secret, not an open
12:50
Speaker 3: secret like it became later on, but a real secret.
12:53
Speaker 3: And one of the ways that they did that was
12:54
Speaker 3: they from what workers later said in like testimony in
12:59
Speaker 3: court cases, is that like they would be interrogated at
13:02
Speaker 3: gunpoint to see if they were actually spies. There were
13:05
Speaker 3: all sorts of like weird loyalty tests and things like that.
13:08
Speaker 3: And while they were working on the U two spyplane
13:12
Speaker 3: in particular, they kept that secret so serious that if
13:17
Speaker 3: you were out there working and you had nothing to
13:20
Speaker 3: do with the utube program, you were just a worker,
13:22
Speaker 3: you were working on a different program, they would move
13:24
Speaker 3: you indoors, close the doors, close the blinds on the
13:27
Speaker 3: windows before rolling the U two out or testing it,
13:31
Speaker 3: like you were not allowed to be outside or look.
13:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty like remarkable. Like within Area fifty one.
13:39
Speaker 1: They even had.
13:40
Speaker 2: Subsecurity protocols in place.
13:44
Speaker 1: I kind of just figured like, if you were in there,
13:46
Speaker 1: then you had access to the alien room, right, you know,
13:50
Speaker 1: all the good stuff.
13:51
Speaker 3: Right. But think about that, because to even be on
13:54
Speaker 3: the base or in Area fifty one, you had to
13:58
Speaker 3: have the highest level of security clearance you could possibly have, yeah,
14:03
Speaker 3: just to work on there. And even if you had that,
14:06
Speaker 3: you still couldn't see the U two spy plane or
14:09
Speaker 3: know that it existed or hear people talk about it.
14:11
Speaker 2: They wouldn't even let Bono in on it.
14:13
Speaker 3: Nope.
14:14
Speaker 2: So that was a terrible joke.
14:16
Speaker 3: It was really bad. I was really home. We can
14:17
Speaker 3: get around that one.
14:20
Speaker 1: So the U two spy plane was great until it wasn't.
14:24
Speaker 1: And that was when Francis gary Powers was shot down
14:28
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty and the plane was all of a
14:31
Speaker 1: sudden in the hand of the Soviets, and they basically
14:35
Speaker 1: were like, well, that's the end of that. You can't
14:38
Speaker 1: have a secret spy plane anymore once it's in the
14:40
Speaker 1: hand of the Soviets. And it was also a big
14:42
Speaker 1: deal because the American people all of a sudden knew
14:46
Speaker 1: that the US government is definitely doing things in total
14:51
Speaker 1: secret and developing technology that no one knows about.
14:54
Speaker 3: It was a surprise to everybody, not just the Soviets,
14:56
Speaker 3: but also the American public, Like you were saying, too,
15:00
Speaker 3: look to see if this was looked upon by historians,
15:03
Speaker 3: is like the point where Americans realized that the government
15:06
Speaker 3: did things in secret that the American public didn't know about.
15:09
Speaker 3: And I didn't see anything like that. So I don't
15:11
Speaker 3: know if this is an ed comment or what, but
15:13
Speaker 3: it makes sense. And certainly people didn't know that the
15:17
Speaker 3: U two spyplane existed. The CIA did a really good
15:19
Speaker 3: job of keeping it secret, but when it was out,
15:24
Speaker 3: it was pretty humiliating for the US. And it was
15:27
Speaker 3: also a big deal that this spy plane was shot
15:29
Speaker 3: down because Eisenhower had approached Krutchev Khrushchev and said, hey,
15:34
Speaker 3: why don't we maintain an open airspace policy to one
15:37
Speaker 3: another so we can keep tabs to make sure that
15:40
Speaker 3: either side is keeping our word with our armament treaties
15:45
Speaker 3: and the stuff we're doing. Like we're enemies, but maybe
15:48
Speaker 3: we should kind of be able to keep tabs one another,
15:50
Speaker 3: and Khrushchev said, no, there's not going to be any
15:53
Speaker 3: open airspace policy, and so the United States went and
15:56
Speaker 3: developed this U two spy plane instead, and when it
15:59
Speaker 3: got shot down flying over restricted airspace of an enemy,
16:02
Speaker 3: that's an act of war and it could have gone
16:04
Speaker 3: way differently than it did, but instead it was a
16:07
Speaker 3: big humiliation for the United States. And instead of just
16:10
Speaker 3: kind of tucking tail and running, the guy who was
16:13
Speaker 3: in charge of it for the CIA, Richard Bissel, went
16:16
Speaker 3: to the government and said, Hey, I've got an idea.
16:19
Speaker 3: Let's get even more secret and develop an even more
16:23
Speaker 3: secretive plane under an even more secretive project. And that
16:28
Speaker 3: the government said, Hey, let's do it. We're scared of
16:30
Speaker 3: the Russians. We'll double down. We'll triple down if you want, buddy,
16:34
Speaker 3: And that became Project ox Cart.
16:37
Speaker 1: That's right, And that was a black project, and it
16:41
Speaker 1: was so secret and so concealed that no one was
16:45
Speaker 1: even allowed to know how much money was being spent.
16:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a big turning point here.
16:50
Speaker 2: It was.
16:51
Speaker 1: I mean, this kind of started the era that we
16:53
Speaker 1: still live in today, in which the military just dumps
16:56
Speaker 1: money into secret projects where there's that that don't exist
17:01
Speaker 1: as far as anyone knows, and that there's very little
17:03
Speaker 1: oversight for right, exactly interesting.
17:06
Speaker 3: Yea, And apparently it was this Richard Bissell's idea.
17:08
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take a break old Dick Bissell
17:14
Speaker 1: and we'll get back to Dick Bissell and the rest of.
17:16
Speaker 2: Ox Cart right after this.
17:25
Speaker 1: Stop.
17:41
Speaker 2: So, one of the problems with I.
17:44
Speaker 1: Guess it's not a problem if you're comfortable with dumping
17:47
Speaker 1: money into a project. But one of the I guess
17:50
Speaker 1: expenses of a super super secret project is that it
17:54
Speaker 1: just costs a lot more background checks, take time, and
17:57
Speaker 1: cost money. Putting something in a super remote location costs
18:01
Speaker 1: money having extra security forces, and it all just costs
18:06
Speaker 1: a lot more money. I mean, it's a serious multiplier
18:10
Speaker 1: on costs to do something that quote unquote doesn't exist.
18:14
Speaker 3: Right. But in addition to that, chuck too, is just
18:16
Speaker 3: the fact that the technology that was being developed was
18:20
Speaker 3: so cutting edge just by definition required even more money
18:24
Speaker 3: on top of the extra money for it being so
18:27
Speaker 3: super secret.
18:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.
18:28
Speaker 1: So ox Card eventually led to the SR seventy one Blackbird,
18:32
Speaker 1: another amazingly cool plane.
18:34
Speaker 3: Probably the coolest of all time if you ask me.
18:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said the Stealth Barmber earlier. But the SR
18:38
Speaker 1: seventy one is that it was pretty awesome, although there
18:42
Speaker 1: is another one later on that I'll mention.
18:45
Speaker 2: Well, I'll go ahead and say the Bird of Prey
18:47
Speaker 2: stealth jet.
18:48
Speaker 3: You like that one, Huh, that's pretty cool. It looks
18:51
Speaker 3: a little bit like a super cool tongue depresser. You
18:55
Speaker 3: know what I'm talking about.
18:57
Speaker 2: I know what a tongue depresser is.
18:58
Speaker 3: This looks like that, a flying gray tongue depressor. It's
19:02
Speaker 3: like a popsicle stick though, right, yeah, but wider.
19:06
Speaker 1: Okay, But the SR seventy one Blackbird definitely not a
19:10
Speaker 1: popsicle stick.
19:11
Speaker 3: No, No, it's just cool. Plus it doesn't hurt the
19:14
Speaker 3: fact that Gi Joe Well Cobra technically had the SR
19:18
Speaker 3: seventy one Blackbird as one of their planes.
19:20
Speaker 2: That's funny.
19:22
Speaker 1: So Oxcart they needed better infrastructure basically, and it was
19:29
Speaker 1: they couldn't just pour money into the development of the
19:32
Speaker 1: jet at this point. They had to really update all
19:34
Speaker 1: the facilities, expanding on land, expanding more restricted airspace. Even
19:40
Speaker 1: that happened in nineteen sixty two, and it just sort
19:43
Speaker 1: of I think ingrained the super permanence of Area fifty one.
19:48
Speaker 3: And also like the fact that like the government said, no, okay,
19:51
Speaker 3: this was a humiliating thing to ever you two shot down,
19:54
Speaker 3: rather than maybe we'll just kind of take another tack.
19:57
Speaker 3: They really went further down the path of just completely
20:01
Speaker 3: secret black projects and they developed some pretty amazing stuff there.
20:07
Speaker 3: The uh I think you were saying, they Bird of
20:10
Speaker 3: Prey that was from the nineties.
20:12
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I think it's cool looking.
20:14
Speaker 3: The F one to seventeen Nighthawk, that's the one that's
20:17
Speaker 3: like a single wing stealth bomber.
20:19
Speaker 1: I believe, yes, And this is also where they take
20:24
Speaker 1: and like if you capture an enemy plane, you will
20:27
Speaker 1: take that to Area fifty one to check out as well.
20:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's another program at Wright Patterson Base in Dayton
20:35
Speaker 3: that's like set up specifically for that. But I wonder
20:38
Speaker 3: if this is like even more highly sensitive. I don't know.
20:42
Speaker 3: I don't know, but yeah, they've captured MiGs before, captured
20:46
Speaker 3: radar systems and they reverse engineered them there, which will
20:49
Speaker 3: come in a play later on. And then there was
20:52
Speaker 3: another one called the Tacit Blue Stealth Bomber. So basically
20:56
Speaker 3: any stealth aircraft, whether it was the stealth Blackhawks or
21:02
Speaker 3: the stealth bombers that were developed from the sixties onward
21:07
Speaker 3: it was probably developed and tested in super secrecy in
21:11
Speaker 3: Area fifty one.
21:13
Speaker 1: Right, So, like I said, this made it just sort
21:16
Speaker 1: of a shop that they that wouldn't close. Essentially at
21:19
Speaker 1: this point in nineteen ninety three, there's an area known
21:23
Speaker 1: as Freedom Ridge, very ironic name because Freedom Ridge was
21:28
Speaker 1: taken by the government.
21:30
Speaker 2: Right and closed off to the public.
21:32
Speaker 1: And this is where tinfoil hats used to gather with
21:36
Speaker 1: their binoculars to try and check out things.
21:39
Speaker 2: And they said to no more. Freedom Ridge is now ours.
21:43
Speaker 3: It's called get out of here Ridge. Yeah, shot on
21:46
Speaker 3: site Ridge.
21:46
Speaker 2: That's right.
21:47
Speaker 3: So if you are like get to the aliens, what
21:51
Speaker 3: are you guys even talking about the aliens in Area
21:54
Speaker 3: fifty one as synonymous as they are now, and they
21:57
Speaker 3: are synonymous. The highway that Area fifty one one is
22:00
Speaker 3: off of, that the road to Area fifty one is
22:02
Speaker 3: off of, has been officially renamed by the state of
22:05
Speaker 3: Nevada as the Extraterrestrial Highway. It's Highway three oh five.
22:09
Speaker 3: As synonymous as this base is with aliens and UFOs,
22:15
Speaker 3: that's actually relatively recent. It was operating for a good
22:20
Speaker 3: twenty five thirty five years, I think, before aliens became
22:26
Speaker 3: tied to Area fifty one, And there's actually a moment
22:30
Speaker 3: in time that you can point to where it happened.
22:34
Speaker 3: And it happened on a broadcast in May of nineteen
22:36
Speaker 3: eighty nine, almost just passed thirty years ago on KLAS,
22:41
Speaker 3: the local Las Vegas TV network. I'm not sure what
22:44
Speaker 3: network affiliate they are, but they had like their five
22:47
Speaker 3: o'clock news, and on it they interviewed a guy who
22:49
Speaker 3: was anonymous, went by the pseudonym Dennis, and he basically said, Hey,
22:54
Speaker 3: I'm doing a lot of weird stuff out there at
22:56
Speaker 3: Area fifty one. Let me tell you all about it.
23:00
Speaker 1: His name, his real name was Bob Lazar, and he
23:05
Speaker 1: Have you seen interviews with this guy?
23:06
Speaker 3: Yeah?
23:07
Speaker 2: Did you see the more recent one?
23:10
Speaker 3: No, but the one where he said I think it
23:12
Speaker 3: was a good idea, that one.
23:15
Speaker 1: No, I'm talking about there was one just from a
23:17
Speaker 1: few years ago.
23:18
Speaker 2: No, it's I gotta say.
23:21
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a conspiracy guy at all. But
23:25
Speaker 1: when you listen to Bob Blazar talk today, he just
23:29
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like some.
23:30
Speaker 2: Crackpot or a weirdo, or like he would be lying.
23:34
Speaker 1: He hasn't like made money off of this or like
23:37
Speaker 1: he's basically like, listen, man, I kind of wish this
23:41
Speaker 1: wasn't attached to my name because I'm trying to run
23:44
Speaker 1: a business in Michigan and it doesn't help that people
23:47
Speaker 1: think I'm some ufo kook.
23:49
Speaker 3: Bob Lazar is alien apples.
23:50
Speaker 2: And he's.
23:54
Speaker 1: Oh good, and he said, but he was like, you know,
23:58
Speaker 1: everything that I told you was true, though, and that's
24:01
Speaker 1: just the deal, you know, and I don't care if
24:04
Speaker 1: anyone believes me.
24:05
Speaker 3: He's kind of like that though too. In the early interviews,
24:09
Speaker 3: at the very least, he's very calm and not at
24:11
Speaker 3: all kookie or anything like that. It's specifically the stuff
24:15
Speaker 3: he was talking about that was, yeah, so compelling.
24:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
24:18
Speaker 1: So his story is then you can go watch this
24:21
Speaker 1: stuff for yourself and see it all. But he basically
24:24
Speaker 1: explains how he's an engineer and he was working on
24:29
Speaker 1: reverse engineering flying saucers, essentially alien spacecraft and alien technology,
24:38
Speaker 1: and at one point he was in a room and
24:41
Speaker 1: they left him alone with all these files that describe
24:44
Speaker 1: alien technology and alien autopsies and all of this stuff.
24:49
Speaker 1: And it's pretty remarkable to listen to. It didn't make
24:53
Speaker 1: the hugest waves because it was nineteen eighty nine. It
24:56
Speaker 1: was a local news station at first, it didn't, yeah,
24:59
Speaker 1: and then it was picked up by Japan oddly enough,
25:02
Speaker 1: and after it went to Japan, it went kind of worldwide,
25:06
Speaker 1: and before you know it, the whole area just sort
25:10
Speaker 1: of became Alien Central.
25:12
Speaker 2: And this is we should point out.
25:13
Speaker 1: This also has a lot to do with the fact
25:15
Speaker 1: that in the seventies and eighties did the United States
25:20
Speaker 1: kind of went ufo nuts.
25:21
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, man, there are so many great books at
25:24
Speaker 3: the time that were coming out that claimed everything from
25:26
Speaker 3: like UFOs were responsible for the Muta Triangle, or Atlantis
25:32
Speaker 3: was populated by UFOs, or the Nazca lines were for UFOs,
25:36
Speaker 3: or the Egyptians built the Pyramids with the UFOs. All
25:39
Speaker 3: that stuff came out of the seventies and eighties.
25:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:42
Speaker 1: So this all kind of coincided with Lazarre having his
25:45
Speaker 1: news interview and it really just kind of changed everything.
25:48
Speaker 3: It did, right, So he kind of like came out
25:50
Speaker 3: at a time when America was primed to really believe it.
25:53
Speaker 3: But if you think about it, like everything you hear
25:55
Speaker 3: about and think about from about Area fifty one today
25:59
Speaker 3: did not exist pre nineteen eighty nine, Pre Bob Blazar.
26:02
Speaker 3: It all started with Bob Blazar, and the reason why
26:05
Speaker 3: everybody wasn't just like so, he's just some nut who
26:09
Speaker 3: came out and said this stuff. Who cares? How did that?
26:12
Speaker 3: How did that become truly cemented with Area fifty one?
26:15
Speaker 3: Is that Weirdly some of the stuff he talked about
26:19
Speaker 3: kind of held water, Like he would talk about just mundane,
26:23
Speaker 3: day to day stuff that went on at Area fifty
26:26
Speaker 3: one that seemed to be able to be correlated from
26:30
Speaker 3: locals like it held up. There was a there was
26:36
Speaker 3: a scanner once. He said that you would get in
26:39
Speaker 3: and out of rooms by scanning your hands and it
26:42
Speaker 3: would scan the bone structure of your hand. That was
26:45
Speaker 3: how you were identified and could come in and out
26:48
Speaker 3: of rooms. And supposedly somebody found years like thirty years later,
26:52
Speaker 3: mentioned of something like that in some declassified report about
26:56
Speaker 3: Area fifty one. He also this is it really kind
27:00
Speaker 3: of legitimized him. He would take people out on Wednesday
27:04
Speaker 3: nights and at the time he would say, I never
27:07
Speaker 3: saw what time it was, but at the time he
27:09
Speaker 3: said it would happen, lights would rise up in the
27:11
Speaker 3: sky and they would do all sorts of ufoi kind
27:13
Speaker 3: of stuff, and the fact that he knew about these
27:16
Speaker 3: schedules really kind of added legitimacy to his claims.
27:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the new interview that I saw, he was
27:22
Speaker 1: explaining some of that anti gravitational propulsion technology that the
27:28
Speaker 1: Aliens had supposedly used that he was supposedly assigned to
27:32
Speaker 1: reverse engineer, and he was sort of walking the person
27:37
Speaker 1: through it that was in the room, and he was like, oh, yeah,
27:39
Speaker 1: and he said, we had this thing. It was sort
27:40
Speaker 1: of like half a basketball and when you went to
27:43
Speaker 1: put your hand on it, he was like, there was
27:44
Speaker 1: this It was like bringing two magnets, you know, opposite
27:48
Speaker 1: poles to opposite poles that repel.
27:52
Speaker 2: And he said, that's kind of what it felt like.
27:53
Speaker 1: And he said, so we would drop like a golf
27:55
Speaker 1: ball and it would just you know, skirt off to
27:58
Speaker 1: the side without hitting it and as if it had bounced.
28:01
Speaker 1: And the way he was describing it, I was just like,
28:03
Speaker 1: this guy just seems so credible, right, It was so
28:07
Speaker 1: like shocking. I didn't know what to expect. I thought
28:09
Speaker 1: he was I thought he was not going to be credible.
28:12
Speaker 3: I guess right. I didn't see the interview with him,
28:16
Speaker 3: but I read about that technology. And by the way, everybody,
28:22
Speaker 3: you can erase your email. It's like poles that repel
28:25
Speaker 3: each other. Chuck, Not, okay, the anti gravity technology was
28:32
Speaker 3: talking about. It was basically saying, like around the craft
28:35
Speaker 3: or whatever that they were reverse engineering, it would bend gravity,
28:39
Speaker 3: so this could just move right through space basically at
28:42
Speaker 3: light speed. That's the big suspicion among ufologists who follow
28:46
Speaker 3: this stuff is that they were reverse engineering light speed
28:49
Speaker 3: aircraft that was propelled using anti gravity technology on engines
28:55
Speaker 3: that were matter antimatter engines. And back in nineteen eighty
28:58
Speaker 3: nine you couldn't There wasn't an Internet to start with,
29:01
Speaker 3: but even if there was, you couldn't find stuff like
29:03
Speaker 3: descriptions of anti gravity craft at the time. So for
29:06
Speaker 3: this guy to just come out and start talking about
29:08
Speaker 3: this in an authoritative way, yeah, he's an enigmatic figure
29:13
Speaker 3: for sure, But he was also one whose credibility was
29:16
Speaker 3: questioned right out of the gate too.
29:17
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean he said that he went to
29:20
Speaker 1: MIT and to Caltech.
29:22
Speaker 2: There are no records of him being a student.
29:26
Speaker 1: The conspiracy theorists will say, like, you know how easy
29:29
Speaker 1: it is for the government to wipe that clean?
29:33
Speaker 3: Do you.
29:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm like, I don't know, is that easy. So
29:38
Speaker 2: that's what they will say.
29:41
Speaker 1: They will also say that they also got in touch
29:46
Speaker 1: with his professors to make sure they never.
29:48
Speaker 2: Talked and stuff like that.
29:50
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's when I get a little bit like,
29:53
Speaker 1: you can't have hundreds of people or thousands of people
29:57
Speaker 1: involved in some big, massive cover up like someone's gonna talk.
30:02
Speaker 3: You're just not thinking big enough. I agree with you.
30:05
Speaker 3: That's when it kind of starts to get hinky for me.
30:08
Speaker 1: But he did disappear, and I mean not disappear, disappear, disappear,
30:12
Speaker 1: but he uh, I mean, it's not like he was like,
30:15
Speaker 1: all right and now I'm going to go make all.
30:17
Speaker 2: The money on this right exactly.
30:19
Speaker 1: Like he moved and tried to start like a regular
30:21
Speaker 1: business and tried to just not be in the public eye.
30:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did, which I think adds to his credibility
30:26
Speaker 3: even more, you know a little bit. Uh, let's take
30:30
Speaker 3: our last break and then come back, shall we. Let's
30:32
Speaker 3: do it, but let's promise we're going to come back. Okay, right, stop, okay, Chuck,
31:00
Speaker 3: So Bob Blazar comes along just starts spouting out at
31:06
Speaker 3: the mouth about all the crazy alien stuff that's going
31:09
Speaker 3: on at Area fifty one, and then he kind of
31:11
Speaker 3: like fades into the background for a while, and everybody
31:14
Speaker 3: else kind of took it from there. If you have
31:16
Speaker 3: anything to do with government conspiracies or believe in UFOs
31:21
Speaker 3: or aliens or whatever, all that stuff started to get
31:23
Speaker 3: saddled little by little onto Area fifty one. And one
31:27
Speaker 3: of the things that pretty early on got connected to
31:30
Speaker 3: Area fifty one, but almost across the board. Any reasonable
31:35
Speaker 3: source or skeptical source will say, like the two have
31:37
Speaker 3: nothing to do with one another. Is Roswell and Area
31:42
Speaker 3: fifty one.
31:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Roswell crash in nineteen forty seven, when something
31:49
Speaker 1: crashed a gentlemen found pieces of an air well, pieces
31:54
Speaker 1: of some kind of unidentified object, and it became ufosnrol.
32:00
Speaker 2: Later it was said to be a weather balloon, but first.
32:04
Speaker 3: The army said it was a flying disc. Right, that
32:08
Speaker 3: kind of change things.
32:09
Speaker 2: You've seen the pictures, right.
32:11
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean it looks like I've seen that one
32:14
Speaker 3: famous picture of the guy crouching with what looks like
32:16
Speaker 3: just some balloon material. Yeah, right, But you know, he
32:20
Speaker 3: was just a stooge for the government, and that was
32:22
Speaker 3: just a prop that they came up with. So the
32:26
Speaker 3: Roswell crash happens in nineteen forty seven, there's no way
32:30
Speaker 3: Area fifty one would have been associated with it. The
32:33
Speaker 3: whole mythos around Roswell is that there was a UFO
32:37
Speaker 3: crash that happened, some aliens survived, or at the very
32:40
Speaker 3: least their bodies were recovered, depending on who you ask,
32:43
Speaker 3: and the UFO and the aliens alive or dead were
32:47
Speaker 3: taken for further study to wear Area fifty one. Area
32:51
Speaker 3: fifty one back in nineteen forty seven, when the Roswell
32:54
Speaker 3: crash happened, was not even on the CIA's radar. It
32:59
Speaker 3: was a that basically a defunct airstrip and a nuclear
33:04
Speaker 3: testing range still, so there wouldn't have been any place
33:07
Speaker 3: to take the aliens in the first place. And then secondly,
33:10
Speaker 3: after the Roswell crash happened, the idea of an alien
33:17
Speaker 3: an alien crash having taken place there, that didn't come
33:20
Speaker 3: about until like the eighties too, so really people started
33:24
Speaker 3: to kind of catch on to this a little late.
33:26
Speaker 3: So probably Area fifty one in Roswell have nothing to
33:28
Speaker 3: do with one another. And let's not forget that they're
33:31
Speaker 3: like eight hundred miles apart too, even though to everyone
33:34
Speaker 3: in America and really the rest of the world outside
33:37
Speaker 3: of the Southwest thinks they're like right next to.
33:39
Speaker 1: Each other, I think, so, you know, yeah, So there
33:43
Speaker 1: have been a lot of crazy theories over the years.
33:46
Speaker 1: The very most basic are, like you just said, like,
33:50
Speaker 1: there's alien corpses there, alien technology there, and the US
33:55
Speaker 1: military has been studying the stuff and trying to perfect
33:59
Speaker 1: everything from time travel to light speed travel. Right, fine,
34:05
Speaker 1: that's the basic ground zero approach.
34:08
Speaker 3: Don't forget interdimensional travel too. Why not another one? I saw?
34:13
Speaker 3: There's some pretty pretty low hanging fruit that I love.
34:16
Speaker 3: The moon landing was faked.
34:17
Speaker 2: There, ah, sure?
34:18
Speaker 3: And then after that, right, but then after that Kubrick
34:21
Speaker 3: was executed on site and replaced by a clone.
34:24
Speaker 2: Well, that clon did some great work.
34:26
Speaker 3: He did better than Barry Linden.
34:29
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, I love Berry Linden.
34:31
Speaker 3: I've never seen it, so I currently hate on it.
34:33
Speaker 3: It's amazing weather control experiments. That's probably the most believable
34:37
Speaker 3: for me.
34:37
Speaker 2: Sure, clouds eating sure, why not?
34:40
Speaker 3: Well? Why not? And then there's like stage two of
34:45
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories.
34:46
Speaker 1: Yes, that is, there are aliens that clock in every
34:51
Speaker 1: day at Area fifty one and work side by side
34:55
Speaker 1: with us in harmony.
34:59
Speaker 3: In harm many in order to build like an alien
35:03
Speaker 3: human hybrid race. Maybe sure. And if all this sounds familiar,
35:07
Speaker 3: I will bet that you watched a pretty hefty amount
35:10
Speaker 3: of X Files. Oh yes, because they really tapped into
35:13
Speaker 3: this stuff. They basically just appropriated it for plot lines.
35:18
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, which is great. I love the X Files.
35:21
Speaker 3: But it was just I guess Chris Carter used to
35:24
Speaker 3: hang out with like uphologists or something just to get ideas.
35:29
Speaker 1: Did he really he had two of yeah, or he
35:32
Speaker 1: is one himself. I don't know much about it. Maybe so,
35:33
Speaker 1: maybe so so. And then of course, if you even
35:37
Speaker 1: ramp that up a little bit more, that this is
35:41
Speaker 1: all part of a giant conspiracy to create a one
35:43
Speaker 1: world government that is human alien run right.
35:48
Speaker 3: And that's where that Majestic twelve I mentioned at the
35:51
Speaker 3: beginning comes in. They are supposedly a panel of academics,
35:57
Speaker 3: elite scientists. There's twelve of them who were impaneled by
36:01
Speaker 3: Eisenhower after the Roswell crash, or I guess it would
36:05
Speaker 3: have been Truman, I think still, and they were put
36:09
Speaker 3: together just the cream of the crop to basically go
36:14
Speaker 3: contact the aliens and basically broker a meeting I guess
36:18
Speaker 3: between the President and the aliens. And they managed to
36:24
Speaker 3: leverage this to catapult themselves into status of actual people
36:29
Speaker 3: who run the world. So they're the ones who are
36:32
Speaker 3: forming this one world government. And that is where Area
36:35
Speaker 3: fifty one, or that's where it's located. The seat of
36:38
Speaker 3: this government is located underground in Area fifty one.
36:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
36:42
Speaker 1: This next one is a little more recent and very kooky,
36:48
Speaker 1: and it's the notion that Hitler and Stalin got together
36:52
Speaker 1: and hatched a plan to undermine the United States in
36:56
Speaker 1: World War two by distracting us about the threat of
37:00
Speaker 1: an impending alien invasion. And they would do this by
37:04
Speaker 1: building a fake spaceship filling it with mutant children that
37:09
Speaker 1: Joseph Mingola created and filled the spaceship with those kids,
37:16
Speaker 1: and then the craft crashed in a storm, and that
37:20
Speaker 1: was the Roswell incident.
37:22
Speaker 3: Right, it was meant to land, and then these mutant children.
37:25
Speaker 2: Come out speaking Germans.
37:28
Speaker 3: Right. Supposedly, the mutant children who were the aliens that
37:32
Speaker 3: were found in the Roswell crash had huge heads and
37:35
Speaker 3: giant eyes. They were basically like the grays of alien
37:38
Speaker 3: legend right, and that Stalin and Hitler were inspired by
37:43
Speaker 3: the public's reaction in America to the World War of
37:46
Speaker 3: the World's broadcast. They wanted to incite that kind of
37:49
Speaker 3: panic by actually creating this fake alien invasion.
37:54
Speaker 1: With all the drugs. Hitler was on after we know
37:57
Speaker 1: this now, who knows?
38:00
Speaker 3: He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. It's
38:01
Speaker 3: a great idea. Man, what else you got? What else
38:03
Speaker 3: you got? What else can we do? Slands like mellow
38:09
Speaker 3: he tried CBD.
38:11
Speaker 2: He's like, no, that's the one thing I haven't tried.
38:13
Speaker 3: He got any right, I'll be I'll mix well with
38:16
Speaker 3: everything else.
38:17
Speaker 2: So this is this is obviously not a thing either.
38:20
Speaker 3: Well, this is from a book by an author named
38:25
Speaker 3: Annie Jacobson, I believe, and she this book came out
38:28
Speaker 3: in twenty eleven, and she based this whole thing on
38:31
Speaker 3: an alleged Area fifty one insider who was her source,
38:35
Speaker 3: who said that he worked on a project that had
38:40
Speaker 3: to do with this somehow, some way, but that this
38:44
Speaker 3: was where all this alien stuff came from. It was
38:46
Speaker 3: a it was a hoax by the Nazis and the Soviets.
38:51
Speaker 3: Weird thing is is there is another guy out there
38:54
Speaker 3: who supposedly has a different source who tells the same story.
38:59
Speaker 3: But this other source says that this is it was
39:04
Speaker 3: all fake. That I saw the files myself, but I
39:07
Speaker 3: believe that it was meant to be a test of loyalty,
39:10
Speaker 3: or to see how I would react working at Area
39:12
Speaker 3: fifty one to files like this and be like, oh
39:15
Speaker 3: my god, this is real, this is real. I can't
39:17
Speaker 3: believe this is this is actually real. I guess to
39:20
Speaker 3: see how gullible you were and therefore how trustworthy you.
39:23
Speaker 1: Were, right, which could explain Bob blazar situation too, because
39:26
Speaker 1: he was supposedly in a room full of files he
39:29
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have seen.
39:30
Speaker 2: Either, right, So that's you probably failed the test.
39:33
Speaker 3: You got three different sources who supposedly worked at Area
39:36
Speaker 3: fifty one. Technically, I should say, because we'll get email
39:39
Speaker 3: Bob Blazar worked at S four, which is an even
39:41
Speaker 3: more secret installation that's attached to Area fifty one.
39:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you got.
39:46
Speaker 3: Three people who allegedly worked in Area fifty one who
39:50
Speaker 3: all tell a story about basically being left in a
39:52
Speaker 3: room with files that contained information about aliens. Whether it
39:57
Speaker 3: was a hoax, or real or whatever. And maybe that
40:00
Speaker 3: is because that kind of correlates with the idea that
40:02
Speaker 3: there were like gunpoint interrogations to verify your allegiance to
40:07
Speaker 3: the government or the military or whatever. Maybe that is
40:10
Speaker 3: something they tried there. Yeah, it doesn't make the actual
40:14
Speaker 3: aliens real. It just makes the presence of the files real,
40:18
Speaker 3: that's true.
40:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Area fifty one today as it truly exists.
40:25
Speaker 1: If you're driving down Highway three seventy five, there's an
40:28
Speaker 1: unmarked dirt road between mile markers twenty nine and thirty
40:32
Speaker 1: or I guess thirty and twenty nine, and you turn.
40:37
Speaker 2: On that road.
40:37
Speaker 1: It's twelve miles on a dirt road, and you'll get
40:40
Speaker 1: to a gate and there'll be warning signs all along
40:43
Speaker 1: saying restricted areas, sort of like close encounters type stuff.
40:47
Speaker 1: There will be cameras and sensors everywhere, so don't think
40:50
Speaker 1: you're like getting away with anything.
40:52
Speaker 3: No, there's mics that listen to your conversation. You were
40:55
Speaker 3: under as close surveillance as you've ever been in your
40:59
Speaker 3: life from what I understand.
41:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are guards, of course, and they will
41:02
Speaker 1: say I'm sorry, turn around and drive back to the
41:04
Speaker 1: highway and if you.
41:06
Speaker 2: Persist a little bit, then you will get arrested.
41:09
Speaker 1: If you're around the perimeter area kind of walking around
41:12
Speaker 1: with your binoculars, they will probably come and take your
41:15
Speaker 1: binoculars and tell you to leave, or drive you back
41:19
Speaker 1: to the highway, or maybe smash your face in and
41:21
Speaker 1: bury you in the desert.
41:23
Speaker 3: Well, there's a sign that says use of deadly forth
41:25
Speaker 3: forces authorized.
41:26
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure, but there's.
41:29
Speaker 3: From what I've seen, there's never been an incident that
41:32
Speaker 3: where that actually happened. You're much more likely to get
41:35
Speaker 3: handed over to the local cops who will slap you
41:37
Speaker 3: with a several hundred dollars fine, sure, if you give
41:42
Speaker 3: them any kind of guff and don't leave immediately when
41:44
Speaker 3: they tell you to.
41:46
Speaker 2: So.
41:46
Speaker 1: Kind of the cool thing about Area fifty one, there are, obviously,
41:51
Speaker 1: I mean, there are civilian workers that work there. It's
41:53
Speaker 1: a huge facility that apparently is still growing because you
41:58
Speaker 1: can look at satellite photographs and year by year it
42:01
Speaker 1: seems to be getting bigger and bigger with more buildings.
42:05
Speaker 1: If you work there, and I mean they have to
42:08
Speaker 1: have everything from food services to custodial services, to plumbing
42:12
Speaker 1: and electricians and stuff like that.
42:15
Speaker 3: And all of those people have the highest possible security
42:18
Speaker 3: clearance an American can have.
42:21
Speaker 1: Oh sure, So they don't drive down that dirt road
42:25
Speaker 1: and just go to the gate and say how you doing, Rick,
42:28
Speaker 1: and they go come on in Jane. They go to
42:31
Speaker 1: McCarran Airport in Las Vegas and they all get on
42:35
Speaker 1: a big basically air taxi. It's a seven thirty seven
42:40
Speaker 1: passenger jet that fly. They call them the Janet Jets.
42:43
Speaker 1: It's under the cassign Janet. They're white with the big
42:45
Speaker 1: thick red stripe. You can look it up online, and
42:48
Speaker 1: they that's how they get to work every day. They
42:50
Speaker 1: fly everyone in on a seven thirty seven and you.
42:53
Speaker 3: Can see them on the tarmac. They just get in
42:56
Speaker 3: with the regular planes. It's just look for the giant
42:59
Speaker 3: seven thirty seven that are white with the red strip.
43:01
Speaker 2: And pretty cool.
43:02
Speaker 3: No logo, no nothing. They don't actually have a name,
43:05
Speaker 3: like you said, They fly under callsign Janet. So people
43:08
Speaker 3: have tried to figure out forever what Janet means. There's
43:11
Speaker 3: an idea that it's just another non existent terminal stands
43:15
Speaker 3: for that her Joint Air Network for employee transportation. But
43:20
Speaker 3: if you go visit the Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame.
43:24
Speaker 3: They tell the story that there was a commander of
43:27
Speaker 3: Area fifty one named Richard A. Sampson from nineteen sixty
43:30
Speaker 3: nine to seventy one, and he chose his wife's name,
43:32
Speaker 3: Janet to identify the commuter shuttles. That's sweet, and that's
43:37
Speaker 3: that's the most romantic, super secret government story of all.
43:42
Speaker 1: So we kind of teased earlier on that the government
43:46
Speaker 1: is no longer saying like, I don't know what you're
43:48
Speaker 1: talking about, Like, no, this satellite image that we're all
43:51
Speaker 1: looking at of buildings, I don't see anything but dirt.
43:56
Speaker 1: That's all changed a little bit now because a lawsuit
44:00
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen nineties there were a group of
44:03
Speaker 1: workers from Area fifty one that sued the government because
44:07
Speaker 1: of the it's an environmental disaster there or you know,
44:12
Speaker 1: maybe that's changing now, but it had been for many,
44:14
Speaker 1: many years because of the fact that it's a black
44:17
Speaker 1: project and so unregulated that they were just basically doing
44:23
Speaker 1: everything like dumping hazardous waste and burning it in trenches
44:27
Speaker 1: and people were there just inhaling these fumes, right and
44:31
Speaker 1: getting really sick. And a guy named Robert Frost that
44:34
Speaker 1: worked there in employee had a lot of really bad
44:37
Speaker 1: health problems. Doctor said, you were suffering from some kind
44:41
Speaker 1: of a really bad chemical reaction, and in order to
44:44
Speaker 1: treat it, we need to know what it is. And
44:46
Speaker 1: the government said, sorry, we can't tell you that, and
44:50
Speaker 1: he died.
44:51
Speaker 3: He died, and some other coworkers filed this lawsuit. One
44:54
Speaker 3: of them ended up dying too, and they finally got
44:57
Speaker 3: to like a Nevada I think, a federal circuit court
45:01
Speaker 3: that said, no, you guys don't have a right to
45:03
Speaker 3: know what you've been exposed to.
45:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, they weren't looking for money. They just wanted to
45:07
Speaker 1: know what was killing them.
45:10
Speaker 3: And the reason that they had no legal right to
45:12
Speaker 3: know was and this is that trial that I was
45:15
Speaker 3: referring to earlier, where the government representatives were saying, we like,
45:18
Speaker 3: the place that they're talking about doesn't exist. Sorry, So
45:22
Speaker 3: imagine like trying to just get past that barrier, right,
45:25
Speaker 3: You're suing the government to find out what they were
45:27
Speaker 3: burning that made you sick, but the government's in court saying, like,
45:31
Speaker 3: the place that they're talking about doesn't even exist. That's like,
45:35
Speaker 3: that's obstacle one. But the whole reason that they were
45:38
Speaker 3: burning this stuff in the first place is because Area
45:41
Speaker 3: fifty one operates under what's called the mosaic theory, and
45:45
Speaker 3: the mosaic theory is that any little piece of information
45:48
Speaker 3: a spy gets his or hands on could be fit
45:52
Speaker 3: together with other information to provide a larger picture of
45:56
Speaker 3: what's being done at Area fifty one. And as a result,
46:01
Speaker 3: nothing can come out of Area fifty.
46:04
Speaker 2: One like the chemical that's killing the people, right.
46:08
Speaker 3: Or computers that go in and are used once they
46:11
Speaker 3: get decommissioned. They get put in this pit and these trenches,
46:15
Speaker 3: and every two weeks they go out there with jet
46:17
Speaker 3: fuel and everything that's been put into the trenches over
46:20
Speaker 3: the last two weeks gets doused with jet fuel. It's
46:22
Speaker 3: set on fire with road flares, amazing, and whatever is
46:25
Speaker 3: in that smoke the workers get exposed to because for
46:28
Speaker 3: some reason, they built the trenches upwind of this this
46:32
Speaker 3: installation rather than downwind, and so people were exposed to
46:36
Speaker 3: this every two weeks for years and years and years,
46:38
Speaker 3: and things like you know, anti radar paint. The jet
46:44
Speaker 3: fuel that they're using is an accelerant. I'm sure wasn't helping,
46:47
Speaker 3: but just all sorts of exotic materials that was super
46:50
Speaker 3: super classified. This is what was killing these people, making
46:56
Speaker 3: them sick exactly, And the government said, no, this is
46:58
Speaker 3: just too classify. These people can't know. They're just going
47:01
Speaker 3: to have to go off and die untreated because we're
47:03
Speaker 3: not going to say publicly what they were exposed to.
47:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where it stood that case.
47:10
Speaker 1: They did, finally, finally in that case say okay, there's
47:16
Speaker 1: an area fifty one.
47:18
Speaker 3: I know, the whole courtroom went out for beers that
47:21
Speaker 3: day afterwards, So.
47:22
Speaker 2: There's a thing there.
47:23
Speaker 1: And that's really all we can say, sorry, is there's
47:27
Speaker 1: a thing there.
47:28
Speaker 2: But that was the very first sort of.
47:33
Speaker 1: Insight into the just that admission that there was something
47:36
Speaker 1: there was the first time that had ever happened, which
47:39
Speaker 1: is in the mid nineteen nineties.
47:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you were saying, like people would point the
47:45
Speaker 3: satellite images of the place and you can see that
47:47
Speaker 3: it's growing now, like you can see it on like
47:48
Speaker 3: Google Maps.
47:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is really new.
47:51
Speaker 3: Because it wasn't very long ago where all the satellites
47:54
Speaker 3: in space were controlled by the government, and the government
47:56
Speaker 3: could control what ended up in satellite images, so they
48:00
Speaker 3: blocked out anything any image of area fifty one, but
48:04
Speaker 3: as private firms started launching their own satellites, it became
48:07
Speaker 3: basically impossible. So just little by little, it's becoming to
48:11
Speaker 3: the point now where they're like, yes, they acknowledge something's there. No,
48:15
Speaker 3: you can't know what's going on. There is basically the
48:18
Speaker 3: status quo.
48:18
Speaker 2: Now pretty much.
48:20
Speaker 3: So that's Area fifty one. And sorry, we kind of
48:23
Speaker 3: took the government tack here and didn't really go all
48:26
Speaker 3: in on the alien theories. But I just don't think
48:30
Speaker 3: that's what it is. If you want to know more
48:32
Speaker 3: about Area fifty one, I guess just start reading about it.
48:36
Speaker 3: There's some pretty interesting stuff out there. And since I
48:39
Speaker 3: said that, it's time for a listener mail.
48:44
Speaker 2: This is about nicknames. This is from Rob Bob.
48:47
Speaker 3: Oh Yeah, I love this one.
48:49
Speaker 1: Hey guys, my name is Rob Bob, Rob and Bob
48:51
Speaker 1: combined into a singular form like Jim Bob.
48:55
Speaker 2: But better.
48:57
Speaker 1: My mom has explained to me that it started when
48:59
Speaker 1: I was about six months old. I was a really
49:01
Speaker 1: chunky kid, like in the ninety ninth percentile for weight.
49:05
Speaker 1: They felt like no other nickname like Robbie or Bobby fit,
49:08
Speaker 1: so they started calling me Rob Bob. Many years later,
49:13
Speaker 1: I meet my wife, which is almost eight years ago now,
49:16
Speaker 1: and quickly found out that her favorite writer is Richard Wright.
49:21
Speaker 1: Since reading his novel Native Son, has wanted to name
49:24
Speaker 1: her kid Richard to honor the impact he had on
49:27
Speaker 1: her life. She had visited his grave in parison as
49:30
Speaker 1: every book he ever published. When she met me, I
49:33
Speaker 1: told her about my super nicknames that I had wanted
49:35
Speaker 1: to call my kid because you see, my father is
49:38
Speaker 1: William Bill for short. But now since we came up
49:42
Speaker 1: with these weird names, I call my dad will Bill
49:46
Speaker 1: to bug him. This leads me to why I have
49:49
Speaker 1: always wanted to name my child Richard since high school.
49:52
Speaker 1: Then we would in order to have a will Bill,
49:54
Speaker 1: a Rob Bob, and a Rickdick, all in three generations
49:58
Speaker 1: of awesomeness. Wife does not approve and thinks we should
50:02
Speaker 1: look elsewhere for name ideas.
50:04
Speaker 2: With great admiration Rob Bob and Rachel.
50:07
Speaker 3: Nice. Thanks Rob Bob, good luck with that with your quest.
50:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think Rick Dick is going to fly
50:13
Speaker 2: in your household.
50:14
Speaker 3: I don't think so either. Rachel may have the cooler
50:17
Speaker 3: head here, I think so. Well, if you want to
50:19
Speaker 3: get in touch with this, like Rob Bob, did, We
50:21
Speaker 3: would love that. You can go on to stuff youshould
50:24
Speaker 3: Know dot com check out our social links there, or
50:26
Speaker 3: you can send us an email to stuff podcast at
50:29
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot com.
50:34
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50:37
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50:41
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