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How Area 51 Works · Stuff You Should Know

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