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Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at

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Speaker 1: hell Stuff Works. In Today, we're looking at another classic

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Speaker 1: tech stuff episode. This was a really fun one. Ben

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Speaker 1: Bowen and I did a whole series of episodes about

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Speaker 1: Area fifty one, a k a. Groom Lake, the most

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Speaker 1: famous secret base in the world. And in this episode

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Speaker 1: we start talking about the mythology of Area fifty one,

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Speaker 1: which gets pretty crazy and a lot of fun, and

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Speaker 1: I hope you guys really enjoy it. Here we go

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Speaker 1: with this classic episode, the Mythology of Area fifty one.

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Speaker 1: This episode, we're looking at the crazy, Yes, sir, we

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Speaker 1: are looking at all of the US conspiracy theories and uh,

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Speaker 1: let's just say unsupported anecdotes to be diplomatic. That's very diplomatic. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so so quick rundown, Just so that we're all on

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Speaker 1: the same page. Area fifty one, also known as Groom Lake,

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Speaker 1: is a facility. It's out in Nevada. It's near the

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Speaker 1: what Well. It's near the Nevada Test site where a

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Speaker 1: lot of nuclear tests were held. In fact, some during

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Speaker 1: the lifetime of Very fifty one. UH. It is UH

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Speaker 1: run by the CIA and the Air Force. Lockheed is

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Speaker 1: essentially the main contractor that does work there. It's not

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Speaker 1: the only one. We've seen some other aircraft from different

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Speaker 1: companies tested at that facility as well. And the whole

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Speaker 1: purpose of it is to be remote from everywhere else

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Speaker 1: so that secret tests of top secret spy technology can

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Speaker 1: happen without anyone learning about it, because, as we've said,

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Speaker 1: if you want to be an effective spy, part of

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Speaker 1: that means people can't be aware of the tools that

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Speaker 1: you have at your disposal, right yeah, And which, as

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Speaker 1: we say, that's why it is in a Goldilocks zone

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Speaker 1: for its for its purpose, right yeah. One of my

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Speaker 1: favorite points that you made in the previous episode, I

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Speaker 1: believe was the first installment, was that this was just

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Speaker 1: far enough away to be so inconvenient to get to

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Speaker 1: that people people wouldn't try. Yeah, it was. It's a

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Speaker 1: remote desert location on a dry lake bed, and so

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Speaker 1: it was close enough where you could get supplies from

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Speaker 1: places like Las Vegas, which is less than a hundred

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Speaker 1: miles away, but far enough away where you know your

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Speaker 1: your casual traveler is unlikely to stumble upon it, especially

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Speaker 1: once you start posting lots of warning signs with scary

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Speaker 1: wording on it warning people away. Oh yeah, Now, the

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Speaker 1: fact that it is remote, the fact that you do

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Speaker 1: have these signs that warned people away. Uh, the fact

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Speaker 1: that you have to bring people in to work at

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Speaker 1: this facility, and most of them are commuting in maybe

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Speaker 1: on a weekly basis, which means you have to figure

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Speaker 1: out how do you transport them from some place like

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Speaker 1: Las Vegas to the actual facility itself. All that means

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Speaker 1: that you're leaving just enough traces to really start to

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Speaker 1: peak people's interests. Right, yeah, it's tantalizing. Oh and uh,

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Speaker 1: point of order for the listeners out there, Jonathan, we

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Speaker 1: should probably tell everybody check out the first two episodes

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Speaker 1: of this before you listen to this one, right, it

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Speaker 1: will make this make I can't say more sense, but

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Speaker 1: you'll at least understand the references to see Yeah. So so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we've got just enough information for the typical person to say,

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Speaker 1: I really want to know what's happening there. And because

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Speaker 1: of the security uh features that are in place, including

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Speaker 1: roving bands, which we'll talk about a little bit later.

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Speaker 1: Of security personnel. Uh, it means that you end up

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Speaker 1: having to fill in a lot of gaps. And when

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Speaker 1: that happens and people are given the leeway to try

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Speaker 1: and fill in like that, there's the big here, there

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Speaker 1: be dragons on the map. That's where you get the dragons, right,

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Speaker 1: You're like, well, I don't know what's out there. It's

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Speaker 1: probably dangerous, so we're just gonna slap dragons on it

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Speaker 1: and call it a day. Yeah, which is you know,

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Speaker 1: at heart of valuable instinct to have, right, it's it's caution.

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Speaker 1: But what happens here is that as we're gonna see um,

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Speaker 1: one thing with a grain of truth such as oh

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Speaker 1: there's something I'm not allowed to go see, uh, became

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Speaker 1: embellished and then exaggerated. And many times the people saying

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Speaker 1: these things sincerely do believe this. They're not hucksters. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: this This isn't necessarily someone who's trying to get a

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Speaker 1: book deal or trying to get on the talk show circuit,

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Speaker 1: and maybe someone who has just enough information to leap

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Speaker 1: to some conclusions that are not supportable. And also we

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Speaker 1: should say there are times where people make guesses where

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Speaker 1: either they latch onto something that is actually true, or

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Speaker 1: they've got part of the story. So just because something

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Speaker 1: is a theory or a rumor or a conspiracy of

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Speaker 1: some sort doesn't mean that there's nothing there. Right. So

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Speaker 1: here's a great example, and it's one of the more grounded,

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Speaker 1: no pun intended examples of the mythology around Area fifty one.

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Speaker 1: There's the myth that there is a giant subterranean network

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Speaker 1: of UH tunnels and facilities that are underneath the ground.

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Speaker 1: So that way, when you get that overhead view of

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Speaker 1: Area fifty one, keep in mind every fifty one is

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Speaker 1: restricted airspace that goes all the way up in space.

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Speaker 1: But there are satellites since the nine eighties that have

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Speaker 1: taken multiple images of that area. So if you know that,

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Speaker 1: in fact, you're going to be photographed from space there,

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Speaker 1: that seems logical that you would want to go underground,

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Speaker 1: right sure, So you can understand why people would say, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: it makes sense. You you want to have that secrecy,

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Speaker 1: you can no longer depend upon it above ground, so

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Speaker 1: you have to go below. But this raises some logistical issues, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: how do you build an underground base and keep it quiet? Especially,

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Speaker 1: as we said in the History podcast, UH the construction

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Speaker 1: workers that were taken out there probably would have known

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Speaker 1: something about it because they would have been the ones digging. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and digging is a big deal. You're talking

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Speaker 1: about subterranean network. That's a lot of earth that you

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Speaker 1: have to move. And only do you have to move it,

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Speaker 1: you then have to figure out what do you do

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Speaker 1: with the earth you have taken. You know, when you

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Speaker 1: when you create a whole, that dirt doesn't just magically disappear, right,

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Speaker 1: you have to put it someplace. And so that's that's

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Speaker 1: a logistical issue, and it's an enormous type of endeavor

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Speaker 1: to undertake. I mean, imagine having to ate something a

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Speaker 1: network of tunnels that is stable enough to support the

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Speaker 1: weight of whatever is above it. Uh not to mention

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Speaker 1: the idea of like level upon level of subterranean layer

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Speaker 1: like dr Evil style. It's it's an enormous task and

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Speaker 1: it would have required such a huge investment and manpower

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Speaker 1: let alone. I don't even think about the cost financially,

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Speaker 1: just the practical manpower necessary to make it. It's not likely,

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Speaker 1: and there there's some rumors that go so far as

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Speaker 1: to suggest that there are there's an entire underground network

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Speaker 1: of tunnels that connect various bases together. And really, when

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Speaker 1: you think of the engineering challenge that represents and the

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Speaker 1: construction that is required, you realize that while it might

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Speaker 1: be technologically possible for us to do it, it is

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Speaker 1: not really feasible to do it secretly where you have

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Speaker 1: not left any trace at all in the whole process

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Speaker 1: right now. And I think that's really good distinction, because

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Speaker 1: it's not just plausible, but it is probable that there

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Speaker 1: is some sort of below the ground construction at Roswell

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Speaker 1: in excuse me, at area fifty one in that when

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Speaker 1: you build things, there might be a basement, there might

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Speaker 1: be a safe room, something like that. But that is

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Speaker 1: a far far cry from, uh, what do we have here?

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Speaker 1: What's what's the biggest record? Jonathan? Fifty stories? The stories. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: imagine a fifty story skyscraper, but underground. I mean, if

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Speaker 1: you've ever seen a skyscraper being built, you know this

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Speaker 1: is a process that takes some time. And we we

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Speaker 1: here at Hell stuff works. We moved into this. You know,

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Speaker 1: we're in an office that has recently, over the last

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Speaker 1: maybe five or six years, seen a lot of growth

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Speaker 1: with the buildings around us, and so We've actually watched

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Speaker 1: year over year as skyscrapers were being built, and it

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Speaker 1: takes a really long time. Name uh, and I know

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Speaker 1: people would say, yeah, but this is a top secret establishment,

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Speaker 1: you know, you they'd really pour a lot into it.

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Speaker 1: If you've ever seen the government at work, the US

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Speaker 1: government at work, speed is not one of the adjectives

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Speaker 1: you would typically use, right where if the U s

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Speaker 1: everyone is a superhero, it would probably not be the Flash.

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Speaker 1: I mean everyone knows that maybe the Blob. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: was gonna go safe with Captain America. Well all right,

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Speaker 1: I was he I was merely going to all the villains.

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Speaker 1: I was thinking the Blob or maybe the Jugger, not

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Speaker 1: you know, the Juggernauts. Cool though, that's a different podcast.

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Speaker 1: We we've got to get to one of the one

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Speaker 1: of the biggest things here, the biggest conspiracies we hear

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Speaker 1: about with Area fifty one. Well, first off, spoiler alert,

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Speaker 1: the real conspiracy is are their secret spy planes? Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and that's exactly what it's for. And that's crazy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean that is the first off. The fact that

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Speaker 1: that can even be possible, it's kind of frightening. We

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Speaker 1: talked in the last couple of podcasts about some of

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Speaker 1: the the aircraft that were under development there that remains

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Speaker 1: secret a good twenty years after they had finished testing,

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Speaker 1: and that's when they were unveiled. Uh. There was one

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Speaker 1: that that I think had a run from eighty three

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Speaker 1: to eighty five something like that, and it wasn't it

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Speaker 1: wasn't acknowledged by the government until ninety six, which was

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Speaker 1: the first time anyone outside of that that program had

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Speaker 1: seen it. Um and I think that was maybe Tacit Blue,

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Speaker 1: but it was one of those that just when you

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Speaker 1: saw the aircraft, you thought, Wow, what a weird looking thing.

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Speaker 1: I can't believe that this remained a secret. Granted, they

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Speaker 1: only built two of them and they were under strict

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Speaker 1: raps over at fifty one. It never got further out

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Speaker 1: from from that area, Like even the tests would be

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Speaker 1: done at night, so it limited when the potential of

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Speaker 1: even being spotted. But they were the genuine articles of

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Speaker 1: conspiracy were indeed spotted in the sky. And that brings

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Speaker 1: us to as we were saying, the biggest part of

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Speaker 1: the area fifty Are you talking UFOs UFOs? Yeah? Yea

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Speaker 1: officially unidentified flying objects UFOs more often than not, Uh,

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Speaker 1: they are attributed to being alien as an extraterrestrial in nature,

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Speaker 1: Area fifty one features heavily and tons of different alien stories,

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Speaker 1: both both the kind that we see on the big screen,

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Speaker 1: like Independence Day, the famous sequence where they go down

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Speaker 1: to Area fifty one where they have uh, not just aliens,

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Speaker 1: but they're they're hardware that has been studied for years,

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Speaker 1: and you know, it's revealed that a lot of technology

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Speaker 1: we depend upon today has been reverse engineered from this

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Speaker 1: alien technology. Still can't build a decent spaceship though, no,

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Speaker 1: we can't build a decent spaceship. However, we have figured

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Speaker 1: out that you can introduce a computer virus as long

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Speaker 1: as you have an Apple MacBook laptop, which to this day,

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Speaker 1: to this day, my friend, that's still that's still bothered me.

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Speaker 1: Uh yeah, spoiler alert again, guys. But but yeah, so

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Speaker 1: so people people started seeing UFOs, and it is correct

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Speaker 1: to call them that because I think there's one of

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Speaker 1: the distinctions that we're about to make, right. A UFO

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Speaker 1: unidentified flying object is simply that. Yeah, it just means

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Speaker 1: that you personally cannot identify what that object is. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's unidentify a ball. It may very well,

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Speaker 1: be that there's a small group of people who know

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Speaker 1: exactly what that object is, like the like the stealth

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Speaker 1: technology we were just talking about. Those stealth programs when

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Speaker 1: they were under development were strict secrets and only a

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Speaker 1: few people, relatively few people knew about them. Anyone outside

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Speaker 1: that who would have seen one of these aircraft flying

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Speaker 1: around naturally, they would not be able to identify it.

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Speaker 1: There was no correlative they could say, oh, this looked

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Speaker 1: like a such and such. These things look really crazy.

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Speaker 1: So calling it a UFO is perfectly fine. You cannot

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Speaker 1: identify it. Calling making the leap from UFO to alien

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Speaker 1: is a little bit of a problem. So this brings

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Speaker 1: us to probably the most famous alien uh incident in

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Speaker 1: all of the United States history, something that that factors

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Speaker 1: into numerous, I'd say dozens, if not hundreds, of different

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, the Roswell Incident. Now, Roswell is in New Mexico, which,

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Speaker 1: for those of you who are not in the United States,

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Speaker 1: is a completely separate state from Nevada. It's in a

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Speaker 1: completely different place. And you know, sometimes there's a pet

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Speaker 1: peeve of mind, Jonathan, is that people often conflate Area

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Speaker 1: fifty one or Groom Lake and the incident in Roswell. Right,

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Speaker 1: and so two things that these are incidents separated both

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Speaker 1: in space and time. Right, Roswell, New Mexico is hundreds

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Speaker 1: of miles away from Area fifty one, like almost a

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Speaker 1: thousand miles away. I think it's somewhere around eight hundred

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Speaker 1: miles away. Eight actually one thousand, four hundred sixteen kilometers

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Speaker 1: according to Google Maps. Thank you Google Maps for letting

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Speaker 1: me know how far apart Roswell, New Mexico an Area

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Speaker 1: fifty one are. That's exactly it. Uh So, By the way,

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Speaker 1: don't don't rely upon Google Maps for turn by turn

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Speaker 1: directions to Area fifty one. You know you'll just end

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Speaker 1: up in Las Vegas? Did you? Did you do it

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Speaker 1: by d I did it by by driving, although walking

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Speaker 1: would have been hilarious. Walking would have been like, at

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Speaker 1: this point people are going to ask you to turn around?

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Speaker 1: Uh so, or at this point you've probably died of dehydration.

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Speaker 1: So the other thing I said was that they're separated

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Speaker 1: by time. The Roswell instant happened on July two, nine seven.

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Speaker 1: So for those of you who listened to our first

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Speaker 1: episode about Area fifty one, you were in member that

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Speaker 1: it was the mid nineteen fifties when the CIA settled

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Speaker 1: on Groom Lake as the the the future home of

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Speaker 1: VERYA fifty one. It was like when construction began. So

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Speaker 1: this is almost a decade apart when of these two events.

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Speaker 1: So then you have the The actual story of the

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Speaker 1: Roswell incident is that some people in Roswell, New Mexico,

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Speaker 1: I saw some strange floating objects that they could not

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Speaker 1: identify on identified flying objects. Sometimes they're referred to as

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Speaker 1: being kind of disc shaped. Part of the problem is

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Speaker 1: that we're so far distanced from the initial event that

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Speaker 1: the story has not remained consistent through all the different retellings. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I can speak to a little bit of that

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Speaker 1: because we have we have some copies of the newspaper

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Speaker 1: articles that changed and because they changed. Uh, there's a

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Speaker 1: very interesting thing here. It's the interpretation of that. Uh,

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Speaker 1: people who believed that there was some sort of extra

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Speaker 1: terrestrial incident. Somebody somebody managed to drive a spacecraft well

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Speaker 1: enough to get to Earth but not well enough to

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Speaker 1: stay above Earth, right, and then uh, the news found

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Speaker 1: out about it and they got shut down there to

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Speaker 1: change their story or did they just correct the reporting

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Speaker 1: when they had more information, Right, that's a that's a

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Speaker 1: good question, like did did some gentlemen wearing black suits

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Speaker 1: and sunglasses show up at the newspaper and say you

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Speaker 1: need to you need to address this, I mean, and Jonathan,

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Speaker 1: that's possible. But if it happened, it wasn't because of aliens,

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Speaker 1: That's right. So get moving on. We're talking about the crash.

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Speaker 1: Just sputting these objects in the air wasn't the only

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Speaker 1: thing that happened with Roswell incident. What specifically went on

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Speaker 1: from there was that some people found debris on the

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Speaker 1: ground and it was described as being shiny and metallic

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Speaker 1: in nature. No one was really sure what it was

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Speaker 1: actually made of at the time. Um. And so this

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Speaker 1: this incident started to become embellished upon over time. In fact,

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Speaker 1: there's some versions of the story where they didn't just

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Speaker 1: find physical debris from some flying object, but also bodies.

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Speaker 1: And this is where we get into the alien stuff,

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Speaker 1: where supposedly there were these bodies of creatures that had

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Speaker 1: unusual features and they were whisked away by the government. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And ultimately some people say that that's they went to

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Speaker 1: Area fifty one, the area purpose was not to study

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Speaker 1: strange materials, although we did eventually get some Soviet aircraft

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Speaker 1: at Area fifty one where they were tested like the bigs.

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Speaker 1: But it's not meant to be a scientific laboratory. That's

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Speaker 1: not the purpose of Every fifty one, So it would

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Speaker 1: make no sense to send any kind of extraterrestrials there.

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Speaker 1: It also doesn't make sense to send extra terrestrial bodies

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Speaker 1: to a place that hasn't been built yet. Right, That's

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Speaker 1: that's a big one. That's a it's a bump in

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Speaker 1: the road. Yeah, it's a little bit of a little

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Speaker 1: bit of a problem with the story. Now what the

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Speaker 1: official story from the government was that the debris came

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Speaker 1: from weather balloons and that there were no bodies. In fact,

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Speaker 1: that we should say right now, there's no evidence at

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Speaker 1: all that anyone ever came across a body. That was

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Speaker 1: something that was added to this story over time. Yeah, sorry, guys.

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Speaker 1: That autopsy on YouTube is most likely a hope. It's

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Speaker 1: it's yeah, there there are special effects uh experts who

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Speaker 1: have actually commented on it and somewhat derisively. So we're like, like,

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Speaker 1: they should have hired me. I could have done a

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Speaker 1: much be there is there there is no no hard

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Speaker 1: evidence that there was, even from the debris they found

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Speaker 1: when they were looking at it, because there really was debris, right,

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Speaker 1: and they really did find it, but they didn't find

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Speaker 1: enough to have built an entire thing. Yeah, Carson, you

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Speaker 1: know this. So the official story from the government was

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Speaker 1: at these were weather balloons. They were meant specifically to, uh,

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Speaker 1: to study the weather at high altitudes. Now, as it

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Speaker 1: turns out, that's not the real story, but we will

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Speaker 1: get to there in a second. So, uh, this was

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Speaker 1: one of those things where people were saying, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: look like any weather balloon I've ever seen, which is true.

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Speaker 1: It didn't. I've seen both balloons and the weathers. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is neither of those two things. So moving on

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Speaker 1: to the the you know, kind of looking at the

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Speaker 1: story another way. One version of this that I was

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Speaker 1: not aware of until a friend of the show, Nate Lenkson,

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Speaker 1: he's the editor of Wired, dot Code dot UK. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He he turned beyond to this. I had never heard

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Speaker 1: about this. It's a book written by Annie Jacobson called

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Speaker 1: Area fifty one and Uncensored History of America's top secret

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Speaker 1: military base. Now full disclosure here. I have not read

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Speaker 1: this book. Yet I read a synopsis of the book

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Speaker 1: and a synopsis of the story we're about the cover,

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Speaker 1: so this may not actually be accurate to the book itself.

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Speaker 1: I want to make that clear. I've also heard that

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Speaker 1: most of the book is pretty much what we covered

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Speaker 1: in our first two episodes of the podcast, a very

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Speaker 1: thorough description of the history of Every fifty one. But

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Speaker 1: there's a section apparently devoted to the Roswell incident and

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Speaker 1: Every fifty one supposed involvement in that, in which the

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Speaker 1: story gets even weirder, I think than aliens. And this

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Speaker 1: story involves Nazis and communists, so you know, it's only

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Speaker 1: missing Indiana Jones to make it really a Hollywood film.

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Speaker 1: So the story that she tells according to a source,

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Speaker 1: I don't know what her source was a source. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if she names the source in the book.

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Speaker 1: The synopsis, I said, said anonymous. But again I haven't

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Speaker 1: read the book. But according to the synopsis, the story

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Speaker 1: is that a Nazi doctor, Joseph Mingola, actually the s

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Speaker 1: S officer who survived the World War two and then

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Speaker 1: and then eventually escaped to South America. The Mingola had

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Speaker 1: worked on behalf of Joseph Stalin doing these horrific procedures

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Speaker 1: on children, resulting in children around the age of twelve

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Speaker 1: with abnormally shaped heads, large eyes that are of an

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Speaker 1: odd shape, and that the whole idea was that they

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Speaker 1: were going to pilot some simple aircraft to fly around

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Speaker 1: the United States and land and essentially star crap up

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Speaker 1: scare people. Yeah, exactly, this idea that they would this

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Speaker 1: idea that they would fake aliens, Yeah, in order to

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Speaker 1: create a panic, essentially doing a war of the World's

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Speaker 1: type event. Uh, one step closer to reality or of

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Speaker 1: the world's For those who don't remember or don't know

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Speaker 1: what this is, um, it was a an Orson Wells project,

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Speaker 1: a radio program that was portrayed in such a way

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Speaker 1: that people who tuned in without knowing that it was

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Speaker 1: actually a fictionalized radio program, began to think that there

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Speaker 1: was actually, uh, an alien invasion happening. It was this

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Speaker 1: sort of famous little blip on the radar of of

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Speaker 1: people freaking out because they weren't aware that, in fact,

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Speaker 1: it was a fictional account. Uh, something that we still

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Speaker 1: see today, uh with things like Mermaids. At any rate.

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Speaker 1: That's enough commentary on that, But yeah, the Uh, the

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Speaker 1: story that she relays is that Mingola had done these

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Speaker 1: these horror, horrific procedures and that the bodies found at

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Speaker 1: the Roswal incidant, which remember there was never any evidence

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Speaker 1: that bodies were found were in fact human children that

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Speaker 1: then were whisked away. I think there's some big problem

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Speaker 1: with this particular story. Problem Number one, Mingola was on

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Speaker 1: the run from the Soviets. He did not, I mean,

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Speaker 1: the Soviets were the ones who were who were approaching

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Speaker 1: when Hitler committed suicide, right, they'd rather than be captured

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Speaker 1: by the Soviets. Um. Hitler committed suicide, and Mingola was

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Speaker 1: trying to escape with records that he had, uh, he

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Speaker 1: had created at Auschwitz. UM. So he eventually escaped Germany.

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Speaker 1: He did at one point go back into Soviet occupied

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Speaker 1: territory in order to retrieve some of these documents, but

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Speaker 1: he evaded capture and eventually escaped to South America and

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Speaker 1: then moved around quite a bit while Uh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was being he was being pursued by agents both

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Speaker 1: Soviet and American, and so it's unlikely that he would

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Speaker 1: have collaborated with Joseph Stalin and certainly unlikely that he

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Speaker 1: would have been allowed to escape. Yeah, well, um, so

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Speaker 1: that already is a problem. Secondly, it would be a

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Speaker 1: real problem the idea of people being fooled long enough

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Speaker 1: to not realize these were humans, right Yeah. And then

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Speaker 1: there's the other there's the other question. Why would they

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Speaker 1: crash there and not in a more occupied place. Why

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Speaker 1: not New York City or something like that. Why, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, they probably get spotted. But then also, and

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Speaker 1: this this is a cruel thing to say, but why

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Speaker 1: would you specifically need that one very evil man to

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Speaker 1: do that sort of operation? Right? Right? Exactly, It's not

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Speaker 1: like if you're going to if you're going to do

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Speaker 1: something so inhuman, uh is there I mean, narratively it's

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Speaker 1: a great story in the sense that there only one

401
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Speaker 1: person is this twisted to pull this off? But in

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Speaker 1: reality we know, unfortunately that's not the case that if

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Speaker 1: you really did have the the will to do something

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Speaker 1: this horrible, you could probably do it without having to

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Speaker 1: to go after the devil himself. Right, I mean, the

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Speaker 1: whole story is is meant to appeal to our dark imaginations,

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Speaker 1: and it's a terrible thing, but it's also one of

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Speaker 1: those things that you could say, yeah, I can imagine

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Speaker 1: this actually playing out in some way. Ultimately, you also

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Speaker 1: have to ask the question, what's the effect you're going for.

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Speaker 1: If the effect you're going for is to cause a panic,

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Speaker 1: I can't think of anything that would have caused a

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Speaker 1: bigger panic than having Soviet airmen being able to land

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Speaker 1: in US territory without any alien cover story. You don't

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Speaker 1: need that to cause a scare. There's really no benefit here,

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Speaker 1: Like the the the entire operation does not seem to

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Speaker 1: have an actual return on investments, so it doesn't make

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Speaker 1: sense from that perspective either. So the Nazis that were

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Speaker 1: involved in in some other con piracy theories about every

420
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Speaker 1: fifty one, like the the UFOs that are seeing our

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Speaker 1: product of you know, Nazi experiments towards the close of

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Speaker 1: the war. And a lot of that comes from a

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Speaker 1: very real, uh and kind of frightening thing that the

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Speaker 1: United States did with Operation paper Clip, which you know

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Speaker 1: about when they brought over some surviving scientists from Germany

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Speaker 1: right right right when you're when you're when you get

427
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:33,119
Speaker 1: the rockets scientists specifically who worked over in Germany to

428
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: then come to the United States and continue their work

429
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 1: in science and and rocketry and specifically, but now they're

430
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: working for a different boss. They're working with the United

431
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 1: States government, uh and partly because they're getting guarantees from

432
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:48,520
Speaker 1: the U. S Government that they won't be tried as

433
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: criminals for their work for the Nazi regime. So yeah,

434
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:55,360
Speaker 1: there's certain real, real things that were happening in history

435
00:26:56,000 --> 00:27:00,080
Speaker 1: that we're probably enough to help fuel this kind of

436
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: conspiracy here in the United States. But you know, you

437
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:08,679
Speaker 1: didn't have to look far to see real instances of

438
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:13,679
Speaker 1: some pretty shady dealings on both sides, uh, but without

439
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,920
Speaker 1: having to make stuff up right and now, Also one

440
00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 1: thing that didn't help the government's case, and as far

441
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: as their official story goes, is that it turned out

442
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:29,320
Speaker 1: they they were telling the truth, but telling it slant,

443
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 1: as Emily Dickinson would say, right, they were. They were

444
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:36,440
Speaker 1: not weather balloons that were being uh deployed out over

445
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:39,159
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. There were balloons though, Yeah, there were

446
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:42,680
Speaker 1: balloons that were part of a spy program called Project Mogul,

447
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,960
Speaker 1: which was a top secret experiment using high altitude balloons

448
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 1: that were carrying microphones, and the idea was the microphones

449
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:54,880
Speaker 1: would be able to detect sounds from Soviet nuclear tests,

450
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: so that we in the United States would have a

451
00:27:58,040 --> 00:28:00,440
Speaker 1: clue when that was going on, and we that would

452
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:03,400
Speaker 1: help us kind of know how far along the Soviets

453
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:07,879
Speaker 1: were with their nuclear program compared to our own nuclear program.

454
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 1: So there was again this need for secrecy. We didn't

455
00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 1: want the Soviets to know that we, in fact had

456
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:17,160
Speaker 1: developed this technology to listen out for uh, these these

457
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: sound waves, um, because we didn't want them to try

458
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:22,920
Speaker 1: and come up with different ways of testing their nuclear

459
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:26,959
Speaker 1: arms and therefore hiding it from us, soeering it and

460
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:30,400
Speaker 1: hearing what we're doing exactly. That's also another another good point.

461
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 1: So the cover story of weather balloons was necessary to

462
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:36,920
Speaker 1: protect the secrecy of the spy program, but it had

463
00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: nothing to do with aliens. It had everything to do

464
00:28:39,000 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: with spying it. Maybe it might have even been to

465
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 1: the government's benefit that people were latching on to the

466
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 1: aliens story because it took attention away from what it

467
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: was really meant to do. So there's not a whole

468
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 1: lot of incentive upon the government's part to come out

469
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 1: and say specifically, guys, no, it's not aliens, because it

470
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 1: keep the attention away. But you don't want it to

471
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:04,960
Speaker 1: you don't want that story to run rampant either, because

472
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 1: it could legitimately start causing either a panic or just

473
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: a growing distrust in the government itself. Sure, and they

474
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:17,240
Speaker 1: don't need any help. That's regardless of what what what

475
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 1: your political beliefs are. We speaking of beliefs, this is

476
00:29:22,760 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of fun for me personally,

477
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 1: I think for you too, because one thing that always

478
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 1: keeps the area fifty one Legends alive is that there.

479
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,240
Speaker 1: It seems like every year there's someone who comes out

480
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:41,440
Speaker 1: and says, well, I was person exit place wide, I

481
00:29:41,480 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 1: know the truth, right, and now I will finally reveal it.

482
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: And you're thinking of someone specific in this case, right,

483
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:55,920
Speaker 1: and specifically thinking of Bob Lazar, Yeah, Robert Lazar or

484
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 1: Bob Lazar, who claimed to have worked on a project

485
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:01,600
Speaker 1: in which the military area had come into possession of

486
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 1: alien technology and his job was to reverse engineer that

487
00:30:06,040 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: alien technology to learn how it works so we could

488
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 1: take advantage of that tech here on Earth and thus

489
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: kind of leap forward what would normally be the process

490
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 1: of developing tech. So instead of you know, constantly testing

491
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:23,400
Speaker 1: and improving and refining, we could jump straight ahead and

492
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 1: you know, skip eight steps in that process and jump

493
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 1: straight to you know, miraculous smartphones that react to our touch,

494
00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And so he claimed that he

495
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 1: had worked at a facility that was near Groom Lake,

496
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 1: so not technically at area fifty one, but adjacent to it.

497
00:30:39,320 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: It was the real secret place. It's called S four. Yeah,

498
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 1: it's it's so secret that it didn't even get a

499
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 1: full name. Um, it just gets a letter and a

500
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 1: number of designation. And it's he said that it housed

501
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: no fewer than nine spacecraft. Uh, here's the thing that

502
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: a lot of his his claims to his background don't

503
00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: check out, right, Like he claims to have advanced degrees

504
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: from M I. T and from cal Tech, but there's

505
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 1: no record of him there. Now, granted, some people say

506
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: that that's evidence of the conspiracy. Yeah, that in fact,

507
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:15,160
Speaker 1: this shows that the government was so interested in keeping

508
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: it a secret that they have white clean his background.

509
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 1: Although to do that you would also have to white

510
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:24,160
Speaker 1: clean the memories of every professor and every student who

511
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 1: would have also attended. And you see that this this

512
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: kind of domino effect, How how wide those ripples would

513
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:33,120
Speaker 1: have to go in order for this to remain an

514
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: effective secret, it becomes unmanageable at some point, wouldn't it

515
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 1: be easier at this point? My question would be for

516
00:31:42,640 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: many of these cases is why did someone go to

517
00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: so such great links to keep you alive? Because from

518
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 1: from a government's perspective, we know that if they're picking

519
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 1: one kind of skull degree, they'll pick the easier one,

520
00:31:57,600 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 1: which is usually an assisted fall all off a building

521
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, assassination is just off

522
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: the table, right, that can never be done, Like, yeah,

523
00:32:07,680 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 1: how do you how do you? Uh? If it did

524
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: come down to there's this one person who has tons

525
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:20,120
Speaker 1: of information, like it's essentially Snowden. Yeah, there's Edward Snowden

526
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: of Area fifty one, who is ready, he has access

527
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: to all the information, he's ready to spill the beans. Um,

528
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 1: and you want to discredit him, you don't go to

529
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 1: every single person in his past. Don't tell anybody about this, right, Yeah,

530
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: it's just it's just not practical, right, It's it's it

531
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 1: would be a monumental task. So essentially, what we're getting

532
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 1: round too is that Lazar's um, his claims to his

533
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 1: his credentials are suspect, right, and that that is a

534
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:53,240
Speaker 1: very diplomatic way to put it. Of course, you know,

535
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 1: we're also showing that his side of it is that

536
00:32:55,800 --> 00:32:58,880
Speaker 1: someone is a racing passed to discredit him, as as

537
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: you said, you know, Jonathan, recently, Mr Lazar in the

538
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 1: past few years went back into the public eye now

539
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess more into the mainstream public eye.

540
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 1: And he was asked to react to the CIA's official

541
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:20,840
Speaker 1: admittance uh of Area fifty ones existence, which as we know,

542
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 1: it didn't happen for a little while. And uh he

543
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:26,760
Speaker 1: said he was not impressed because this was a very

544
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 1: tiny baby step forward. I think that's the quote he used.

545
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 1: And uh he was waiting for them to reveal S four,

546
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: which is the site he says he worked at reverse

547
00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 1: engineering these things. Now, he has many, many claims. Uh.

548
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:50,720
Speaker 1: He speaks at length about interspecial politics, about injuries he

549
00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 1: suffered by technology that we won't hear about for several decades. Uh.

550
00:33:56,240 --> 00:34:00,840
Speaker 1: But I I really like the point you made that. Um.

551
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 1: One of the other things people who believe him see

552
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:08,360
Speaker 1: his proof is um what they perceive as a inexplicable

553
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 1: jump in technology, right right, Well, the truth is that

554
00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: if you look at any technology closely enough, you will

555
00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:19,719
Speaker 1: see incremental improvements. It's very very rare that we have

556
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:23,160
Speaker 1: someone come out with a brand new piece of technology

557
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 1: that has no precedent to it, right, yeah, exactly, Television,

558
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:30,279
Speaker 1: perfect example. So yeah, you look at these things like

559
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:33,759
Speaker 1: television was really building upon the developments of radio, and

560
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 1: you think, okay, well what about Tesla and Marconi, Well

561
00:34:36,239 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: they were working on research that had preceded them as well.

562
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,479
Speaker 1: These are all if you if you really dig down

563
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: into it, you know, you look at the invention of

564
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:47,279
Speaker 1: the light bulb. You look at all of these sort

565
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:50,759
Speaker 1: of inventions that we we take for granted. We like

566
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: the stories that say this inventor came up with this

567
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 1: idea and implemented it, and now it exists and before

568
00:34:57,520 --> 00:35:00,759
Speaker 1: it never did. Usually the truth is much more complicated,

569
00:35:00,800 --> 00:35:05,040
Speaker 1: with lots of different things leading into that invention, including

570
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:09,400
Speaker 1: earlier inventions that may not have been practical but showed

571
00:35:09,440 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 1: a working concept, and then this other inventor like Thomas

572
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:16,160
Speaker 1: Edison comes along and takes that takes that concept and

573
00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 1: makes it practical. So now it's something that we can

574
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:22,400
Speaker 1: actually use as opposed to just a cool idea, but

575
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:26,000
Speaker 1: we didn't know how to to you know, capitalize on it. So,

576
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,760
Speaker 1: you know, I think most of these advances we've seen

577
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 1: have over the over the decades have been examples of

578
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 1: this where people have made incremental improvements and maybe grab

579
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:41,840
Speaker 1: together multiple pieces of technology and then and then package

580
00:35:41,880 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: them in such a way that it's a really compelling

581
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: piece of tech. But if you break it down component

582
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:51,520
Speaker 1: by component, you start to see the actual process of

583
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:56,479
Speaker 1: this creating something, refining it, tweaking and putting it out again,

584
00:35:56,560 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 1: refining it again. I don't see any annoy or miss

585
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:05,319
Speaker 1: leaps where someone has jumped well ahead of everywhere else.

586
00:36:05,360 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 1: Maybe Claude Shannon and his uh his computer science with

587
00:36:10,000 --> 00:36:14,800
Speaker 1: using binary logic, his approach to computer science was pretty

588
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: much fully formed. But that's kind of similar to Albert

589
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:20,759
Speaker 1: Einstein and his theories of relativity. These were ideas that

590
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: both men had developed over years, and then they presented

591
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: them as complete pictures. So to us the outsiders, it

592
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:32,680
Speaker 1: looks like a person just came up with a brilliant process,

593
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 1: fully formed instantaneously. The truth is it actually took several

594
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:38,319
Speaker 1: years to build that up, and even then they were

595
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:43,839
Speaker 1: building on previous thoughts and knowledge. They were just incorporating

596
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: it in a new way. Yeah, but what about the lasers. Okay,

597
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,880
Speaker 1: so lasers are an issue, right, um I'm glad you

598
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: brought up lasers. One of the things that have has

599
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: often been attributed to Area fifty one is energy weapons.

600
00:36:57,960 --> 00:37:02,720
Speaker 1: So this ties into the strategic Defense initiative, often referred

601
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:06,600
Speaker 1: to derisively as wars. Yeah, this was the program in

602
00:37:06,600 --> 00:37:09,400
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, and I promise that I will do

603
00:37:09,480 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: an episode about the Star Wars program that will go

604
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:16,200
Speaker 1: into full detail. I know, I've got a lot of

605
00:37:16,200 --> 00:37:17,799
Speaker 1: listeners who have asked me to do it, and I

606
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:19,799
Speaker 1: really want to at some point, but it's gonna be

607
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 1: a little bit further down the road. But it's um

608
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 1: you know. The whole idea was that it was going

609
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:26,200
Speaker 1: to be a system that would shoot down incoming i

610
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:29,719
Speaker 1: c b m s intercontinental ballistic missiles. This was the

611
00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:32,879
Speaker 1: height of the Cold War nineteen eighties. I mean, propaganda

612
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,040
Speaker 1: was ridiculous in both the Soviet Union and the United States.

613
00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:38,799
Speaker 1: I grew up in that era and I remember like

614
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:41,560
Speaker 1: the Russians being the bad guys all the time, you know,

615
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:45,720
Speaker 1: from from uh everything from Red Dawn to Rocky four.

616
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:49,160
Speaker 1: So anyway, um or was it three. It might have

617
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: been three rocky three at any rate. The the idea

618
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:56,080
Speaker 1: here was that the energy weapons that would shoot down

619
00:37:56,080 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: these missiles were supposedly under development at Area fifty one.

620
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:02,320
Speaker 1: Again not really the purpose for Area fifty one. I

621
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:05,879
Speaker 1: mean you could you could understand them, uh, testing such

622
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:08,600
Speaker 1: a device, because that is kind of what they were doing.

623
00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:12,280
Speaker 1: But they were mostly testing airborne things, not not ground

624
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 1: to air technology. It was mostly aircraft that they were

625
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:21,280
Speaker 1: really focusing on, and not offensive aircraft, just spycraft. Yeah,

626
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 1: I mean there's some of the drones they worked on

627
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: probably had offensive kick, but yeah, it was it was

628
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:29,920
Speaker 1: mostly again, it was mostly reconnaissance type stuff. We have

629
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 1: a bit more to say about the mythology of Area

630
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 1: fifty one. Hope you're enjoying the episode so far, and

631
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 1: now we're going to take a quick break to thank

632
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 1: our sponsor. So first of all, we don't have any

633
00:38:47,640 --> 00:38:51,080
Speaker 1: technology powerful enough to control the weather. Weather is an

634
00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:54,480
Speaker 1: incredibly chaotic system that we do not fully understand it.

635
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:56,839
Speaker 1: Before you can under before you can really control something,

636
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,160
Speaker 1: you have to at least have some understanding of how

637
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:05,360
Speaker 1: it works. Now, people have conducted experiments with weather manipulation

638
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 1: things like influence it like seeding clouds, that kind of thing.

639
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:13,120
Speaker 1: But even this, we can't be fully sure how effective

640
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,400
Speaker 1: they are, right, because here's the problem is that you

641
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:19,880
Speaker 1: can't you can't have a scientific consensus on whether or

642
00:39:19,920 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 1: not something is effective unless you're able to have a

643
00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:25,560
Speaker 1: control group. And you can't really have a control group

644
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:27,919
Speaker 1: with weather. I mean you can you can have as

645
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:32,840
Speaker 1: close to the same uh kind of elements in play

646
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: in two different and two different instances, and one you

647
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: seed the cloud, in one you don't, and then you

648
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: see how much rain it results. But even then again,

649
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:43,920
Speaker 1: whether it's such a complex system that you can't you

650
00:39:43,960 --> 00:39:49,799
Speaker 1: can't be completely certain that the seeding is the effective agent, right.

651
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: And you know the problem with whether is it's a

652
00:39:52,320 --> 00:39:57,160
Speaker 1: chaotic system that is one massive cluster of systems. So

653
00:39:57,280 --> 00:40:01,720
Speaker 1: any two points you pick are ultimately in this same system.

654
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:04,720
Speaker 1: So are they really is there a control? It's stuff.

655
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, you know things like HARP,

656
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:10,080
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you guys have talked about, which was

657
00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: designed to to actually look at interactions in the ionosphere. Now,

658
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 1: the ionosphere around Earth can conduct electricity. In fact, when

659
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 1: we get a big electrical impulse in there from something

660
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 1: like a solar flare or coronal mass ejection. It can

661
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: make the auroras at the polls really active because that's

662
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:33,600
Speaker 1: that's kind of the convergence point for this electric field.

663
00:40:34,160 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: And UH, and so there's certainly things that interact with

664
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: atmospheric um phenomena, but we still can't control the weather there. Now.

665
00:40:43,719 --> 00:40:45,920
Speaker 1: It doesn't help, I'm just gonna be honest with you, Jonathan,

666
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:51,280
Speaker 1: does not help UH to dispel any of the speculation

667
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:54,440
Speaker 1: about places like HARP, you know, when it was an operation,

668
00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 1: because the descriptions from from the government and from HARP

669
00:40:59,880 --> 00:41:03,840
Speaker 1: about what they were doing we're just cartoonously vague in

670
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:07,000
Speaker 1: some ways. So, yeah, it's a high frequency active auroral

671
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 1: research program, which already you're you're thinking they're at least

672
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:13,200
Speaker 1: a couple of words in there that I'm not entirely

673
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:15,840
Speaker 1: sure what they're supposed to be UM. And it really

674
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:20,279
Speaker 1: was about beaming energy into the ionosphere too. The goal

675
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 1: for HARP, at least on the government side, that the

676
00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 1: military funded side, was can we use the ionosphere as

677
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: a conduit through which we can communicate with distant vehicles

678
00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: like submarines that are under the water. I mean they

679
00:41:32,320 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: really were hoping that this would be a way of

680
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 1: doing that. The scientists at HARP were mostly thinking, if

681
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: we can keep getting funding for what we want to do,

682
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: which is to study the ionosphere, then we should try

683
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:46,400
Speaker 1: and keep that door open for the possibility that this

684
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:50,239
Speaker 1: could be a communications tool, even if we don't think

685
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:54,279
Speaker 1: it will really work. So, um, which happens. Yeah, that's

686
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:56,279
Speaker 1: that's essentially what happened with HARP. And then eventually the

687
00:41:56,320 --> 00:41:58,959
Speaker 1: military said, you know what, we're done, and they pulled

688
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,120
Speaker 1: the funding. So that was the story of HARP. Well,

689
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 1: a lot of those same stories apply to Area fifty one,

690
00:42:06,040 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 1: but there's no evidence that there were any weather control

691
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:13,319
Speaker 1: systems under development. There's certainly no evidence that anything ever

692
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:18,239
Speaker 1: did any actual weather manipulation. So uh, yeah, that just

693
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:21,800
Speaker 1: doesn't that doesn't really fly. Um. And then if there's

694
00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 1: a piece of tech and science fiction, there's a chance

695
00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: that there's at least some story out there that there's

696
00:42:27,400 --> 00:42:30,200
Speaker 1: something like that underdevelopment at Area fifty one, you know,

697
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 1: warp coils, teleporters, phasers, whatever you want to think about.

698
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: I realized I was focusing mainly on Star Trek there,

699
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 1: but really all of that has at some time or

700
00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: another been attributed to AREAE warp drives, uh, teleportation devices, lightsabers. Yeah, okay,

701
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:50,839
Speaker 1: thank you. You know we've got st you know we've

702
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:55,480
Speaker 1: got there. So moving on another another host of conspiracy

703
00:42:55,520 --> 00:42:58,320
Speaker 1: theories around Area fifty one don't have so much to

704
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 1: do with what was act going on at the facility,

705
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:06,719
Speaker 1: but rather the mysterious shadowy organizations that were behind it all. Yeah,

706
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 1: like the real life Smoking Man exactly. Yeah. So a

707
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:15,360
Speaker 1: lot of these conspiracy theories involve organizations that have no

708
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:20,560
Speaker 1: official um uh designation or they don't they aren't officially

709
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:23,880
Speaker 1: acknowledged by the government, right, So some of them have

710
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:27,040
Speaker 1: a designation, but they're not you know, they're they're not

711
00:43:27,200 --> 00:43:30,080
Speaker 1: in any government files because that's how secret they are

712
00:43:30,239 --> 00:43:35,360
Speaker 1: in alleged designation. Yeah. So here the big one for

713
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:39,240
Speaker 1: Area fifty one at least is the Majestic twelve. Majestic

714
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:43,720
Speaker 1: twelve is a group that existed many years ago, according

715
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 1: to the conspiracy lore, and included people like President Truman

716
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 1: as well as the head of CIA and also like

717
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:54,160
Speaker 1: top businessmen, like essentially the most powerful people in the

718
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 1: United States at that time, and that their purpose was

719
00:43:57,239 --> 00:44:01,279
Speaker 1: to solidify power and control worldwide, right like this was

720
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 1: gonna be like. The Trilateral Commission was often referred to

721
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:07,560
Speaker 1: as being the secret organization for these sort of purposes,

722
00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: which is not what it was for um Uh. There

723
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: are other organizations that are meant to be like think

724
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:16,879
Speaker 1: tanks that have often been kind of compared to this source.

725
00:44:17,880 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: The Majestic twelve, however, is one that appears to have

726
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 1: been completely fabricated. Uh. There was a UFO enthusiast named

727
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:28,920
Speaker 1: William L. Moore who produced papers that he claimed proved

728
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:32,880
Speaker 1: the group's existence, but a lot of people who have

729
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:35,239
Speaker 1: looked at these papers have said that they don't hold

730
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:38,160
Speaker 1: up to scrutiny, that the signatures that are there appeared

731
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,040
Speaker 1: to have been copied from other documents and then pasted

732
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 1: into them into the Majestic twelve, the MJ twelve papers, uh,

733
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:47,560
Speaker 1: and that there does not appear to be any sort

734
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: of evidence supporting the existence of such an organization. So

735
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:55,279
Speaker 1: if your organization isn't real, then chances are it's not

736
00:44:55,400 --> 00:45:00,399
Speaker 1: actually the secret one behind area. But that's of fun.

737
00:45:00,880 --> 00:45:05,800
Speaker 1: So the so the the the idea that has become

738
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: you know, common currency in a lot of these beliefs

739
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 1: is that in J twelve, uh did exist, but was

740
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 1: had its world rocked when news of the extraterrestrial crash

741
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:20,759
Speaker 1: in hit them. And then they've they've spent the next

742
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:24,719
Speaker 1: few decades. Um, you know what, more and more I

743
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:27,880
Speaker 1: think maybe X files was inspired by some of these well,

744
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 1: you know, and it's very like m J twelve shares

745
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: a lot of the same kind of traits as other shadowy,

746
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:40,480
Speaker 1: conspiratorial uh most likely fictional organization. It's a trope. It's

747
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 1: right up there with things like the Illuminati for example. Uh.

748
00:45:44,040 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 1: Then you have some real people who really do exist

749
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:51,439
Speaker 1: that have kind of helped fuel the mystique around Area

750
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:54,800
Speaker 1: fifty one, not necessarily, you know, purposefully setting out to

751
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:57,359
Speaker 1: define the mystique, but they're part of it. And those

752
00:45:57,360 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: are the Camo dudes. That's that's what the folks in

753
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 1: the Area fifty one U biz. The people who like

754
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:06,440
Speaker 1: to watch Area fifty one, not the ones who are

755
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:09,000
Speaker 1: actually working there. What they referred to these guys as

756
00:46:09,160 --> 00:46:12,840
Speaker 1: Camo dudes because they tend to be wearing a desert

757
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 1: camouflage outfits. You know, they're on Nevada, so they're wearing

758
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:20,760
Speaker 1: these these kind of desert cam outfits. They travel in pairs,

759
00:46:21,960 --> 00:46:25,480
Speaker 1: usually in in four wheel drive vehicles, and they are

760
00:46:26,160 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 1: uh the perimeter guards essentially is what they serve as.

761
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:32,880
Speaker 1: So if someone starts to come close to the area

762
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:37,239
Speaker 1: fifty one borders, then they may end up encountering a

763
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:41,280
Speaker 1: pair of these camo dudes who tend to not appear

764
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: to be military. The best guess is, in fact, they

765
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:47,880
Speaker 1: are probably part of some contract group that ends up

766
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:51,719
Speaker 1: doing security for things like military installations. So not not

767
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: official military personnel, but rather private citizens who are part

768
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: of a contractor, and they're job is to um to

769
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:06,240
Speaker 1: firmly suggest to people that they should go somewhere else

770
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:10,400
Speaker 1: rather than than try and get footage of the area.

771
00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:13,880
Speaker 1: I have a quotation for you from an incident. This

772
00:47:14,080 --> 00:47:17,680
Speaker 1: is published in the Huffington Post. A UFO conspiracy film

773
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 1: crew was detained at gunpoint at the Air fifty one

774
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:24,719
Speaker 1: Gate UH in two thousand twelve. H Here's here's the quotation.

775
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:29,320
Speaker 1: According to a crew member, a camouflage dress guard carrying

776
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:32,279
Speaker 1: an M sixteen told a member of this team, we

777
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: could make you disappear and your body will never be found. Uh.

778
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and say maybe they're playing it up.

779
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:43,320
Speaker 1: But the point is that, yes, you're not supposed to

780
00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:46,279
Speaker 1: be there. As we said in the first PEW podcast,

781
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:49,440
Speaker 1: don't don't try to go you guys. Yeah, most of

782
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 1: the most of the reports I've read didn't have a

783
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:58,240
Speaker 1: point where the the Camo dudes were actively aiming weapons

784
00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:01,800
Speaker 1: in their direction, but rather they were they were visibly armed,

785
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 1: So that's one thing, you know, it was certainly they

786
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 1: were armed, but they weren't I don't remember reading a

787
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 1: whole lot of them either brandishing their weapons, like as

788
00:48:10,200 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 1: far as I recall, most of the incidents involved their

789
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:17,040
Speaker 1: weapons being holstered, but they have in the past, according

790
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:20,880
Speaker 1: to a lot of reports, confiscated film back when film

791
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:25,480
Speaker 1: was a thing, or demanded to have various equipment turned

792
00:48:25,640 --> 00:48:29,320
Speaker 1: over to them. Because again, the facility is all about

793
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:34,439
Speaker 1: spy aircraft, so you don't want footage leaking of either

794
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:38,120
Speaker 1: the facility or the aircraft that are under development there. Um.

795
00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily that big of a mystery, but

796
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:42,320
Speaker 1: the fact that you have these guys who are not

797
00:48:42,440 --> 00:48:47,040
Speaker 1: easily identifiable as belonging to a specific United States government organization,

798
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:51,640
Speaker 1: that definitely adds to that mystery. And they're not identifying

799
00:48:51,719 --> 00:48:57,280
Speaker 1: themselves and also to be candid in in some cases

800
00:48:57,360 --> 00:49:00,400
Speaker 1: not all, but in some cases, if you were making

801
00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:04,080
Speaker 1: a film, then you want to have that sort of conflict.

802
00:49:04,640 --> 00:49:08,480
Speaker 1: So it it's also possible that in some cases easier

803
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 1: the threat as it is as it is is um embellished,

804
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: or it's possible that people are purposefully agitating the guards. Yeah,

805
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:22,120
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely without being there, we can't say for sure,

806
00:49:22,200 --> 00:49:25,880
Speaker 1: but that but but both scenarios seem to be plausible

807
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:29,360
Speaker 1: to me, Right, I don't know what really unfolded. It

808
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 1: may be that the truth is somewhere in between those

809
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: two those two scenarios, right, But you can't accidentally end

810
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:38,640
Speaker 1: up there, you know, you purposefully we're trying to get there.

811
00:49:38,680 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 1: And this is clearly an area that is off limits.

812
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:45,600
Speaker 1: Uh and is you know, is legally off limits. Some

813
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:48,120
Speaker 1: people are and you know, we talked about that in

814
00:49:48,200 --> 00:49:51,360
Speaker 1: the second episode of the history about how Area fifty

815
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:55,719
Speaker 1: one gets a whole lot of legal leeway um in

816
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:59,120
Speaker 1: ways that other places in the United States simply do not,

817
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: and that that also adds to this curiosity we have

818
00:50:04,000 --> 00:50:06,759
Speaker 1: of Area fifty one. I think we've really covered kind

819
00:50:06,840 --> 00:50:10,239
Speaker 1: of what drives that the fact that you know, human

820
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:13,960
Speaker 1: beings are curious, right, we want to know things. When

821
00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:17,319
Speaker 1: we see something that we do not understand, often one

822
00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:20,759
Speaker 1: of our earliest responses is how does that work? Or

823
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:24,560
Speaker 1: what is going on here? What's really happening? Unless it's

824
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 1: really scary, and which is where's the closest exit? And

825
00:50:27,640 --> 00:50:30,879
Speaker 1: can I run faster than ben um? Because you don't

826
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:33,640
Speaker 1: have to run the fastest, just faster than the slowest person.

827
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 1: As long as I'm not the slowest person in the office,

828
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:41,600
Speaker 1: I'm still got a chance. Yeah, So I can certainly

829
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:45,040
Speaker 1: see and I feel it too. I mean, I certainly

830
00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 1: have this curiosity about Area fifty one. Heck, just just

831
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: going from the baseline most mundane description of what's going

832
00:50:53,160 --> 00:50:56,800
Speaker 1: on there, there's still so many questions like how do

833
00:50:56,920 --> 00:50:59,440
Speaker 1: they how do they really maintain that level of secrecy,

834
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:02,520
Speaker 1: how much which does the typical worker at Area fifty

835
00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:05,839
Speaker 1: one know about what's going on? How do they make

836
00:51:05,920 --> 00:51:09,880
Speaker 1: sure that people working on one project remain oblivious to

837
00:51:10,040 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: everything else that's happening, how do they schedule these things?

838
00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 1: What is it like being a pilot for one of

839
00:51:16,719 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 1: these aircraft? I mean, there are a lot of questions

840
00:51:18,640 --> 00:51:21,920
Speaker 1: that we don't have the answers too, so I think, uh,

841
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:24,040
Speaker 1: you know, it was a lot of fun tackling this

842
00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:26,279
Speaker 1: this subject, and I think it really did merit the

843
00:51:26,360 --> 00:51:29,960
Speaker 1: three episodes because it is such a touchstone for everything

844
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:35,920
Speaker 1: from the political ideology from the nineteen shiftees forward to

845
00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:40,880
Speaker 1: just a pop culture you know, touchstone, right, It's it's like,

846
00:51:41,040 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 1: that's that's the go to for science fiction. Now, I

847
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,800
Speaker 1: have a question for you. Absolutely when and now that

848
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:50,120
Speaker 1: we have, along with the rest of the tech stuff

849
00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:55,719
Speaker 1: audience explored still discerned the the ideas and the reality

850
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:58,239
Speaker 1: and the mist very fifty one, I have to ask you,

851
00:51:58,880 --> 00:52:01,560
Speaker 1: what would you do if one of the you know,

852
00:52:01,600 --> 00:52:04,360
Speaker 1: if one of the strangest things turned out to be true?

853
00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:08,239
Speaker 1: You know, I like to I would like to think

854
00:52:08,560 --> 00:52:11,759
Speaker 1: that I'm the type of skeptic who, when presented with

855
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 1: incontrovertible evidence that something I believe to be true is

856
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 1: in fact not true, and that's something I thought was

857
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 1: just purely made up is in fact the truth, that

858
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:26,680
Speaker 1: I would be able to accept it. Saying that and

859
00:52:26,880 --> 00:52:29,600
Speaker 1: actually doing it are two different things, right, I don't

860
00:52:29,719 --> 00:52:32,360
Speaker 1: know if that's how I would truly react. I'd like

861
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:37,080
Speaker 1: to think that if suddenly there was just pure evidence

862
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:40,320
Speaker 1: that in fact the Roswal incident involved aliens, and that

863
00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:42,800
Speaker 1: the aliens were in fact Holstad area fifty one, and

864
00:52:42,880 --> 00:52:46,320
Speaker 1: all of these crazy conspiracy theories were actually true. I

865
00:52:46,719 --> 00:52:48,440
Speaker 1: like to believe that I would be able to say,

866
00:52:48,520 --> 00:52:51,840
Speaker 1: you know what, I never would have bought into this,

867
00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: but it turns out it was right and I was wrong.

868
00:52:54,200 --> 00:52:55,960
Speaker 1: I'd like to think I could do that. I think

869
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: you would. I like, okay, incontrovertible evidence then would have

870
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:04,400
Speaker 1: to be thing like aliens landing at your house and

871
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:07,600
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, guys, have you seen our buddies? They

872
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:10,759
Speaker 1: showed up maybe I don't know, you know, seventy earth

873
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:13,960
Speaker 1: years ago something around there. Yeah, they checked their watch

874
00:53:14,080 --> 00:53:17,560
Speaker 1: for seventy year years ago, and they're big fans of

875
00:53:17,640 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 1: text stuff, and so they heard that we had done

876
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 1: an episode. Yeah, I feel like you're the kind of

877
00:53:23,200 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 1: guy would go, huh, well, yeah, okay, I guess let

878
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: me let me call my boss. I would be like,

879
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:31,960
Speaker 1: some of um, all right, well, it turns out I

880
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:34,440
Speaker 1: was a big fat head and I was wrong about everything.

881
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: That's not everything. But also, yeah, it is true that

882
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:41,879
Speaker 1: there is at least. There are several conspiracies that we're

883
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: at work at Area fifty one, and we've we've explored those,

884
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:49,080
Speaker 1: and I guess what what I would want people to

885
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:52,720
Speaker 1: take away from this is that there really is amazing strange,

886
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 1: science fiction, action thriller movie level stuff there. It just

887
00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:00,480
Speaker 1: may not be what people are claiming it is. That

888
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:03,279
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's you know, not interesting. It certainly is,

889
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:07,799
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's really again an evidence of human

890
00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:11,400
Speaker 1: achievement for both an engineering side and just a secrecy

891
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 1: keeping side, because it's really hard to keep those secrets.

892
00:54:15,040 --> 00:54:18,160
Speaker 1: So I do suspect that they do that by managing

893
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:20,719
Speaker 1: how many people are allowed to know any one thing

894
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:25,839
Speaker 1: at any one time, otherwise you know, loose lips. Well,

895
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:29,439
Speaker 1: that wraps up our classic episode, the Mythology of Area

896
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:32,920
Speaker 1: fifty one. Like I said, I really enjoyed researching and

897
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:34,960
Speaker 1: talking about that with then so many years ago. I

898
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:38,160
Speaker 1: remember when I first got the assignment to write How

899
00:54:38,280 --> 00:54:41,920
Speaker 1: Area fifty one works shortly after I was hired at

900
00:54:41,960 --> 00:54:43,879
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, and it was one of the most

901
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:47,759
Speaker 1: enjoyable research experiences I've ever had. It's just fun to

902
00:54:47,960 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 1: learn about what actually happened. What people thought happened, what

903
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:54,560
Speaker 1: people still say are is happening there. It's a really

904
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:59,960
Speaker 1: fascinating look into not just military secrets, but human psychology.

905
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed this classic episode, and we'll

906
00:55:03,560 --> 00:55:06,360
Speaker 1: be back soon with a brand new episode of tech Stuff.

907
00:55:06,360 --> 00:55:09,400
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future episodes, why not

908
00:55:09,640 --> 00:55:11,839
Speaker 1: let me know. Send me an email the addresses tech

909
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:14,040
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me

910
00:55:14,120 --> 00:55:16,920
Speaker 1: a line on Twitter or Facebook. To handle both of

911
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:19,759
Speaker 1: those is tech Stuff hs W. Don't forget to follow

912
00:55:19,880 --> 00:55:23,600
Speaker 1: us on Instagram and I'll talk to you again really soon.

913
00:55:29,400 --> 00:55:31,840
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

914
00:55:31,880 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com.