Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: hell Stuff Works. In Today, we're looking at another classic
Speaker 1: tech stuff episode. This was a really fun one. Ben
Speaker 1: Bowen and I did a whole series of episodes about
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, a k a. Groom Lake, the most
Speaker 1: famous secret base in the world. And in this episode
Speaker 1: we start talking about the mythology of Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: which gets pretty crazy and a lot of fun, and
Speaker 1: I hope you guys really enjoy it. Here we go
Speaker 1: with this classic episode, the Mythology of Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: This episode, we're looking at the crazy, Yes, sir, we
Speaker 1: are looking at all of the US conspiracy theories and uh,
Speaker 1: let's just say unsupported anecdotes to be diplomatic. That's very diplomatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so quick rundown, Just so that we're all on
Speaker 1: the same page. Area fifty one, also known as Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: is a facility. It's out in Nevada. It's near the
Speaker 1: what Well. It's near the Nevada Test site where a
Speaker 1: lot of nuclear tests were held. In fact, some during
Speaker 1: the lifetime of Very fifty one. UH. It is UH
Speaker 1: run by the CIA and the Air Force. Lockheed is
Speaker 1: essentially the main contractor that does work there. It's not
Speaker 1: the only one. We've seen some other aircraft from different
Speaker 1: companies tested at that facility as well. And the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of it is to be remote from everywhere else
Speaker 1: so that secret tests of top secret spy technology can
Speaker 1: happen without anyone learning about it, because, as we've said,
Speaker 1: if you want to be an effective spy, part of
Speaker 1: that means people can't be aware of the tools that
Speaker 1: you have at your disposal, right yeah, And which, as
Speaker 1: we say, that's why it is in a Goldilocks zone
Speaker 1: for its for its purpose, right yeah. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite points that you made in the previous episode, I
Speaker 1: believe was the first installment, was that this was just
Speaker 1: far enough away to be so inconvenient to get to
Speaker 1: that people people wouldn't try. Yeah, it was. It's a
Speaker 1: remote desert location on a dry lake bed, and so
Speaker 1: it was close enough where you could get supplies from
Speaker 1: places like Las Vegas, which is less than a hundred
Speaker 1: miles away, but far enough away where you know your
Speaker 1: your casual traveler is unlikely to stumble upon it, especially
Speaker 1: once you start posting lots of warning signs with scary
Speaker 1: wording on it warning people away. Oh yeah, Now, the
Speaker 1: fact that it is remote, the fact that you do
Speaker 1: have these signs that warned people away. Uh, the fact
Speaker 1: that you have to bring people in to work at
Speaker 1: this facility, and most of them are commuting in maybe
Speaker 1: on a weekly basis, which means you have to figure
Speaker 1: out how do you transport them from some place like
Speaker 1: Las Vegas to the actual facility itself. All that means
Speaker 1: that you're leaving just enough traces to really start to
Speaker 1: peak people's interests. Right, yeah, it's tantalizing. Oh and uh,
Speaker 1: point of order for the listeners out there, Jonathan, we
Speaker 1: should probably tell everybody check out the first two episodes
Speaker 1: of this before you listen to this one, right, it
Speaker 1: will make this make I can't say more sense, but
Speaker 1: you'll at least understand the references to see Yeah. So so, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got just enough information for the typical person to say,
Speaker 1: I really want to know what's happening there. And because
Speaker 1: of the security uh features that are in place, including
Speaker 1: roving bands, which we'll talk about a little bit later.
Speaker 1: Of security personnel. Uh, it means that you end up
Speaker 1: having to fill in a lot of gaps. And when
Speaker 1: that happens and people are given the leeway to try
Speaker 1: and fill in like that, there's the big here, there
Speaker 1: be dragons on the map. That's where you get the dragons, right,
Speaker 1: You're like, well, I don't know what's out there. It's
Speaker 1: probably dangerous, so we're just gonna slap dragons on it
Speaker 1: and call it a day. Yeah, which is you know,
Speaker 1: at heart of valuable instinct to have, right, it's it's caution.
Speaker 1: But what happens here is that as we're gonna see um,
Speaker 1: one thing with a grain of truth such as oh
Speaker 1: there's something I'm not allowed to go see, uh, became
Speaker 1: embellished and then exaggerated. And many times the people saying
Speaker 1: these things sincerely do believe this. They're not hucksters. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this This isn't necessarily someone who's trying to get a
Speaker 1: book deal or trying to get on the talk show circuit,
Speaker 1: and maybe someone who has just enough information to leap
Speaker 1: to some conclusions that are not supportable. And also we
Speaker 1: should say there are times where people make guesses where
Speaker 1: either they latch onto something that is actually true, or
Speaker 1: they've got part of the story. So just because something
Speaker 1: is a theory or a rumor or a conspiracy of
Speaker 1: some sort doesn't mean that there's nothing there. Right. So
Speaker 1: here's a great example, and it's one of the more grounded,
Speaker 1: no pun intended examples of the mythology around Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: There's the myth that there is a giant subterranean network
Speaker 1: of UH tunnels and facilities that are underneath the ground.
Speaker 1: So that way, when you get that overhead view of
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, keep in mind every fifty one is
Speaker 1: restricted airspace that goes all the way up in space.
Speaker 1: But there are satellites since the nine eighties that have
Speaker 1: taken multiple images of that area. So if you know that,
Speaker 1: in fact, you're going to be photographed from space there,
Speaker 1: that seems logical that you would want to go underground,
Speaker 1: right sure, So you can understand why people would say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. You you want to have that secrecy,
Speaker 1: you can no longer depend upon it above ground, so
Speaker 1: you have to go below. But this raises some logistical issues, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you build an underground base and keep it quiet? Especially,
Speaker 1: as we said in the History podcast, UH the construction
Speaker 1: workers that were taken out there probably would have known
Speaker 1: something about it because they would have been the ones digging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and digging is a big deal. You're talking
Speaker 1: about subterranean network. That's a lot of earth that you
Speaker 1: have to move. And only do you have to move it,
Speaker 1: you then have to figure out what do you do
Speaker 1: with the earth you have taken. You know, when you
Speaker 1: when you create a whole, that dirt doesn't just magically disappear, right,
Speaker 1: you have to put it someplace. And so that's that's
Speaker 1: a logistical issue, and it's an enormous type of endeavor
Speaker 1: to undertake. I mean, imagine having to ate something a
Speaker 1: network of tunnels that is stable enough to support the
Speaker 1: weight of whatever is above it. Uh not to mention
Speaker 1: the idea of like level upon level of subterranean layer
Speaker 1: like dr Evil style. It's it's an enormous task and
Speaker 1: it would have required such a huge investment and manpower
Speaker 1: let alone. I don't even think about the cost financially,
Speaker 1: just the practical manpower necessary to make it. It's not likely,
Speaker 1: and there there's some rumors that go so far as
Speaker 1: to suggest that there are there's an entire underground network
Speaker 1: of tunnels that connect various bases together. And really, when
Speaker 1: you think of the engineering challenge that represents and the
Speaker 1: construction that is required, you realize that while it might
Speaker 1: be technologically possible for us to do it, it is
Speaker 1: not really feasible to do it secretly where you have
Speaker 1: not left any trace at all in the whole process
Speaker 1: right now. And I think that's really good distinction, because
Speaker 1: it's not just plausible, but it is probable that there
Speaker 1: is some sort of below the ground construction at Roswell
Speaker 1: in excuse me, at area fifty one in that when
Speaker 1: you build things, there might be a basement, there might
Speaker 1: be a safe room, something like that. But that is
Speaker 1: a far far cry from, uh, what do we have here?
Speaker 1: What's what's the biggest record? Jonathan? Fifty stories? The stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine a fifty story skyscraper, but underground. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a skyscraper being built, you know this
Speaker 1: is a process that takes some time. And we we
Speaker 1: here at Hell stuff works. We moved into this. You know,
Speaker 1: we're in an office that has recently, over the last
Speaker 1: maybe five or six years, seen a lot of growth
Speaker 1: with the buildings around us, and so We've actually watched
Speaker 1: year over year as skyscrapers were being built, and it
Speaker 1: takes a really long time. Name uh, and I know
Speaker 1: people would say, yeah, but this is a top secret establishment,
Speaker 1: you know, you they'd really pour a lot into it.
Speaker 1: If you've ever seen the government at work, the US
Speaker 1: government at work, speed is not one of the adjectives
Speaker 1: you would typically use, right where if the U s
Speaker 1: everyone is a superhero, it would probably not be the Flash.
Speaker 1: I mean everyone knows that maybe the Blob. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was gonna go safe with Captain America. Well all right,
Speaker 1: I was he I was merely going to all the villains.
Speaker 1: I was thinking the Blob or maybe the Jugger, not
Speaker 1: you know, the Juggernauts. Cool though, that's a different podcast.
Speaker 1: We we've got to get to one of the one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things here, the biggest conspiracies we hear
Speaker 1: about with Area fifty one. Well, first off, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: the real conspiracy is are their secret spy planes? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what it's for. And that's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that is the first off. The fact that
Speaker 1: that can even be possible, it's kind of frightening. We
Speaker 1: talked in the last couple of podcasts about some of
Speaker 1: the the aircraft that were under development there that remains
Speaker 1: secret a good twenty years after they had finished testing,
Speaker 1: and that's when they were unveiled. Uh. There was one
Speaker 1: that that I think had a run from eighty three
Speaker 1: to eighty five something like that, and it wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't acknowledged by the government until ninety six, which was
Speaker 1: the first time anyone outside of that that program had
Speaker 1: seen it. Um and I think that was maybe Tacit Blue,
Speaker 1: but it was one of those that just when you
Speaker 1: saw the aircraft, you thought, Wow, what a weird looking thing.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that this remained a secret. Granted, they
Speaker 1: only built two of them and they were under strict
Speaker 1: raps over at fifty one. It never got further out
Speaker 1: from from that area, Like even the tests would be
Speaker 1: done at night, so it limited when the potential of
Speaker 1: even being spotted. But they were the genuine articles of
Speaker 1: conspiracy were indeed spotted in the sky. And that brings
Speaker 1: us to as we were saying, the biggest part of
Speaker 1: the area fifty Are you talking UFOs UFOs? Yeah? Yea
Speaker 1: officially unidentified flying objects UFOs more often than not, Uh,
Speaker 1: they are attributed to being alien as an extraterrestrial in nature,
Speaker 1: Area fifty one features heavily and tons of different alien stories,
Speaker 1: both both the kind that we see on the big screen,
Speaker 1: like Independence Day, the famous sequence where they go down
Speaker 1: to Area fifty one where they have uh, not just aliens,
Speaker 1: but they're they're hardware that has been studied for years,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's revealed that a lot of technology
Speaker 1: we depend upon today has been reverse engineered from this
Speaker 1: alien technology. Still can't build a decent spaceship though, no,
Speaker 1: we can't build a decent spaceship. However, we have figured
Speaker 1: out that you can introduce a computer virus as long
Speaker 1: as you have an Apple MacBook laptop, which to this day,
Speaker 1: to this day, my friend, that's still that's still bothered me.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, spoiler alert again, guys. But but yeah, so
Speaker 1: so people people started seeing UFOs, and it is correct
Speaker 1: to call them that because I think there's one of
Speaker 1: the distinctions that we're about to make, right. A UFO
Speaker 1: unidentified flying object is simply that. Yeah, it just means
Speaker 1: that you personally cannot identify what that object is. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's unidentify a ball. It may very well,
Speaker 1: be that there's a small group of people who know
Speaker 1: exactly what that object is, like the like the stealth
Speaker 1: technology we were just talking about. Those stealth programs when
Speaker 1: they were under development were strict secrets and only a
Speaker 1: few people, relatively few people knew about them. Anyone outside
Speaker 1: that who would have seen one of these aircraft flying
Speaker 1: around naturally, they would not be able to identify it.
Speaker 1: There was no correlative they could say, oh, this looked
Speaker 1: like a such and such. These things look really crazy.
Speaker 1: So calling it a UFO is perfectly fine. You cannot
Speaker 1: identify it. Calling making the leap from UFO to alien
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a problem. So this brings
Speaker 1: us to probably the most famous alien uh incident in
Speaker 1: all of the United States history, something that that factors
Speaker 1: into numerous, I'd say dozens, if not hundreds, of different
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, the Roswell Incident. Now, Roswell is in New Mexico, which,
Speaker 1: for those of you who are not in the United States,
Speaker 1: is a completely separate state from Nevada. It's in a
Speaker 1: completely different place. And you know, sometimes there's a pet
Speaker 1: peeve of mind, Jonathan, is that people often conflate Area
Speaker 1: fifty one or Groom Lake and the incident in Roswell. Right,
Speaker 1: and so two things that these are incidents separated both
Speaker 1: in space and time. Right, Roswell, New Mexico is hundreds
Speaker 1: of miles away from Area fifty one, like almost a
Speaker 1: thousand miles away. I think it's somewhere around eight hundred
Speaker 1: miles away. Eight actually one thousand, four hundred sixteen kilometers
Speaker 1: according to Google Maps. Thank you Google Maps for letting
Speaker 1: me know how far apart Roswell, New Mexico an Area
Speaker 1: fifty one are. That's exactly it. Uh So, By the way,
Speaker 1: don't don't rely upon Google Maps for turn by turn
Speaker 1: directions to Area fifty one. You know you'll just end
Speaker 1: up in Las Vegas? Did you? Did you do it
Speaker 1: by d I did it by by driving, although walking
Speaker 1: would have been hilarious. Walking would have been like, at
Speaker 1: this point people are going to ask you to turn around?
Speaker 1: Uh so, or at this point you've probably died of dehydration.
Speaker 1: So the other thing I said was that they're separated
Speaker 1: by time. The Roswell instant happened on July two, nine seven.
Speaker 1: So for those of you who listened to our first
Speaker 1: episode about Area fifty one, you were in member that
Speaker 1: it was the mid nineteen fifties when the CIA settled
Speaker 1: on Groom Lake as the the the future home of
Speaker 1: VERYA fifty one. It was like when construction began. So
Speaker 1: this is almost a decade apart when of these two events.
Speaker 1: So then you have the The actual story of the
Speaker 1: Roswell incident is that some people in Roswell, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: I saw some strange floating objects that they could not
Speaker 1: identify on identified flying objects. Sometimes they're referred to as
Speaker 1: being kind of disc shaped. Part of the problem is
Speaker 1: that we're so far distanced from the initial event that
Speaker 1: the story has not remained consistent through all the different retellings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I can speak to a little bit of that
Speaker 1: because we have we have some copies of the newspaper
Speaker 1: articles that changed and because they changed. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: very interesting thing here. It's the interpretation of that. Uh,
Speaker 1: people who believed that there was some sort of extra
Speaker 1: terrestrial incident. Somebody somebody managed to drive a spacecraft well
Speaker 1: enough to get to Earth but not well enough to
Speaker 1: stay above Earth, right, and then uh, the news found
Speaker 1: out about it and they got shut down there to
Speaker 1: change their story or did they just correct the reporting
Speaker 1: when they had more information, Right, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: good question, like did did some gentlemen wearing black suits
Speaker 1: and sunglasses show up at the newspaper and say you
Speaker 1: need to you need to address this, I mean, and Jonathan,
Speaker 1: that's possible. But if it happened, it wasn't because of aliens,
Speaker 1: That's right. So get moving on. We're talking about the crash.
Speaker 1: Just sputting these objects in the air wasn't the only
Speaker 1: thing that happened with Roswell incident. What specifically went on
Speaker 1: from there was that some people found debris on the
Speaker 1: ground and it was described as being shiny and metallic
Speaker 1: in nature. No one was really sure what it was
Speaker 1: actually made of at the time. Um. And so this
Speaker 1: this incident started to become embellished upon over time. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's some versions of the story where they didn't just
Speaker 1: find physical debris from some flying object, but also bodies.
Speaker 1: And this is where we get into the alien stuff,
Speaker 1: where supposedly there were these bodies of creatures that had
Speaker 1: unusual features and they were whisked away by the government. Uh.
Speaker 1: And ultimately some people say that that's they went to
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, the area purpose was not to study
Speaker 1: strange materials, although we did eventually get some Soviet aircraft
Speaker 1: at Area fifty one where they were tested like the bigs.
Speaker 1: But it's not meant to be a scientific laboratory. That's
Speaker 1: not the purpose of Every fifty one, So it would
Speaker 1: make no sense to send any kind of extraterrestrials there.
Speaker 1: It also doesn't make sense to send extra terrestrial bodies
Speaker 1: to a place that hasn't been built yet. Right, That's
Speaker 1: that's a big one. That's a it's a bump in
Speaker 1: the road. Yeah, it's a little bit of a little
Speaker 1: bit of a problem with the story. Now what the
Speaker 1: official story from the government was that the debris came
Speaker 1: from weather balloons and that there were no bodies. In fact,
Speaker 1: that we should say right now, there's no evidence at
Speaker 1: all that anyone ever came across a body. That was
Speaker 1: something that was added to this story over time. Yeah, sorry, guys.
Speaker 1: That autopsy on YouTube is most likely a hope. It's
Speaker 1: it's yeah, there there are special effects uh experts who
Speaker 1: have actually commented on it and somewhat derisively. So we're like, like,
Speaker 1: they should have hired me. I could have done a
Speaker 1: much be there is there there is no no hard
Speaker 1: evidence that there was, even from the debris they found
Speaker 1: when they were looking at it, because there really was debris, right,
Speaker 1: and they really did find it, but they didn't find
Speaker 1: enough to have built an entire thing. Yeah, Carson, you
Speaker 1: know this. So the official story from the government was
Speaker 1: at these were weather balloons. They were meant specifically to, uh,
Speaker 1: to study the weather at high altitudes. Now, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, that's not the real story, but we will
Speaker 1: get to there in a second. So, uh, this was
Speaker 1: one of those things where people were saying, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like any weather balloon I've ever seen, which is true.
Speaker 1: It didn't. I've seen both balloons and the weathers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is neither of those two things. So moving on
Speaker 1: to the the you know, kind of looking at the
Speaker 1: story another way. One version of this that I was
Speaker 1: not aware of until a friend of the show, Nate Lenkson,
Speaker 1: he's the editor of Wired, dot Code dot UK. Uh.
Speaker 1: He he turned beyond to this. I had never heard
Speaker 1: about this. It's a book written by Annie Jacobson called
Speaker 1: Area fifty one and Uncensored History of America's top secret
Speaker 1: military base. Now full disclosure here. I have not read
Speaker 1: this book. Yet I read a synopsis of the book
Speaker 1: and a synopsis of the story we're about the cover,
Speaker 1: so this may not actually be accurate to the book itself.
Speaker 1: I want to make that clear. I've also heard that
Speaker 1: most of the book is pretty much what we covered
Speaker 1: in our first two episodes of the podcast, a very
Speaker 1: thorough description of the history of Every fifty one. But
Speaker 1: there's a section apparently devoted to the Roswell incident and
Speaker 1: Every fifty one supposed involvement in that, in which the
Speaker 1: story gets even weirder, I think than aliens. And this
Speaker 1: story involves Nazis and communists, so you know, it's only
Speaker 1: missing Indiana Jones to make it really a Hollywood film.
Speaker 1: So the story that she tells according to a source,
Speaker 1: I don't know what her source was a source. I
Speaker 1: don't know if she names the source in the book.
Speaker 1: The synopsis, I said, said anonymous. But again I haven't
Speaker 1: read the book. But according to the synopsis, the story
Speaker 1: is that a Nazi doctor, Joseph Mingola, actually the s
Speaker 1: S officer who survived the World War two and then
Speaker 1: and then eventually escaped to South America. The Mingola had
Speaker 1: worked on behalf of Joseph Stalin doing these horrific procedures
Speaker 1: on children, resulting in children around the age of twelve
Speaker 1: with abnormally shaped heads, large eyes that are of an
Speaker 1: odd shape, and that the whole idea was that they
Speaker 1: were going to pilot some simple aircraft to fly around
Speaker 1: the United States and land and essentially star crap up
Speaker 1: scare people. Yeah, exactly, this idea that they would this
Speaker 1: idea that they would fake aliens, Yeah, in order to
Speaker 1: create a panic, essentially doing a war of the World's
Speaker 1: type event. Uh, one step closer to reality or of
Speaker 1: the world's For those who don't remember or don't know
Speaker 1: what this is, um, it was a an Orson Wells project,
Speaker 1: a radio program that was portrayed in such a way
Speaker 1: that people who tuned in without knowing that it was
Speaker 1: actually a fictionalized radio program, began to think that there
Speaker 1: was actually, uh, an alien invasion happening. It was this
Speaker 1: sort of famous little blip on the radar of of
Speaker 1: people freaking out because they weren't aware that, in fact,
Speaker 1: it was a fictional account. Uh, something that we still
Speaker 1: see today, uh with things like Mermaids. At any rate.
Speaker 1: That's enough commentary on that, But yeah, the Uh, the
Speaker 1: story that she relays is that Mingola had done these
Speaker 1: these horror, horrific procedures and that the bodies found at
Speaker 1: the Roswal incidant, which remember there was never any evidence
Speaker 1: that bodies were found were in fact human children that
Speaker 1: then were whisked away. I think there's some big problem
Speaker 1: with this particular story. Problem Number one, Mingola was on
Speaker 1: the run from the Soviets. He did not, I mean,
Speaker 1: the Soviets were the ones who were who were approaching
Speaker 1: when Hitler committed suicide, right, they'd rather than be captured
Speaker 1: by the Soviets. Um. Hitler committed suicide, and Mingola was
Speaker 1: trying to escape with records that he had, uh, he
Speaker 1: had created at Auschwitz. UM. So he eventually escaped Germany.
Speaker 1: He did at one point go back into Soviet occupied
Speaker 1: territory in order to retrieve some of these documents, but
Speaker 1: he evaded capture and eventually escaped to South America and
Speaker 1: then moved around quite a bit while Uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was being he was being pursued by agents both
Speaker 1: Soviet and American, and so it's unlikely that he would
Speaker 1: have collaborated with Joseph Stalin and certainly unlikely that he
Speaker 1: would have been allowed to escape. Yeah, well, um, so
Speaker 1: that already is a problem. Secondly, it would be a
Speaker 1: real problem the idea of people being fooled long enough
Speaker 1: to not realize these were humans, right Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: there's the other there's the other question. Why would they
Speaker 1: crash there and not in a more occupied place. Why
Speaker 1: not New York City or something like that. Why, um,
Speaker 1: you know, they probably get spotted. But then also, and
Speaker 1: this this is a cruel thing to say, but why
Speaker 1: would you specifically need that one very evil man to
Speaker 1: do that sort of operation? Right? Right? Exactly, It's not
Speaker 1: like if you're going to if you're going to do
Speaker 1: something so inhuman, uh is there I mean, narratively it's
Speaker 1: a great story in the sense that there only one
Speaker 1: person is this twisted to pull this off? But in
Speaker 1: reality we know, unfortunately that's not the case that if
Speaker 1: you really did have the the will to do something
Speaker 1: this horrible, you could probably do it without having to
Speaker 1: to go after the devil himself. Right, I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole story is is meant to appeal to our dark imaginations,
Speaker 1: and it's a terrible thing, but it's also one of
Speaker 1: those things that you could say, yeah, I can imagine
Speaker 1: this actually playing out in some way. Ultimately, you also
Speaker 1: have to ask the question, what's the effect you're going for.
Speaker 1: If the effect you're going for is to cause a panic,
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything that would have caused a
Speaker 1: bigger panic than having Soviet airmen being able to land
Speaker 1: in US territory without any alien cover story. You don't
Speaker 1: need that to cause a scare. There's really no benefit here,
Speaker 1: Like the the the entire operation does not seem to
Speaker 1: have an actual return on investments, so it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense from that perspective either. So the Nazis that were
Speaker 1: involved in in some other con piracy theories about every
Speaker 1: fifty one, like the the UFOs that are seeing our
Speaker 1: product of you know, Nazi experiments towards the close of
Speaker 1: the war. And a lot of that comes from a
Speaker 1: very real, uh and kind of frightening thing that the
Speaker 1: United States did with Operation paper Clip, which you know
Speaker 1: about when they brought over some surviving scientists from Germany
Speaker 1: right right right when you're when you're when you get
Speaker 1: the rockets scientists specifically who worked over in Germany to
Speaker 1: then come to the United States and continue their work
Speaker 1: in science and and rocketry and specifically, but now they're
Speaker 1: working for a different boss. They're working with the United
Speaker 1: States government, uh and partly because they're getting guarantees from
Speaker 1: the U. S Government that they won't be tried as
Speaker 1: criminals for their work for the Nazi regime. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certain real, real things that were happening in history
Speaker 1: that we're probably enough to help fuel this kind of
Speaker 1: conspiracy here in the United States. But you know, you
Speaker 1: didn't have to look far to see real instances of
Speaker 1: some pretty shady dealings on both sides, uh, but without
Speaker 1: having to make stuff up right and now, Also one
Speaker 1: thing that didn't help the government's case, and as far
Speaker 1: as their official story goes, is that it turned out
Speaker 1: they they were telling the truth, but telling it slant,
Speaker 1: as Emily Dickinson would say, right, they were. They were
Speaker 1: not weather balloons that were being uh deployed out over
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. There were balloons though, Yeah, there were
Speaker 1: balloons that were part of a spy program called Project Mogul,
Speaker 1: which was a top secret experiment using high altitude balloons
Speaker 1: that were carrying microphones, and the idea was the microphones
Speaker 1: would be able to detect sounds from Soviet nuclear tests,
Speaker 1: so that we in the United States would have a
Speaker 1: clue when that was going on, and we that would
Speaker 1: help us kind of know how far along the Soviets
Speaker 1: were with their nuclear program compared to our own nuclear program.
Speaker 1: So there was again this need for secrecy. We didn't
Speaker 1: want the Soviets to know that we, in fact had
Speaker 1: developed this technology to listen out for uh, these these
Speaker 1: sound waves, um, because we didn't want them to try
Speaker 1: and come up with different ways of testing their nuclear
Speaker 1: arms and therefore hiding it from us, soeering it and
Speaker 1: hearing what we're doing exactly. That's also another another good point.
Speaker 1: So the cover story of weather balloons was necessary to
Speaker 1: protect the secrecy of the spy program, but it had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with aliens. It had everything to do
Speaker 1: with spying it. Maybe it might have even been to
Speaker 1: the government's benefit that people were latching on to the
Speaker 1: aliens story because it took attention away from what it
Speaker 1: was really meant to do. So there's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot of incentive upon the government's part to come out
Speaker 1: and say specifically, guys, no, it's not aliens, because it
Speaker 1: keep the attention away. But you don't want it to
Speaker 1: you don't want that story to run rampant either, because
Speaker 1: it could legitimately start causing either a panic or just
Speaker 1: a growing distrust in the government itself. Sure, and they
Speaker 1: don't need any help. That's regardless of what what what
Speaker 1: your political beliefs are. We speaking of beliefs, this is
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of fun for me personally,
Speaker 1: I think for you too, because one thing that always
Speaker 1: keeps the area fifty one Legends alive is that there.
Speaker 1: It seems like every year there's someone who comes out
Speaker 1: and says, well, I was person exit place wide, I
Speaker 1: know the truth, right, and now I will finally reveal it.
Speaker 1: And you're thinking of someone specific in this case, right,
Speaker 1: and specifically thinking of Bob Lazar, Yeah, Robert Lazar or
Speaker 1: Bob Lazar, who claimed to have worked on a project
Speaker 1: in which the military area had come into possession of
Speaker 1: alien technology and his job was to reverse engineer that
Speaker 1: alien technology to learn how it works so we could
Speaker 1: take advantage of that tech here on Earth and thus
Speaker 1: kind of leap forward what would normally be the process
Speaker 1: of developing tech. So instead of you know, constantly testing
Speaker 1: and improving and refining, we could jump straight ahead and
Speaker 1: you know, skip eight steps in that process and jump
Speaker 1: straight to you know, miraculous smartphones that react to our touch,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And so he claimed that he
Speaker 1: had worked at a facility that was near Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: so not technically at area fifty one, but adjacent to it.
Speaker 1: It was the real secret place. It's called S four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's so secret that it didn't even get a
Speaker 1: full name. Um, it just gets a letter and a
Speaker 1: number of designation. And it's he said that it housed
Speaker 1: no fewer than nine spacecraft. Uh, here's the thing that
Speaker 1: a lot of his his claims to his background don't
Speaker 1: check out, right, Like he claims to have advanced degrees
Speaker 1: from M I. T and from cal Tech, but there's
Speaker 1: no record of him there. Now, granted, some people say
Speaker 1: that that's evidence of the conspiracy. Yeah, that in fact,
Speaker 1: this shows that the government was so interested in keeping
Speaker 1: it a secret that they have white clean his background.
Speaker 1: Although to do that you would also have to white
Speaker 1: clean the memories of every professor and every student who
Speaker 1: would have also attended. And you see that this this
Speaker 1: kind of domino effect, How how wide those ripples would
Speaker 1: have to go in order for this to remain an
Speaker 1: effective secret, it becomes unmanageable at some point, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be easier at this point? My question would be for
Speaker 1: many of these cases is why did someone go to
Speaker 1: so such great links to keep you alive? Because from
Speaker 1: from a government's perspective, we know that if they're picking
Speaker 1: one kind of skull degree, they'll pick the easier one,
Speaker 1: which is usually an assisted fall all off a building
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, assassination is just off
Speaker 1: the table, right, that can never be done, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you? Uh? If it did
Speaker 1: come down to there's this one person who has tons
Speaker 1: of information, like it's essentially Snowden. Yeah, there's Edward Snowden
Speaker 1: of Area fifty one, who is ready, he has access
Speaker 1: to all the information, he's ready to spill the beans. Um,
Speaker 1: and you want to discredit him, you don't go to
Speaker 1: every single person in his past. Don't tell anybody about this, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just not practical, right, It's it's it
Speaker 1: would be a monumental task. So essentially, what we're getting
Speaker 1: round too is that Lazar's um, his claims to his
Speaker 1: his credentials are suspect, right, and that that is a
Speaker 1: very diplomatic way to put it. Of course, you know,
Speaker 1: we're also showing that his side of it is that
Speaker 1: someone is a racing passed to discredit him, as as
Speaker 1: you said, you know, Jonathan, recently, Mr Lazar in the
Speaker 1: past few years went back into the public eye now
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess more into the mainstream public eye.
Speaker 1: And he was asked to react to the CIA's official
Speaker 1: admittance uh of Area fifty ones existence, which as we know,
Speaker 1: it didn't happen for a little while. And uh he
Speaker 1: said he was not impressed because this was a very
Speaker 1: tiny baby step forward. I think that's the quote he used.
Speaker 1: And uh he was waiting for them to reveal S four,
Speaker 1: which is the site he says he worked at reverse
Speaker 1: engineering these things. Now, he has many, many claims. Uh.
Speaker 1: He speaks at length about interspecial politics, about injuries he
Speaker 1: suffered by technology that we won't hear about for several decades. Uh.
Speaker 1: But I I really like the point you made that. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the other things people who believe him see
Speaker 1: his proof is um what they perceive as a inexplicable
Speaker 1: jump in technology, right right, Well, the truth is that
Speaker 1: if you look at any technology closely enough, you will
Speaker 1: see incremental improvements. It's very very rare that we have
Speaker 1: someone come out with a brand new piece of technology
Speaker 1: that has no precedent to it, right, yeah, exactly, Television,
Speaker 1: perfect example. So yeah, you look at these things like
Speaker 1: television was really building upon the developments of radio, and
Speaker 1: you think, okay, well what about Tesla and Marconi, Well
Speaker 1: they were working on research that had preceded them as well.
Speaker 1: These are all if you if you really dig down
Speaker 1: into it, you know, you look at the invention of
Speaker 1: the light bulb. You look at all of these sort
Speaker 1: of inventions that we we take for granted. We like
Speaker 1: the stories that say this inventor came up with this
Speaker 1: idea and implemented it, and now it exists and before
Speaker 1: it never did. Usually the truth is much more complicated,
Speaker 1: with lots of different things leading into that invention, including
Speaker 1: earlier inventions that may not have been practical but showed
Speaker 1: a working concept, and then this other inventor like Thomas
Speaker 1: Edison comes along and takes that takes that concept and
Speaker 1: makes it practical. So now it's something that we can
Speaker 1: actually use as opposed to just a cool idea, but
Speaker 1: we didn't know how to to you know, capitalize on it. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think most of these advances we've seen
Speaker 1: have over the over the decades have been examples of
Speaker 1: this where people have made incremental improvements and maybe grab
Speaker 1: together multiple pieces of technology and then and then package
Speaker 1: them in such a way that it's a really compelling
Speaker 1: piece of tech. But if you break it down component
Speaker 1: by component, you start to see the actual process of
Speaker 1: this creating something, refining it, tweaking and putting it out again,
Speaker 1: refining it again. I don't see any annoy or miss
Speaker 1: leaps where someone has jumped well ahead of everywhere else.
Speaker 1: Maybe Claude Shannon and his uh his computer science with
Speaker 1: using binary logic, his approach to computer science was pretty
Speaker 1: much fully formed. But that's kind of similar to Albert
Speaker 1: Einstein and his theories of relativity. These were ideas that
Speaker 1: both men had developed over years, and then they presented
Speaker 1: them as complete pictures. So to us the outsiders, it
Speaker 1: looks like a person just came up with a brilliant process,
Speaker 1: fully formed instantaneously. The truth is it actually took several
Speaker 1: years to build that up, and even then they were
Speaker 1: building on previous thoughts and knowledge. They were just incorporating
Speaker 1: it in a new way. Yeah, but what about the lasers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so lasers are an issue, right, um I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought up lasers. One of the things that have has
Speaker 1: often been attributed to Area fifty one is energy weapons.
Speaker 1: So this ties into the strategic Defense initiative, often referred
Speaker 1: to derisively as wars. Yeah, this was the program in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, and I promise that I will do
Speaker 1: an episode about the Star Wars program that will go
Speaker 1: into full detail. I know, I've got a lot of
Speaker 1: listeners who have asked me to do it, and I
Speaker 1: really want to at some point, but it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a little bit further down the road. But it's um
Speaker 1: you know. The whole idea was that it was going
Speaker 1: to be a system that would shoot down incoming i
Speaker 1: c b m s intercontinental ballistic missiles. This was the
Speaker 1: height of the Cold War nineteen eighties. I mean, propaganda
Speaker 1: was ridiculous in both the Soviet Union and the United States.
Speaker 1: I grew up in that era and I remember like
Speaker 1: the Russians being the bad guys all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: from from uh everything from Red Dawn to Rocky four.
Speaker 1: So anyway, um or was it three. It might have
Speaker 1: been three rocky three at any rate. The the idea
Speaker 1: here was that the energy weapons that would shoot down
Speaker 1: these missiles were supposedly under development at Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: Again not really the purpose for Area fifty one. I
Speaker 1: mean you could you could understand them, uh, testing such
Speaker 1: a device, because that is kind of what they were doing.
Speaker 1: But they were mostly testing airborne things, not not ground
Speaker 1: to air technology. It was mostly aircraft that they were
Speaker 1: really focusing on, and not offensive aircraft, just spycraft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's some of the drones they worked on
Speaker 1: probably had offensive kick, but yeah, it was it was
Speaker 1: mostly again, it was mostly reconnaissance type stuff. We have
Speaker 1: a bit more to say about the mythology of Area
Speaker 1: fifty one. Hope you're enjoying the episode so far, and
Speaker 1: now we're going to take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. So first of all, we don't have any
Speaker 1: technology powerful enough to control the weather. Weather is an
Speaker 1: incredibly chaotic system that we do not fully understand it.
Speaker 1: Before you can under before you can really control something,
Speaker 1: you have to at least have some understanding of how
Speaker 1: it works. Now, people have conducted experiments with weather manipulation
Speaker 1: things like influence it like seeding clouds, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But even this, we can't be fully sure how effective
Speaker 1: they are, right, because here's the problem is that you
Speaker 1: can't you can't have a scientific consensus on whether or
Speaker 1: not something is effective unless you're able to have a
Speaker 1: control group. And you can't really have a control group
Speaker 1: with weather. I mean you can you can have as
Speaker 1: close to the same uh kind of elements in play
Speaker 1: in two different and two different instances, and one you
Speaker 1: seed the cloud, in one you don't, and then you
Speaker 1: see how much rain it results. But even then again,
Speaker 1: whether it's such a complex system that you can't you
Speaker 1: can't be completely certain that the seeding is the effective agent, right.
Speaker 1: And you know the problem with whether is it's a
Speaker 1: chaotic system that is one massive cluster of systems. So
Speaker 1: any two points you pick are ultimately in this same system.
Speaker 1: So are they really is there a control? It's stuff.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, you know things like HARP,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you guys have talked about, which was
Speaker 1: designed to to actually look at interactions in the ionosphere. Now,
Speaker 1: the ionosphere around Earth can conduct electricity. In fact, when
Speaker 1: we get a big electrical impulse in there from something
Speaker 1: like a solar flare or coronal mass ejection. It can
Speaker 1: make the auroras at the polls really active because that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the convergence point for this electric field.
Speaker 1: And UH, and so there's certainly things that interact with
Speaker 1: atmospheric um phenomena, but we still can't control the weather there. Now.
Speaker 1: It doesn't help, I'm just gonna be honest with you, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: does not help UH to dispel any of the speculation
Speaker 1: about places like HARP, you know, when it was an operation,
Speaker 1: because the descriptions from from the government and from HARP
Speaker 1: about what they were doing we're just cartoonously vague in
Speaker 1: some ways. So, yeah, it's a high frequency active auroral
Speaker 1: research program, which already you're you're thinking they're at least
Speaker 1: a couple of words in there that I'm not entirely
Speaker 1: sure what they're supposed to be UM. And it really
Speaker 1: was about beaming energy into the ionosphere too. The goal
Speaker 1: for HARP, at least on the government side, that the
Speaker 1: military funded side, was can we use the ionosphere as
Speaker 1: a conduit through which we can communicate with distant vehicles
Speaker 1: like submarines that are under the water. I mean they
Speaker 1: really were hoping that this would be a way of
Speaker 1: doing that. The scientists at HARP were mostly thinking, if
Speaker 1: we can keep getting funding for what we want to do,
Speaker 1: which is to study the ionosphere, then we should try
Speaker 1: and keep that door open for the possibility that this
Speaker 1: could be a communications tool, even if we don't think
Speaker 1: it will really work. So, um, which happens. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's essentially what happened with HARP. And then eventually the
Speaker 1: military said, you know what, we're done, and they pulled
Speaker 1: the funding. So that was the story of HARP. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of those same stories apply to Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: but there's no evidence that there were any weather control
Speaker 1: systems under development. There's certainly no evidence that anything ever
Speaker 1: did any actual weather manipulation. So uh, yeah, that just
Speaker 1: doesn't that doesn't really fly. Um. And then if there's
Speaker 1: a piece of tech and science fiction, there's a chance
Speaker 1: that there's at least some story out there that there's
Speaker 1: something like that underdevelopment at Area fifty one, you know,
Speaker 1: warp coils, teleporters, phasers, whatever you want to think about.
Speaker 1: I realized I was focusing mainly on Star Trek there,
Speaker 1: but really all of that has at some time or
Speaker 1: another been attributed to AREAE warp drives, uh, teleportation devices, lightsabers. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: thank you. You know we've got st you know we've
Speaker 1: got there. So moving on another another host of conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories around Area fifty one don't have so much to
Speaker 1: do with what was act going on at the facility,
Speaker 1: but rather the mysterious shadowy organizations that were behind it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the real life Smoking Man exactly. Yeah. So a
Speaker 1: lot of these conspiracy theories involve organizations that have no
Speaker 1: official um uh designation or they don't they aren't officially
Speaker 1: acknowledged by the government, right, So some of them have
Speaker 1: a designation, but they're not you know, they're they're not
Speaker 1: in any government files because that's how secret they are
Speaker 1: in alleged designation. Yeah. So here the big one for
Speaker 1: Area fifty one at least is the Majestic twelve. Majestic
Speaker 1: twelve is a group that existed many years ago, according
Speaker 1: to the conspiracy lore, and included people like President Truman
Speaker 1: as well as the head of CIA and also like
Speaker 1: top businessmen, like essentially the most powerful people in the
Speaker 1: United States at that time, and that their purpose was
Speaker 1: to solidify power and control worldwide, right like this was
Speaker 1: gonna be like. The Trilateral Commission was often referred to
Speaker 1: as being the secret organization for these sort of purposes,
Speaker 1: which is not what it was for um Uh. There
Speaker 1: are other organizations that are meant to be like think
Speaker 1: tanks that have often been kind of compared to this source.
Speaker 1: The Majestic twelve, however, is one that appears to have
Speaker 1: been completely fabricated. Uh. There was a UFO enthusiast named
Speaker 1: William L. Moore who produced papers that he claimed proved
Speaker 1: the group's existence, but a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: looked at these papers have said that they don't hold
Speaker 1: up to scrutiny, that the signatures that are there appeared
Speaker 1: to have been copied from other documents and then pasted
Speaker 1: into them into the Majestic twelve, the MJ twelve papers, uh,
Speaker 1: and that there does not appear to be any sort
Speaker 1: of evidence supporting the existence of such an organization. So
Speaker 1: if your organization isn't real, then chances are it's not
Speaker 1: actually the secret one behind area. But that's of fun.
Speaker 1: So the so the the the idea that has become
Speaker 1: you know, common currency in a lot of these beliefs
Speaker 1: is that in J twelve, uh did exist, but was
Speaker 1: had its world rocked when news of the extraterrestrial crash
Speaker 1: in hit them. And then they've they've spent the next
Speaker 1: few decades. Um, you know what, more and more I
Speaker 1: think maybe X files was inspired by some of these well,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's very like m J twelve shares
Speaker 1: a lot of the same kind of traits as other shadowy,
Speaker 1: conspiratorial uh most likely fictional organization. It's a trope. It's
Speaker 1: right up there with things like the Illuminati for example. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you have some real people who really do exist
Speaker 1: that have kind of helped fuel the mystique around Area
Speaker 1: fifty one, not necessarily, you know, purposefully setting out to
Speaker 1: define the mystique, but they're part of it. And those
Speaker 1: are the Camo dudes. That's that's what the folks in
Speaker 1: the Area fifty one U biz. The people who like
Speaker 1: to watch Area fifty one, not the ones who are
Speaker 1: actually working there. What they referred to these guys as
Speaker 1: Camo dudes because they tend to be wearing a desert
Speaker 1: camouflage outfits. You know, they're on Nevada, so they're wearing
Speaker 1: these these kind of desert cam outfits. They travel in pairs,
Speaker 1: usually in in four wheel drive vehicles, and they are
Speaker 1: uh the perimeter guards essentially is what they serve as.
Speaker 1: So if someone starts to come close to the area
Speaker 1: fifty one borders, then they may end up encountering a
Speaker 1: pair of these camo dudes who tend to not appear
Speaker 1: to be military. The best guess is, in fact, they
Speaker 1: are probably part of some contract group that ends up
Speaker 1: doing security for things like military installations. So not not
Speaker 1: official military personnel, but rather private citizens who are part
Speaker 1: of a contractor, and they're job is to um to
Speaker 1: firmly suggest to people that they should go somewhere else
Speaker 1: rather than than try and get footage of the area.
Speaker 1: I have a quotation for you from an incident. This
Speaker 1: is published in the Huffington Post. A UFO conspiracy film
Speaker 1: crew was detained at gunpoint at the Air fifty one
Speaker 1: Gate UH in two thousand twelve. H Here's here's the quotation.
Speaker 1: According to a crew member, a camouflage dress guard carrying
Speaker 1: an M sixteen told a member of this team, we
Speaker 1: could make you disappear and your body will never be found. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and say maybe they're playing it up.
Speaker 1: But the point is that, yes, you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: be there. As we said in the first PEW podcast,
Speaker 1: don't don't try to go you guys. Yeah, most of
Speaker 1: the most of the reports I've read didn't have a
Speaker 1: point where the the Camo dudes were actively aiming weapons
Speaker 1: in their direction, but rather they were they were visibly armed,
Speaker 1: So that's one thing, you know, it was certainly they
Speaker 1: were armed, but they weren't I don't remember reading a
Speaker 1: whole lot of them either brandishing their weapons, like as
Speaker 1: far as I recall, most of the incidents involved their
Speaker 1: weapons being holstered, but they have in the past, according
Speaker 1: to a lot of reports, confiscated film back when film
Speaker 1: was a thing, or demanded to have various equipment turned
Speaker 1: over to them. Because again, the facility is all about
Speaker 1: spy aircraft, so you don't want footage leaking of either
Speaker 1: the facility or the aircraft that are under development there. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's not necessarily that big of a mystery, but
Speaker 1: the fact that you have these guys who are not
Speaker 1: easily identifiable as belonging to a specific United States government organization,
Speaker 1: that definitely adds to that mystery. And they're not identifying
Speaker 1: themselves and also to be candid in in some cases
Speaker 1: not all, but in some cases, if you were making
Speaker 1: a film, then you want to have that sort of conflict.
Speaker 1: So it it's also possible that in some cases easier
Speaker 1: the threat as it is as it is is um embellished,
Speaker 1: or it's possible that people are purposefully agitating the guards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely without being there, we can't say for sure,
Speaker 1: but that but but both scenarios seem to be plausible
Speaker 1: to me, Right, I don't know what really unfolded. It
Speaker 1: may be that the truth is somewhere in between those
Speaker 1: two those two scenarios, right, But you can't accidentally end
Speaker 1: up there, you know, you purposefully we're trying to get there.
Speaker 1: And this is clearly an area that is off limits.
Speaker 1: Uh and is you know, is legally off limits. Some
Speaker 1: people are and you know, we talked about that in
Speaker 1: the second episode of the history about how Area fifty
Speaker 1: one gets a whole lot of legal leeway um in
Speaker 1: ways that other places in the United States simply do not,
Speaker 1: and that that also adds to this curiosity we have
Speaker 1: of Area fifty one. I think we've really covered kind
Speaker 1: of what drives that the fact that you know, human
Speaker 1: beings are curious, right, we want to know things. When
Speaker 1: we see something that we do not understand, often one
Speaker 1: of our earliest responses is how does that work? Or
Speaker 1: what is going on here? What's really happening? Unless it's
Speaker 1: really scary, and which is where's the closest exit? And
Speaker 1: can I run faster than ben um? Because you don't
Speaker 1: have to run the fastest, just faster than the slowest person.
Speaker 1: As long as I'm not the slowest person in the office,
Speaker 1: I'm still got a chance. Yeah, So I can certainly
Speaker 1: see and I feel it too. I mean, I certainly
Speaker 1: have this curiosity about Area fifty one. Heck, just just
Speaker 1: going from the baseline most mundane description of what's going
Speaker 1: on there, there's still so many questions like how do
Speaker 1: they how do they really maintain that level of secrecy,
Speaker 1: how much which does the typical worker at Area fifty
Speaker 1: one know about what's going on? How do they make
Speaker 1: sure that people working on one project remain oblivious to
Speaker 1: everything else that's happening, how do they schedule these things?
Speaker 1: What is it like being a pilot for one of
Speaker 1: these aircraft? I mean, there are a lot of questions
Speaker 1: that we don't have the answers too, so I think, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a lot of fun tackling this
Speaker 1: this subject, and I think it really did merit the
Speaker 1: three episodes because it is such a touchstone for everything
Speaker 1: from the political ideology from the nineteen shiftees forward to
Speaker 1: just a pop culture you know, touchstone, right, It's it's like,
Speaker 1: that's that's the go to for science fiction. Now, I
Speaker 1: have a question for you. Absolutely when and now that
Speaker 1: we have, along with the rest of the tech stuff
Speaker 1: audience explored still discerned the the ideas and the reality
Speaker 1: and the mist very fifty one, I have to ask you,
Speaker 1: what would you do if one of the you know,
Speaker 1: if one of the strangest things turned out to be true?
Speaker 1: You know, I like to I would like to think
Speaker 1: that I'm the type of skeptic who, when presented with
Speaker 1: incontrovertible evidence that something I believe to be true is
Speaker 1: in fact not true, and that's something I thought was
Speaker 1: just purely made up is in fact the truth, that
Speaker 1: I would be able to accept it. Saying that and
Speaker 1: actually doing it are two different things, right, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's how I would truly react. I'd like
Speaker 1: to think that if suddenly there was just pure evidence
Speaker 1: that in fact the Roswal incident involved aliens, and that
Speaker 1: the aliens were in fact Holstad area fifty one, and
Speaker 1: all of these crazy conspiracy theories were actually true. I
Speaker 1: like to believe that I would be able to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, I never would have bought into this,
Speaker 1: but it turns out it was right and I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I'd like to think I could do that. I think
Speaker 1: you would. I like, okay, incontrovertible evidence then would have
Speaker 1: to be thing like aliens landing at your house and
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, guys, have you seen our buddies? They
Speaker 1: showed up maybe I don't know, you know, seventy earth
Speaker 1: years ago something around there. Yeah, they checked their watch
Speaker 1: for seventy year years ago, and they're big fans of
Speaker 1: text stuff, and so they heard that we had done
Speaker 1: an episode. Yeah, I feel like you're the kind of
Speaker 1: guy would go, huh, well, yeah, okay, I guess let
Speaker 1: me let me call my boss. I would be like,
Speaker 1: some of um, all right, well, it turns out I
Speaker 1: was a big fat head and I was wrong about everything.
Speaker 1: That's not everything. But also, yeah, it is true that
Speaker 1: there is at least. There are several conspiracies that we're
Speaker 1: at work at Area fifty one, and we've we've explored those,
Speaker 1: and I guess what what I would want people to
Speaker 1: take away from this is that there really is amazing strange,
Speaker 1: science fiction, action thriller movie level stuff there. It just
Speaker 1: may not be what people are claiming it is. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's you know, not interesting. It certainly is,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's really again an evidence of human
Speaker 1: achievement for both an engineering side and just a secrecy
Speaker 1: keeping side, because it's really hard to keep those secrets.
Speaker 1: So I do suspect that they do that by managing
Speaker 1: how many people are allowed to know any one thing
Speaker 1: at any one time, otherwise you know, loose lips. Well,
Speaker 1: that wraps up our classic episode, the Mythology of Area
Speaker 1: fifty one. Like I said, I really enjoyed researching and
Speaker 1: talking about that with then so many years ago. I
Speaker 1: remember when I first got the assignment to write How
Speaker 1: Area fifty one works shortly after I was hired at
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, and it was one of the most
Speaker 1: enjoyable research experiences I've ever had. It's just fun to
Speaker 1: learn about what actually happened. What people thought happened, what
Speaker 1: people still say are is happening there. It's a really
Speaker 1: fascinating look into not just military secrets, but human psychology.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed this classic episode, and we'll
Speaker 1: be back soon with a brand new episode of tech Stuff.
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Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me
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Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
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