September 27, 2025 • 50 mins
The secret military base Area 51 is inextricably linked to every secret, shady project the US government is rumored to be involved in – from reverse-engineering alien technology to coordinating a one-world government. The truth is much more mundane. Listen to this classic episode as Josh and Chuck break it down.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody, Chuck here, take me to your leader. Other
things ets might say, Happy Saturday. This episode is called
how Area fifty one Works. It's from June thirteenth, twenty nineteen,
and you know, we get into it. We chop it up,
as they say, all about Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Brian over there, and there's Dylan
the guest producer again. And this is stop should Know,
the podcast about Chuck some pretty heady stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I could have sworn we did this one. No, what
do we do roswell no UFOs?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yes we did that at a comic con or something, right.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah we did. We did it live. I've never been
satisfied with that one.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Maybe we'll redo it one day.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, this is good, this Area fifty one.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I think this kind of covers some ground that I
didn't think I was surprised by.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, me too, And I think the thing that I
would wager you were surprised about, which I was definitely
surprised about was just how mundane the explanations for what
goes on at Area fifty one probably.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Is yeah, secret government research the end.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Right, but it probably doesn't have anything to do with
reverse engineering, alien technology and the secret seat of the
one World government, the Majestic twelve, probably isn't located there.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
No, probably just bombs and planes.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Probably it makes sense. And if there is a conspiracy
going on, the one conspiracy theory I saw for Area
fifty one that made the most sense to me is
that it's actually meant to be a distraction or has
developed into a distraction for some other place that no
one even.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Knows about Area fifty Maybe, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Maybe hopefully they're not quite that on the nose, but
it's possible.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
All right. So let's go back in time, I guess.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
To World War two, and well, first of all, Area
fifty one, just to geographically level set, it's less than
one hundred miles from Las Vegas in.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Nevada, South South Nevada.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, it's six hundred square miles and it's basically if
you look at it on Google Earth, it looks like
a you know, big airfield with a bunch of buildings.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
So the I think the whole restricted airspace that's part
of like the test range and the air base and
all of that stuff. Yeah, the Area fifty one is
located in. I think that's six hundred square miles. I'm
pretty sure Area fifty one itself is no more than
sixty square miles.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Oh yeah, sure, just like the It's not like they're
six hundred square miles of buildings.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Right, it's just what Yeah, the installation that people think
of as Area fifty one is part of a larger, huge,
big chunk of the American desert in Nevada.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Right, So.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Next to Area fifty one is what's what you were
kind of talking.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
About, the Nevada Test Site.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
And this is where for about ten or eleven years,
the Atomic Energy Commission was setting off nuclear bombs underground,
above ground and really sort of figuring out how to
kill a lot of people very easily and sort of
the most dangerous way you could imagine.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, and you could see this from Vegas, Like they
would have parties when they were doing the test, because
Vegas is like eighty miles away or something like that,
and they would have like atomic cocktails and viewing parties
and stuff like that. And people watch them shoot off bombs. Unbelievable, right,
But this is obviously a part of the country that
(04:05):
the government would be very interested in keeping people away from,
not just for the bombs, but because of the fallout
the radiation, but also the fact that they're testing like
super sensitive military equipment and weapons, right, like atomic bombs.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Like previous to this, it was just land. There were
silver mines, there was cattle and wildlife. But then in
nineteen forty the government said no, this is ours, and
we're going to train bombers here.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And there was a big bombing range and they.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Were split into different numbers, and that's where the number
Area fifty one comes from, which seems I don't know
about arbitrary, but no one knows if it really matters
why it was named Area fifty one.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
No, I think it was. If you look at old
bombing range maps, the area where Area fifty one is
located was denoted as area fifty.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
One Between fifty and fifty two, it is probably the answer.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, it's basically from what I saw, that was it.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So there's another part of this story. With World War two,
and this is Germany. They were a bit ahead of
US as far as jets go, jet airplanes, the United
States is like, this won't do it all. So we're
going to get kind of put the gas on our
jet development. And in nineteen forty three, Lockheed said was
(05:25):
tasked with developing a jet fighter plane you can use
a British jet engine, and they tasked engineer Kelly Johnson said,
get a team together. He got a team together and
they delivered the P eighty Shooting Star, which is one
of the coolest looking old jets.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
All these planes are just amazing looking.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Agreed, very very cool. It's a good idea when we
talk about a new jet or something, go look it
up as we're talking about because most of them are
pretty boss looking.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I've never been a plane guy, but I'm getting more
and more into it.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Is that right? Yeah, I want to do a stealth
bomber episode one day.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Okay, possibly the coolest plane.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah. So Kelly Johnson was just that right there. Delivering
America's first jet on like undertime and under budget was
huge and he became a legendary engineer right off the bat.
And they I think Lockheed said, hey, how would you
like to keep this pace up? We'll give you, your
(06:21):
team of elite engineers, whatever funding you need, whatever resources
you need, just ask you can have it, and you
just keep developing stuff really quickly for us, and we
will put you at the cutting edge of aviation research.
And so Kelly Johnson and his team eventually became known
as the Skunk Works, which is legendary in aviation engineering
(06:44):
because they developed a whole bunch of really cool stuff.
But also they had a pretty great name too that
was fairly intriguing. But they were the first ones to
kind of basically develop agile project management from what I understand.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yeah, and this was all out of the what was
own a Site one, which was in Burbank, California, just
sort of a suburb of LA But then in nineteen
fifty four they said, you know what we need now
is a spy plane. The CIA wants a spyplane. We
want something that can fly above radar and photograph Soviet
(07:19):
military bases missile installations. We're going to name it, because
we name everything Project aquatone. And that's where Johnson and
his team developed the U two. The Skunkworks team, but
they couldn't do this at Site one anymore because it
had to be super super secret obviously because it was
a spy plane, so they needed a different place, and
(07:42):
that's where that sort of all converges onto this testing
site in Nevada.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, Kelly Johnson, CIA officer named Richard Bissel and a
couple of pilots started scouting locations for where they could
develop this in super super secret and they they went
to look at the old Nevada Test Range and specifically
the thing that attracted them was a dry salt lake
(08:08):
called Groom Lake. And one of the pilots recounted taking
some like sixteen pounds shot put balls and dropping them
on the ground to see just how sandy the ground was,
and he said it was solid as a tabletop. This
lake was the dry lake. They were like, this will
probably do. And there's a lot of reasons why it
would do, not just because there was a dry lake
(08:29):
bed that was as hard as concrete, but because it
was in an area that was already off limits to
the public. The airspace was already restricted, it was remote,
there were two mountain ranges that shield the test site
from view. So this area, what became known as Area
(08:49):
fifty one, was just perfect for developing a super secret
spy plane in Super Secret and so the CIA and
the skunk Works team say this will do. Let's take
this place over.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Did I ever tell you about one of the most
fun things I ever got to do as a PA?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
What wait, didn't were you arrested by Eric a Strada?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Is you're gonna say, oh no, that's stop. Ten Okay.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
We did a car shoot on a dry like bed
and death Valley nice and they had like a big,
huge line of cars in a row, all driving in
perfect synchronicity, and the director wasn't happy, and they were like,
we want all the dust is behind them. He went,
I want dust in front of them. So the ad
ran and grabbed the keys to a Mustang, threw them
(09:35):
to me, and he said, get in that Mustang and
drive one hundred feet in front of them as fast
as you can, fish tailing and doing donuts and stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
I was like me, yeah, oh man, it was so
much fun because this is a dry lake bed. It's
like there's just no fear of hitting anything or flipping,
like you.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Could just do whatever you wanted. It was wonderful.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
It was so much fun.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Did you didn't hit a jack rabbit or anything, just
a couple.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
No, it was fine. It was a lot of fun.
So what was the last thing he said.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah, the last thing, Well, I was talking about how
amazingly perfect Area fifty one is for developing a super
secret spy plane.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, so they called it Paradise Ranch, and the locals
around there they were used to because of all the
atomic bomb testing. It kind of worked out because they
weren't gonna First of all, I was in the middle
of nowhere, but even the nearby communities, the ones that
were close enough, it just wasn't on anyone's radar because
they had always been doing weird things out there, so
it's not like it pricked up anyone's ears. So it
(10:38):
was kind of the perfect cover to be there at
Paradise Ranch doing these development of these spy planes and.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Stuff, right right.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
So, but in addition to that, the cover story initially
that the CIA produced was that they were a team
of bomb experts, yeah, who were cleaning up unexploded munitions
from the time when it was used as a bombing range.
So that was why that was the story they used
for why there was a sudden appearance of like trucks
and people when there hadn't been really much of anything
(11:08):
there before.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, there were also natural barriers. There were a couple
of mountain ranges that kind of shielded it from view.
It was already remote, the airspace was already restricted. And
then Eisenhower came along and signed Executive Order one zero, six, three,
three and nineteen fifty five, which basically extended the airspace
(11:29):
over Area fifty one, and then in nineteen fifty eight
a public Land Order made this basically said that this
area doesn't exist anymore. Right, it's not on maps, it's
not acknowledged. And this is one of the huge reasons
why cite to the ranch Area fifty one has been
so And we'll see later things have changed a little
(11:53):
bit in recent years. But just for the government to say, like,
I don't know what you're talking about, over and over again,
it's sort of crazy making it is.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
But like they would, as we'll see later, they will
they would say an open court, the place where this
person claims to work does not exist, like in court,
and the judge would just be like, what do you what?
How are we going to get around this? This is
a real problem. But from what I read, Chuck originally
(12:23):
Area fifty one was a CIA installation, and around nineteen
seventy it transferred hands to the Air Force. But from
what I could tell, up until that point, or at
least the first several years in the mid to late
fifties and early sixties, no one had any idea that
Area fifty one existed. They did a really good job
(12:46):
of keeping that place a genuine secret, not an open
secret like it became later on, but a real secret.
And one of the ways that they did that was
they from what workers later said in like testimony in
court cases, is that like they would be interrogated at
gunpoint to see if they were actually spies. There were
all sorts of like weird loyalty tests and things like that.
(13:08):
And while they were working on the U two spyplane
in particular, they kept that secret so serious that if
you were out there working and you had nothing to
do with the utube program, you were just a worker,
you were working on a different program, they would move
you indoors, close the doors, close the blinds on the
windows before rolling the U two out or testing it,
(13:31):
like you were not allowed to be outside or look.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah, that was pretty like remarkable. Like within Area fifty one.
They even had.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Subsecurity protocols in place.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I kind of just figured like, if you were in there,
then you had access to the alien room, right, you know,
all the good stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Right. But think about that, because to even be on
the base or in Area fifty one, you had to
have the highest level of security clearance you could possibly have, yeah,
just to work on there. And even if you had that,
you still couldn't see the U two spy plane or
know that it existed or hear people talk about it.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
They wouldn't even let Bono in on it.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Nope.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
So that was a terrible joke.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
It was really bad. I was really home. We can
get around that one.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
So the U two spy plane was great until it wasn't.
And that was when Francis gary Powers was shot down
in nineteen sixty and the plane was all of a
sudden in the hand of the Soviets, and they basically
were like, well, that's the end of that. You can't
have a secret spy plane anymore once it's in the
hand of the Soviets. And it was also a big
(14:42):
deal because the American people all of a sudden knew
that the US government is definitely doing things in total
secret and developing technology that no one knows about.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
It was a surprise to everybody, not just the Soviets,
but also the American public, Like you were saying, too,
look to see if this was looked upon by historians,
is like the point where Americans realized that the government
did things in secret that the American public didn't know about.
And I didn't see anything like that. So I don't
know if this is an ed comment or what, but
it makes sense. And certainly people didn't know that the
(15:17):
U two spyplane existed. The CIA did a really good
job of keeping it secret, but when it was out,
it was pretty humiliating for the US. And it was
also a big deal that this spy plane was shot
down because Eisenhower had approached Krutchev Khrushchev and said, hey,
why don't we maintain an open airspace policy to one
(15:37):
another so we can keep tabs to make sure that
either side is keeping our word with our armament treaties
and the stuff we're doing. Like we're enemies, but maybe
we should kind of be able to keep tabs one another,
and Khrushchev said, no, there's not going to be any
open airspace policy, and so the United States went and
developed this U two spy plane instead, and when it
(15:59):
got shot down flying over restricted airspace of an enemy,
that's an act of war and it could have gone
way differently than it did, but instead it was a
big humiliation for the United States. And instead of just
kind of tucking tail and running, the guy who was
in charge of it for the CIA, Richard Bissel, went
to the government and said, Hey, I've got an idea.
(16:19):
Let's get even more secret and develop an even more
secretive plane under an even more secretive project. And that
the government said, Hey, let's do it. We're scared of
the Russians. We'll double down. We'll triple down if you want, buddy,
And that became Project ox Cart.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
That's right, And that was a black project, and it
was so secret and so concealed that no one was
even allowed to know how much money was being spent.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yeah, this is a big turning point here.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
It was.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
I mean, this kind of started the era that we
still live in today, in which the military just dumps
money into secret projects where there's that that don't exist
as far as anyone knows, and that there's very little
oversight for right, exactly interesting.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yea, And apparently it was this Richard Bissell's idea.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
All right, well, let's take a break old Dick Bissell
and we'll get back to Dick Bissell and the rest of.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Ox Cart right after this.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Stop.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So, one of the problems with I.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Guess it's not a problem if you're comfortable with dumping
money into a project. But one of the I guess
expenses of a super super secret project is that it
just costs a lot more background checks, take time, and
cost money. Putting something in a super remote location costs
money having extra security forces, and it all just costs
(18:06):
a lot more money. I mean, it's a serious multiplier
on costs to do something that quote unquote doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Right. But in addition to that, chuck too, is just
the fact that the technology that was being developed was
so cutting edge just by definition required even more money
on top of the extra money for it being so
super secret.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
So ox Card eventually led to the SR seventy one Blackbird,
another amazingly cool plane.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Probably the coolest of all time if you ask me.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, I said the Stealth Barmber earlier. But the SR
seventy one is that it was pretty awesome, although there
is another one later on that I'll mention.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well, I'll go ahead and say the Bird of Prey
stealth jet.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
You like that one, Huh, that's pretty cool. It looks
a little bit like a super cool tongue depresser. You
know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I know what a tongue depresser is.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
This looks like that, a flying gray tongue depressor. It's
like a popsicle stick though, right, yeah, but wider.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Okay, But the SR seventy one Blackbird definitely not a
popsicle stick.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
No, No, it's just cool. Plus it doesn't hurt the
fact that Gi Joe Well Cobra technically had the SR
seventy one Blackbird as one of their planes.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
So Oxcart they needed better infrastructure basically, and it was
they couldn't just pour money into the development of the
jet at this point. They had to really update all
the facilities, expanding on land, expanding more restricted airspace. Even
that happened in nineteen sixty two, and it just sort
(19:43):
of I think ingrained the super permanence of Area fifty one.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And also like the fact that like the government said, no, okay,
this was a humiliating thing to ever you two shot down,
rather than maybe we'll just kind of take another tack.
They really went further down the path of just completely
secret black projects and they developed some pretty amazing stuff there.
The uh I think you were saying, they Bird of
(20:10):
Prey that was from the nineties.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Right, Yeah, I think it's cool looking.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
The F one to seventeen Nighthawk, that's the one that's
like a single wing stealth bomber.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I believe, yes, And this is also where they take
and like if you capture an enemy plane, you will
take that to Area fifty one to check out as well.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, there's another program at Wright Patterson Base in Dayton
that's like set up specifically for that. But I wonder
if this is like even more highly sensitive. I don't know.
I don't know, but yeah, they've captured MiGs before, captured
radar systems and they reverse engineered them there, which will
come in a play later on. And then there was
(20:52):
another one called the Tacit Blue Stealth Bomber. So basically
any stealth aircraft, whether it was the stealth Blackhawks or
the stealth bombers that were developed from the sixties onward
it was probably developed and tested in super secrecy in
Area fifty one.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Right, So, like I said, this made it just sort
of a shop that they that wouldn't close. Essentially at
this point in nineteen ninety three, there's an area known
as Freedom Ridge, very ironic name because Freedom Ridge was
taken by the government.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Right and closed off to the public.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
And this is where tinfoil hats used to gather with
their binoculars to try and check out things.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And they said to no more. Freedom Ridge is now ours.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
It's called get out of here Ridge. Yeah, shot on
site Ridge.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
So if you are like get to the aliens, what
are you guys even talking about the aliens in Area
fifty one as synonymous as they are now, and they
are synonymous. The highway that Area fifty one one is
off of, that the road to Area fifty one is
off of, has been officially renamed by the state of
Nevada as the Extraterrestrial Highway. It's Highway three oh five.
(22:09):
As synonymous as this base is with aliens and UFOs,
that's actually relatively recent. It was operating for a good
twenty five thirty five years, I think, before aliens became
tied to Area fifty one, And there's actually a moment
(22:30):
in time that you can point to where it happened.
And it happened on a broadcast in May of nineteen
eighty nine, almost just passed thirty years ago on KLAS,
the local Las Vegas TV network. I'm not sure what
network affiliate they are, but they had like their five
o'clock news, and on it they interviewed a guy who
was anonymous, went by the pseudonym Dennis, and he basically said, Hey,
(22:54):
I'm doing a lot of weird stuff out there at
Area fifty one. Let me tell you all about it.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
His name, his real name was Bob Lazar, and he
Have you seen interviews with this guy?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Did you see the more recent one?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
No, but the one where he said I think it
was a good idea, that one.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
No, I'm talking about there was one just from a
few years ago.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
No, it's I gotta say.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I mean, I'm not a conspiracy guy at all. But
when you listen to Bob Blazar talk today, he just
doesn't seem like some.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Crackpot or a weirdo, or like he would be lying.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
He hasn't like made money off of this or like
he's basically like, listen, man, I kind of wish this
wasn't attached to my name because I'm trying to run
a business in Michigan and it doesn't help that people
think I'm some ufo kook.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Bob Lazar is alien apples.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And he's.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Oh good, and he said, but he was like, you know,
everything that I told you was true, though, and that's
just the deal, you know, and I don't care if
anyone believes me.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
He's kind of like that though too. In the early interviews,
at the very least, he's very calm and not at
all kookie or anything like that. It's specifically the stuff
he was talking about that was, yeah, so compelling.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
So his story is then you can go watch this
stuff for yourself and see it all. But he basically
explains how he's an engineer and he was working on
reverse engineering flying saucers, essentially alien spacecraft and alien technology,
(24:38):
and at one point he was in a room and
they left him alone with all these files that describe
alien technology and alien autopsies and all of this stuff.
And it's pretty remarkable to listen to. It didn't make
the hugest waves because it was nineteen eighty nine. It
was a local news station at first, it didn't, yeah,
(24:59):
and then it was picked up by Japan oddly enough,
and after it went to Japan, it went kind of worldwide,
and before you know it, the whole area just sort
of became Alien Central.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
And this is we should point out.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
This also has a lot to do with the fact
that in the seventies and eighties did the United States
kind of went ufo nuts.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Oh yeah, man, there are so many great books at
the time that were coming out that claimed everything from
like UFOs were responsible for the Muta Triangle, or Atlantis
was populated by UFOs, or the Nazca lines were for UFOs,
or the Egyptians built the Pyramids with the UFOs. All
that stuff came out of the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
So this all kind of coincided with Lazarre having his
news interview and it really just kind of changed everything.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
It did, right, So he kind of like came out
at a time when America was primed to really believe it.
But if you think about it, like everything you hear
about and think about from about Area fifty one today
did not exist pre nineteen eighty nine, Pre Bob Blazar.
It all started with Bob Blazar, and the reason why
everybody wasn't just like so, he's just some nut who
(26:09):
came out and said this stuff. Who cares? How did that?
How did that become truly cemented with Area fifty one?
Is that Weirdly some of the stuff he talked about
kind of held water, Like he would talk about just mundane,
day to day stuff that went on at Area fifty
one that seemed to be able to be correlated from
(26:30):
locals like it held up. There was a there was
a scanner once. He said that you would get in
and out of rooms by scanning your hands and it
would scan the bone structure of your hand. That was
how you were identified and could come in and out
of rooms. And supposedly somebody found years like thirty years later,
(26:52):
mentioned of something like that in some declassified report about
Area fifty one. He also this is it really kind
of legitimized him. He would take people out on Wednesday
nights and at the time he would say, I never
saw what time it was, but at the time he
said it would happen, lights would rise up in the
sky and they would do all sorts of ufoi kind
(27:13):
of stuff, and the fact that he knew about these
schedules really kind of added legitimacy to his claims.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, and the new interview that I saw, he was
explaining some of that anti gravitational propulsion technology that the
Aliens had supposedly used that he was supposedly assigned to
reverse engineer, and he was sort of walking the person
through it that was in the room, and he was like, oh, yeah,
(27:39):
and he said, we had this thing. It was sort
of like half a basketball and when you went to
put your hand on it, he was like, there was
this It was like bringing two magnets, you know, opposite
poles to opposite poles that repel.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
And he said, that's kind of what it felt like.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And he said, so we would drop like a golf
ball and it would just you know, skirt off to
the side without hitting it and as if it had bounced.
And the way he was describing it, I was just like,
this guy just seems so credible, right, It was so
like shocking. I didn't know what to expect. I thought
he was I thought he was not going to be credible.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I guess right. I didn't see the interview with him,
but I read about that technology. And by the way, everybody,
you can erase your email. It's like poles that repel
each other. Chuck, Not, okay, the anti gravity technology was
(28:32):
talking about. It was basically saying, like around the craft
or whatever that they were reverse engineering, it would bend gravity,
so this could just move right through space basically at
light speed. That's the big suspicion among ufologists who follow
this stuff is that they were reverse engineering light speed
aircraft that was propelled using anti gravity technology on engines
(28:55):
that were matter antimatter engines. And back in nineteen eighty
nine you couldn't There wasn't an Internet to start with,
but even if there was, you couldn't find stuff like
descriptions of anti gravity craft at the time. So for
this guy to just come out and start talking about
this in an authoritative way, yeah, he's an enigmatic figure
for sure, But he was also one whose credibility was
(29:16):
questioned right out of the gate too.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Right, Yeah, I mean he said that he went to
MIT and to Caltech.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
There are no records of him being a student.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
The conspiracy theorists will say, like, you know how easy
it is for the government to wipe that clean?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Do you.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I'm like, I don't know, is that easy. So
that's what they will say.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
They will also say that they also got in touch
with his professors to make sure they never.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Talked and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
But yeah, that's when I get a little bit like,
you can't have hundreds of people or thousands of people
involved in some big, massive cover up like someone's gonna talk.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
You're just not thinking big enough. I agree with you.
That's when it kind of starts to get hinky for me.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
But he did disappear, and I mean not disappear, disappear, disappear,
but he uh, I mean, it's not like he was like,
all right and now I'm going to go make all.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
The money on this right exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Like he moved and tried to start like a regular
business and tried to just not be in the public eye.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Yeah, he did, which I think adds to his credibility
even more, you know a little bit. Uh, let's take
our last break and then come back, shall we. Let's
do it, but let's promise we're going to come back. Okay, right, stop, okay, Chuck,
(31:00):
So Bob Blazar comes along just starts spouting out at
the mouth about all the crazy alien stuff that's going
on at Area fifty one, and then he kind of
like fades into the background for a while, and everybody
else kind of took it from there. If you have
anything to do with government conspiracies or believe in UFOs
(31:21):
or aliens or whatever, all that stuff started to get
saddled little by little onto Area fifty one. And one
of the things that pretty early on got connected to
Area fifty one, but almost across the board. Any reasonable
source or skeptical source will say, like the two have
nothing to do with one another. Is Roswell and Area
(31:42):
fifty one.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, the Roswell crash in nineteen forty seven, when something
crashed a gentlemen found pieces of an air well, pieces
of some kind of unidentified object, and it became ufosnrol.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Later it was said to be a weather balloon, but first.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
The army said it was a flying disc. Right, that
kind of change things.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
You've seen the pictures, right.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Sure, I mean it looks like I've seen that one
famous picture of the guy crouching with what looks like
just some balloon material. Yeah, right, But you know, he
was just a stooge for the government, and that was
just a prop that they came up with. So the
Roswell crash happens in nineteen forty seven, there's no way
Area fifty one would have been associated with it. The
(32:33):
whole mythos around Roswell is that there was a UFO
crash that happened, some aliens survived, or at the very
least their bodies were recovered, depending on who you ask,
and the UFO and the aliens alive or dead were
taken for further study to wear Area fifty one. Area
fifty one back in nineteen forty seven, when the Roswell
(32:54):
crash happened, was not even on the CIA's radar. It
was a that basically a defunct airstrip and a nuclear
testing range still, so there wouldn't have been any place
to take the aliens in the first place. And then secondly,
after the Roswell crash happened, the idea of an alien
(33:17):
an alien crash having taken place there, that didn't come
about until like the eighties too, so really people started
to kind of catch on to this a little late.
So probably Area fifty one in Roswell have nothing to
do with one another. And let's not forget that they're
like eight hundred miles apart too, even though to everyone
in America and really the rest of the world outside
of the Southwest thinks they're like right next to.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Each other, I think, so, you know, yeah, So there
have been a lot of crazy theories over the years.
The very most basic are, like you just said, like,
there's alien corpses there, alien technology there, and the US
military has been studying the stuff and trying to perfect
everything from time travel to light speed travel. Right, fine,
(34:05):
that's the basic ground zero approach.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Don't forget interdimensional travel too. Why not another one? I saw?
There's some pretty pretty low hanging fruit that I love.
The moon landing was faked.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
There, ah, sure?
Speaker 3 (34:18):
And then after that, right, but then after that Kubrick
was executed on site and replaced by a clone.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Well, that clon did some great work.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
He did better than Barry Linden.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Right, Oh, I love Berry Linden.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
I've never seen it, so I currently hate on it.
It's amazing weather control experiments. That's probably the most believable
for me.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Sure, clouds eating sure, why not?
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Well? Why not? And then there's like stage two of
conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yes, that is, there are aliens that clock in every
day at Area fifty one and work side by side
with us in harmony.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
In harm many in order to build like an alien
human hybrid race. Maybe sure. And if all this sounds familiar,
I will bet that you watched a pretty hefty amount
of X Files. Oh yes, because they really tapped into
this stuff. They basically just appropriated it for plot lines.
Oh yeah, which is great. I love the X Files.
(35:21):
But it was just I guess Chris Carter used to
hang out with like uphologists or something just to get ideas.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Did he really he had two of yeah, or he
is one himself. I don't know much about it. Maybe so,
maybe so so. And then of course, if you even
ramp that up a little bit more, that this is
all part of a giant conspiracy to create a one
world government that is human alien run right.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
And that's where that Majestic twelve I mentioned at the
beginning comes in. They are supposedly a panel of academics,
elite scientists. There's twelve of them who were impaneled by
Eisenhower after the Roswell crash, or I guess it would
have been Truman, I think still, and they were put
(36:09):
together just the cream of the crop to basically go
contact the aliens and basically broker a meeting I guess
between the President and the aliens. And they managed to
leverage this to catapult themselves into status of actual people
who run the world. So they're the ones who are
(36:32):
forming this one world government. And that is where Area
fifty one, or that's where it's located. The seat of
this government is located underground in Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
This next one is a little more recent and very kooky,
and it's the notion that Hitler and Stalin got together
and hatched a plan to undermine the United States in
World War two by distracting us about the threat of
an impending alien invasion. And they would do this by
(37:04):
building a fake spaceship filling it with mutant children that
Joseph Mingola created and filled the spaceship with those kids,
and then the craft crashed in a storm, and that
was the Roswell incident.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Right, it was meant to land, and then these mutant children.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Come out speaking Germans.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Right. Supposedly, the mutant children who were the aliens that
were found in the Roswell crash had huge heads and
giant eyes. They were basically like the grays of alien
legend right, and that Stalin and Hitler were inspired by
the public's reaction in America to the World War of
the World's broadcast. They wanted to incite that kind of
(37:49):
panic by actually creating this fake alien invasion.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
With all the drugs. Hitler was on after we know
this now, who knows?
Speaker 3 (38:00):
He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. It's
a great idea. Man, what else you got? What else
you got? What else can we do? Slands like mellow
he tried CBD.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
He's like, no, that's the one thing I haven't tried.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
He got any right, I'll be I'll mix well with
everything else.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
So this is this is obviously not a thing either.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Well, this is from a book by an author named
Annie Jacobson, I believe, and she this book came out
in twenty eleven, and she based this whole thing on
an alleged Area fifty one insider who was her source,
who said that he worked on a project that had
to do with this somehow, some way, but that this
(38:44):
was where all this alien stuff came from. It was
a it was a hoax by the Nazis and the Soviets.
Weird thing is is there is another guy out there
who supposedly has a different source who tells the same story.
But this other source says that this is it was
all fake. That I saw the files myself, but I
(39:07):
believe that it was meant to be a test of loyalty,
or to see how I would react working at Area
fifty one to files like this and be like, oh
my god, this is real, this is real. I can't
believe this is this is actually real. I guess to
see how gullible you were and therefore how trustworthy you.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Were, right, which could explain Bob blazar situation too, because
he was supposedly in a room full of files he
probably shouldn't have seen.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Either, right, So that's you probably failed the test.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
You got three different sources who supposedly worked at Area
fifty one. Technically, I should say, because we'll get email
Bob Blazar worked at S four, which is an even
more secret installation that's attached to Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, but you got.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Three people who allegedly worked in Area fifty one who
all tell a story about basically being left in a
room with files that contained information about aliens. Whether it
was a hoax, or real or whatever. And maybe that
is because that kind of correlates with the idea that
there were like gunpoint interrogations to verify your allegiance to
(40:07):
the government or the military or whatever. Maybe that is
something they tried there. Yeah, it doesn't make the actual
aliens real. It just makes the presence of the files real,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Yeah, So Area fifty one today as it truly exists.
If you're driving down Highway three seventy five, there's an
unmarked dirt road between mile markers twenty nine and thirty
or I guess thirty and twenty nine, and you turn.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
On that road.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
It's twelve miles on a dirt road, and you'll get
to a gate and there'll be warning signs all along
saying restricted areas, sort of like close encounters type stuff.
There will be cameras and sensors everywhere, so don't think
you're like getting away with anything.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
No, there's mics that listen to your conversation. You were
under as close surveillance as you've ever been in your
life from what I understand.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah, and there are guards, of course, and they will
say I'm sorry, turn around and drive back to the
highway and if you.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Persist a little bit, then you will get arrested.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
If you're around the perimeter area kind of walking around
with your binoculars, they will probably come and take your
binoculars and tell you to leave, or drive you back
to the highway, or maybe smash your face in and
bury you in the desert.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Well, there's a sign that says use of deadly forth
forces authorized.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Oh, I'm sure, but there's.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
From what I've seen, there's never been an incident that
where that actually happened. You're much more likely to get
handed over to the local cops who will slap you
with a several hundred dollars fine, sure, if you give
them any kind of guff and don't leave immediately when
they tell you to.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
So.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Kind of the cool thing about Area fifty one, there are, obviously,
I mean, there are civilian workers that work there. It's
a huge facility that apparently is still growing because you
can look at satellite photographs and year by year it
seems to be getting bigger and bigger with more buildings.
If you work there, and I mean they have to
(42:08):
have everything from food services to custodial services, to plumbing
and electricians and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
And all of those people have the highest possible security
clearance an American can have.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Oh sure, So they don't drive down that dirt road
and just go to the gate and say how you doing, Rick,
and they go come on in Jane. They go to
McCarran Airport in Las Vegas and they all get on
a big basically air taxi. It's a seven thirty seven
passenger jet that fly. They call them the Janet Jets.
(42:43):
It's under the cassign Janet. They're white with the big
thick red stripe. You can look it up online, and
they that's how they get to work every day. They
fly everyone in on a seven thirty seven and you.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Can see them on the tarmac. They just get in
with the regular planes. It's just look for the giant
seven thirty seven that are white with the red strip.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
And pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
No logo, no nothing. They don't actually have a name,
like you said, They fly under callsign Janet. So people
have tried to figure out forever what Janet means. There's
an idea that it's just another non existent terminal stands
for that her Joint Air Network for employee transportation. But
if you go visit the Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame.
(43:24):
They tell the story that there was a commander of
Area fifty one named Richard A. Sampson from nineteen sixty
nine to seventy one, and he chose his wife's name,
Janet to identify the commuter shuttles. That's sweet, and that's
that's the most romantic, super secret government story of all.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
So we kind of teased earlier on that the government
is no longer saying like, I don't know what you're
talking about, Like, no, this satellite image that we're all
looking at of buildings, I don't see anything but dirt.
That's all changed a little bit now because a lawsuit
in the mid nineteen nineties there were a group of
(44:03):
workers from Area fifty one that sued the government because
of the it's an environmental disaster there or you know,
maybe that's changing now, but it had been for many,
many years because of the fact that it's a black
project and so unregulated that they were just basically doing
(44:23):
everything like dumping hazardous waste and burning it in trenches
and people were there just inhaling these fumes, right and
getting really sick. And a guy named Robert Frost that
worked there in employee had a lot of really bad
health problems. Doctor said, you were suffering from some kind
of a really bad chemical reaction, and in order to
(44:44):
treat it, we need to know what it is. And
the government said, sorry, we can't tell you that, and
he died.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
He died, and some other coworkers filed this lawsuit. One
of them ended up dying too, and they finally got
to like a Nevada I think, a federal circuit court
that said, no, you guys don't have a right to
know what you've been exposed to.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, they weren't looking for money. They just wanted to
know what was killing them.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
And the reason that they had no legal right to
know was and this is that trial that I was
referring to earlier, where the government representatives were saying, we like,
the place that they're talking about doesn't exist. Sorry, So
imagine like trying to just get past that barrier, right,
You're suing the government to find out what they were
burning that made you sick, but the government's in court saying, like,
(45:31):
the place that they're talking about doesn't even exist. That's like,
that's obstacle one. But the whole reason that they were
burning this stuff in the first place is because Area
fifty one operates under what's called the mosaic theory, and
the mosaic theory is that any little piece of information
a spy gets his or hands on could be fit
(45:52):
together with other information to provide a larger picture of
what's being done at Area fifty one. And as a result,
nothing can come out of Area fifty.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
One like the chemical that's killing the people, right.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Or computers that go in and are used once they
get decommissioned. They get put in this pit and these trenches,
and every two weeks they go out there with jet
fuel and everything that's been put into the trenches over
the last two weeks gets doused with jet fuel. It's
set on fire with road flares, amazing, and whatever is
in that smoke the workers get exposed to because for
(46:28):
some reason, they built the trenches upwind of this this
installation rather than downwind, and so people were exposed to
this every two weeks for years and years and years,
and things like you know, anti radar paint. The jet
fuel that they're using is an accelerant. I'm sure wasn't helping,
but just all sorts of exotic materials that was super
(46:50):
super classified. This is what was killing these people, making
them sick exactly, And the government said, no, this is
just too classify. These people can't know. They're just going
to have to go off and die untreated because we're
not going to say publicly what they were exposed to.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, and that's where it stood that case.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
They did, finally, finally in that case say okay, there's
an area fifty one.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
I know, the whole courtroom went out for beers that
day afterwards, So.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
There's a thing there.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
And that's really all we can say, sorry, is there's
a thing there.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
But that was the very first sort of.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Insight into the just that admission that there was something
there was the first time that had ever happened, which
is in the mid nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, and you were saying, like people would point the
satellite images of the place and you can see that
it's growing now, like you can see it on like
Google Maps.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, that is really new.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Because it wasn't very long ago where all the satellites
in space were controlled by the government, and the government
could control what ended up in satellite images, so they
blocked out anything any image of area fifty one, but
as private firms started launching their own satellites, it became
basically impossible. So just little by little, it's becoming to
(48:11):
the point now where they're like, yes, they acknowledge something's there. No,
you can't know what's going on. There is basically the
status quo.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Now pretty much.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
So that's Area fifty one. And sorry, we kind of
took the government tack here and didn't really go all
in on the alien theories. But I just don't think
that's what it is. If you want to know more
about Area fifty one, I guess just start reading about it.
There's some pretty interesting stuff out there. And since I
said that, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
This is about nicknames. This is from Rob Bob.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Oh Yeah, I love this one.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Hey guys, my name is Rob Bob, Rob and Bob
combined into a singular form like Jim Bob.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
But better.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
My mom has explained to me that it started when
I was about six months old. I was a really
chunky kid, like in the ninety ninth percentile for weight.
They felt like no other nickname like Robbie or Bobby fit,
so they started calling me Rob Bob. Many years later,
I meet my wife, which is almost eight years ago now,
and quickly found out that her favorite writer is Richard Wright.
(49:21):
Since reading his novel Native Son, has wanted to name
her kid Richard to honor the impact he had on
her life. She had visited his grave in parison as
every book he ever published. When she met me, I
told her about my super nicknames that I had wanted
to call my kid because you see, my father is
William Bill for short. But now since we came up
(49:42):
with these weird names, I call my dad will Bill
to bug him. This leads me to why I have
always wanted to name my child Richard since high school.
Then we would in order to have a will Bill,
a Rob Bob, and a Rickdick, all in three generations
of awesomeness. Wife does not approve and thinks we should
look elsewhere for name ideas.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
With great admiration Rob Bob and Rachel.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
Nice. Thanks Rob Bob, good luck with that with your quest.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, I don't think Rick Dick is going to fly
in your household.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
I don't think so either. Rachel may have the cooler
head here, I think so. Well, if you want to
get in touch with this, like Rob Bob, did, We
would love that. You can go on to stuff youshould
Know dot com check out our social links there, or
you can send us an email to stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, everybody, Chuck here, take me to your leader. Other
things ets might say, Happy Saturday. This episode is called
how Area fifty one Works. It's from June thirteenth, twenty nineteen,
and you know, we get into it. We chop it up,
as they say, all about Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Brian over there, and there's Dylan
the guest producer again. And this is stop should Know,
the podcast about Chuck some pretty heady stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I could have sworn we did this one. No, what
do we do roswell no UFOs?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yes we did that at a comic con or something, right.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah we did. We did it live. I've never been
satisfied with that one.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Maybe we'll redo it one day.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, this is good, this Area fifty one.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
I think this kind of covers some ground that I
didn't think I was surprised by.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, me too, And I think the thing that I
would wager you were surprised about, which I was definitely
surprised about was just how mundane the explanations for what
goes on at Area fifty one probably.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Is yeah, secret government research the end.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Right, but it probably doesn't have anything to do with
reverse engineering, alien technology and the secret seat of the
one World government, the Majestic twelve, probably isn't located there.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
No, probably just bombs and planes.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Probably it makes sense. And if there is a conspiracy
going on, the one conspiracy theory I saw for Area
fifty one that made the most sense to me is
that it's actually meant to be a distraction or has
developed into a distraction for some other place that no
one even.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Knows about Area fifty Maybe, yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Maybe hopefully they're not quite that on the nose, but
it's possible.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
All right. So let's go back in time, I guess.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
To World War two, and well, first of all, Area
fifty one, just to geographically level set, it's less than
one hundred miles from Las Vegas in.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Nevada, South South Nevada.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, it's six hundred square miles and it's basically if
you look at it on Google Earth, it looks like
a you know, big airfield with a bunch of buildings.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
So the I think the whole restricted airspace that's part
of like the test range and the air base and
all of that stuff. Yeah, the Area fifty one is
located in. I think that's six hundred square miles. I'm
pretty sure Area fifty one itself is no more than
sixty square miles.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Oh yeah, sure, just like the It's not like they're
six hundred square miles of buildings.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Right, it's just what Yeah, the installation that people think
of as Area fifty one is part of a larger, huge,
big chunk of the American desert in Nevada.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Right, So.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Next to Area fifty one is what's what you were
kind of talking.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
About, the Nevada Test Site.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
And this is where for about ten or eleven years,
the Atomic Energy Commission was setting off nuclear bombs underground,
above ground and really sort of figuring out how to
kill a lot of people very easily and sort of
the most dangerous way you could imagine.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, and you could see this from Vegas, Like they
would have parties when they were doing the test, because
Vegas is like eighty miles away or something like that,
and they would have like atomic cocktails and viewing parties
and stuff like that. And people watch them shoot off bombs. Unbelievable, right,
But this is obviously a part of the country that
(04:05):
the government would be very interested in keeping people away from,
not just for the bombs, but because of the fallout
the radiation, but also the fact that they're testing like
super sensitive military equipment and weapons, right, like atomic bombs.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Like previous to this, it was just land. There were
silver mines, there was cattle and wildlife. But then in
nineteen forty the government said no, this is ours, and
we're going to train bombers here.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And there was a big bombing range and they.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Were split into different numbers, and that's where the number
Area fifty one comes from, which seems I don't know
about arbitrary, but no one knows if it really matters
why it was named Area fifty one.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
No, I think it was. If you look at old
bombing range maps, the area where Area fifty one is
located was denoted as area fifty.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
One Between fifty and fifty two, it is probably the answer.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Yeah, it's basically from what I saw, that was it.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
So there's another part of this story. With World War two,
and this is Germany. They were a bit ahead of
US as far as jets go, jet airplanes, the United
States is like, this won't do it all. So we're
going to get kind of put the gas on our
jet development. And in nineteen forty three, Lockheed said was
(05:25):
tasked with developing a jet fighter plane you can use
a British jet engine, and they tasked engineer Kelly Johnson said,
get a team together. He got a team together and
they delivered the P eighty Shooting Star, which is one
of the coolest looking old jets.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
All these planes are just amazing looking.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Agreed, very very cool. It's a good idea when we
talk about a new jet or something, go look it
up as we're talking about because most of them are
pretty boss looking.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
I've never been a plane guy, but I'm getting more
and more into it.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Is that right? Yeah, I want to do a stealth
bomber episode one day.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Okay, possibly the coolest plane.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Yeah. So Kelly Johnson was just that right there. Delivering
America's first jet on like undertime and under budget was
huge and he became a legendary engineer right off the bat.
And they I think Lockheed said, hey, how would you
like to keep this pace up? We'll give you, your
(06:21):
team of elite engineers, whatever funding you need, whatever resources
you need, just ask you can have it, and you
just keep developing stuff really quickly for us, and we
will put you at the cutting edge of aviation research.
And so Kelly Johnson and his team eventually became known
as the Skunk Works, which is legendary in aviation engineering
(06:44):
because they developed a whole bunch of really cool stuff.
But also they had a pretty great name too that
was fairly intriguing. But they were the first ones to
kind of basically develop agile project management from what I understand.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Yeah, and this was all out of the what was
own a Site one, which was in Burbank, California, just
sort of a suburb of LA But then in nineteen
fifty four they said, you know what we need now
is a spy plane. The CIA wants a spyplane. We
want something that can fly above radar and photograph Soviet
(07:19):
military bases missile installations. We're going to name it, because
we name everything Project aquatone. And that's where Johnson and
his team developed the U two. The Skunkworks team, but
they couldn't do this at Site one anymore because it
had to be super super secret obviously because it was
a spy plane, so they needed a different place, and
(07:42):
that's where that sort of all converges onto this testing
site in Nevada.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Yeah, Kelly Johnson, CIA officer named Richard Bissel and a
couple of pilots started scouting locations for where they could
develop this in super super secret and they they went
to look at the old Nevada Test Range and specifically
the thing that attracted them was a dry salt lake
(08:08):
called Groom Lake. And one of the pilots recounted taking
some like sixteen pounds shot put balls and dropping them
on the ground to see just how sandy the ground was,
and he said it was solid as a tabletop. This
lake was the dry lake. They were like, this will
probably do. And there's a lot of reasons why it
would do, not just because there was a dry lake
(08:29):
bed that was as hard as concrete, but because it
was in an area that was already off limits to
the public. The airspace was already restricted, it was remote,
there were two mountain ranges that shield the test site
from view. So this area, what became known as Area
(08:49):
fifty one, was just perfect for developing a super secret
spy plane in Super Secret and so the CIA and
the skunk Works team say this will do. Let's take
this place over.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Did I ever tell you about one of the most
fun things I ever got to do as a PA?
Speaker 3 (09:06):
What wait, didn't were you arrested by Eric a Strada?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Is you're gonna say, oh no, that's stop. Ten Okay.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
We did a car shoot on a dry like bed
and death Valley nice and they had like a big,
huge line of cars in a row, all driving in
perfect synchronicity, and the director wasn't happy, and they were like,
we want all the dust is behind them. He went,
I want dust in front of them. So the ad
ran and grabbed the keys to a Mustang, threw them
(09:35):
to me, and he said, get in that Mustang and
drive one hundred feet in front of them as fast
as you can, fish tailing and doing donuts and stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
I was like me, yeah, oh man, it was so
much fun because this is a dry lake bed. It's
like there's just no fear of hitting anything or flipping,
like you.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Could just do whatever you wanted. It was wonderful.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
It was so much fun.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Did you didn't hit a jack rabbit or anything, just
a couple.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
No, it was fine. It was a lot of fun.
So what was the last thing he said.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah, the last thing, Well, I was talking about how
amazingly perfect Area fifty one is for developing a super
secret spy plane.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, so they called it Paradise Ranch, and the locals
around there they were used to because of all the
atomic bomb testing. It kind of worked out because they
weren't gonna First of all, I was in the middle
of nowhere, but even the nearby communities, the ones that
were close enough, it just wasn't on anyone's radar because
they had always been doing weird things out there, so
it's not like it pricked up anyone's ears. So it
(10:38):
was kind of the perfect cover to be there at
Paradise Ranch doing these development of these spy planes and.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Stuff, right right.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
So, but in addition to that, the cover story initially
that the CIA produced was that they were a team
of bomb experts, yeah, who were cleaning up unexploded munitions
from the time when it was used as a bombing range.
So that was why that was the story they used
for why there was a sudden appearance of like trucks
and people when there hadn't been really much of anything
(11:08):
there before.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah, there were also natural barriers. There were a couple
of mountain ranges that kind of shielded it from view.
It was already remote, the airspace was already restricted. And
then Eisenhower came along and signed Executive Order one zero, six, three,
three and nineteen fifty five, which basically extended the airspace
(11:29):
over Area fifty one, and then in nineteen fifty eight
a public Land Order made this basically said that this
area doesn't exist anymore. Right, it's not on maps, it's
not acknowledged. And this is one of the huge reasons
why cite to the ranch Area fifty one has been
so And we'll see later things have changed a little
(11:53):
bit in recent years. But just for the government to say, like,
I don't know what you're talking about, over and over again,
it's sort of crazy making it is.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
But like they would, as we'll see later, they will
they would say an open court, the place where this
person claims to work does not exist, like in court,
and the judge would just be like, what do you what?
How are we going to get around this? This is
a real problem. But from what I read, Chuck originally
(12:23):
Area fifty one was a CIA installation, and around nineteen
seventy it transferred hands to the Air Force. But from
what I could tell, up until that point, or at
least the first several years in the mid to late
fifties and early sixties, no one had any idea that
Area fifty one existed. They did a really good job
(12:46):
of keeping that place a genuine secret, not an open
secret like it became later on, but a real secret.
And one of the ways that they did that was
they from what workers later said in like testimony in
court cases, is that like they would be interrogated at
gunpoint to see if they were actually spies. There were
all sorts of like weird loyalty tests and things like that.
(13:08):
And while they were working on the U two spyplane
in particular, they kept that secret so serious that if
you were out there working and you had nothing to
do with the utube program, you were just a worker,
you were working on a different program, they would move
you indoors, close the doors, close the blinds on the
windows before rolling the U two out or testing it,
(13:31):
like you were not allowed to be outside or look.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Yeah, that was pretty like remarkable. Like within Area fifty one.
They even had.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Subsecurity protocols in place.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I kind of just figured like, if you were in there,
then you had access to the alien room, right, you know,
all the good stuff.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Right. But think about that, because to even be on
the base or in Area fifty one, you had to
have the highest level of security clearance you could possibly have, yeah,
just to work on there. And even if you had that,
you still couldn't see the U two spy plane or
know that it existed or hear people talk about it.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
They wouldn't even let Bono in on it.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Nope.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
So that was a terrible joke.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
It was really bad. I was really home. We can
get around that one.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
So the U two spy plane was great until it wasn't.
And that was when Francis gary Powers was shot down
in nineteen sixty and the plane was all of a
sudden in the hand of the Soviets, and they basically
were like, well, that's the end of that. You can't
have a secret spy plane anymore once it's in the
hand of the Soviets. And it was also a big
(14:42):
deal because the American people all of a sudden knew
that the US government is definitely doing things in total
secret and developing technology that no one knows about.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
It was a surprise to everybody, not just the Soviets,
but also the American public, Like you were saying, too,
look to see if this was looked upon by historians,
is like the point where Americans realized that the government
did things in secret that the American public didn't know about.
And I didn't see anything like that. So I don't
know if this is an ed comment or what, but
it makes sense. And certainly people didn't know that the
(15:17):
U two spyplane existed. The CIA did a really good
job of keeping it secret, but when it was out,
it was pretty humiliating for the US. And it was
also a big deal that this spy plane was shot
down because Eisenhower had approached Krutchev Khrushchev and said, hey,
why don't we maintain an open airspace policy to one
(15:37):
another so we can keep tabs to make sure that
either side is keeping our word with our armament treaties
and the stuff we're doing. Like we're enemies, but maybe
we should kind of be able to keep tabs one another,
and Khrushchev said, no, there's not going to be any
open airspace policy, and so the United States went and
developed this U two spy plane instead, and when it
(15:59):
got shot down flying over restricted airspace of an enemy,
that's an act of war and it could have gone
way differently than it did, but instead it was a
big humiliation for the United States. And instead of just
kind of tucking tail and running, the guy who was
in charge of it for the CIA, Richard Bissel, went
to the government and said, Hey, I've got an idea.
(16:19):
Let's get even more secret and develop an even more
secretive plane under an even more secretive project. And that
the government said, Hey, let's do it. We're scared of
the Russians. We'll double down. We'll triple down if you want, buddy,
And that became Project ox Cart.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
That's right, And that was a black project, and it
was so secret and so concealed that no one was
even allowed to know how much money was being spent.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yeah, this is a big turning point here.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
It was.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
I mean, this kind of started the era that we
still live in today, in which the military just dumps
money into secret projects where there's that that don't exist
as far as anyone knows, and that there's very little
oversight for right, exactly interesting.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yea, And apparently it was this Richard Bissell's idea.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
All right, well, let's take a break old Dick Bissell
and we'll get back to Dick Bissell and the rest of.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Ox Cart right after this.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Stop.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So, one of the problems with I.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Guess it's not a problem if you're comfortable with dumping
money into a project. But one of the I guess
expenses of a super super secret project is that it
just costs a lot more background checks, take time, and
cost money. Putting something in a super remote location costs
money having extra security forces, and it all just costs
(18:06):
a lot more money. I mean, it's a serious multiplier
on costs to do something that quote unquote doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Right. But in addition to that, chuck too, is just
the fact that the technology that was being developed was
so cutting edge just by definition required even more money
on top of the extra money for it being so
super secret.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
So ox Card eventually led to the SR seventy one Blackbird,
another amazingly cool plane.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Probably the coolest of all time if you ask me.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, I said the Stealth Barmber earlier. But the SR
seventy one is that it was pretty awesome, although there
is another one later on that I'll mention.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Well, I'll go ahead and say the Bird of Prey
stealth jet.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
You like that one, Huh, that's pretty cool. It looks
a little bit like a super cool tongue depresser. You
know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I know what a tongue depresser is.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
This looks like that, a flying gray tongue depressor. It's
like a popsicle stick though, right, yeah, but wider.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Okay, But the SR seventy one Blackbird definitely not a
popsicle stick.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
No, No, it's just cool. Plus it doesn't hurt the
fact that Gi Joe Well Cobra technically had the SR
seventy one Blackbird as one of their planes.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
So Oxcart they needed better infrastructure basically, and it was
they couldn't just pour money into the development of the
jet at this point. They had to really update all
the facilities, expanding on land, expanding more restricted airspace. Even
that happened in nineteen sixty two, and it just sort
(19:43):
of I think ingrained the super permanence of Area fifty one.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And also like the fact that like the government said, no, okay,
this was a humiliating thing to ever you two shot down,
rather than maybe we'll just kind of take another tack.
They really went further down the path of just completely
secret black projects and they developed some pretty amazing stuff there.
The uh I think you were saying, they Bird of
(20:10):
Prey that was from the nineties.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Right, Yeah, I think it's cool looking.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
The F one to seventeen Nighthawk, that's the one that's
like a single wing stealth bomber.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
I believe, yes, And this is also where they take
and like if you capture an enemy plane, you will
take that to Area fifty one to check out as well.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, there's another program at Wright Patterson Base in Dayton
that's like set up specifically for that. But I wonder
if this is like even more highly sensitive. I don't know.
I don't know, but yeah, they've captured MiGs before, captured
radar systems and they reverse engineered them there, which will
come in a play later on. And then there was
(20:52):
another one called the Tacit Blue Stealth Bomber. So basically
any stealth aircraft, whether it was the stealth Blackhawks or
the stealth bombers that were developed from the sixties onward
it was probably developed and tested in super secrecy in
Area fifty one.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Right, So, like I said, this made it just sort
of a shop that they that wouldn't close. Essentially at
this point in nineteen ninety three, there's an area known
as Freedom Ridge, very ironic name because Freedom Ridge was
taken by the government.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Right and closed off to the public.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
And this is where tinfoil hats used to gather with
their binoculars to try and check out things.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And they said to no more. Freedom Ridge is now ours.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
It's called get out of here Ridge. Yeah, shot on
site Ridge.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
So if you are like get to the aliens, what
are you guys even talking about the aliens in Area
fifty one as synonymous as they are now, and they
are synonymous. The highway that Area fifty one one is
off of, that the road to Area fifty one is
off of, has been officially renamed by the state of
Nevada as the Extraterrestrial Highway. It's Highway three oh five.
(22:09):
As synonymous as this base is with aliens and UFOs,
that's actually relatively recent. It was operating for a good
twenty five thirty five years, I think, before aliens became
tied to Area fifty one, And there's actually a moment
(22:30):
in time that you can point to where it happened.
And it happened on a broadcast in May of nineteen
eighty nine, almost just passed thirty years ago on KLAS,
the local Las Vegas TV network. I'm not sure what
network affiliate they are, but they had like their five
o'clock news, and on it they interviewed a guy who
was anonymous, went by the pseudonym Dennis, and he basically said, Hey,
(22:54):
I'm doing a lot of weird stuff out there at
Area fifty one. Let me tell you all about it.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
His name, his real name was Bob Lazar, and he
Have you seen interviews with this guy?
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Did you see the more recent one?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
No, but the one where he said I think it
was a good idea, that one.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
No, I'm talking about there was one just from a
few years ago.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
No, it's I gotta say.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I mean, I'm not a conspiracy guy at all. But
when you listen to Bob Blazar talk today, he just
doesn't seem like some.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Crackpot or a weirdo, or like he would be lying.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
He hasn't like made money off of this or like
he's basically like, listen, man, I kind of wish this
wasn't attached to my name because I'm trying to run
a business in Michigan and it doesn't help that people
think I'm some ufo kook.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Bob Lazar is alien apples.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And he's.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Oh good, and he said, but he was like, you know,
everything that I told you was true, though, and that's
just the deal, you know, and I don't care if
anyone believes me.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
He's kind of like that though too. In the early interviews,
at the very least, he's very calm and not at
all kookie or anything like that. It's specifically the stuff
he was talking about that was, yeah, so compelling.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
So his story is then you can go watch this
stuff for yourself and see it all. But he basically
explains how he's an engineer and he was working on
reverse engineering flying saucers, essentially alien spacecraft and alien technology,
(24:38):
and at one point he was in a room and
they left him alone with all these files that describe
alien technology and alien autopsies and all of this stuff.
And it's pretty remarkable to listen to. It didn't make
the hugest waves because it was nineteen eighty nine. It
was a local news station at first, it didn't, yeah,
(24:59):
and then it was picked up by Japan oddly enough,
and after it went to Japan, it went kind of worldwide,
and before you know it, the whole area just sort
of became Alien Central.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
And this is we should point out.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
This also has a lot to do with the fact
that in the seventies and eighties did the United States
kind of went ufo nuts.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Oh yeah, man, there are so many great books at
the time that were coming out that claimed everything from
like UFOs were responsible for the Muta Triangle, or Atlantis
was populated by UFOs, or the Nazca lines were for UFOs,
or the Egyptians built the Pyramids with the UFOs. All
that stuff came out of the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
So this all kind of coincided with Lazarre having his
news interview and it really just kind of changed everything.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
It did, right, So he kind of like came out
at a time when America was primed to really believe it.
But if you think about it, like everything you hear
about and think about from about Area fifty one today
did not exist pre nineteen eighty nine, Pre Bob Blazar.
It all started with Bob Blazar, and the reason why
everybody wasn't just like so, he's just some nut who
(26:09):
came out and said this stuff. Who cares? How did that?
How did that become truly cemented with Area fifty one?
Is that Weirdly some of the stuff he talked about
kind of held water, Like he would talk about just mundane,
day to day stuff that went on at Area fifty
one that seemed to be able to be correlated from
(26:30):
locals like it held up. There was a there was
a scanner once. He said that you would get in
and out of rooms by scanning your hands and it
would scan the bone structure of your hand. That was
how you were identified and could come in and out
of rooms. And supposedly somebody found years like thirty years later,
(26:52):
mentioned of something like that in some declassified report about
Area fifty one. He also this is it really kind
of legitimized him. He would take people out on Wednesday
nights and at the time he would say, I never
saw what time it was, but at the time he
said it would happen, lights would rise up in the
sky and they would do all sorts of ufoi kind
(27:13):
of stuff, and the fact that he knew about these
schedules really kind of added legitimacy to his claims.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, and the new interview that I saw, he was
explaining some of that anti gravitational propulsion technology that the
Aliens had supposedly used that he was supposedly assigned to
reverse engineer, and he was sort of walking the person
through it that was in the room, and he was like, oh, yeah,
(27:39):
and he said, we had this thing. It was sort
of like half a basketball and when you went to
put your hand on it, he was like, there was
this It was like bringing two magnets, you know, opposite
poles to opposite poles that repel.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
And he said, that's kind of what it felt like.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And he said, so we would drop like a golf
ball and it would just you know, skirt off to
the side without hitting it and as if it had bounced.
And the way he was describing it, I was just like,
this guy just seems so credible, right, It was so
like shocking. I didn't know what to expect. I thought
he was I thought he was not going to be credible.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I guess right. I didn't see the interview with him,
but I read about that technology. And by the way, everybody,
you can erase your email. It's like poles that repel
each other. Chuck, Not, okay, the anti gravity technology was
(28:32):
talking about. It was basically saying, like around the craft
or whatever that they were reverse engineering, it would bend gravity,
so this could just move right through space basically at
light speed. That's the big suspicion among ufologists who follow
this stuff is that they were reverse engineering light speed
aircraft that was propelled using anti gravity technology on engines
(28:55):
that were matter antimatter engines. And back in nineteen eighty
nine you couldn't There wasn't an Internet to start with,
but even if there was, you couldn't find stuff like
descriptions of anti gravity craft at the time. So for
this guy to just come out and start talking about
this in an authoritative way, yeah, he's an enigmatic figure
for sure, But he was also one whose credibility was
(29:16):
questioned right out of the gate too.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Right, Yeah, I mean he said that he went to
MIT and to Caltech.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
There are no records of him being a student.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
The conspiracy theorists will say, like, you know how easy
it is for the government to wipe that clean?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Do you.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, I'm like, I don't know, is that easy. So
that's what they will say.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
They will also say that they also got in touch
with his professors to make sure they never.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Talked and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
But yeah, that's when I get a little bit like,
you can't have hundreds of people or thousands of people
involved in some big, massive cover up like someone's gonna talk.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
You're just not thinking big enough. I agree with you.
That's when it kind of starts to get hinky for me.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
But he did disappear, and I mean not disappear, disappear, disappear,
but he uh, I mean, it's not like he was like,
all right and now I'm going to go make all.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
The money on this right exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Like he moved and tried to start like a regular
business and tried to just not be in the public eye.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Yeah, he did, which I think adds to his credibility
even more, you know a little bit. Uh, let's take
our last break and then come back, shall we. Let's
do it, but let's promise we're going to come back. Okay, right, stop, okay, Chuck,
(31:00):
So Bob Blazar comes along just starts spouting out at
the mouth about all the crazy alien stuff that's going
on at Area fifty one, and then he kind of
like fades into the background for a while, and everybody
else kind of took it from there. If you have
anything to do with government conspiracies or believe in UFOs
(31:21):
or aliens or whatever, all that stuff started to get
saddled little by little onto Area fifty one. And one
of the things that pretty early on got connected to
Area fifty one, but almost across the board. Any reasonable
source or skeptical source will say, like the two have
nothing to do with one another. Is Roswell and Area
(31:42):
fifty one.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Yeah, the Roswell crash in nineteen forty seven, when something
crashed a gentlemen found pieces of an air well, pieces
of some kind of unidentified object, and it became ufosnrol.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Later it was said to be a weather balloon, but first.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
The army said it was a flying disc. Right, that
kind of change things.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
You've seen the pictures, right.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Sure, I mean it looks like I've seen that one
famous picture of the guy crouching with what looks like
just some balloon material. Yeah, right, But you know, he
was just a stooge for the government, and that was
just a prop that they came up with. So the
Roswell crash happens in nineteen forty seven, there's no way
Area fifty one would have been associated with it. The
(32:33):
whole mythos around Roswell is that there was a UFO
crash that happened, some aliens survived, or at the very
least their bodies were recovered, depending on who you ask,
and the UFO and the aliens alive or dead were
taken for further study to wear Area fifty one. Area
fifty one back in nineteen forty seven, when the Roswell
(32:54):
crash happened, was not even on the CIA's radar. It
was a that basically a defunct airstrip and a nuclear
testing range still, so there wouldn't have been any place
to take the aliens in the first place. And then secondly,
after the Roswell crash happened, the idea of an alien
(33:17):
an alien crash having taken place there, that didn't come
about until like the eighties too, so really people started
to kind of catch on to this a little late.
So probably Area fifty one in Roswell have nothing to
do with one another. And let's not forget that they're
like eight hundred miles apart too, even though to everyone
in America and really the rest of the world outside
of the Southwest thinks they're like right next to.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Each other, I think, so, you know, yeah, So there
have been a lot of crazy theories over the years.
The very most basic are, like you just said, like,
there's alien corpses there, alien technology there, and the US
military has been studying the stuff and trying to perfect
everything from time travel to light speed travel. Right, fine,
(34:05):
that's the basic ground zero approach.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Don't forget interdimensional travel too. Why not another one? I saw?
There's some pretty pretty low hanging fruit that I love.
The moon landing was faked.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
There, ah, sure?
Speaker 3 (34:18):
And then after that, right, but then after that Kubrick
was executed on site and replaced by a clone.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Well, that clon did some great work.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
He did better than Barry Linden.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Right, Oh, I love Berry Linden.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
I've never seen it, so I currently hate on it.
It's amazing weather control experiments. That's probably the most believable
for me.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Sure, clouds eating sure, why not?
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Well? Why not? And then there's like stage two of
conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yes, that is, there are aliens that clock in every
day at Area fifty one and work side by side
with us in harmony.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
In harm many in order to build like an alien
human hybrid race. Maybe sure. And if all this sounds familiar,
I will bet that you watched a pretty hefty amount
of X Files. Oh yes, because they really tapped into
this stuff. They basically just appropriated it for plot lines.
Oh yeah, which is great. I love the X Files.
(35:21):
But it was just I guess Chris Carter used to
hang out with like uphologists or something just to get ideas.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Did he really he had two of yeah, or he
is one himself. I don't know much about it. Maybe so,
maybe so so. And then of course, if you even
ramp that up a little bit more, that this is
all part of a giant conspiracy to create a one
world government that is human alien run right.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
And that's where that Majestic twelve I mentioned at the
beginning comes in. They are supposedly a panel of academics,
elite scientists. There's twelve of them who were impaneled by
Eisenhower after the Roswell crash, or I guess it would
have been Truman, I think still, and they were put
(36:09):
together just the cream of the crop to basically go
contact the aliens and basically broker a meeting I guess
between the President and the aliens. And they managed to
leverage this to catapult themselves into status of actual people
who run the world. So they're the ones who are
(36:32):
forming this one world government. And that is where Area
fifty one, or that's where it's located. The seat of
this government is located underground in Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
This next one is a little more recent and very kooky,
and it's the notion that Hitler and Stalin got together
and hatched a plan to undermine the United States in
World War two by distracting us about the threat of
an impending alien invasion. And they would do this by
(37:04):
building a fake spaceship filling it with mutant children that
Joseph Mingola created and filled the spaceship with those kids,
and then the craft crashed in a storm, and that
was the Roswell incident.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Right, it was meant to land, and then these mutant children.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Come out speaking Germans.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Right. Supposedly, the mutant children who were the aliens that
were found in the Roswell crash had huge heads and
giant eyes. They were basically like the grays of alien
legend right, and that Stalin and Hitler were inspired by
the public's reaction in America to the World War of
the World's broadcast. They wanted to incite that kind of
(37:49):
panic by actually creating this fake alien invasion.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
With all the drugs. Hitler was on after we know
this now, who knows?
Speaker 3 (38:00):
He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. It's
a great idea. Man, what else you got? What else
you got? What else can we do? Slands like mellow
he tried CBD.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
He's like, no, that's the one thing I haven't tried.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
He got any right, I'll be I'll mix well with
everything else.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
So this is this is obviously not a thing either.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Well, this is from a book by an author named
Annie Jacobson, I believe, and she this book came out
in twenty eleven, and she based this whole thing on
an alleged Area fifty one insider who was her source,
who said that he worked on a project that had
to do with this somehow, some way, but that this
(38:44):
was where all this alien stuff came from. It was
a it was a hoax by the Nazis and the Soviets.
Weird thing is is there is another guy out there
who supposedly has a different source who tells the same story.
But this other source says that this is it was
all fake. That I saw the files myself, but I
(39:07):
believe that it was meant to be a test of loyalty,
or to see how I would react working at Area
fifty one to files like this and be like, oh
my god, this is real, this is real. I can't
believe this is this is actually real. I guess to
see how gullible you were and therefore how trustworthy you.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Were, right, which could explain Bob blazar situation too, because
he was supposedly in a room full of files he
probably shouldn't have seen.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Either, right, So that's you probably failed the test.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
You got three different sources who supposedly worked at Area
fifty one. Technically, I should say, because we'll get email
Bob Blazar worked at S four, which is an even
more secret installation that's attached to Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, but you got.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
Three people who allegedly worked in Area fifty one who
all tell a story about basically being left in a
room with files that contained information about aliens. Whether it
was a hoax, or real or whatever. And maybe that
is because that kind of correlates with the idea that
there were like gunpoint interrogations to verify your allegiance to
(40:07):
the government or the military or whatever. Maybe that is
something they tried there. Yeah, it doesn't make the actual
aliens real. It just makes the presence of the files real,
that's true.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Yeah, So Area fifty one today as it truly exists.
If you're driving down Highway three seventy five, there's an
unmarked dirt road between mile markers twenty nine and thirty
or I guess thirty and twenty nine, and you turn.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
On that road.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
It's twelve miles on a dirt road, and you'll get
to a gate and there'll be warning signs all along
saying restricted areas, sort of like close encounters type stuff.
There will be cameras and sensors everywhere, so don't think
you're like getting away with anything.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
No, there's mics that listen to your conversation. You were
under as close surveillance as you've ever been in your
life from what I understand.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah, and there are guards, of course, and they will
say I'm sorry, turn around and drive back to the
highway and if you.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Persist a little bit, then you will get arrested.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
If you're around the perimeter area kind of walking around
with your binoculars, they will probably come and take your
binoculars and tell you to leave, or drive you back
to the highway, or maybe smash your face in and
bury you in the desert.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Well, there's a sign that says use of deadly forth
forces authorized.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Oh, I'm sure, but there's.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
From what I've seen, there's never been an incident that
where that actually happened. You're much more likely to get
handed over to the local cops who will slap you
with a several hundred dollars fine, sure, if you give
them any kind of guff and don't leave immediately when
they tell you to.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
So.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
Kind of the cool thing about Area fifty one, there are, obviously,
I mean, there are civilian workers that work there. It's
a huge facility that apparently is still growing because you
can look at satellite photographs and year by year it
seems to be getting bigger and bigger with more buildings.
If you work there, and I mean they have to
(42:08):
have everything from food services to custodial services, to plumbing
and electricians and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
And all of those people have the highest possible security
clearance an American can have.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Oh sure, So they don't drive down that dirt road
and just go to the gate and say how you doing, Rick,
and they go come on in Jane. They go to
McCarran Airport in Las Vegas and they all get on
a big basically air taxi. It's a seven thirty seven
passenger jet that fly. They call them the Janet Jets.
(42:43):
It's under the cassign Janet. They're white with the big
thick red stripe. You can look it up online, and
they that's how they get to work every day. They
fly everyone in on a seven thirty seven and you.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Can see them on the tarmac. They just get in
with the regular planes. It's just look for the giant
seven thirty seven that are white with the red strip.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
And pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
No logo, no nothing. They don't actually have a name,
like you said, They fly under callsign Janet. So people
have tried to figure out forever what Janet means. There's
an idea that it's just another non existent terminal stands
for that her Joint Air Network for employee transportation. But
if you go visit the Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame.
(43:24):
They tell the story that there was a commander of
Area fifty one named Richard A. Sampson from nineteen sixty
nine to seventy one, and he chose his wife's name,
Janet to identify the commuter shuttles. That's sweet, and that's
that's the most romantic, super secret government story of all.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
So we kind of teased earlier on that the government
is no longer saying like, I don't know what you're
talking about, Like, no, this satellite image that we're all
looking at of buildings, I don't see anything but dirt.
That's all changed a little bit now because a lawsuit
in the mid nineteen nineties there were a group of
(44:03):
workers from Area fifty one that sued the government because
of the it's an environmental disaster there or you know,
maybe that's changing now, but it had been for many,
many years because of the fact that it's a black
project and so unregulated that they were just basically doing
(44:23):
everything like dumping hazardous waste and burning it in trenches
and people were there just inhaling these fumes, right and
getting really sick. And a guy named Robert Frost that
worked there in employee had a lot of really bad
health problems. Doctor said, you were suffering from some kind
of a really bad chemical reaction, and in order to
(44:44):
treat it, we need to know what it is. And
the government said, sorry, we can't tell you that, and
he died.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
He died, and some other coworkers filed this lawsuit. One
of them ended up dying too, and they finally got
to like a Nevada I think, a federal circuit court
that said, no, you guys don't have a right to
know what you've been exposed to.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, they weren't looking for money. They just wanted to
know what was killing them.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
And the reason that they had no legal right to
know was and this is that trial that I was
referring to earlier, where the government representatives were saying, we like,
the place that they're talking about doesn't exist. Sorry, So
imagine like trying to just get past that barrier, right,
You're suing the government to find out what they were
burning that made you sick, but the government's in court saying, like,
(45:31):
the place that they're talking about doesn't even exist. That's like,
that's obstacle one. But the whole reason that they were
burning this stuff in the first place is because Area
fifty one operates under what's called the mosaic theory, and
the mosaic theory is that any little piece of information
a spy gets his or hands on could be fit
(45:52):
together with other information to provide a larger picture of
what's being done at Area fifty one. And as a result,
nothing can come out of Area fifty.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
One like the chemical that's killing the people, right.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Or computers that go in and are used once they
get decommissioned. They get put in this pit and these trenches,
and every two weeks they go out there with jet
fuel and everything that's been put into the trenches over
the last two weeks gets doused with jet fuel. It's
set on fire with road flares, amazing, and whatever is
in that smoke the workers get exposed to because for
(46:28):
some reason, they built the trenches upwind of this this
installation rather than downwind, and so people were exposed to
this every two weeks for years and years and years,
and things like you know, anti radar paint. The jet
fuel that they're using is an accelerant. I'm sure wasn't helping,
but just all sorts of exotic materials that was super
(46:50):
super classified. This is what was killing these people, making
them sick exactly, And the government said, no, this is
just too classify. These people can't know. They're just going
to have to go off and die untreated because we're
not going to say publicly what they were exposed to.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, and that's where it stood that case.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
They did, finally, finally in that case say okay, there's
an area fifty one.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
I know, the whole courtroom went out for beers that
day afterwards, So.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
There's a thing there.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
And that's really all we can say, sorry, is there's
a thing there.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
But that was the very first sort of.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Insight into the just that admission that there was something
there was the first time that had ever happened, which
is in the mid nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, and you were saying, like people would point the
satellite images of the place and you can see that
it's growing now, like you can see it on like
Google Maps.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, that is really new.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Because it wasn't very long ago where all the satellites
in space were controlled by the government, and the government
could control what ended up in satellite images, so they
blocked out anything any image of area fifty one, but
as private firms started launching their own satellites, it became
basically impossible. So just little by little, it's becoming to
(48:11):
the point now where they're like, yes, they acknowledge something's there. No,
you can't know what's going on. There is basically the
status quo.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
Now pretty much.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
So that's Area fifty one. And sorry, we kind of
took the government tack here and didn't really go all
in on the alien theories. But I just don't think
that's what it is. If you want to know more
about Area fifty one, I guess just start reading about it.
There's some pretty interesting stuff out there. And since I
said that, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
This is about nicknames. This is from Rob Bob.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Oh Yeah, I love this one.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Hey guys, my name is Rob Bob, Rob and Bob
combined into a singular form like Jim Bob.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
But better.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
My mom has explained to me that it started when
I was about six months old. I was a really
chunky kid, like in the ninety ninth percentile for weight.
They felt like no other nickname like Robbie or Bobby fit,
so they started calling me Rob Bob. Many years later,
I meet my wife, which is almost eight years ago now,
and quickly found out that her favorite writer is Richard Wright.
(49:21):
Since reading his novel Native Son, has wanted to name
her kid Richard to honor the impact he had on
her life. She had visited his grave in parison as
every book he ever published. When she met me, I
told her about my super nicknames that I had wanted
to call my kid because you see, my father is
William Bill for short. But now since we came up
(49:42):
with these weird names, I call my dad will Bill
to bug him. This leads me to why I have
always wanted to name my child Richard since high school.
Then we would in order to have a will Bill,
a Rob Bob, and a Rickdick, all in three generations
of awesomeness. Wife does not approve and thinks we should
look elsewhere for name ideas.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
With great admiration Rob Bob and Rachel.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
Nice. Thanks Rob Bob, good luck with that with your quest.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, I don't think Rick Dick is going to fly
in your household.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
I don't think so either. Rachel may have the cooler
head here, I think so. Well, if you want to
get in touch with this, like Rob Bob, did, We
would love that. You can go on to stuff youshould
Know dot com check out our social links there, or
you can send us an email to stuff podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.