We’ve all heard of Area 51 but what about its equivalents around the world? Here are ten of the most intriguing, all but three of which are still in operation.

10. Station 13, South Africa (Closed)

In the grasslands outside Johannesburg, near the not-quite-rural Bapsfontein, Station 13 was—allegedly—operational from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. But there’s not a lot of info to go on. In fact, it all seems to come from one man: Greg Roberts.

In 1966, he says, he stumbled upon the base while looking for the Baker-Nunn satellite tracking station, where he was due for a job interview. Finding himself on a dirt road to a gate with a STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE sign, a 4-meter-high trailer, and, 6-8 km away, a huge radio dish tucked out of view in a dip, he realized he’d found the Bapsfontein tracking station, or Station 13—about which he’d only heard rumors. Not being the sort to follow orders from signs, he let himself in and entered the trailer. There he was met by “a young man in US military uniform,” who, after Roberts explained, let him use the phone to call the staff at Baker-Nunn. Other uniformed men were there too, along with “racks of electronic equipment” for radio satellite tracking. It was clear from documents lying around that the station belonged to the United States Air Force, and was run by Pan American Airways as part of the Eastern Missile Test Range. It was also clear what satellites they were tracking—though, of course, when Roberts asked, the officer would neither confirm nor deny. Phone call made, he was on his way, with orders not to venture further down the road.

And that was that—until 1982. Eager to distance itself from apartheid, the US shut down its South African bases and sold off a load of equipment. Roberts himself missed the auction, what he heard from friends left him wondering what went on at Station 13. For one thing, there was equipment covering a frequency only ever (officially) used for the 1961-65 RANGER craft, which NASA crashed into the moon. Also, the dish he’d seen the top of was 26 meters across—like the one at Hartebeesthoek used for deep space tracking. “What was such a big dish used for, apart from lunar missions?” Roberts wonders, “Was it used for deep space missions?” Answers have not been forthcoming.

9. QinetiQ, United Kingdom

The Hampshire headquarters of defense contractor QinetiQ are, according to the British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society (BEAMS), built on top of a UFO base. In the levels below it, they say, researchers are working on intergalactic defense and futuristic flight development. In their 109-page report, they call these hidden levels “deep underground military bases”, or D.U.M.B.

Unfortunately, there’s not much concrete evidence—but some of it does involve concrete. Calling to mind the Nazca Lines, the layout of the roads leading up to the entrance resembles a Grey with arms outstretched. BEAMS calls it a Grey/Reptilian Hybrid and identifies it with Australian cave paintings. Furthermore, part of the building looks just like a flying saucer.

Other evidence includes the tight security on site, reports from alleged personnel, witnesses, and remote viewings, as well as QinetiQ’s involvement in mining coupled with the strange rumbling noises heard in Farnborough over the past 15 years. When approached for comment by The Daily Express, a QinetiQ spokesman said they were looking through the “very detailed dossier and working on a response”. But that was eight years ago, and they’re still keeping schtum—as is the Ministry of Defence, which said they “do not comment on UFO matters”.

8. Site 7, USSR/Kazakhstan (Closed)

The Soviet Union’s Sary Shagan facility was, according to the CIA, a testing range for experimental weapons. Specifically, it was focused on missiles, such as warheads containing metal balls. But rumors also suggest it was developing weaponized lasers… which might explain the UFO sighting at the base’s Site 7—but that would be a stretch.

In 1973, again according to the CIA, a member of Site 7 personnel saw “an unidentified sharp (bright) green circular object or mass in the sky.” It was hovering just above cloud level, they said, or where the clouds would have been if the sky wasn’t clear. “Within 10 to 15 seconds …, the green circle widened and … several green concentric circles formed around [it].” There was no sound. And minutes later it was gone.

Site 7 was, officially, Sary Shagan’s “warhead checkout unit”, so UFO interest may not be that surprising—assuming it wasn’t a laser. Still, the combination of experimental weapons and unexplained lights bears striking resemblance to Area 51. Even the location and climate are similar, being right by a lake in a desert, with clear skies most of the year.

 7. Port Wakefield Proof and Experimental Establishment, Australia

Port Wakefield is one of several large military facilities in Australia, a country heavily involved in nuclear testing. And while it’s not the largest (56 square kilometers compared to the Woomera Range’s 120,000), it is the most interesting. As the name suggests, it conducts experimental weapons testing and munitions proofing at the coast—specifically, “off a remote highway” near the northernmost tip of Gulf St Vincent, South Australia.

Officially, Port Wakefield serves the army, air force, and navy. But they’re testing some pretty weird weapons. Locals and passersby have reported strange bursts of light, flashing balls, and radio interference. One delivery driver said he loses contact with other drivers whenever approaching the site, adding: “There’s a lot that I don’t think people know about it.”

He may have been alluding to the Port Wakefield hitchhiker. Witnessed by numerous drivers, this spectral figure in air force clothes is said to haunt the highway to Adelaide. Sometimes he stands by the side of the road, other times right in the middle, forcing drivers to slam on the brakes. Whether or not he’s given a lift, though, he vanishes into thin air. One local businessman even claims to have followed him into the toilet at a gas station only to see him dissolve.

6. Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory

Diego Garcia lies just south of the equator, more than 2,000 kilometers from Sri Lanka. It has a long history of exploitation by Europeans, including as a French leper colony and, as recently as the 60s under the British Queen’s ownership, as a plantation forcing children to work. Nowadays, though, with the natives removed, it’s a joint UK/US military base complete with a deep water port and a runway the space shuttle could land on.

Naturally, its isolation gives rise to rumors. Perhaps the most outlandish, purporting to be from a whistleblower, is that it sits atop a D.U.M.B., a deep underground military base, for “Black Navy” projects like the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Also human cloning. The alleged whistleblower claims to have been cloned twice in the 1980s, and that his “alters” as he calls them were “infused with his soul extracts”. One of them was sent to Mars while the other stayed on Earth, running assassination and abduction missions for its masters.

Well, anything’s possible. More credible, though, is the report from Stephen Walker, a USAF pilot stationed there at the height of the “War on Terror”. One week in 2005, he said, personnel were told to stay away from the “large, red, dilapidated hangar at the northern end of the airfield,” because the Navy was “conducting sensitive operations”. But it seemed to be empty throughout. At one point, they were even told to stay inside and away from the windows. The flightline was cleared and the base locked down to “protect an incoming classified aircraft”. Everyone complied and listened for a landing—“tires touching pavement, … disc brake rotors, or … brakes being applied”—but there was nothing, no sound whatsoever. As Walker put it, “there’s no quiet like the silence of a shutdown airfield on an atoll more than 2,000 miles away from the nearest sign of civilization.” He never found out what it was.

5. Orford Ness, United Kingdom (Closed)

Orford Ness on the coast of Suffolk, 160 km north-east of London, was once a major nuclear weapons lab. Nowadays, it’s a National Trust nature reserve—a protected marshland ecosystem amid the ruins of the base, giving a glimpse of Area 51’s ultimate future. When it was in operation, Orford Ness was home to a massive centrifuge for testing warhead casings, a hangar for captured Axis planes, and the enormous Cobra Mist over-the-horizon radar system. Although it’s not well known, it was just as important in WWII as the code-breaking Bletchley Park.

It was set up in 1913, ten years after the first manned flight, to research aircraft for warfare—all in top secret. And it stayed in operation for the next six decades, opening the Atomic Weapons Laboratory during the Cold War. Interestingly, given the other UK entry on this list, Orford Ness was part of a network that included a site in Farnborough. It’s also a short walk from Rendlesham Forest, the site of Britain’s most infamous UFO sightings. 

As in comparable facilities nowadays, research was compartmentalized. Scientists worked on one small piece of a larger weapon without knowing about all the others or even if the finished thing worked. Among the technologies they developed are night-flying instruments, means for taking off and landing on ships, the 5,400 kg ‘earthquake bomb’ (nicknamed “Tallboy”), and Britain’s first nuke, “Blue Danube”. But much remains secret today, and access to the site is still limited.

4. Znamensk, Russia

Better known by its original name Kasputin Yar, Znamensk was established in 1946 (just after the Second World War) and may be the longest running experimental weapons site on the planet. Like Area 51 and several others on this list, it’s situated in the desert—specifically, east of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in southern Russia.

Technologies developed here include ballistic missiles, orbital rockets, sounding rockets, and nukes. This is also where Laika the dog was launched into space from. Today, in addition to weapons testing and aerospace research, it’s the largest military training center in Russia. So it’s not quite as secretive as its equivalent in Nevada. But, like the United States, Russia rounded up all the Nazi scientists they could—and it was at Kasputin Yar they were put to work.

In 1953, the British photographed the base from a modified Canberra bomber, managing to land in Iran despite drawing fire from the Soviets. But the photos were blurry and useless. Later, with the help of Turkish radar engineers along the Black Sea border with Russia, the US constructed a massive antenna—as long as a football field—to observe the skies above the base. And what they saw was the development and testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles with a range of up to 2,500 nautical miles. 

3. Mount Yamantau, Russia

Known as “Russia’s Mount Everest”, Mount Yamantau in the Ural Mountains is said to host an underground base. And the government doesn’t deny it. In fact, the peak is officially designated a strategic site and, from what Putin has said in recent years about protecting nuclear command and control infrastructure from any threat, it seems an obvious location for the underground base he alludes to.

But it’s bigger than you’re probably thinking—at least according to rumor. Entombed under 3,000 feet of quartz, it’s said to be “as big as the Washington area inside the Beltway”, more than 1,000 square kilometers. That the quartz interferes with radio signals may be part of the point. Also for this reason, the complex is thought to be a bunker to keep top brass alive in the event of a nuclear war—similar to the United States’ Raven Rock Mountain Complex.

But its true purpose is shrouded in secrecy. Some say the nearby town of Mezhgorye, with its population of 17,000, is inhabited solely by Yamantau scientists all working on top-secret projects.

2. Lop Nur, China

In China it’s easy to keep things secret, at least from the people. Deep in the desert, hundreds of miles from any city in one of the most barren places in the entire country—the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang—lies the site of Lop Nur. And not only is it still operational but, as recently as 2021, it appeared to be undergoing expansion. Satellite imagery from the time showed that around 12 new concrete buildings had sprung up around the isolated, three-mile runway.

Given the size of the landing strip, which only appeared in 2016, Lop Nur is assumed to be involved in testing the classified “space plane” and other off-world technologies. The construction of new buildings there may suggest a more permanent military presence, or it could just be housing for scientists. Either way, though, Lop Nur appears to be gearing up for more highly classified testing. In fact, the already massive runway may be expanding too—into an equilateral triangle allowing take-offs and landings in three directions.

There’s not much else to say about this one, but it’s location, activities, and secrecy (with diplomats refusing to comment on it) make Lop Nur a direct Chinese equivalent to Area 51.

1. Kongka La, India

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14PTajp9r00

Kongka La, or Kongka Pass, is a high mountain pass in the Himalayas near Ladakh. And it’s “a hotbed for unusual activities”: unexplained lights, equipment failures, flying saucers, etc. It’s also disputed territory, with the Chinese and Indian governments both insisting it’s theirs—sometimes violently, as in the 1950s and 60s. Civilians aren’t allowed there at all.

The case for there being an Area 51 in the region comes from Google Earth imagery, which, allegedly, once showed military buildings. If there is a base, though, it’s thought to be deep underground, taking advantage of Kongka La’s unique geology—the Earth’s crust here being deeper than anywhere else. Hence other pictures from Google purport to show “unidentified caves” that disappear and reappear sporadically.

Other reports come from ground level. For instance, there’s the team of geologists, who in 2004 saw “a robot-like creature, 4 feet tall and strolling on the mountain crest,” before it fled in response to their approach. The Indian military has also, apparently, seen strange goings-on—including, in 2012, a ribbon- or cloth-like object drifting in the sky” that couldn’t be detected on radar.

It could be argued that the scale of the universe is such that our minds will never be able to comprehend it. In fact, it seems very likely that even things here on earth are far beyond what our minds could imagine at the best of times. That’s one of the reasons people will refer to flooding by saying it was like 100 Olympic sized pools, or a distance something travelled was six football fields. They’re all just ways to make something hard to comprehend a little more understandable. And when it comes to the incredible power and energy nature can wield, it’s pretty mind blowing.

10. Mount St. Helens Released 24 Megatons of Thermal Energy

North America is subject to frequent hurricanes and tornadoes as well as more than its fair share of earthquakes. And though they are rare, there are a number of volcanoes present as well that also erupt from time to time, such as Washington state’s Mount St. Helens. When it erupted back in 1980, it proved its remarkable power in terrifying ways. 

Starting in March of that year, a series of earthquakes were recorded in the area and the actual volcano itself began to bulge outward by 450 feet. When it finally erupted on May 18, it released 24 megatons of thermal energy, which means 24 million tons of TNT. It released 520 million tons of ash and destroyed enough trees to have built 300,000 houses just with the initial lateral blast.

9. Turning 1 kg of Hydrogen to Helium Releases as Much Energy as Burning 20,000 Tons of Coal 

The sun is forever engaged in a fusion reaction that turns hydrogen into helium, producing light and heat and keeping us all alive. Fusion is a hell of a way to produce power and we’re all hoping one day someone masters it down here on Earth because it would make life a lot easier. But until that time we have to make do with things like nuclear fission, solar power and good ol’ fossil fuel burning. 

The difference between how fusion and burning coal works is so preposterous that it seems made up when you try to match it up on the same scale. By that we mean the difference in power generated when the sun turns one kilogram of hydrogen into helium versus how much coal we need to burn down here on earth to get the same amount of energy produced.

The reaction of one kilogram of hydrogen becoming helium releases 630 trillion joules, or what you’d get from burning 20,000 tons of coal. 

Over the course of its life, the sun will use 1.95 x 1029 kg of hydrogen. In a single second, the sun generates 3.9 x 1026 watts of power. To put that in perspective, in one second, the sun produces more power than the entire world would use in a few hundred thousand years. 

8. A Hurricane’s Energy is 200 times the Electricity Generating Capacity of the Whole World

Hurricanes are arguably the most terrifying force of nature any of us will ever see. The destructive potential of a hurricane is hard to believe and we’ve all seen the evidence of the destruction they can produce. But how much power is behind that terrifying force? The scale is massive and really puts things in perspective for you.

From the moment a hurricane is born through its cycle of destruction until its ultimate demise, it will release as much energy as 10,000 nuclear weapons. Put another way, all of that energy, and we’re including cloud and rain formation, is about 200 times the amount of electricity generated across the entire planet. That’s just one hurricane. We average about six per year, with several other storms not quite reaching hurricane status. 

7. Krakatoa Exploded with the Force of 10,000 Atomic Bombs 

In 1883, the volcano on the island of Krakatoa exploded and produced the loudest sound in the history of the world. It’s estimated to have hit 310 decibels, so loud that it managed to circle the planet 4 times. It was 172 decibels, 100 miles away. A jet engine will hit you with 150 decibels if you’re standing next to it. 

When it erupted, it went off with the force of 200 megatons of TNT. That’s 10,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It’s believed upwards of 36,000 people were killed.

6. 1 kg of Uranium 235 Produces 3 Million Times the Heat of 1 kg of Coal

For a long time now, people have debated the merits of nuclear power versus something like traditional coal burning. Nuclear comes with dangers such as the potential for meltdowns and the problem of nuclear waste. Coal burning causes pollution and, as we’re about to see, is terribly inefficient by comparison.

If you had one kilogram of uranium-235, you could generate 24,000,000 kWh of heat. By comparison, you’ll make 8 kWh from the same weight of coal. So uranium has around three million times the energy-producing capability of an equal amount of coal. One single uranium fuel pellet is equal to one ton of coal. 

5. Tsunamis Can Produce Enough Power to Run Major Cities or Even Countries for Days

In the past few decades, there have been a couple of massively destructive tsunamis. In 2011, a tsunami hit Japan wielding three petajoules of energy. That was enough to power New York City for an entire week. But even that pales in comparison to one just seven years earlier.

 In 2004, an undersea earthquake triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean the day after Christmas. The power of the tsunami has been estimated to be equal to 0.8 gigatons of TNT. In more practical terms, that’s as much energy as the entire United States of America will use in 11 days and works out to 3.35 exajoules. What the heck is an exajoule? That’s one quintillion joules.

One calorie of food produces 4,184 joules of energy. A Big Mac has 550 calories. That means a Big Mac is equivalent to 2,301,200 joules. Divided by the exajoules in the tsunami and it produced the energy equivalent of just under 1.46 trillion of them. That’s a lot of Big Macs. 

4. Climate Change is Adding Energy Equivalent to Exploding Thousands of Nuclear Weapons Per Day 

These days everyone is aware of climate change and most people who still want to argue about it choose the man vs nature approach. Which is to say even the critics have agreed that earth is getting warmer, they just don’t agree on why. But if we all accept the earth is warming up, just how much energy is the earth absorbing to do such a thing?

Heat is energy, so the energy required to warm the entire planet is no small scale achievement. Scientists studying global temperature trends tried to put it in perspective in a fairly dramatic way. 

Between 2005 and 2019, scientists compared the earth’s energy imbalance. This compares the amount of energy we absorb versus how much we can radiate. The imbalance doubled in that time period and the amount of extra energy the earth is absorbing works out to four Hiroshima explosions occurring every single second. This is actually slightly better than the 2012 estimate by NASA climate scientists that said it was equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima’s per day, but not by much. 

3. A 9.0 Earthquake Releases 90 Times the Power Produced by the US

Like any natural disaster, an earthquake packs a serious punch. The seismic power of an earthquake is typically related to use by use of the Richter scale, but saying an earthquake measures a four on that scale doesn’t really put much into perspective. Luckily, there are some equivalences we can make.

If an earthquake did register a 4.0 on the Richter scale, you’d consider it fairly mild, more or less. That said, it releases energy equivalent to 1 kiloton of TNT. Sounds like a lot, right? It works out to about 1162 mWh or the energy. If the average US household uses 10.715 kWh in a year, then a 4.0 earthquake could power 108 American homes for a year. But that’s just a moderate quake. Let’s go up the scale to a serious quake.

It’s rare that an earthquake measures 9.0 on the scale. That’s a serious quake and they only happen every few years, if not decades. Based on data from the US Geological Survey, they’ll release energy on par with exploding 32,000 megatons of TNT. That works out to 1,338,880,000,000 gigajoules. Convert that to MwH and you get 371,911,111,111.11. The US generates 4,095,487,406 MwH of electricity. So that 9.0 earthquake generated 90 times the power of the entire US annual power production capacity. 

2. The Meteor That Killed the Dinosaurs Was More Powerful Than The World’s Nuclear Arsenal 

Everyday we go about our business with the knowledge, somewhere in the back of our heads, that a meteor could hit the Earth and wipe us all out in a matter of moments. It’s not likely or anything, but it happened before, so it could certainly happen again one day. And that means a meteor must be a pretty powerful thing when it touches down. We can look at a recent one to figure out just how powerful they can be.

In 2013, a meteor lit up the Russian skies over the city of Chelyabinsk. The 11,000 ton rock flew through the air at 42,000 miles per hour, creating a shockwave that laid waste to 4,000 buildings. It released energy equivalent to 30 times the bomb that exploded at Hiroshima. Powerful stuff. But, as you may have noticed, the world didn’t end.

If we go back in time, the most famous meteor in history would be the one commonly attributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs. That one was clearly more powerful than Chelyabinsk, and the scale of that power was remarkable.

Research has estimated the power of that particular blast was equal to 10 billion of the bombs dropped during the Second World War. Enough to scorch life thousands of miles away and cover the earth in a cloud that wiped out 75% of all life. 

1. A Supernova Produces More Energy Than Anything You Could Imagine

Let’s leave the earth for a minute because, as powerful as nature is here, the universe at large shames our tiny blue dot. Let’s go into the vastness of the great beyond towards a star as it lashes out in its death throes. A supernova. 

As far as we know, this is the biggest explosion that can exist. And they can get big. So big that our efforts to try to make it sound understandable are still, frankly, ridiculous. But at least it will offer some kind of perspective.

The energy released during a supernova can be around 1044 joules. That one event will therefore release as much energy as the exploding star released during the previous 10 billion years of its existence. Imagine our sun burning as hot and bright as it does for 10 billion years. We already covered that every second it produces all the energy the earth could use in hundreds of thousands of years. All of that, for 10 billion years of time, released all over again during the supernova. 

That’s still very insane and very hard to grasp, so we can break it down further. One specific supernova was observed by scientists in 2015. Called ASSASN-15lh, the dying star was 580 billion times brighter than our own sun. It produced a blast that was a billion trillion times more powerful than the explosion of the tsar bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested. It was 30 times brighter than the entire Milky Way galaxy, itself home to 100 thousand million stars.