What is Actually in Area 51?

Like the Bermuda Triangle, Area 51 is one of those enduring mysteries that technically was solved, but some people still believe it isn’t fully solved, if that makes sense. As in, the official explanation isn’t cutting the mustard. Not for everyone, anyway. And, to be fair, there are things that happen at Area 51 that the government is not willing to tell us about. It is a secret research facility, after all. It’s not like they tell you what’s going on in the Pentagon all the time, either.

The very idea of Area 51 has fascinated people for decades now. It’s become a major staple of pop culture, appearing in shows like The X-Files and Roswell and featuring in many movies as well. In 2019, there was even an organized attempt to gather people to storm Area 51 so they could find out for themselves what was really going on there. It started as a joke on Facebook, quickly went viral, and two million people RSVP’d that they were going to show up. In reality, 6,000 people showed up, which is actually pretty impressive for a joke meme about storming the secure government facility where you could be shot for trying.

None of the people who showed up in 2019 found any aliens. No one, in fact, has found any aliens. But the facility is still locked down, and it still fascinates people. With that in mind, why don’t we take a journey into the Nevada desert and see what the official word and the unofficial word is on just what’s going on in Area 51?

Area 51 History

Officially known as the Nevada Test and Training Range, as well as Groom Lake and Homey Airport, Paradise Ranch, the Ranch, Watertown, and Dreamland, Area 51 is located in the Nevada desert just over 120 miles from Las Vegas. The facility was built back in 1955 to test the Lockheed U-2 spy plane, and it is still a highly classified facility. 

It has been acknowledged as a test flight location by the US government and, over the years, has also been used to test aircraft like the Archangel-12, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. The existence of the site was only officially acknowledged by the CIA in 2013.

The name Area 51 is attributed to old Atomic Energy Commission maps. The AEC used to number grids, and Area 51 would have been the designation of that grid. That said, it has been pointed out since this theory was devised there that 51 was not a number in the AEC grid maps. Other theories are that they called it that because they would not need it for the grid system since it was a secret test facility. No one has ever confirmed one way or the other. 

Currently, the facility is administered by Edwards Air Force Base and, as ever, it is not open to the public. Armed guards patrol the exterior, and even entering airspace above it is forbidden without permission. Cameras and motion sensors are monitoring the perimeter as well. Signs warn that drones, photography, and firearms are prohibited in the area. They also warn that deadly force is authorized, so those armed guards aren’t there just for show. 

Area 51 Conspiracies

Conspiracy theories have surrounded Area 51 for almost as long as it has been in existence. Much of this is thanks to a man named Robert Lazar, who we’ll look into more later on. Lazar was the first person to publicly come out in the 1980s and say aliens and UFOs were being studied in Area 51. He claimed to have worked there and had firsthand knowledge. 

Lazar said he worked there, on alien spacecraft and technology, in 1989, and that set the conspiracy world aflame. The most enduring of these conspiracy theories is that Area 51 is used to test and house alien aircraft. The most notable one? The alleged craft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. The official word from the US government is that there was no alien craft that landed in Roswell; it was just a weather balloon.

The statements made by Lazar, combined with the fact that the government wouldn’t even acknowledge that Area 51 existed at the time, was more than enough fuel for the conspiracy-minded. There was an insider supposedly blowing the whistle and a completely non-responsive government. By denying the existence of the entire facility for 58 years, which people could literally go to and look at with their own eyes, they were essentially opening the floodgates for anyone to believe anything.

Keep in mind that this is actually a good strategy for the government. Let people believe whatever they want, and even if they stumble upon the truth, it will just get mixed up in all the conspiracies that sound crazy, and no one will believe any of it.

The other thing that helped fuel these conspiracy theories was the fact that, for 58 years, this facility was used as a testing ground for top secret aircraft. Meaning aircraft that didn’t look like anything anyone had ever seen before, had not been officially acknowledged, and were typically faster than anything else in the sky. In a very real way these were unidentified flying objects; they just weren’t extraterrestrial.

There are conspiracies that alien autopsies have been conducted at Area 51, complete with low-budget videos disguised as documentaries on the subject. Lazar said he was reverse engineering alien aircraft there, and of course there are conspiracies that aliens that crashed in Roswell are still held there, which was a major plot point of the Independence Day franchise. 

Other Conspiracies

Aliens are far from the only conspiracy that surrounds Area 51. Some think there is weather-controlling technology hidden there, likely born from the real-life Project Cirrus, an experiment in the 40s and 50s to use weather and rain as a weapon. 

Arguably, the biggest conspiracy theory related to Area 51 that doesn’t involve aliens still involves outer space. Some people believe, to this day, that the moon landing was faked. The idea is that it was done just as a propaganda measure to sort of pull one over on the Soviets and make America look better in the eyes of the world and at home. So, instead of actually getting to the Moon, which was not a possibility at the time, the US government just faked it by filming a moon landing in a secret studio at Area 51.

There’s never really been a specific reason why Area 51 would be the place to film it, other than it’s a secret facility. Some people concede it could have been done in a Hollywood studio. Of course, much of this conspiracy rests on the fact that the flag moves when Buzz Aldrin places it into the lunar surface which leads people to believe that there was a wind present and one has to wonder why they would have wind in a studio, either.

Robert Lazar

We can lay almost all the conspiracy theories at the feet of Robert Lazar. In 1989, Lazar gave an interview with a Las Vegas journalist about how he had worked in Area 51 on top secret projects to reverse engineer alien aircraft. He claimed to have seen the alien aircraft first hand and had also seen photos of autopsies. He claimed that Area 51 held nine crashed vehicles of extraterrestrial origin. 

Lazar sounded like the real deal. A nuclear physicist who had been working at Los Alamos. This was a man with credentials, respectability, and every reason you could think of to be sincere and trustworthy. He had been educated at MIT and CalTech and was a leading mind in nuclear physics. At least until someone looked into it.

Neither MIT nor CalTech has any record of Robert Lazar. He says the government erased his history. But others have looked into his education before he would have been at MIT and discovered he only took one science class in high school and barely passed. He never had the grades to have been accepted to MIT. Instead, records show that Lazar went to Pierce Junior College outside of Los Angeles at the same time he was supposed to be enrolled in MIT on the other side of the country. That school does have records of him being there.

Lazar has been arrested for involvement in a prostitution ring, and his employment at Nellis Air Force Base was apparently made up as much as his education was. Nevertheless, he still has staunch believers who feel they have evidence that he’s been on the level, including confirmation of things he’s said by other officials and apparently passing a lie detector test (though the results were later stolen).

When it came to working for the lab at Los Alamos, research into that claim found that Lazar had been there but not working for the lab. He was an employee of a subcontractor that had been hired to do work there. 

The most noticeable and easily disproved claim from Lazar was that he had been working on alien engine technology with element 115, which, to most people’s minds, didn’t exist at the time. Years later, it was created in a lab. Rather than proving Lazar’s claim, it served to show he didn’t know what he was talking about. Element 115, of which four atoms were made in a particle accelerator that had a half-life of milliseconds, could never have existed in the amounts Lazar claimed to be using to reverse engineer alien ship technology. 

What is Really There?

 So if it was a test facility in the ’50s, and there are no aliens there, why is it still top secret? What’s going on at Area 51 today? There are two ways you can go about dealing with that question. You can either listen to what the government says or you can not. After all, if there was something to hide there, would they actually put it on the CIA website? Probably not.

Area 51 is still, to this day, used by the US Air Force as a test facility. The secrecy around the facility when it was first constructed had nothing to do with aliens; it had to do with the Soviet Union. They were building spy planes for use in the Cold War, and they didn’t want the Russians to know about them. As time went on, they kept building secret aircraft there and didn’t want enemies to know about them, so everything stayed hush-hush.

Ironically, Area 51 is used to reverse technology. However, it’s all of a terrestrial origin. If the US military can capture enemy aircraft, it will be taken to Area 51 to be studied and, if it’s worth the effort, reverse-engineered so that the same technology can be applied to American weapons. Or, at the very least, it will give you insight into how to detect and overcome that technology. 

That information comes from a journalist who has researched and written a book about Area 51. If you ask the US Air Force what goes on at Area 51, and even specifically if they reverse engineer enemy aircraft there, you will get a boilerplate answer that they can’t discuss what happens at a secure facility like that.

Much of the American military’s surveillance and reconnaissance technology likely came from work done at Area 51. Meaning this is the hub of spy technology at its best. This is where the stealth bomber came from. This is where they make the impossible possible, so if you can imagine what they do there, you’re probably wrong. They’re working on stuff that you can’t imagine, and that’s the point. You can’t imagine it, our enemies can’t imagine it, it’s fringe stuff that takes the world by surprise when it finally does come to light.

Does any of it come from aliens? We’ll probably never know. But if people keep wasting time debating it, odds are the people who are working there don’t mind if everyone else stays distracted.