I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going on at Area 51.
I don’t want you to think I’m just talking out of my ass, so here are my bona fides:
1) I was in the military, which Ufologists believe grants me authority. It makes me a “trained observer,” and, according to a guy I met on the Extraterrestrial Highway, that’s literally the only qualification you need to be believed without question. 2) I went to the back gate and looked at it. 3) I did some research on the internet.
What I’m about to present to you is as good or better than 99% of the UFO conspiracies out there and makes 20x more sense. So here it is:
Absolutely fucking nothing is going on at Area 51.
Exhibit A: The Extraterrestrial Highway
After the 1996 alien invasion movie hit, Independence Day, the state of Nevada changed the name of a stretch of State Route 375 to The Extraterrestrial Highway. If you’re worried you’ll miss it, that’s no problem. There’s a store with a giant cowboy-alien mural and “crashed UFOs” in the parking lot right before your turn, where you can buy overpriced alien toys of every kind. Oh, and there’s a great big sign that says “Extraterrestrial Highway.”
There’s not a whole lot on The Extraterrestrial Highway, aside from a few similarly goofy roadside attractions and the famous “Black Mailbox,” where Bob Lazar used to meet people for UFO watching trips. This ultra-secret spot for only the people in the know can be found at the intersection of Mailbox Road and Extraterrestrial Highway (yes, really).
The road only exists to take you from the Las Vegas part of Nevada to the testing grounds that surround Area 51, and, along the way, the rinky-dink town outside its back gate, Rachel, Nevada.
Most super-secret military bases don’t have a highway named “MILITARY SECRETS THIS WAY!” In fact, most regular military bases don’t have roads that advertise their existence at all.
Exhibit B: Rachel, Nevada
Rachel, Nevada is home to a single gas station that can accommodate six cars in a pinch and a combination motel/RV park/campground/restaurant/bar called the Little A’Le’Inn. Both feature more alien-themed photo-ops than you can shake an anal probe at. And that’s it. The town’s population at the last census was twenty-five.
You may be thinking, “So, what?”
Military bases have people on them, and people need stuff. Whole economies are built around military bases. Outside the US Marine base in Twentynine Palms, 26,653 people are working and living outside the base. Sure, some of them support the tourist industry for the nearby national park. Let’s look at Ft Leonard Wood in Missouri. It butts up against two towns. St. Robert, MO, has a population of 5,511, and Waynesboro has a population of 5,493. Certainly, they aren’t all working to support the servicemembers coming and going from the base, but a base where absolutely no one lives off base? No civilians at all work on base? No amount of traffic comes through that would require a larger gas station or at least a drive-thru? Even if they’re flying in scientists from Nellis Air Force Base every day, as some believe, the stuff has to get there. Are they flying toilet paper and vending machine snacks in, too? Flying whole hunks of spacecraft in?
It makes sense for a testing ground, which we can all agree exists around the little spot on the map marked Area 51. It doesn’t make sense for a functioning base with top scientists and military generals working on chunks of alien spacecraft and hitherto unknown elements.
Exhibit C: It’s Just Hangin’ Out
Do you know where the NSA is? It’s inside Ft Meade. Now, the people who live and work on Ft Meade can’t just stroll into the NSA. There’s a whole separate set of gates and security officers and guns you have to get past, but it’s there. This is, in part, because the infrastructure is there. It actually takes a lot to keep a base going, especially one that requires high levels of security. And the kind of people who work at the NSA are the kind of people you want to retain – so they have to have a nice place to live and work. They need to be able to bring their families with them when they relocate to work there. They have to have some quality of life.
This is true of almost all the super-secret, high-security shit the US Government is doing. They are tucked away neatly inside a gated and well-secured base inside another gated and well-secured base.
By contrast, this is what the back gate of Area 51 (on the helpfully named Back Gate Rd.) looks like:
There’s a little guard shack, and we’re supposed to believe that if you blow past this gate, there’s a second gate with heavier security. But … this doesn’t pass the smell test. While having a drink at the Little A’Le’Inn, we were told that, “If you drive up to the back gate, they’ll just blow a horn at you.” Tons of tourists and conspiracy theorists have done just that. People brazenly take photos of the sign that says not to take pictures. When the idiots who “stormed Area 51” showed up and ran at the gate, they didn’t even put up an extra barricade. It’s harder to get into the National Parks during daylight hours than it would be to blow past this thing.
Exhibit D: It’s An Amusement Park
The last and perhaps most obvious evidence that Area 51 isn’t home to our nation’s most protected and prized secrets is the fact that it’s a tourist attraction. When you get to Rachel, it starts to feel like a horror movie where everyone in the town is trying to manipulate you into going into the orchard where you’ll be sacrificed to the elder god – but it’s just the rickety old gate with a guard shack.
As mentioned before, the location of the back gate is so “secret” that the road it is on is named “Back Gate Road” on Google Maps. Every stop along the Extraterrestrial Highway is Area 51 themed. There’s a weird little field on the way to the back gate that also warns you not to take pictures because super secret stuff is going on.
Ask anyone who has been to the gate what their experience was like – it’s all security theater. The guards don’t jump up and draw weapons. They let people have a little fun for a few minutes, give them a low-stakes warning, and let them giggle and flee like a haunted house at the county fair. Tourists drive up to that gate all the time, and I could not find a single reference to someone being harmed as a result.
The melodrama is never more apparent than when Netflix calls on Colonel Cavan Craddock for their documentary, Trainwreck: Storm Area 51. The colonel speaks like he’s never met a PR person in his life. He claims they had no way of knowing who was a serious threat and who was not – this is supposed to be a top secret military base. They don’t have anyone in intelligence? No one can see who is posting Shrek memes and who is posting links to ammunition. Really?
He never once mentions the words “crowd control” or “de-escalation.” He tells this story as if the goofballs who showed up at Area 51’s back gate that day had tried to go past that little red and white arm, they would have been immediately mowed down by gunfire. I call bullshit. He also claims it cost the Air Force $11 million.
Well, call me Jerry McGuire because I want you to show me the money, Colonel Craddock. $11 million on what? It wasn’t on extra intel, since you said you had no idea what was going to happen. It wasn’t on additional security, because obviously Area 51 already has all these guys on hand … right? Not only that, but it sure didn’t look like there were that many extra guys around to handle the hordes of … less than 200 people.
But it sure sounds serious to have a real, live Air Force colonel telling everyone watching their favorite trashy docuseries that whatever is happening at Area 51 is so serious, so secret, that they’ll murder you for even putting a toe over the line. They won’t even tell you to step back first.
So, What’s The Point?
Whether the US Government has alien spacecraft or little green men isn’t what we’re discussing here. They definitely have projects they don’t want us to know about because if we know, Russia and China know, too.
If you keep all the UFO crackpots and anti-government conspiracy theorists sneaking around Area 51 at night, getting a spotlight shone in their eyes before they scurry off giggling, everyone stays happy. Well, except Russia and China, I guess.
I haven’t been on Area 51 with a little camera or flown a drone over it. I can’t show you empty hangars or guarantee you that they’ve removed anything of value from the place, if anything was ever there. There’s a test site there, and who knows what kind of weapons or vehicles they’re testing. But I don’t believe they’re building anything there, or reverse engineering alien spacecraft. And if you think about it, it makes a whole lot more sense than a fully operational super-secret alien base operating in the middle of the Nevada desert with no security, no infrastructure, and no civilian support.
