On Area 51

After recently researching my update to the Nevada Enemies page, I realized that since everyone else in the sharing of their opinion business says something about this mysterious federal facility, I might as well get my two cents worth in. A refreshing change from all of the child support peonage hoopla.

The obvious facts are not in dispute. Area 51 is the popular designation for a federal facility located on Nellis Air Force Base, just east of the boundary between Nye and Lincoln Counties, at the south end of a dry lakebed called Groom Lake. The Soviets sold to the world one of its photographs of the facility, and the rumor was confirmed: There is an airstrip and a bunch of buildings located there of which the federal government previously denied existence. Since then, a number of photographs taken by satellite imaging companies not controlled by the United States have become public, along with a few select U.S. government images. Our own government has finally admitted what the photographs reveal: we have an airbase at Groom Lake.

The most recent photographs show two long runways running northwest-southeast with taxiways connecting them to some large hangers. One runway is over 19,000 feet in length and crosses the west side of the lakebed. A newer runway parallel to the old one, and further from the hangers and buildings, is about 11,000 feet long and stops short of the lakebed. In addition to the large hangers, there are some aprons out in the open where not so secret aircraft, such as C-130 transports and even commercial aircraft may park. There is a large warehouse facility that can serve 53 foot trailers such as commonly used in the trucking industry. There are other buildings that apparently serve as offices, cafeterias, and on base housing. A baseball field is visible, the 90 foot by 90 foot diamond providing scale. There are some apparent fuel storage facilities. A few roads connect the site to other parts of Nellis Air Force Base. A substantial concrete highway runs from the north side of the lakebed to an eastern gate of the base on the Lincoln County side, connecting up with the Extraterrestrial Highway. Publicly available maps that do not show the facility at Groom Lake show an abandoned mine in the hills north of the lakebed, from the days before there was a military base in this part of Nevada.

One name for the basin in which this facility is located is Emigrant Valley. Wagon trains came through the Groom Lake basin, over Groom Pass and across Yucca Flat and through Death Valley, and on to the California settlements.

Another fact that cannot be reasonably disputed is that the level of fallout from nuclear tests is probably higher than anywhere else in the United States outside of Yucca Flat. When the bombs were shot off on Yucca Flat, the winds were blowing from the West-Southwest. For obvious political and public safety reasons, the Atomic Energy Commission did not care to have the mushroom clouds blown over to California or to Las Vegas. But detonations during low velocity winds that tended toward the lightly populated regions of Lincoln County and southwestern Utah were considered acceptable at the time.

So Groom Lake got the brunt of the fallout.

Still, after 40 years since the most recent above ground nuclear explosions, working at Groom Lake should be no more dangerous than working in a uranium mine. Well, maybe. Some unburned plutonium in the fallout might give the more finicky among us the heebie-jeebies, but such people would not be working at Groom Lake anyway.

So what was the facility at Groom Lake used for?

Classified Top Secret, of course. Area 51 was allegedly began by Lockheed's Kelly Johnson. The conventional wisdom is that when a new experimental aircraft design was concocted at Lockheed's Skunk Works or other such facility, the parts would be loaded onto trucks and into air transports and hauled to Groom Lake. There, the aircraft were assembled and flight tested. The runway runs in such directions so that whichever way the aircraft took off it would have at least 40 miles of straight line flight before it left the restricted airspace over the base. If the pilot kept the plane low, civilians on the ground outside the base could not see it because of the surrounding hills. If the pilot exceeded the allowed ceiling or left the base airspace, then the Air Force's Project Blue Book would receive the UFO reports. Aircraft developed this way are widely believed to include the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Stealth Fighter, and the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

Why keep the base top secret? The aircraft, once put into production and used, are no longer secret. They are even paraded before the public at air shows. One answer to that question is that one primary goal of the American military since World War II is deterrence. When deterrence fails, Kick Ass. If President Bush conquers Iraq, it is because deterrence failed and the World Trade Center came down, we are in Kick Ass mode. To those who believe Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with September 11, President Bush apparently believes otherwise. If he appears to be ignoring Osama bin Laden, it might be to get him complacent. If Mr. bin Laden gets reckless and overconfident, exposes himself unnecessarily, a CIA sniper can send him to his 72 virgins. For both deterrence and Kick Ass, having something up our sleeve that no one knows about is useful. Not only do adversaries need to plan for what they know we have, they have to account for what we have yet to reveal.

Thus the secrecy of Area 51.

About those rumors that we analyze the remains of alien spacecraft and try to reverse engineer them and build working models that we might test fly: If the U.S military ever came into possession of a truly alien artifact, Groom Lake might be the place to analyze it. It already has a culture of secrecy and orders are orders. Nellis Air Force Base publicly declares that it has a Threat Training Facility, and lists some of the foreign made weapons in its possession. The list is not comprehensive, there can be no doubt that it has some foreign weapons not listed or otherwise revealed.

Would any of those secretly owned foreign weapons include alien artifacts?

Bob Lazar is famous for saying that he worked on such an alien artifact while at Groom Lake, or more accurately inside a cave south of Groom Lake. There are several possibilities that arise from his story:

1) He's making it all up for fun and profit. Sadly, this might be the most likely possibility, what with his own website and all.

2) He's following orders in participation of a well conceived disinformation campaign. Probably not, the "well conceived" part brings laughter. Not so well conceived, too obviously transparent to anybody who thinks, but then most people do not, is more likely. After all, somebody during the Reagan Administration dreamed up the White Train. No doubt they split their guts with laughter every time they watched a news report of protesters laying down in front of the White Train causing deputy sheriffs to drag them off to allow the Train to proceed. I found those reports pretty funny myself.

3) He's a nutcase, having suffered a nervous breakdown somewhere along the way. Given the military culture of secrecy, apparently irrational orders, mind games, disinformation, never knowing what is true and what is lie, because it is a mixture of both, and even practical jokes like the White Train, it is not surprising that people who work with the military and with military contractors sometimes go bonkers.

4) The "alien artifact" is a cleverly constructed prop designed to see if Mr. Lazar would blab about it. He did. Thus, Mr. Lazar is not given anything real to work on. It would not be the first time that trick has been pulled.

5) He might actually be telling the truth.

Support for this last possibility is that if the U.S. government ever came into possession of an alien artifact, Groom Lake might be the place they would take it for analysis. It's quiet, out of the way, and on the back side of nowhere. Lots of security and secrecy. Las Vegas is there for R&R, the hookers hear all kinds of stories, have no idea what to believe and therefore believe none of it, the truth is still safely secret! Where Mr. Lazar loses what tiny amount of credibility he may have is that he does not mention the one thing that should be obvious to anybody who has worked on a car, or otherwise performed mechanical repair work on any machine of any kind: If what you have is the wreckage of a suspected alien spacecraft CHECK THE FASTENERS FOR THREAD AND SIZE OF HEX HEAD. If inch based or Metric, it is of Earth origin.

Duh.

Aliens would use their own weights and measures. I hear that the folks at Zeta Reticuli hate the Metric System even more than we Americans! Must be that Base 12 number system of theirs. They don't use English inches either, so forget about National Fine threaded fasteners like we use in our aircraft construction.

There are some other obvious tricks, such as checking the isotope mix of any aluminum, copper, or iron used in the construction to see if it is possible the materials came from Earth ores. If not, then the metals came from ores mined elsewhere unless somebody went to a LOT of trouble to change the isotope mix of the materials. But checking the fasteners for Metric or inch based threading is quick, cheap, and easy to do.

Of course, some Earthling could just invent a measuring system complete with his own fastener thread standards, and then make a bunch of nuts and bolts and use them to build an "alien artifact". He might try to recover his investment by passing it off as a "genuine piece of the Roswell Wreck". True enough, if he took it to Roswell and wrecked it. While at it, he could invent a strange looking writing system and cover the thing with "inspection plates" and "warning labels" written in such "alien language". Just don't use Ancient Egyptian or Linear B, too many people would recognize it.

That's the problem with speculating on how to test the authenticity of a claimed "alien artifact". It generates suggestions on how to make a better hoax.

Funny how I never hear checking the fasteners against known Metric and inch based standards discussed on Art Bell or the X-files. Such a test is so easy, there is not much of a story there.

As for living aliens? Considering that the primary purpose of Groom Lake is to secretly test experimental aircraft designs, it is highly unlikely such visitors would be taken there, however friendly they would appear to be. Hostile aliens would just blast the place. They would not be secret on account they will have revealed themselves by blasting every airstrip from which an aircraft could take off or land. We would be like the Plains Indians: sign the treaties offered or die. We could put up a fight, as the Sioux did, but we would have to capitulate or be exterminated. Neutral aliens might want to observe us without revealing their existence, but I cannot understand that once their presence is revealed to our governments, they would not want to let the rest of us know they exist. Friendly aliens who come in peace would tell ALL of us of their existence. It would be ridiculous for them to sneak around.

As for dead bodies of aliens? There are better places than Groom Lake for autopsies. Bases in Alaska, Canadian Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctica have the advantage of cold storage in addition to extreme remoteness of location. Any such place is better than Groom Lake, Nevada for such a purpose. We would be so concerned about the potential danger posed by alien micro-organisms, we might take the safe route and burn the bodies to a crisp. Any crematorium would do for such purpose, the undertaker would take his fee and keep it quiet. H.G. Wells wrote in War of the Worlds that the Martians invading England were destroyed by our bacteria. That they destroyed England first did not save them from our pathogens. Who can say that an alien bug would be less destructive to us? If we don't burn the bodies, then Groom Lake is too close to Las Vegas and its globe trotting tourists for the comfort of anyone concerned about a possible alien pathogen.

Thus my take on Area 51, just another military base, Kelly Johnson's little playground for his Skunk Works products. No possibility of live aliens or alien bodies. A very slight possibility, but highly unlikely, that an alien artifact is there.

But we can have a lot of fun joking about it and pretending.

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