Do you know what is Area 51? Recently, a lot of interest arose in the place due to which a viral Facebook event, “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” is due to take place on September 20. This comes even as the person who came up with the idea called it a joke.
Now, what really is Area 51, exactly?
The famous moniker for a United States Air Force base is Area 51, which alludes to a geographical region. It is located 85 miles (135 kilometers) north of Las Vegas in Groom Lake, a dry lake bed in the Nevada Desert.
What happens inside is a mystery as warning signs, technological surveillance, and armed guards keep the general people at bay.
Flying above Area 51 is also prohibited, even though the site is now visible on satellite pictures. The base has runways that are up to 12,000 feet in length (2.3 miles/3.7 kilometers).
The Nevada Test Site, where US atomic weapons were tested from the 1950s until the 1990s, and the Nevada Test and Training Range are both adjacent to the facility.
Over 2.9 million acres of land make up the entire range.
What is the purpose of Area 51 creation?
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union established Area 51 as a research and validation site for aircraft such as the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance planes.
Even though it opened in 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency only acknowledged its existence in August 2013.
Barack Obama was also the first US president to publicly acknowledge Area 51 four months after the CIA’s disclosure.
Is Area 51 home to aliens?
Many conspiracy theories have been fueled by the secrecy surrounding Area 51. The most famous story is that the location is home to an alien spaceship and its pilots’ bodies, which crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. However, the US authorities say that there were no aliens and the fallen device was a weather balloon.
A man called Robert Lazar claimed to have worked on space aliens inside Area 51 in 1989. He is reported to have seen forensic photos of aliens. Many people claim to have seen UFOs above or near the site, while others say they had been abducted by aliens, and even experimented on, before being returned to Earth.
According to the BBC, Area 51’s association with aliens may have served as a useful distraction for the intelligence agencies.
So what will happen if people “storm” Area 51? Matty Roberts, 20, created a Facebook event proposing that “we can run faster than their bullets. Let’s see them aliens”.
Two million people said they were “going”, although a linked festival was moved because of fears of a “possible humanitarian disaster.”
Later, notices posted around Area 51 stated that intruders “will not be tolerated.”
