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00:00Area 51 was built in 1955.
00:03Over the years, it's also been known as Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, Groom Lake, and Homie Airport.
00:10If you wanted to visit, you'd have to travel deep into the harsh and blistering Nevada desert.
00:15But of course, the official line is very much against that kind of thing.
00:19Area 51 is one of the most secretive locations on the entire planet.
00:24And yet, it's also one of the most well-known sites in modern pop culture.
00:28Despite all the governmental claims otherwise,
00:31it's said that Area 51 houses extraterrestrial tech and true alien life.
00:39But even if that were true… then why, exactly, would that be?
00:49The official line on Area 51, the existence of which was only formally acknowledged by
00:53the US government in 2013, is that it serves as a testing ground for top-secret aircraft.
00:58The first planes it developed were the U-2 spy planes,
01:01and it's also famous for being the home of the F-117 Nighthawk.
01:05In the public consciousness, however, Area 51 has long served as an ultra-classified
01:09laboratory full of extraterrestrial specimens and equipment. Down-flying saucers, reverse-engineered
01:15technology, and perhaps even aliens themselves all linger within the confines of Groom Lake.
01:20In fact, the connection between Area 51 and aliens is so prevalent that the closest major
01:25road was renamed the Extraterrestrial Highway because of the large number of UFO sightings
01:30reported along it. While these sightings can be explained away by weird-looking planes
01:34like the F-117 Nighthawk, the belief that the US military is harbouring alien life persists.
01:40So, where did that belief come from? Current stories around Area 51 are generally a conflation
01:45of various other modern, alien mythologies from the US… and not all of them are even
01:49centred all that close to the base, like the Roswell Incident in 1947.
01:54Some have suggested that the remnants of the Roswell Crash, officially a weather balloon,
01:58unofficially a spaceship, were taken all the way from New Mexico to Nevada,
02:02thus sparking the interest in Area 51. But the root of this particular folklore lies elsewhere,
02:07with the real event to kick-start UFO culture today being a sighting from the pilot Kenneth
02:12Arnold, who said he encountered nine UFOs while flying near Mount Rainier in Washington.
02:17This sighting was made on June 24th, 1947, a few days before Roswell gained its infamy,
02:23as the case marked the first-ever uses of the phrases flying saucer and flying disc in reports,
02:28words which are today used exclusively to refer to the archetypal UFO shape.
02:33Arnold's story and his explanations that the discs were of extraterrestrial origin
02:37captured the attention of the American presses, so much so that the same phrase emerged during
02:42the now-heightened news coverage of the Roswell Crash, which didn't actually hit the papers until
02:46July. Shortly after all of that, and especially once the US started testing U-2s in the mid-fifties,
02:52UFO sightings shot up in Nevada especially… and it wasn't long before theorists put two and two
02:57together to suggest that it maybe was all connected. Maybe Area 51 really was an alien hub.
03:03The base in the back and beyond seemed as good a place as any for aliens to stop by,
03:07and an even better place for top-secret government work to take place. News coverage is only one
03:12half of the equation where UFOs in the Nevada desert are concerned, though. The other half is
03:17Hollywood. By the end of the forties, various sources were claiming that alien bodies had
03:21been recovered from flying saucer crash sites all across the United States… and in 1950 the film
03:27The Flying Saucer was released, a B-movie that became the first film to cover the concept.
03:32As soon as the idea of UFOs and government cover-ups hit the mainstream, Hollywood had
03:36its next big thing, and by the early 1960s the alien legend was a bankable home run for sci-fi
03:41producers. Over the years since then, the alien boom has triggered a pop-cultural feedback loop,
03:46where more media means bigger audiences means more people who learn and begin to believe in
03:51the subject. With Area 51 and UFOs, it's modern folklore being written in front of our eyes,
03:56fuelled by our fascination with science, space and technology, in much the same way as the vampire
04:01myth has resurfaced time and time again as a knock-on effect and variation of Bram Stoker's
04:06Dracula. But, still, why should news stories from all across America and a slew of Tinseltown
04:11movies mean that aliens actually would target Area 51, in the middle of the desert specifically?
04:16What makes it so special? Well, the Silver State does have more mysteries up its sleeve to feed
04:21the conspiracy than just the existence of Area 51. The Nevada Triangle, for one, has intrigued
04:27people for years, as the site of two thousand supposed plane disappearances. The Triangle is
04:32a large region stretching from Las Vegas to Reno to Fresno, California, covering much of the Sierra
04:37Nevada Mountains. Like the Bermuda Triangle, its name was inspired by, it's notorious for strange
04:42vanishings and unrecovered planes, making it a popular source for conspiracy theorists.
04:47Area 51 is along the boundaries of the Nevada Triangle, and many of the people who are said
04:51to have disappeared there have supposedly never resurfaced, so there's that. But why even America
04:57at all, though? There have been significant UFO sightings made outside of the United States,
05:02after all, with the UK and France leading the way for UFO reports across the rest of the world.
05:07However, there's often some kind of US influence not too far away. One particularly famous UFO
05:12encounter in the UK is the Rendlesham Forest Incident in 1980, appropriately nicknamed
05:17Britain's Roswell. The sighting says that a flying saucer landed in the woods, shortly after Christmas.
05:22The saucer, though, wasn't actually witnessed by a Brit, but by American Air Force personnel
05:27stationed at the nearby RAF Woodbridge Base. Regardless, the after-effects at Rendlesham have
05:32played out much like Area 51, but on a smaller scale, with a high number of UFO sightings reported
05:37even today. So, is this because otherworldly aliens just really want to visit this particular
05:42corner of England? Or is it just another example of alien excitement brought on by Western media?
05:47Pine Gap is a similar place of interest. Widely dubbed Australia's Area 51,
05:52it's a surveillance installation deep within the outback that's also jointly used by the
05:56United States military and is also rumoured to be housing aliens. It should be said that
06:01America isn't always directly involved, though. There are areas in Russia with similar legends
06:06surrounding them, like the Soviet missile development site Kapustin Yar, and the
06:10mountainous town of Mezhgorye where nuclear weapons were once stored and tested. Perhaps
06:14Russian sites being linked to similar mysteries shouldn't be that surprising, though,
06:18since such facilities were often founded during the Cold War, at a time when it was feared that
06:22seeing strange things in the sky could signal a nuclear attack. Not one other location holds
06:27anywhere near the same status as Area 51, however, whose mere name evokes images of alien autopsies
06:33and exotic propulsion systems. So, if against the odds the UFO sightings in the area are all
06:38absolutely real, then the question remains… why America? Why Nevada? And why Area 51? Is it because
06:45one ship crashed there by accident in the forties and extraterrestrials have been trying to recover
06:49it ever since? Is it because they're actively liaising with the US government specifically to
06:54help them reverse-engineer alien devices, like energy weapons and alternative propulsion techniques?
06:59Or, just maybe, is there something else bright and shiny out there in the desert that draws
07:03millions of human visitors every year? They do say Las Vegas has it all, and it does boast
07:08giant replicas of near enough every single piece of Earth iconography all along the Strip.
07:13Could it be that for all this time tourists haven't been flocking to UFO hotspots,
07:18but UFOs have been flocking to tourist traps? Maybe… but probably not.
07:23In all likelihood, the UFO in the sky over a suspiciously secretive military base motif
07:27is really just a creation of the US mass media, an amalgamation of different contemporary stories
07:33stuck together, made into movies and then turned into legends. All of which means that
07:37Homey Airport in the Nevada desert is as likely or as unlikely a melting pot of extraterrestrial
07:42activity as practically everywhere else. But that's why aliens appear to target Area 51.
07:53What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments,
07:56check out these other clips from Unveiled,
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