AREA 51 AND RELATED CONTROVERSIES
All unlabeled images are from www.photobucket.com and are all public domain. Other pictures on this site are also public domain and are cited.
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AREA 51 AND RELATED CONTROVERSIES All unlabeled images are from www.photobucket.com and are all public domain. Other pictures on this site are also public domain and are cited.
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Area 51, the most secret military base, is making new secrets each day. They have had nuclear weapons testing but want to eliminate nuclear weapons testing. When they do their nuclear weapons testing, they would take a nuclear device and test it to see what it does. They do their weapons testing at night, so Russian satellites don’t know what they are doing. Nuclear weapons deteriorate if they just sit around for a certain amount of time when they are not tested or used. All of their nuclear weapons have different names. Each weapon’s name is a code to what size it is. There was a five and a half megaton device buried 5500 feet below the desert ground. That device is equivalent to five and a half million tons of TNT. It was the biggest device exploded in the United States. Nuclear weapons’ testing is very risky and hazardous. There was a weapons’ storage added to Area 51 in the 1980’s. Area 51 is located in Lincoln County, Nevada and it is shaped by some mountain ranges. Groom Lake is a place inside the middle of the mountain ranges and the air base lies on the southwest corner of the lake. The air base has two concrete runways and one of them extends onto the lake bed. There are also two unprepared runways on the lake. Area 51 shares a border with the Yucca Flats region. The nuclear weapons storage facility is located in the Yucca Mountains; it is 40 miles southwest of Groom Lake. Area 51 is connected to an internal road network. Paved roads lead to a town called Mercury northwest and west to the Yucca Flats. Groom Lake Road runs through the Jumbled Hills and it used to be a track leading to the mines in Groom Basin. There is a winding road that takes it past a security checkpoint then Gloom Lake Road lowers eastward to the floor of Tikaboo Valley. Then it passes dirt-road entrances to small ranches. After that it joins up with State Highway 375, now renamed Extraterrestrial Highway. Area 51 is protected by radar stations, helicopters, armed guards, and buried movement sensors. The base doesn’t even appear on public United States government maps. The civil aviation chart for Nevada just shows a large restricted area. The tourists that get into the base get a $600 fine. Tourists could also receive visits from FBI agents after. Area 51 covers an area equal to Rhode Island and Connecticut combined and it has more than 1,850 federal civilian workers. Their Yucca Mountain project is to open an underground repository to get rid of used nuclear fuel. The Department of Energy employs a total of 448 people in the Las Vegas area. Area 51 is 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. There is a black mailbox that is on the crossroads and it marks the road to Area 51. There are few local jobs at Area 51. There are 2,000 civilian employees of Defense, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Energy there. Employees take flights from Las Vegas airfields to the base whenever they need to work there. There are 166 employees of Defense and Army and there are 156 Environmental Protection Agency workers. There are four hangars that are visible off of the runway. It is believed that Hangar 18 holds alien bodies and alien technology. There were bigger secrets when the Air Force bought 9,000 acres of land around the base. Area 51 has a total of seven different runways. One of the runways is now currently closed though. The closed runway is also the longest one with a total length of 7,093 meters or 23,270 feet, not including the stop way. The others are two asphalt runways, one at a total length of 3,658 meters and the other at 1,652 meters. There are four other runways located on the Salt Lake. Two of them are both 3,489 meters and the other two are both 3,057 meters. Those are the only runways in Area 51. These runways are important so they can test their airplanes and fly in and out of the base. The Federal Government does admit Area 51’s existence, but they will not give away any information about it. The area surrounding Groom Lake is off limits to all civilians and normal military air traffic. The area is protected by radar stations and unauthorized personnel are quickly taken away. Even the military pilots training risk disciplinary action if they go into the “box” surrounding Groom Lake’s airspace. The perimeter security is provided by private security guards in uniforms that patrol in desert camouflage. They drive around in Jeep Cherokees and other vehicles or champagne-colored Ford F-150 Pickups. The guards are armed with M16s but there have never been any violent encounters with Area 51 observers. Usually, the guards follow observers to the perimeter then use the radio to call in the sheriff. Deadly force is used if violators who attempt to enter the secured area fail to halt, and/or listen to warnings. The federal property within the base does not have taxes, but the facilities owned by private contractors do have taxes. Area 51 supposedly has a taxable value of $2 million to the Lincoln County tax assessor, who is unable to enter the area to collect the taxes. There is a new hangar being built by the Area 51 South Ramp near the north end of Runway 12/30. It is about 1.5 times the size of Hangar 18, which will no longer be the biggest hangar in Area 51. There is a large dirt mound that blocks most of the view of the new hangar. This is mostly used to hide whatever will eventually occur in the hangar when it is finished. The estimated size of the new hangar is 200 x 400 feet and 100 feet tall. The construction started between January 17, 2006 and June 10, 2007. Area 51 has many different names. Groom Lake is the name of the geographic feature that describes the test site. It is a dry lakebed with a surface of hardness used for aircraft operations. It has some marked airstrips but most of the uses for the entire surface is considered as an active runway for the air traffic control tower. Paradise Ranch is another name used for Area 51. It was suggested for the test site in 1955. The name has been used for many years as generations of workers passed it on. Watertown is the official name of the test site that was named in 1956. It was taken from the name of a CIA director’s hometown. Area 51 is the name applied for the land seizure of June 20, 1958. This name describes a 38,400-acre block of land surrounding the airfield and much of the lakebed. Dreamland is the radio call sign for the base, and it was introduced in the late 1960s. It referred to a large airspace surrounding Area 51 and parts of the Nevada test site and Nellis Range. Some people think Area 51 is just a dumping ground for toxic substances and if it is, Area 51 could be very hazardous to health. Some former workers have filed lawsuits for injuries, deaths of other workers, or family members at Area 51. The government is protected from those lawsuits though because of national security. One time, the government didn’t even pay attention to the existence of Area 51. That provides more information that there is a government conspiracy to cover up anything that has happened there. Highly toxic chemicals were dumped into open pits and burned, and the workers at Area 51 were exposed to the fumes. Helen Frost, the person with the most recent death at Area 51, died in 1988. Her body revealed high levels of dangerous chemicals and toxic fumes, which were caused to exposure of the fumes at the base. In 1996, the lawsuit was finally dismissed by a Federal judge with the military’s national security privilege. The security force that patrols the outside of Area 51 is people known as “cammo dudes”. They are a mixture of the air force and the employees of a private contractor. They are protected by the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, which is the only local police force in the United States that acts for a secret Federal organization. The Cammo Dudes follow tourists that walk across the marked military border near the Extraterrestrial Highway. If caught, the tourists are turned over to the Sheriff’s Department for the typical $600 fine, which is said earlier. By dealing with the local authorities, the Cammo Dudes avoid having to identify themselves or appear in court. The Basecamp Airfield is an airstrip and support facilities 10 miles northeast of Warm Springs. This is a secret facility that is in plain sight. The facility is operated by a government contractor because the Air Force Flight Test Center helps with testing programs at Area 51. Basecamp is in line with the runway at Groom Lake, making it a possible emergency field for aborted take-offs of test aircraft from there. The Tonopah Test Range is a military range and air base in the Nellis Range 30 miles southeast of the town of Tonopah. The Range was the secret testing ground for the F-117A stealth fighter during its development. It was also used by the Sandia Laboratories for the development of delivery systems for atomic weapons. Even though many secret tests have gone on there, the main base at the range is visible from public land and it has a sign on the side of the highway. Sources- Book Title: dreamland Author: Phil Patton Copyright date: 1998 Publishing company: villand books Book Title: area 51- the dreamland chronicles Author: David Darlington Copyright date: 1997 Publishing company: Henry Holt and Company Inc Book Title: what really happened at Roswell? Author Kathleen Krull Publishing company: Harper Collins publishers
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