8 Mysteries About Area 51 That The Government Still Hasn't Clarified

It’s unknown exactly why Area 51 is called Area 51. Per Dictionary.com, diagrams dating back to the 1960s identify the facility as such; the designation is thought to have been connected to the numbered grid system the former Atomic Energy Commission used to identify the various parts of the Nevada Test Site (now known as the Nevada National Security Site). The problem, though, is that this grid only went from one to 30 — not all the way up to 51. Plus, Area 51 doesn’t border any areas numbered 50 or 52; it borders Area 15. Although some have speculated that the 51 comes from flipping the 15, it’s still not clear where the term “Area 51” comes from or precisely when it was first put into use.

The actual base appears to be quite small — on the surface, at least. Although it’s situated on more than 90,000 acres, according to How Stuff Works, all you can really see is a hangar, a guard shack, housing, a mess hall, offices, shelters, radar antennae, and some runways (it is an airport, technically speaking). But many folks believe that the base is actually massive; we just can’t see it — because the rest of it is underground.

This theory has never been confirmed.

The security guards who patrol Area 51 and the surrounding Nellis Air Force Base aren’t military. We know that much. That’s why they’re colloquially known as “cammo dudes” — they wear desert camouflage gear and they’re heavily armed, but they’re not actually soldiers. They’re probably defense contractors, but we don’t know for sure. Indeed, according to Area51.org, they’re actually not allowed to tell you who their employer is even if you ask. As the New York Daily News pointed out in 2016, they’re “shrouded in nearly as much secrecy as the… military testing site they protect” — and, of course, no one’s talking.

People who work at Area 51 have an unusual commute: They’re flown in from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas on a fleet of planes operated for the U.S. Air Force that fly under the name “Janet.” But although “Janet” is said to have a number of meanings — options range from “Joint Air Network For Employee Transportation” to the jokey, more colloquial “Just Another Non-Existent Terminal,” according to Business Insider — it’s never been made entirely clear exactly where the name comes from. Personally, I kind of like to think that there’s a The Good Place-style Janet running the fleet, but that’s just me.

Exactly what the government uses the facility for remains unknown. Thanks to the declassified report, we do know that in the past, experimental aircraft testing was carried out there; the testing of the U-2, for example, is probably the most well-known. But although the facility is still active today, no one really knows what’s going on there right now. Experts and historians such as Peter Merlin and Chris Pocock have some ideas — Merlin told Popular Mechanics in 2017 that he suspects it has something to do with “improved stealth technology, advanced weapons, electronic warfare systems and … unmanned aerial vehicles,” while Pocock thought it was more along the lines of “classified aircraft, more exotic forms of radio communication, directed energy weapons, and lasers” — but they’re just theories for now.

Despite the Roswell UFO incident having occurred in 1947, Area 51 didn’t capture America’s collective imagination until Bob Lazar stepped forward in 1989 claiming to have worked on projects involving reverse engineering alien technology while employed at the facility. The story itself was controversial enough, of course; even more controversial, though, were his qualifications: He claimed to have attended both Cal Tech and MIT and to have worked at the Los Alamos laboratory, but no records of his having attended Cal Tech or MIT have ever been found. Additionally, Los Alamos “denied [Lazar’s] testimony that he worked there” and said they had “no records at all” of him, according to the Daily Beast — but other evidence was located that seems to suggest he was telling the truth: A 1982 phone book for the lab included his name “among the other scientists,” while a newspaper clipping also dated 1982 described him as “a physicist at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility.”

For his part, Lazar has never wavered from his story. But, uh… what gives? About… everything here?

On Sept. 5, 2017, Schultz crashed while flying an aircraft at the Nevada Test and Training Range. He died from injuries sustained in the crash. But the U.S. Air Force didn’t make the crash public until three days afterwards — an uncommonly long time, as Popular Mechanics pointed out: Other, recent, similar incidents were reported after just a day.

Plus, the government has refused to identify the kind of aircraft Schultz — an aerospace engineer with six degrees who became an experienced pilot later in life after receiving corrective eye surgery — was flying when he went down. (Their exact words were, “Information about the type of aircraft involved is classified and not releasable," per Popular Mechanics.) The lack of transparency surrounding the crash and Schultz’s death has led many to believe that the aircraft was of foreign origin and had been… uh… acquired by the U.S. government.

According to a New York Times report from May 2019, Navy pilots reported seeing “strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind,” with “no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes” reaching “30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds” with almost daily frequency from 2014 to 2015 — and we still don’t know what the objects actually were. To be fair, these sightings occurred on the East Coast — just about as far away from Area 51 as you can get without leaving the United States — but, as NPR observed recently, the sightings “[stoked] anew theories about extraterrestrial life hiding at Area 51.”

Will we ever really know the deal with Area 51? Probably not. In the meantime, though, let's, uh, not storm it. No amount of Naruto running will get you past all the security there. Just sayin'.