this week on the season premiere of BuzzFeed unsolved we investigate area 51 as part of our ongoing investigation into the question are aliens real kind of weird to hear me say aliens instead of ghosts yeah have you said that before this may be the first time it's raid a that is true this is the day that people have gathered together and decided it's a good idea to advance on area 51 I guess and speaking of which if you're watching this now expecting to see footage of us at the raid we didn't go because we like
our head on her shoulders too much fancy boys like us you think we're gonna be out there in the desert marching our house yeah I don't really like chewing on bullets in I don't really know how it transpired no we're shooting this before it happened so God willing everyone is okay what if everything's different now what if they found aliens there what if everybody marched up to it and a gray came out anyway so that's probably how an this is gonna be a stupid episode I think so on November 26th 1954 Allen Dulles the director
of the Central Intelligence Agency entrusted his special assistant Richard Bissell to lead a very secret program with the codename aqua tone love a codename as far as code names go though aqua tone pretty cool what no what would you have called it stop it stop it stop it don't go down there okay that's better okay what would you have called it I got a satisfied with the bit here I got tangled oh man yeah yeah you lost yourself what about purple nurple project purple nurple yeah cuz then people are gonna get too wrapped up things
like what could that possibly be [Laughter] it was the beginning of the cold or an aqua tones mission was to build a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that could fly over the Soviet Union undetected the plane would need to fly higher than any other plane had flown before and the team would need to put it together in complete secrecy that aircraft came to be known as the u2 we could fly really hot higher than any other aircraft before it and feel like being up that high you might get a little oh yeah if there's any man who
knows how to be higher than any other man its bono baby it's go to his u2's death once built the team needed to find somewhere they could test the aircraft without being discovered on April 12th 1955 Bissell along with Air Force officer Colonel Osmond Ritland Clarence Kelly Johnson of Lockheed skunkworks division and Lockheed test pilot Tony LaVere surveyed options in the sparsely populated deserts of the American West they honed in on a site near a Nevada salt flat called groom Lake a piece of land better known by its map location area 51 but the u2
isn't the top-secret aircraft hidden inside area 51 that's captivated people's imaginations this top secret government base has been dogged with theories of extraterrestrial phenomenon for years one theory even posited that the base had perhaps been built at the site of a top-secret crash and that the US was analyzing these spaceships in order to reverse-engineer alien technology to develop better man-made aircraft perhaps the most famous proponent of this theory is a man who claimed his job was to do exactly that oh I think that if we were reverse engineering aircraft planes would be better now especially
because it's the Cold War right it's the Cold War yeah they're trying to show off their technological prowess mmm why don't they trot in that thing out having parades around it no fill out the goo tank sometimes I think when you're in a battle for supremacy though it helps to have an upper hand and the way to have an upper hand is to do so under the veil of secrecy mm the best strike is the one they don't see coming and if we're out there parading around our famous little stealth airplanes not a lot of
secrecy to that on May 12th 1989 klas reporter George Knapp interviewed a man who kept his face hidden from the camera and was identified on-screen only as Dennis Dennis revealed that he briefly worked at s for an outpost facility near area 51 Knapp asked the obscured man quote exactly what's going on up there end quote Dennis answered plainly quote while there's several actually nine flying saucers flying discs that are out there of extraterrestrial origins and they're being tested and basically just analyzed and quote when Knapp pressed about whether or not these mysterious aircraft could have
possibly been made by our own government Dennis shot back quote totally impossible the propulsion system is a gravity propulsion system the power source is an antimatter reactor this technology does not exist at all Denis was later identified as Robert Bob Lazar a senior staff physicist who was recommended for his position at s4 by none other than dr. Edward Teller the man who Co invented the thermonuclear bomb in a televised interview was our provided information on the type of technology he said he had seen as well as sketches identifying what the spacecraft looked like Lazar nicknamed
the craft he allegedly worked on the sport model I think I just truly think if it was revealed if something got out government has aliens most that happens is people make jokes on Twitter for six to twelve hours and that's it and it'll be in the news a little bit here and there but no it'll be hash table trending for a little bit extraterrestrials are monitoring our knowledge of their existence in the wasn't it then they're gonna show up no but show up if they see that we see what their craft looks like it we
see where they see that we see what their weapons are like maybe they think all the jig's up I don't think anybody wants to spend any time here that's oh they just oh that happens who cares I care because I live here yeah but then everyone's dead so nothing matters and that's kind of cool I mean what a privilege you sound like a movie villain right now Lazar said he was motivated to show his face and give his true name in the later interviews to ensure his safety quote insurance is the true motivation behind this
end quote in his initial anonymous interview he mentioned the things he'd faced from the government quote I've been threatened with being charged with espionage I've had my life threatened by them my wife's life threatened by them and I mean I don't know where else you can go from there end quote in a 2018 documentary Lazar was asked quote would you take it all back and just be Bob the jet car guy and never have done this if you can or are you glad you had the experience end quote Lazar answered quote yeah that's hard to
say I don't know I think I'd lean towards not at this point in my life I'd probably lean towards not saying anything and what anyone should ask my intent yeah with the nickname Bob the jet car guy it's pretty good that could be like oh no like a polo or something or a business card did you just do that as an excuse to rub your left nipple again no but as you say that now I think the logo would look really good like right around here this is my least favorite bit we've ever done what
been bob lazar risked everything to tell what he believed to be the truth quote that in the late 1980s the US government had recovered alien spacecraft several of them and the technology in the Nevada desert that they were keeping quiet and analyzing that's a fact end quote let's say you worked at NASA which I think you could have done if you wanted to thank you Wow thank you once again just I did love math sure school whatnot whatever it's fun to do my cat yeah you're at NASA you go to you you have your lunch
pill you're walking in almost glad wearing the white shirt the horn-rimmed glasses or whatever you're walking around you're thinking about what you're gonna do at work that day you look down at your watch what are you seeing the reflection and ice cream but it's a really nice watch I know yeah it's a nice watch you're seeing a glint in the watch okay what's that I've got such a great job you see like a door that's slightly ajar there's a glow coming from it you open it up you see a spacecraft holy hell and a little
guy in there going there dancing the Billy Eilish you see that you think what the hell did I just see I need to tell people I'm not even thinking that um tweetment and I'm streaming now what do I have yes significant social media you don't have any following at this point cuz you're shame a day in the timeline where you're at NASA oh I don't even want to live but is it a fact or are these alien spacecraft just ongoing sightings of the u2 the high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that started this way back in 1955 a
CIA report that was more fully Declassified in two thousand thirteen states that the u2 program was responsible for several UFO sightings around area 51 in fact there is a substantial increase in reported sightings of UFOs right around the same time the you two test flights began in area 51 which the CIA documents call quote an unexpected side effect end quote and while it might be easy for the government to explain UFO reports as u2 sightings Bob claims he didn't just see the alien spacecraft but the crew as well just sounds very convenient very convenient well
I saw the crew I saw their little butts I saw their little smiles I saw one of them singing in the shower saw one of them eating a bag of Doritos it saw one of them kissing his wife in a crater I don't like what's is going I saw one of them choosing to do some other stuff what kind of stuff some sex stuff in March 1989 Bob Lazar was walking down an s4 hallway when according to author Annie Jacobson he quote glanced sideways through a small 9 by 9 inch window and for a brief
moment he says he saw inside an unmarked room he thought he saw a small grey alien with a large head standing between two men dressed in white coats when he tried to get a better look he was pushed by a guard who told him to keep his eyes forward and down unquote Lazar stated that the aliens around area 51 were referred to as the kids what if this what if they're working on something so top secret that they want to fuzz the narrative a little bit they don't want people snooping mmm they don't want people
thinking about something else yeah so they put you know funny little alien in a room Oh fake alien you drop here let someone see it Oh aliens there everyone start to talk about aliens meanwhile they're over here working on you know they found the Fountain of Youth or something they distract from one hysteria by adding another hysteria well it's certainly taken control of the narrative hasn't it they're fuzzing the narrative yep but that's still having the same effect they're put into more fuzz in that peach but it's still spilling out plenty of juice why did
you turn into someone from New Jersey still spilling out plenty of juice it's still safe stuff fuzzy ones but it's still got plenty of you is there still a mess on your hands is what I'm getting at but if the flying saucers and small grey aliens weren't enough to compel Knapp to believe Lazar it could have been the totally impossible technology that started emerging in the marketplace technology that Lazar recognized as alien in one early interview Lazar describes a hand scanner that used some kind of advanced technology which he claims could grant him and other
employees access to s4 in the 2018 documentary Bob Lazar area 51 and flying saucers Lazar has shown a now Declassified photo of such a device called an ident used in the f-117 program Lazar confirmed it was the device he used back in the 80s yeah that's pretty weak I mean first off you got to understand escalation Bob so when you say spaceship oh wow aliens in the spaceship holy smokes yeah they had a hand scanner to that um it's pretty sweet the UH scanned your hand you could go in the door you don't have to
have a badge I'm not listening to you anymore Bob no we've landed on the moon let's start with hand scanner then work your way up and then to the alien this was that what year did he say that he said I saw it in any 80s 20 years after we landed on the moon yeah oh great but according to Lazar it was what was fueling these flying saucers that intrigued s4 the most Lazar said quote I was given a demonstration on how it worked things that it did the physics of it the thing they were
most interested in is duplicating the reactors without using this element 115 which is of course impossible end quote maybe not as impossible as Lazar once thought when Lazar reported that they were working with something called element 115 back in the 80s it didn't exist on the periodic table he explained that the spacecraft used element 115 as its fuel because it could actually produce its own gravity reverse engineering this alien fuel was what s4 was most interested in element 115 has since been created by Russian scientists in early 2000's and reported as confirmed in 2013 when
Swedish chemist replicated the element at the GSI Helmholtz Centre in Germany now called Muscovy 'm element 115 is extremely heavy and highly unstable so far laboratory experiments have only been able to reproduce it for about a second or less at a time aliens and all that stuff aside what we do have here is a definitive discovery of a new element which is pretty sweet that's cool yeah I thought as a science guy you would appreciate that that's neat I mean they're only able to replicate it a second at a time but not very handy well
I mean because we don't have the tech it's unstable but I will say it's interesting to say the least and it certainly doesn't hurt the extra-terrestrial conversation mom I'm just saying I'm coming at this from a pragmatic way so the scientists who produced it in Russia yes they didn't say like oh we're trying to reproduce this alien goop why I imagine it's probably hard to get funding for something saying oh we want to recreate alien goo yeah much easier to be like yeah we need to make more element 115 and they're like okay I'll read
the check despite the the narrative and all that stuff if we were able to make an element that could produce its own gravity that would open us up to vehicles that were anti-gravity true and essentially flying cars would now be a reality I love it it's a new Pixar film sure I'll do a little more research on this on my own time see how it stacks up don't you touch my case my library can picture vinegar chips originally picked out in April of 1955 area 51 wasn't even acknowledged as officially existing until August of 2013
with nothing but some chain-link fencing and signs warning against trespassing at the head of an unmarked Road the secretive government base is a rife breeding ground for Supernatural stories and conspiracy theories all we can do is follow Bob lazarre's advice to younger generations quote just pay attention pay attention end quote perhaps someday area 51's research alien or otherwise will be declassified for the public until then whether area 51 secretly holds aliens or their spacecrafts remains unsolved now this is just essentially one case that provides a look into what area 51 could possibly be there are
so many other more cases about it so what do you think is actually in area 51 gun to your head I think there's a lot of things that could be in there it could be aliens it could be advanced machinery and weapons that we don't know about I'd like to think it holds all the world's mysteries you know Roswell Bigfoot yeah Bigfoot's were working at the reception desk or parking yeah I don't know it's a fun idea but ultimately you're not gonna get any answers for me what do you think's in there nothing well that
does it for this episode to anyone out there at area 51 our thoughts are with you you shouldn't be there you shouldn't be there hopefully you make it home make sure to hydrate [Music] you [Music]
