'The UFO craze began in the summer of 1947. Thirty-two of the people she interviewed lived and worked at Area 51. She says her book is based on interviews with 74 individuals with rare firsthand knowledge of the secret base. Jacobsen addresses these conspiracy theories in the book and speculates about what led to them. The secrecy surrounding Area 51 has made it fertile ground for conspiracy theories, including one about a UFO cover-up and another about the moon landing having never happened. 'In one example, a 148-pound chunk of radioactive debris shoots up into the sky and lands, rending a place that no one could go, not even in a hazmat suit, for six weeks.'Īnnie Jacobsen is a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine. 'It comes right up to the edge of violating the treaty when an accident occurs,' she says. ratified the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited nuclear testing in the atmosphere, the tests continued to take place. It's very controversial it was kept very top-secret.'Īfter the U.S. And to do that meant spewing vast quantities of radiation into the air.

'They were testing the rocket to see whether it would actually work. 'This didn't end up happening, but it almost did,' Jacobsen says. One of its ideas was to develop a nuclear-powered space-based missile launch system that would sit outside Earth's atmosphere and have the capability to launch missiles - from outer space - into the Soviet Union. And during the space race with the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the Department of Defense proposed using space itself as a weapon, according to declassified documents that Jacobsen found.

The nuclear tests at Area 51 gave the Department of Defense ideas about how the technology could be used to help the United States' newly minted space program. Rockets Into Space With Nuclear Powered Explosions 'Richard Mingus also stood guard at a test at a subparcel of Area 51. 'You can absolutely drive through an atmospheric bomb test and not be affected,' Jacobsen says. Mingus survived, as did many other atomic veterans who stood close to ground zero during other Plumbbob tests.

'And so they send Richard Mingus through ground zero, 45 minutes to an hour after this nuclear bomb has exploded, so that he can get to Area 51 to guard the gate.' Richard Mingus is at ground zero, safe away in a bunker somewhere, and suddenly someone realizes, 'My God, Area 51 is unsecured,' ' Jacobsen says. Twenty-nine explosions were set off while tests were conducted on troop readiness, accidental detonations and the effects of flying debris on living targets, according to documents declassified by the Department of Energy that Jacobsen details in her book.ĭuring the explosions, security officer Richard Mingus stood guard outside many of the weapons-testing sites, including one with the largest atmospheric bomb that has ever exploded in the United States. In the summer and fall of 1957, a series of atmospheric nuclear tests - called Operation Plumbbob - were conducted above ground at the Nevada testing and training range, located just outside of Area 51. In Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, Jacobsen details how several agencies - including the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Defense and the CIA - once used the site to conduct controversial and secretive research on aircraft and pilot-related projects, including planes that traveled three times faster than the speed of sound and nuclear-propelled, space-based missile launch systems.Īrea 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base Journalist Annie Jacobsen tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the site has remained classified for many years - not because of aliens or spaceships, but because the government once used the site for top-secret nuclear testing and weapons development. Unofficially, it has become a place associated with conspiracy theories, alien landings and tiny spaceships. government has never acknowledged the existence of Area 51. Called Area 51, the parcel is just outside of the abandoned Nevada Test and Training Range, where more than 100 atmospheric bomb tests were conducted in the 1950s. Seventy-five miles north of Las Vegas sits a land parcel in the middle of the desert.

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