Slashdot Mirror
Under Soviet Satellites, How Area 51 Hid (And Invented) Secret Craft
An anonymous reader writes "No word yet on alien starships, but now that many Cold War-era Area 51 documents have been declassified, veterans of the secret US base are revealing some of the clever — and surprisingly low-tech — ways they hid futuristic prototypes from prying eyes."
Roofs?
Why was it called Area 51?
I think you clicked that link wrong. Got nothing of the sort here.
Wait, that was too nice. uh, let me try again:
your mom's face leads to some sort of bogus site. stop cowering... feeb? :P
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Well I found the site by browsing from the main NG site. (Didn't try the summary link) Here joo go: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/110520-area-51-secret-hid-craft-base-declassified-a-12-plane/
If companies the size of National Geographic can't operate without letting hackers in through their adnetworks, they should go out of business.
False feeling of safety!
Thanks to ad networks, there are no safe sites on the interwebs.
I didn't get a zip file but I did get a malware alert from Safari. Possibly NG or an ad provider hacked?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thanks, but if the ad provider is compromised the link will not help prevent the attack.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I got it on the third attempt. Digging further, I was redirected to 178.162.157.0. Actual site is 184.84.222.83 as I pinged it. First is in germany, second is Akamai and gives the real site.
This is a Harold Clamping parallel, how loons fool themselves. Area 51 could only have been credible alien ship junkyard to a poorly educated lot. Most modern people believe in repeatable, falsifiable observations. Those who don't live with a world view that is arcane, oblivious, and ignorant. As such, why give them the media attention? Do you also laugh at people with Down's syndrome or any other serious challenges? These dudes are parts the modern freak show.
Thank you for offending 80% of slashdot.
Table-ized A.I.
Poisoned rotating ads, Lester, chill. Not everyone will get hit. Turn on the NoScript and AdBlock and you're all set.
Am I the only one with a desperate urge to push it over?
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
What I want to know is what they did with all the spare organs they removed from Dr. Zoidberg. Come on, open the files!
I'm sure whatever it was, it was delicious! The pictures would probably be of a Christmas BBQ.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
checked for malware lately?
... wait, what?
This sounds a little like what the Allies were doing with operation fortitude - before the dday landings. They build inflatable rubber tanks and artillery - and placed them in locations that made it look like the invasion would be aimed at Calais. Of course then they weren't trying to confuse satellites - but German spotter planes.
It's much easier to hide things in an underground cavern than in a building on the surface.
There are various levels of secret. Classify everything; declassify "low-grade" secrets first.
The base that didn't exist except in the minds of "conspiracy nuts" has been partially admitted to. I wonder what other "secrets" are out there, and where they're hidden. And when will they open Area 51 for tours?
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Noscript, and Adblock Plus, and I saw nothing but a National Geographic story. Pretty boring stuff. If you've ever known anyone in military intelligence, they'll tell you the same kind of story. Fake vehicles (like cardboard cutouts), scrambling to move anything "interesting" inside, or cover it with a tarp. The idea was to make every base look like it was deserted, even if there was a full complement there.
Area 51 still does a fine job of it. I check Google Maps there once in a while to see what's changed. Some of the underground bunkers, that had taxiways from the runways, which had an obvious opening, now look like they're just the side of a mountain. So you have an empty taxiway to nowhere? Yup, I'm falling for that.
I still have yet to see interesting aircraft, but of course they are the gov't, and can tell Google to remove any unpopular images before they're published. Most likely, they still do their privacy covers. What's the difference between a dirty colored tarp, and the side of a mountain? Absolutely nothing without very high resolution and/or infrared imaging.
For reference, this is one of those spots.
If you browse around, they only have 4 aircraft. Two airliners, two helicopters, and one fighter jet. Hmmm, that doesn't seem quite right, now does it? :)
This is my favorite feature of the area.
Oops, I rambled again, didn't I? Oh well.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
or is everything else officially accounted for?
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
One successful method was to hire bald fat scifi geeks to run around naked. The resulting hysterical blindness worked better than a Romulan claoking[sic] device.
Thank you for offending 80% of slashdot.
Make that 90%, the Romulans aren't happy about the disparagement of the cloaking device.
This is my favorite feature of the area.
Interesting... Panning a bit east on that map (to the other side of Mesa Rd) there's a lot of large (500ft+) craters... Is that a nuclear test site?
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
IT'S A TARP!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This is my favorite feature of the area.
Interesting... Panning a bit east on that map (to the other side of Mesa Rd) there's a lot of large (500ft+) craters... Is that a nuclear test site?
Uhhhh...no. Those are just ... gophers. Gopher sinkholes. I mean sinkholes. From water erosion and stuff.
They do look interesting, but I really have no way of knowing if they are a natural or manmade phenomenon.
Duh... it's extra craters that they made to hide the real alien crash site!
The article is a puff 'news' piece regurgitating a new NatGeo documentary Area 51 Declassified that premiered on May 22. Check your local listings or favourite video sharing site.
Happened to me too. In Safari in a Mac. It immediately started a fake scanning in a browser window. I closed it right away and the Mac installer started and asked me to install Mac Protector, so I quit the installer and all is well. I did some reading and a lot of people apparently go ahead and install a program they know nothing about including entering in their admin credentials to allow it to install with root privs. Sigh... So seems like Nat Geo's ad farm or service is infected....
My roommate, my neighbor, and a friend of mine have all been hit by rogue anti-virus programs on Windows in the past 3 weeks or so. I've had the same thing that happened to you happen to me twice today. I guess someone has decided to bring the rogue anti-virus scam to Macs. Thankfully, it isn't so easy to get administrator access to a UNIX machine and the scammers have to actually ask permission to install their virus. Fixing my roommate's computers was a pain in the ass, and my neighbor had to go to work before I could figure out how to fix his.
They moved the mockup planes under cover when Soviet satellites were passing over.
When they supposed that the Soviets were learning about the shapes of the aircraft with infrared from shape the ground shadow left in the hot sun, they made funny-shaped shadows.
That's pretty much the whole article.
Is it just me or is Nat'l Geo running out of things to write about?
-Styopa
and thanks to adblock+ there are few ads on the intertubes.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Careful clicking on that link...there is a malicious banner ad on the National Geographic website. It doesn't hit every time, but on the first click, I was redirected to a rogue AV download site where anti-malware.zip was downloaded.
Shameless promotion: Mac OS X, FTW!
How apt. A malware payload in an article about A51.
The conspiracy crackpots will have a blast with that one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Another interesting thing about Groom Lake is its status as restricted airspace. If you find R-4808N on the FAA's Las Vegas sectional map (e.g., at http://skyvector.com/ ), you'll see that it covers two things: a large area over the old Nevada Testing Site, where the Department of Energy used to test nuclear weapons, and a big conspicuously square area with a large dry lake bed called Groom Lake smack dab in the center. The fairly large airport that's been built next to and extending onto the lake bed is also not labeled on those maps, despite the fact that various other land features and manmade structures just a few miles away (including in the Nevada Testing Site) are labeled to serve as landmarks to pilots.
Restricted airspace listings (the text versions, to be used in conjunction with various airspace maps, e.g., http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/SUA.pdf ) tell you a few things that provide a mechanism for legally accessing them. For instance, they tell you what hours they are restricted (such as a fixed pattern of hours each week, or by specifically issued FAA notice, etc.), what elevations are restricted, the using agency (the agency for the benefit of which the airspace is restricted), and the controlling agency (whom you would contact to try to get clearance to enter the airspace) in the case of "joint use" airspace.
If you look up R-4808N in the restricted airspace listings, it tells you (a) that the restricted airspace is in continuous operation, i.e., it's restricted 24 hours a day every day; (b) it's restricted at all elevations from the ground up; (c) there is no "controlling agency" listed, meaning the airspace is not joint use; and (d) the using agency is the Department of Energy, meaning that the block of restricted airspace is lumped in with the Nevada Test Site even though the Air Force actually runs the Groom Lake facility. All of these characteristics are fairly unusual as restricted airspace goes, and I've only found one other bit of restricted airspace in the listings that doesn't list a controlling facility (a tiny bit of airspace at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah).
Nellis AFB near Las Vegas manages almost all of the restricted and military operation airspace in that area, and they're the ones who will angrily contact you via radio if you even approach the restricted airspace in that area. The restricted airspace is more of a legal mechanism to deal with pilots who encroach on the airspace after they land, and Nellis AFB will send fighters out to strongly dissuade anyone who comes too close to the airspace even if they don't enter it.
One other thing to note is that the runways at Groom Lake are actually quite busy. There is a restricted access terminal at McCarran (Las Vegas) Airport where some thousand or so people board planes that make trips to and from Groom Lake throughout the day. The flights use the name "Janet" when talking to the tower at McCarran (similar to how a United Airlines flight would be referred to as, e.g., "United 123").
I've seen those same rogue anti-virus scams on my Linux Boxes. Always amuses me when it shows my C: drive and tells me my Windows Registry is infected...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
> I closed it right away and the Mac installer started and asked me to install Mac Protector, so I quit the installer and all is well
No, not _all_ is well. You need to turn off the Safari pref 'Open "safe" files after downloading', which should not even _exist_. :-(
There is a large crater left over from nuclear testing out there -- Sedan crater:
http://deputy-dog.com/2009/06/worlds-largest-man-made-explosion.html
I would assume all the others are smaller craters from various other experiments.
I saw something, it seemed to be in the sky, therefore it was an Unidentified Flying Oject. It was probably a weather balloon. Or a pelican. It could have been some secret CIA spy plane.
I hallucinated an disc-shaped spacecraft full of aliens who flew the 186,000,000,000,000,000 miles from Sirius to give me a prostate exam, they were in a flying saucer.
I was molested by a flying bar hade. No, I'm not crazee.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I know Nevada is a sin-friendly state, with it's gambling and prostitution, but what kind of depraved lunatic would violate a sign?!! I mean really, couldn't someone who is, uh, sign oriented easily find a consensual relationship?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Righteous anger has it's place but do you actually have any answers? Any suggestions on how to make it better? Unfortunately, as ugly as it is, we currently have the best system of government the world has ever seen. The People have more power and say today in the US than in any country at any time in history.
what are the craters around the area from? nuke tests or conventional weapons tests or just holes they dug for some other reason?
They went into such pains to hide even a shadow, and yet Soviets obtained blueprints of american supersonic jet, and that is only the one I know of. Talk about management with misguided objectives.
[Cue Wine compatibility jokes]
Yup. :) The did a lot of nuke testing in that area. That's probably one of the biggest reasons the area is off limits. There's another test area, Area 25 if I recall correctly, where they did an atmospheric nuke test, and that test area is still hot.
The largest civil purpose nuke was tested in that test range. Google for the "Sedan Crater". They were testing to see if a nuke could move a mountain. It worked very well, except for the pesky radiation problem. It's safe enough to go out and visit for a few minutes, and they do take tour groups, but they're limited, and can't stay very long.
From what I heard, there is an Executive Order from the POTUS stating that they are exempt from EPA testing and inspection. It makes perfect sense though. If they're testing new or exotic fuels, and they had to dump it, testing of the residue could show what was being tested.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It's well documented, that was a weapons test range, and they did nuclear testing there.
You could go with what some of the conspiracy theorists say though. They make up stuff about a network of secret government tunnels that span the entire country. A lot of their maps show Area 51 to be a central hub. That kind of stuff is made up by people with their tinfoil hats screwed on a little too tight though. :) I'm sure they could find straight lines through there, which lead directly to arbitrary cities, and they'd claim that there were accidents landing UFOs or some such nonsense, and the tunnels collapsed.
Occam says, they're just craters from tests. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Being someone who uses multiple OSes, it's also pretty funny to see fake Windows XP scans on 7, though with Linux it's especially hilarious. Funny thing is, my Uncle running Linux, fell for it and called me telling me that he had a virus. Sometimes I wonder if I should have left him with those BSOD's on Vista...
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.