If we didn’t all know better, we might think that ‘Area 51’ was a cheap ladies’ clothes shop or a tacky provincial nightclub. We do all know better, though. We all know that Area 51 is a top-secret and highly classified US Air Force facility.

What we don’t all know, however, is what goes on inside the place. And why would we? The US Air Force tends to take concepts such as ‘top secret’ and ‘highly classified’ quite seriously.

The Nevada facility is famous for its secrecy and the fact that some folk believe it’s where the American government keeps some of their shady ‘alien stuff’.

What really goes on in there, though? Well, let’s examine some of the possibilities. We’ll start with the big theory...

You might remember a tongue-in-cheek Facebook campaign from 2019 that called for people to ‘storm Area 51 together’ in order to ‘see them aliens’. More than 300,000 social media users signed up to the pledge. Alas, however, there was to be no storming. So we still don’t know if ‘Homey Airport’ (as it’s officially known) is home-y to any little green - or grey - men. Not yet, anyway.

Rumours that the remains of crash-landed aliens are being stored and examined for research purposes at Area 51 have circulated for decades. As has gossip that some kind of ghoulish human/alien hybrids are being created there. No proof of any of that has yet surfaced. Is that because it’s hokum? Or because it’s being covered up...?

A slightly more toned-up version of the alien theory says that while there might not be any actual aliens - dead or alive - at Groom Lake (as it’s also known), the confidentiality that surrounds the place is still ET-related.

Perhaps the most popular theory as to what really goes on behind closed hangar doors at Area 51 is that the US government stores, reverse engineers, tests and flies extraterrestrial spacecraft there.

There has long been talk of world powers trying their utmost to gain control over the weather. The ability to manipulate the weather is useful for boring things like irrigation and the like but it's far more appealing as a weapon.

If National Science Foundation reports are to be believed, the American military's Project Cirrus was a post-war research project designed to find out if it was possible to adapt clouds and use rain — or a lack of it — as a weapon against other nations. 

That's not all. Between 1962 and 1983, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ran Project STORMFURY, where boffins attempted to use something called cloud seeding in order to try and slow hurricane winds.

All this research and testing has to happen somewhere, right?

Quite a few conspiracy theories involving the US government or the militaristic ‘deep state’ pulling the strings mention ‘black helicopters’. When supposed top secret and highly illegal black ops are carried out, a fleet of dark whirlybirds are used. 

Are they, perhaps, parked up in hangars in Area 51?

Not that we don’t love conspiracy theories or creative thinking, but in this case it seems as though Occam’s Razor may well hold the answer to the Area 51 enigma. 

Hey, we’re not saying that they’re definitely isn’t any form of strangeness going on inside the place, but the most likely answer seems to be the official one given by the US government.

Ask the US Air Force and they won't say much. They'll mostly just say something along the lines of "for operational security reasons we do not provide detailed information regarding what type of operations take place in specific areas of the Nevada Test and Training Range." 

The USAF has previously conceded that Area 51 is an open training range that 'supports the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems', however. Which is pretty vague, but then again this is a top-secret and classified place we're talking about here.

Very few of us will ever know what goes on at Area 51. If you ever find yourself there and figure it all out, do let us know, eh?