# Area 51: No ETs, but the truth is even weirder?! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 10, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946 "2011-06-10T03:40:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/41 "2011-06-11T02:26:26Z")
Did they broast the faux-alien midget? I LOVE broasted faux-alien midget with panko bread crumbs. I’d recommend a nice fruity white wine to go with that as well. Bon appetit! -XT ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/42 "2011-06-12T15:34:45Z")
Okay, I finished reading the book. After the initial bit about the Horten brothers, it becomes what appears to be a sober history of Area 51, with parts of it coincididing with what I’ve read elsewhere. She has sections that seem to be based on only one or two sources that claim to be The First REvelation Anywhere! that I can’t verify or debunk. Twice at least she screws up on minor points that annoy me . One of these is the claim that the James Bond movie _Diamonds are Forever_ depicts a faked moon-landing conspiracy. It doesn’t in 1971, when it came out, nobody believed the moon landings had been faked. It was clearly depicting a simulation or training exercise. As even She admits, the “No-Moon-Landing” craziness started three years later in 1974. The other part was where she refers to the “Caspian Sea Monster” as an “ekranopian”. It’s “EkranoPLAN”, as in “plane” (something the neo-James Bond novel _Devil May Care_ got right. She needs to brush up on her James Bond. My point is that less than 60 seconds on the internet would have set both these errors right.It does make you wonder how accurate the rest of her book is. It’s at the end of the booki, where she revisits the flying saucer business, that she gets hit by the galloping crazies again. Stalin got the Horton brothers to build an unprecedented flying saucer with unprecedented stealth technology (the WWII carbon-in-glue would not, I suspect, have worked all that well on a long-track flight with more up-to-date radar) and unprecedented remote-piloting and unprecedented hover capability and unprecedented high-speed flight with genetically- or surgically-altered people inside and crashed this in the New Mexico desert. Right. Several times over. And in all the time since, nobody outside the US or Russia has duplicated this flying saucer or the hover technology and great flying capability. And no one, even in the US or Russia, has thought to use this hover capability for the many great technical and life-saving purposes it could be used for, it apparently being felt more important to Keep It Under Wraps. And Stalin’s purpose in this was to create a “Man from Mars/War of the Worlds” scare to set off a panic in the US? Then why the hell did he put Cyrillic lettering on the craft? This is literally a story out of science fiction. I’m not talking about the graphic novel verwsion of _The Watchmen_, and its many literary forbears. More explicitly, it’s in _Quatermass and the Pit_ (and its US featureversion, _Five Milliojn Years to Earth_), where the (ironically, real in the film) alien spacecraft with its aliens and proto-humans are dismissed by the military officer as a panic-inducing propaganda trick by the Third Reich. Sorry. There are so many holes in this story, you could fly a flying saucer through them. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/43 "2011-06-12T17:00:23Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Wait… the Russians specifically bread midget faux-alien pilots as part of their plan to panic the US government into thinking we were being invaded by aliens… and then went and put Cyrillic writing all over their faux-alien flying saucers? > > I think I may have detected a minor flaw in their diabolical ploy. Considering that we’re dealing with Russians, that actually makes the story more plausible. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![QuarkChild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c5a1d2/32.png) [@QuarkChild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuarkChild)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/44 "2011-06-12T17:31:14Z")
Sounds like a Clive Cussler novel. And probably is about as true. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/45 "2011-06-12T18:08:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And **Justin\_Bailey** , you’re assuming that the government considers fueling whacko conspiracy theories to be a bad thing. Quite the contrary, they actually encourage it, as it makes their job considerably easier. The more attention is focused on aliens and flying saucers and Mengelian midgets, the less is left over to focus on U2s and F117s and nuke-listening microphones. That’s what they _want_ you to think. Convince 'em that the crazy shit is crazy, then they’ll be distracted by ordinary technology and the Mengelian midgets can sneak right on by. Has anyone else realized that the new Jacobsen revelations almost certainly explain the disappearance of Flight 19 over the Bermuda Triangle? The pilots were tracking a Horton-designed Soviet saucer but had to invent that cover-up about navigational problems to fool listeners. Then when they caught up with the saucer they were teleported to the Soviet Union and de-aged/miniaturized so they’d forget what they’d seen. My source tells me this is on the level, and cannot be refuted. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/46 "2011-06-12T19:57:38Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I predict a lot of controversy about this book, at least inthe pages of SI. Does SI does a special issue on this topic, like their swimsuit issue? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/47 "2011-06-12T22:18:56Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#): > > Does SI does a special issue on this topic, like their swimsuit issue? I’ve seen many SI contributors, and pictures of many others. I don’t think I’d want to see a Swimsuit Issue. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/48 "2011-06-12T22:43:47Z")
For those who are wondering: SI does not refer only to Sports Illustrated, it is also an acronym for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2011, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/49 "2011-06-13T00:39:29Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > For those who are wondering: SI does not refer only to Sports Illustrated, it is also an acronym for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. Watch for the cover story of their next issue: “Debunking the Orlando ‘Magic’”! ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/50 "2011-06-14T01:27:44Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > For those who are wondering: SI does not refer only to Sports Illustrated, it is also an acronym for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine. I was joking, but you knew that, right? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2011, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/51 "2011-06-14T01:30:09Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#): > > I was joking, but you knew that, right? Jeez, ya wanna drag **telepathy** into this now?! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946.md?page=2)