The Heap: The Trash is Out There

For decades, in the absence of confirmation from the U.S. government, conspiracy theorists have held tightly to the belief that the mysterious Area 51, a military installation in the Nevada desert A) exists and B) has been used to conceal evidence of extraterrestrial contact. Until recently it appeared the only hidden E.T.s in the desert were truckloads of unwanted Atari cartridges, tied to the Spielberg film, buried there in the early 80s. But at long last, a recently declassified report has confirmed Area 51’s existence, if glossing over some details of what actually happened there.

More clarity is provided in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial by Jonathan Turley, a lawyer who represented Area 51 workers in a pair of suits against the U.S. government. And as with so many things, reality is often more frightening than fantasy. Forget little green men. The scariest thing about Area 51 now appears to have been its role as hazardous waste dump where toxic material from Cold War-era weapons and experiments was burned in open trenches, creating persistent clouds of poisonous smoke euphemistically referred to by base personnel as “London fog.”

Perhaps “X-Files” creators were hitting closer to the mark than they knew when they conceived that show’s shadowy antagonist, The Smoking Man.

Source: Los Angeles Times