Tuesday, April 17, 2007

“Use of Deadly Force Authorized”

Area 51 Warning Sign-B
Here are directions to place that doesn’t exist


By By Mitchell Smyth
Meridian Writers’ Group
Comox Valley Record
4-11-07

     RACHEL, Nevada — Take a turn off State Route 375 here in south-central Nevada, drive up a gravel road and you come to a place that doesn’t exist.

That, anyway, is what the U.S. government says.

To you and me the huge swath of desert west of Rachel is known as Area 51.

It’s where—depending on which stories you believe—the U.S. military is testing top secret weapons; or building flying saucers from the wreckage of crashed extraterrestrial craft (as in the movie Independence Day); or experimenting with something else that Buck Rogers or Anakin Skywalker would recognize.

Pentagon officials predictably deny all this, even deny that Area 51 exists, although they admit there’s a gunnery and bombing range somewhere around here. Maybe, I thought, I should have a closer look, so I took the gravel road.

It stopped me short at a gate in a perimeter fence. “Warning. Restricted area,” said a sign. Behind it, surveillance cameras swivelled this way and that on their stilts.

I was about to climb over the gate when I read the line in red paint on the sign: “Use of deadly force authorized.” I decided to go no farther (though I did disobey the further warning: “Photography of this area is prohibited.”)

“They wouldn’t have shot you,” UFO “expert” Chuck Clark assured me later. “But they’d certainly have arrested you if you’d gone in and you’d have been fined $600. It’s an expensive lesson.”

Clark, author of The Area 51 Handbook, has spent years trying to find out exactly what is happening in the top-secret installation. He and the other residents of Rachel, the closest town to Area 51, know that something is going on in their backyard. They’ve all seen enough strange sights through the years.

Many of these, says Clark, can be explained rationally. Flares, dropped for bomb tests, can be mistaken for UFOs.

And this is probably one of the places where top-secret aircraft, such as the U-2 spy plane of the 1950s and the B-2 Stealth bomber in the 1980s, were tested.

Still, he says, there have been other sightings that defy rational explanation. And that’s what brings the tourists, many of them “UFOlogists,” to Rachel. The government’s veil of secrecy helps fuel the rumours.

Many believe that in a morgue in Area 51 there are the bodies of those little grey men allegedly recovered from the crash of a “flying saucer” in Roswell, N.M. in 1947.

“As they say in The X-Files, ‘The truth is out there’,” says Rachel’s Pat Travis, the owner of The Little A’Le’Inn (“little alien,” get it?), a pub, restaurant and motel, and gathering place for the curious. (“Welcome UFOs and crews,” says one sign; another, beneath a drawing of a flying saucer, reads: “Self parking.”)

Rachel (population: 98) is the only town on the 158-kilometre stretch of two-lane blacktop Route 375 running alongside Area 51.

To help the tourist trade, the residents persuaded the state to designate 375 “The Extraterrestrial Highway,” and signs along the road now carry that name.

ACCESS

For more information on the Extraterrestrial Highway visit the U.S. department of transportation’s National Scenic Byways Program website at www.byways.org/browse/byways/2029/.

For more information on Rachel, Nevada visit the town’s website at www.rachel-nevada.com.

1 comment :

  1. to post a sign that says deadly force realy makes me wonder, but it brings back memories:
    Twas a very foggy night. Mum sent me to the grocery store to fetch a bottle of milk and a box of baby diapers for baby Grundyke.
    i left the house and was down the road for about a quarter of a mile or so.
    Just at that moment i remembered i had left my jacket on the back of my arm chair.
    twas a nip of cold in the nights air.
    i looked slightly to my left and saw a swift flashing light of green and blue. At first the lights were at a distance, and slowly started right at me at a high rate of speed. I was so scared i got out of my car and took about three steps and i froze in motion. My feet were about four feet off the ground. I was weightless. The only part of my body i was able to move was my eyes.
    Then i was approached by a figure of a man. A man not of this world. His head was large and his eyes were silver in color with green inner colors. He had tiny little ears and a large hole for a nose. The nose cavity was leaking a green slime of snot. His mouth was very small. His teeth were filthy and looked like an old service station oil rag.
    His ears were like the ears of a gold fish. I remember him looking to his left and mumbling a strange noise.
    Then another figure came into view. it was a female from another world. Her features were much the same as the man except she had a pinkish liquid comming out of her nose that smelled of oxygen.
    She came to me and a tenicle from her forehead came out and she guided it through my ear. it went into my ear and through my brain. Even though there was no pain in the brain, my head was dead. A loom of doom.
    The tinicle was retracted from my brain and ear as the male floated over to the female.
    The female beings tinicle was bound with redish wax from deep within my ear.
    The male being began to extract his lips and lick my ear wax from her tinicle. his lips were big and greenish purple and shaped like a garlic clove. His breath smelled of onions, mixed with skunk oil.
    His eyes began to change colors and two of his teeth fell onto the ground.
    The female came up to me and said she now had all the information she gathered from my brain, put into a computer chip in her brain and could now comunicate with me.
    she said her name was Philis and they were from another galaxy far, far away.
    i ask her if they were going to harm me. She said they were friendly people and just passing through looking for plopez, which is a fuel they use for their space ship.
    we then floated straight up for about twenty five feet or so and went inside the space ship.
    Just to my right side was a computer that looked like a thirty six inch television set.
    I could see that they were downloading illegal mp3 music from the net.
    The lady from another world said they had permission from the President of the planet Ziptoetoc to download it and they would not reproduce, sell, or give coppies to pirates on the high seas.
    i told them i would except that, and not turn them over to the s p c a, and they were happy.
    she poured me a cup of tea, and we began to visit.
    She put two table spoons of ground garlic into her cup of tea.
    i ask her if she had ever tried sugar in her tea and she ask, what is sugar?
    i told her i woud be glad to go to the grocery store and get them a bag.
    She was so happy because from their planet there was no sugar.
    She also told me her husband had dibetes and could only have sweet n low.
    she floated me to the door and i floated down to my car.
    When i got to the store, i bought five pounds of sugar and a box of sweet n low.
    i also got a quart of low fat milk, and a box of depends for my little brother, Grundyke.
    as i was driving back to the location of the space ship, i was in a hurry.
    I kept telling my self, speed kills.
    I drove very carefully.
    As i got back to the space ship, i shut off the engine of my car and set the emergency brake, i began to float upwards.
    Again i was in the space ship and Phillis had made another pot of tea.
    She added two tea spoons of sugar to her cup of tea and drank it all up.
    She looked at me and said, this sugar stuff is great.
    I replied, oh, i am so glad you like it.
    Her husbands name was Milton.
    Milton loves all kinds of music. Even country and blues.
    He told me his teeth are in bad condition because back on their planet, all the men mow the grass and, when finished mowing the grass,
    they have block partys and eat it with sweet bread.
    Plillis and Milton told me the favorite drink on their planet is aligator milk.
    Yuck, i explained.
    I told them how dangerous they can be, and they replied, they are our pets on our planet.
    I answered, oh, that is nice.
    Just at that moment, i remembered, my lunch break was about over at the factory, and i must return to work soon.
    They understood and told me they realy injoyed the visit.
    Again they floated me back to my car and i was on my way back to work.
    To this day i will never know why there is a bottle of milk and a box of depends, in a grocery bag, sitting in the front seat of my car.

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