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By: Jalen Pithawalla-Pierre, Khushi Gajeeban & Paige Ferlatte

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This section of the website is dedicated to area 51, and the National Geographic show that follows it. The website contains numerous articles, videos, as well as the episodes of National Geographic's area 51 show. The main reason for belief in this website is the unexplained. The website and show follows the theme of area 51 being a part of the “unknown” and uses that to make their assumptions and theories seem more realistic. A red flag that relates to this is appeal to authority. By using the national geographic name to produce this content, they are essentially giving people the misconception that this conspiracy theory is legitimate.

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It's the most famous military installation in the world, yet it doesn't officially exist. Area 51-- a site for covert Cold War operations-- has long been a magnet for crackpots, conspiracy theorists, and the overly curious. While there may not be truth to the rumours that Area 51 is a haven for UFO's and extraterrestrials, it's clear that the US government has been up to something in Area 51 for decades, and it turns out there is a kernel of truth to even some of the wildest speculation. Underground tunnels... Hidden enemy aircraft... Secret government UFO files... Now, after years of silence, for the first time Area 51 insiders spill their secrets and reveal what's really been going on inside the most secretive place on earth.

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It's the most famous military installation in the world, yet it doesn't officially exist. Area 51-- a site for covert Cold War operations-- has long been a magnet for crackpots, conspiracy theorists, and the overly curious.

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The object I chose is a video game about an alien, held inside Area 51. People have managed to adhere their beliefs to their appeal of authority. Scientists have said numerous things about Area 51 for years hoping to bring in a valuable audience. This object relates to confirmation bias because, those who believe in aliens tend to look deep into many scientific observations and unexplained situations, fake evidence, placebos, and their own assumptions, for confirmation bias, pushing them to purchase this game. The existence of this video game shows the red flag; red herring as well, being a distraction for real world issues that are happening (ex. poverty, abandonment, lack of education). Many political figures around the world influence others to look for ways to distract the public from real issues.

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This article about how for years the government worked diligently to hide the fact that area 51 existed, as well as anything associated with it. The article, which was published in 2017 by the Washington Post states that the Pentagon has officially confirmed that there is a government program made to analyze UFO's. The article also contains some very interesting videos which you can decided whether or not to believe. A reason for belief in this article would be simplicity. It is a lot easier to watch the videos in this article and immediately believe them, than to think about the possible scientific reasons. A red flag that relates to this article would be appeal to authority. The article claims that the government is admitting to possible alien activity, which people are much more likely to believe than an average person telling them the same information.

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For decades, Americans were told that Area 51 didn't really exist and that the U.S. government had no official interest in aliens or UFOs. Statements to the contrary, official-sounding people cautioned, were probably the musings of crackpots in tinfoil hats.

Well, score one for the crackpots.

The Pentagon has officially confirmed that there was, in fact, a $22 million government program to collect and analyze "anomalous aerospace threats" - government-speak for UFOs.
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As The Washington Post's Joby Warrick reported, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was a rare instance of continued government investigations into a UFO phenomenon that was the subject of multiple official inquiries in the 1950s and 1960s.

For a specific segment of the population that doesn't need to Google the terms " Paradise Ranch" and " Cheshire cat airstrip," it was a eureka moment - the first (of presumably many) alien-related secrets that have slipped out of the clenched jaws of the government.

The non-Googlers have it easy, it seems: The admission - and the fact that the government spent $22 million on UFO research - gives any out-there theory a patina of credibility.

But what about the rest of us who have not fully jumped onto the tinfoil-hat bandwagon? What are we to make of 70 years of bizarre stories centered on a secret government base an hour's drive from the Las Vegas Strip?

In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower "approved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51, to the Nevada Test Site," according to a CIA history of a spy plane declassified in 2013. The area was near the Atomic Energy Commission's vast, desolate proving grounds and was used to test the high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance plane.

A parade of top-secret aircraft was tested in the area, according to Reuters, including the A-12 aircraft, a spy plane that flew faster than the speed of sound, and the angular F-117 stealth ground-attack jet.

But Area 51 quickly became a wire frame for not-quite-verifiable musings about alien life, secret technology and supernatural behavior.

Gaping holes in out-there theories had an easy explanation: The government is working diligently to keep the real story under wraps.

The biggest working (conspiracy) theory is that Area 51 is where the U.S. government stored aliens and spacecraft that crash-landed on Earth, particularly the unidentifiable debris discovered by William "Mac" Brazel.

Brazel, a farmer, discovered metallic rods, pieces of plastic and silvery paper scraps in Roswell, N.M., in 1947. He called the sheriff, who called the military, who carted the debris off in armored vehicles. But the secret was out, and it captured the imagination of the American public.

The government, the theories go, experimented on the aliens and tried to harness the technology in their ship to manufacture interstellar spacecraft and produce powerful energy weapons. Lab-coated Area 51 scientists also were said to be mulling ways to manipulate or weaponize the weather, travel through time and teleport.

For decades, people reported seeing strange lights in the desert around Area 51 - presumably alien aircraft taking off or being tested at the government facility.

Adding fuel to the alien theories, Ray Santilli released a video in 1995 that purported to show an alien autopsy after the Roswell crash.

The crowd that believed something wasn't quite right at Area 51 was buoyed by a lawsuit filed by workers at the facility. They reported rashes, respiratory ailments and even deaths related to their jobs.
[Area 51: Secrets under the sun]
Of course, the alien aspects of those theories have crumbled under decades of scrutiny. Some have been explained away by declassified documents; other theories have been outright fabrications.

The debris Brazel found on his farm was part of a government coverup, for example. It just didn't involve aliens.

The Air Force claimed it was using high-altitude balloons to try to detect Soviet nuclear tests. The Air Force said as much, about 50 years after the debris was found, in a 231-page report. Other officials have speculated that the debris came from a crashed nuclear bomber that had broken up over New Mexico. Roswell was, after all, the home of the 509th Composite Group, the atomic weapons unit that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

"We do believe that something did happen at Roswell," one source close to the investigation told The Post's Jack Anderson and Michael Binstein in 1995. "Something big. We don't know if it was a plane that crashed with a nuclear device on it . . . or if it was some other experimental situation. But everything we've seen so far points to an attempt on the part of the Air Force to lead anybody that looks at this down another track."

Santilli's autopsy footage was easier to debunk. He admitted that it was a fake (though he maintains that it was based on actual footage).

And the space around Area 51 was where the United States tested several of its more experimental aircraft as the Cold War raged, adding to its mystery.

Incidents such as the crash on Brazwell's farm or the sighting of several bright lights were shrouded in secrecy and half-baked excuses that became fodder for people who believe " the truth is out there."

The experimental aircraft may have had something to do with the injuries suffered by the workers, as The Post's Richard Leiby reported in 1997. They claimed materials, including anti-radar coating and other classified substances, had been burned in open pits on the base.

Filmmakers took notice of the intrigue. Over the past 70 years, Area 51 has been cemented as a popular science fiction trope.

Experiments on aliens and their spacecraft was an important plot point in the 1996 summer blockbuster "Independence Day," in which a U.S. resistance force converges on Area 51 to launch a final battle.

In the movie "Super 8," the train crash that motors the plot involves material being transported from Area 51.

But in the real world, government employees had been poring over their own film, captured by fighter pilots, of possible UFOs.

Chris Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence who once worked for the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, said investigators had interviewed pilots who claimed they saw weird things in the air.

Mellon, who now works with UFODATA, a private organization, described one video of an encounter with an unidentified object to Politico:

"It is white, oblong, some 40 feet long and perhaps 12 feet thick. . . . The pilots are astonished to see the object suddenly reorient itself toward the approaching F/A-18.

"In a series of discreet tumbling maneuvers that seem to defy the laws of physics, the object takes a position directly behind the approaching F/A-18. The pilots capture gun camera footage and infrared imagery of the object. They are outmatched by a technology they've never seen."

The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program generated at least one report, a 490-page volume that describes alleged UFO sightings in the United States and numerous other countries over multiple decades.
Read more: Scientists have identified the 50-foot creature that washed up on an Indonesian beach This ancient shark with a snake head and 300 teeth is why we should just say nope to the ocean Researchers think they know where Amelia Earhart died - days after a photo suggested she lived A lobster boat captain said a freak storm killed his crew. Then doctors found drugs in his system.

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The government admits it studies UFOs. So about those Area 51 conspiracy theories ...

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For decades, Americans were told that Area 51 didn't really exist and that the U.S. government had no official interest in aliens or UFOs. Statements to the contrary, official-sounding people cautioned, were probably the musings of crackpots in tinfoil hats. Well, score one for the crackpots.

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This picture is a google maps produced, birds eye view of what is assumed to be area 51, the secret government facility that is located on the on the southern shore of Nevada's Groom Lake. The main reason for belief associated with this picture is perception and observation. People are seeing that there is a base in that location, and because they see that it is actually there, they assume it has to be for the reason they thought it was for; alien testing. A red flag that applies to this image is confirmation bias. People are using this image to guarantee that there is indeed a secret government facility in Nevada that experiments on alien, when it could actually just be a military facility that has nothing to do with aliens. An assumption people are making is that just because there is indeed a military base in the location where area 51 is thought to be, it is also there for the reason they thought it to be, but in reality the function of the base could be absolutely anything.

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Area 51 is a highly classified, secret United States location where many aerial and scientific tests were completed and observed. This video shows the red flag: proof by verbosity. There is just too many debates, articles, and videos, to review to learn anything about Area 51. People have built up knowledge from missing evidence and impartial facts that were only revealed in the past few years. The CIA used their method of admitting to the public that Area 51 exists, and certain scientific test are conducted there, to further settle the public opinion on the rumors and stories of area 51, further connecting to the reason of belief, simplicity. That was enough for many skeptics to cease themselves as well as others. This video also relates to the reason for belief: Ideology. This video is not certified for facts by the American Government, this video is just an extraction of few facts found somewhere on the internet.

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This article is about a really strange video that shows shows a UFO hovering above a mountain range in the Nevada desert, leading people to claim that it proves the United States Air Force is testing alien activity at their top-secret Area 51 base. The main reason for belief in this situation is the unexplained. Due to the fact that no one but the government has access to area 51, and no one knows what is there, people have attempted to find their own explanations for the things they see in that vicinity. A red flag that is apparent in this article is suppression by authorities. As previously mentioned, because only the government knows what goes on in area 51, and the public has no access, people claim that the secrecy of the location is a conspiracy of the government. The evidence in the video seems to be fake due to the fact that the video is of bad quality, therefore the flying object in the video could be something else like a drone, plane of anything other than a UFO.

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The video, which was captured during the night on May 4, shows the UFO hovering above a mountain range in the Nevada desert.

Steven Baron captured the event from his garden in Las Vegas and was left puzzled by what unfolded.

The clip shows a glowing article moving across the sky, appearing to pulsate and then disappear completely.

It is believed the scope in which the subject is moving could be somewhere on the grounds of Area 51.

UFOS OVER VEGAS

"Behind those mountains lies Area 51 and there have been a ton of these sightings recently"
YouTube viewer

It was later uploaded to Steven's YouTube channel UFOs over Vegas, where it has gained 1,000 hits so far.

And viewers are convinced it is proof that the US government is testing alien technology at the Homey Airport facility.

One comment read: "Behind those mountains lies Area 51 and there have been a ton of these sightings recently."

And another added: "When you see such light in real life, it's astounding. You know you're in the presence of something non-terrestrial, something magical, to us."

And a third simply stated: "You should go out there and camp by Area 51 to get a better look."

Conspiracists have long linked the USAF's highly classified Edwards Air Force base as being a UFO testing zone.

Some believe it is used for the storage examination and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft.

While others believe the government is developing and testing the use of exotic energy weapons and weather control technology.

Only last month, similar claims rose when a UFO was spotted flying vertically in the same area.

And before that, one man captured something bizarre appearing to take off from the facility.

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Is this PROOF of alien testing at Area 51? Frenzy as 'UFO spotted' near secret facility

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The video, which was captured during the night on May 4, shows the UFO hovering above a mountain range in the Nevada desert. Steven Baron captured the event from his garden in Las Vegas and was left puzzled by what unfolded. The clip shows a glowing article moving across the sky, appearing to pulsate and then disappear completely.

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The above link will take you to an article about Conspiracy Theories. This article relates to the reason of belief: Agenticity and patternicity. Many people look for meaning in the patterns that resemble astrological life forms. All over the world people promote the concept and belief of aliens. The patterns that they observe create the idea that they are not alone but somewhere in the world aliens exist. With these rumors and beliefs people insist that what can’t be seen, does not mean it is to be considered false. Scientists scavenged and reverse engineered spacecrafts that had once fallen to earth. This is fake evidence, leading us to believe in such a red herring.  This article also relates to the red flag: suppressed by authorities. Area 51 is the biggest secret created by the United States. What is in that facility would risk national security and safety. It was only until late 2013 that the CIA released information on Area 51 to the public.

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We may have Tang thanks to the space program, but who gave us such innovations as the Stealth fighter and Kevlar? Aliens, of course. Conspiracy theorists believe that the remains of crashed UFO…

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This is a video found from YouTube of a call made in 1997 to a talk show from a man who had allegedly worked at area 51. The radio went off air as soon as he started to reveal detailed plans involving area 51. The main reason for belief in this video would be unexplained. We don't know if this call was real or staged, if the man calling made the whole thing up, or if it was indeed real. A red flag that relates to could be proof by verbosity, because the man on the phone throws out a lot of information in a short amount of time.

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This is a photo of a sign outside of area 51 that prohibits entry and/or photography. It is simply a sign and yet holds great significance for area 51. A reason for belief associated with this picture is unexplained. If the public is not allowed to go anywhere near it, and nothing about is allowed to be exposed, then we have no real solid knowledge about it. A red flag associated with this photo is suppression by authority. If there really was groundbreaking work going on there, and discoveries being made, the government should want to share this information instead of doing everything in their power to hide it.

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Reflective Discussion Questions