Worlds Most Famous Secret Bases

It’s a secret to everybody. Or at least it was supposed to be. Today we look at some of the most famous secret bases in the world including Area 51, Kapustin Yar, the South China Sea Bases, Porton Down, Pine Gap, and Mount Weather.

World’s Most Famous Secret Bases

By Kevin Jennings

People are notoriously terrible at keeping secrets. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Vatican Secret Archives, McDonald’s secret menu, or the world famous secret agent James Bond. But more often than not, it is not the mere existence of a secret that is meant to be guarded from the public. Everybody knows that Coca-Cola has a secret recipe, and it is the contents rather than its existence that are the secret.

The same is true for many secret military installations. Unless it’s completely underground, it’s difficult to hide an entire military base. Either people will be able to see it, or more likely they will see all the signs and fences warning civilians that any trespassers will be shot on sight.

Unfortunately, this has a bit of a Streisand Effect. The more people know there’s a place they aren’t allowed to be, the more attention it receives and the more everybody wants to know what’s going on inside. Today we’ll be looking at some of the most famous secret bases around the world, locations whose notoriety was only increased by the lengths governments went to keep their operations secret. Just don’t expect us to be able to tell you everything that’s actually going on inside them.

Area 51

To most Americans, there is probably no more famous secret base than Area 51. Located about 83 miles north-northwest of Las Vegas, it is a top secret Air Force base that houses the remnants of the UFO that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. That last part’s not actually true, but it is Area 51’s association with extraterrestrials that has made it a location of such national interest.

Originally built in 1955 as Paradise Ranch, the site is predominantly the home of military testing. Despite having been in operation for nearly 60 years and everybody already knowing that it was there, the CIA did not publically acknowledge the existence of Area 51 until 2013 following a FOIA request and the release of some declassified documents.

This secrecy, combined with the type of testing they were doing, led to it becoming the home of numerous alien and UFO conspiracy theories. The primary purpose of Area 51 when it first opened was to test Lockheed’s new U-2 high altitude stealth reconnaissance aircraft. These tests resulted in numerous sightings, particularly by pilots of commercial airlines, of lights and aircrafts that seemed to be traveling at altitudes that were too high for any manmade craft.

The U-2 spy planes were flying at over 65,000 feet, which was about 25,000 feet higher than even the most advanced military planes at the time. It was these high altitude tests, combined with the official response that the civilians were just witnessing “weather phenomenon,” that caused rumours of alien tech to spread.

In addition to developing their own aircraft, the American government was also using Area 51 as a site to test and examine captured soviet planes. While all of this is known thanks to the release of those declassified documents, their current operations are still shrouded in secrecy.

While it was previously possible to get a decent view of the secret base from nearby mountains, in 1995 the government expanded the exclusionary zone around the base to include those mountains. In 2015, a family that had been living on the same land in Nevada since 1870 was forced to give that land to the Air Force so that they could expand Area 51. Even though the modern day activities at Area 51 aren’t known to the public, it still probably has nothing to do with aliens.

Kapustin Yar

Located in Astrakhan Oblast, about 100 km east of Stalingrad (Modern day Voldegrad), the Soviet Union constructed their secret military base known as Kapustin Yar. Built in 1946, it is often compared to Area 51 because of the belief that it is the home of a great deal of alien technology.

Similar to Area 51, this belief stemmed from numerous civilian sightings of UFOs in the area. Kapustin Yar was a Cold War era testing sight, and the UFO sightings seen by their citizens would have been very similar to those observed by Americans in Nevada. It wasn’t aliens, it was just advanced, experimental aircraft that the government absolutely was not going to publically acknowledge the existence of.

In addition to conspiracy theories about aliens, there is also a popular rumour that there is an even more secret underground base built beneath the existing Kapustin Yar. It doesn’t help that the base is shrouded in so much mystery that there is very little confirmable information about anything that has taken place there for the past 75 years, other than a timeline of the original construction.

It also didn’t help allay any conspiratorial notions when in 1953, Kapustin Yar expanded. In order to expand, they had to fully evacuate the nearby town of Zhiktur which was then completely leveled. Though this was likely a safety precaution as Kapustin Yar became used as a nuclear test site, many felt the Soviet government was trying to ensure that no civilians saw something near the base that they weren’t supposed to.

Aside from nuclear testing, the principle purpose of Kapustin Yar, at least that we know of, was to help the Soviet Union try to win the space race. To those outside of the Soviet Union, this was the location from which it was believed that Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 launched. This was not the case, and the base did not begin operating as Soviet launch site, also called a cosmodrome, until 1966.

South China Sea Bases

The South China Sea is crucial for international trade. It is a contested region, with China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei all claiming all or part of the sea. It’s no wonder that the neighbouring nations would all want a piece of the action, as over $3 trillion worth of goods are shipped through the sea each year accounting for over 20% of all global trade.

Despite being such a heavily contested and trafficked area, in 2013 seven islands were observed among the Spratley Islands archipelago that did not appear on any map. In an attempt to exert their dominance over the South China Sea, China had created a series of artificial islands. The location was chosen, at least in part, because Beijing claims to have “historical rights” over the Spratly Islands.

With a total mass of about 3,200 acres, the construction of these islands represents an enormous engineering undertaking. What matters to us today are only three of the seven islands: Mischief Reef, Subi Reef, and Fiery Cross. Starting in 2016, it was observed that China was building fully operational military installations on these islands.

When it comes to constructing a secret military base, usually discretion is key. The previous entries were constructed in remote locations, but China wanted to go a different direction. Though the bases were constructed in secret and raise all sorts of questions of international law, China absolutely wanted people to know that these military installations existed.

We know that these militarized, artificial islands have functional missile systems and runways capable of accommodating heavy aircraft, but their actual purpose remains somewhat unclear. On the surface, it would seem that China’s goal is to increase their military capabilities in the region and try to seize total control of the South China Sea. However, conventional wisdom would tell us that it’s not an effective strategy.

Aside from the massive cost associated with building artificial islands, keeping an island base like this funded and operational is both costly and difficult. In an actual conflict, especially if the United States got involved, these bases would generally be considered to be a tactical liability rather than an advantage.

These secret bases are still very new, so only time will tell exactly how this story will play out. Are they just a scare tactic to try to get the other nations involved to abandon their claims to the South China Sea, or does China have something else in mind?

Porton Down

Porton Down is located in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of Porton. It’s a rather generic British name for a location and is officially classified as a science park. It sounds like a pretty nice place on the surface, but it is England’s most secretive and controversial military research facility with a specialization in chemical and biological warfare.

The 7,000 acre facility was founded in 1916, yet despite being over 100 years old nearly all of the research conducted there has remained secret to this day. Of the things that we do now know, none of it is good. Porton Down engaged in both animal and human tests, with one of the most famous being the Rawalpindi experiments.

These experiments were carried out at the British military installation in Rawalpindi, Pakistan before and during World War II. The purpose of the experiments, which lasted for over ten years, was to test the effects of mustard gas on servicemen in the British Indian Army. Over 500 soldiers were subjected to mustard gas during these trials, but it gets much worse than that. Between 1949 and 1989, up to 20,000 more people were subjected to chemical warfare trials, the details of which are largely unknown.

Then there was the biological warfare testing Porton Down performed on Gruinard Island. The British military wanted to test the viability of a biological weapon armed with anthrax spores. They did have the foresight to use an island that wasn’t inhabited by people, using livestock as their test subjects. The test worked, and the anthrax killed off all of the livestock on the island.

The test worked so well, in fact, that the island remained uninhabitable for over 40 years until a concerted effort was finally made to decontaminate the soil.

And that’s most of what we know about Porton Down. Aside from a few isolated deaths of researchers that were accidentally exposed to nerve toxins or plagues, most of the over 100 year history of Porton Down remains a mystery. The facility remains active to this day, but we’ll choose to believe their research has become much more ethical than it once was.

Pine Gap

The Joint Defense Facility Pine Gap is located 11 miles southwest of the town of Alice Springs, Northern Territory in the center of Australia. It is a joint surveillance operation by the United States and Australia, run in part by the CIA, NSA, and NRO. It was originally created in 1966 as the Joint Defense Space Research Facility, and as far as the public was concerned, it was dedicated to space research. Until the release of classified documents by Edward Snowden in 2013, that was the official story.

As it turns out, this space research facility was actually part of the ECHELON program, operated by the not at all ominous sounding partnership known as the Five Eyes. The Five Eyes is a collaborative surveillance program operated by the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Originally, the purpose of Pine Gap was to detect missile launches and make sure everyone was complying with nuclear treaties. However, as time went on the project expanded. The extent of their goals remains unclear, but they utilize six geosynchronous satellites to gather communications data from the Eastern Hemisphere. Based on documents leaked in 2017, these spy satellites are conducting two secret missions known only as Mission 7600 and Mission 8300.

Most of what goes on at Pine Gap has remained a mystery, despite the leaked documents. It has been reported that the technology used intercepts phone calls, emails, and faxes of Australian citizens. Though the reporting made it sound like this interception of personal communications may have been incidental and that wasn’t the intended goal, this may not be the case. According to NSA documents, this was likely part of an NSA effort to intercept and collect internet and telephone communications on a global scale.

Despite the initial documents concerning Pine Gap having been leaked a decade ago, the facility is still in operation. Since, as far as we know, nothing has actually changed at Pine Gap since the information was released, one could argue that the public may have been better off while they were blissfully ignorant.

Mount Weather

The Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center is a secret base so famous it has appeared in The X-Files, the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, The 100, and numerous other movies, television shows, and books. As one might expect, the center is located at Mount Weather in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Bluemont, Virginia, this secret base was in operation for 15 years before anybody even knew it existed. Even then, its existence was only made public because of a terrible accident.

On December 1, 1974, TWA Flight 514 lost control during stormy weather and crashed into the top of Mount Weather. All 85 passengers and seven crew members died in the crash, and the wreckage landed near the Mount Weather facility. It wasn’t until a report in The Washington Post mentioned the government facility in its coverage of the crash that the public had any idea the secret installation existed.

The Mount Weather facility has two sections, the above ground Area A and the underground Area B. The location was originally opened as a weather station in the late 1800s, and Area A has FEMA training facilities and a control station for the FEMA National Radio System. As for Area B, that’s a lot more classified.

We know that the 600,000 square foot underground area was built as a Cold War relocation site, a secure location where the highest ranking government officials could be taken to survive nuclear Armageddon. Though that fortunately has never been necessary, the site has still been used on multiple occasions, such as after the September 11th attacks.

But beyond knowing that it exists and why it was originally created, nobody actually knows what goes on in the secretive Area B. Local residents will tell you that the facility is a major employer, but even most of the employees have no idea what’s actually going on there. Naturally, this has led to a lot of rumours.

Among the more believable claims are that the underground facility has its own hospital, dining and sleeping quarters, and a radio and TV studio that is connected to the Emergency Broadcast System. Those provisions absolutely make sense considering it is built for long term survival to wait out a nuclear war. Even the claims that Area B is equipped with a crematorium aren’t that outlandish; if the facility is intended to be occupied for years at a time, there needs to be a plan in place for those that die of natural causes.

The rumours also state that the underground base has its own police department, fire department, and is even home to a shadow government. To be clear, we mean “shadow government” in the sense of a continuity of government contingency plan, not a conspiracy theory about a secret government that is actually in charge.

With the high level of secrecy surrounding what’s actually beneath the surface at Mount Weather, if you’d like to know for sure then you’ll just have to become the President of the United States. Or at the very least, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Key Takeaways

• Area 51 is a top-secret Air Force base known for UFO conspiracy theories, but it primarily tests military aircraft.
• Kapustin Yar, a Soviet military base, was used for nuclear testing and space research, leading to UFO sightings.
• China’s South China Sea bases are artificial islands with military installations, aiming to assert regional dominance.
• Porton Down in England is a secretive military research facility specializing in chemical and biological warfare.
• Mount Weather in Virginia is a secret underground facility designed for government officials to survive nuclear attacks.

Sources

• Original Side Projects video: Worlds Most Famous Secret Bases

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