Latest news with #Area51
Geek Tyrant
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
Colin Trevorrow and Ryan Reynolds Are Teaming Up For a Film That Revolvs Around Area 51 — GeekTyrant
Colin Trevorrow and Ryan Reynolds are teaming up on an interesting new film project that will revolve around the infamous Area 51. Trevorrow is set to direct and producethe untitled conspiracy thriller for Paramount Pictures, and Reynolds is on board as producer through his Maximum Effort banner. According to Deadline, the film takes place in the late 1980s and centers on a local Las Vegas TV journalist who first broke the story of Area 51. The script comes from Thomas and William Wheeler, who are also executive producing. For Trevorrow, this feels like a return to the more grounded, high-concept storytelling that first put him on the map with Safety Not Guaranteed , a small indie sci-fi comedy that wowed audiences at Sundance back in 2012. That breakout film led to him landing Jurassic World , which became a massive box office hit and reignited a dormant franchise. Now, he's dialing the scale back a bit but keeping the mystery front and center. Pair that with Reynolds' track record of injecting charm, humor, and heart into almost everything he touches, and you've got something that feels like it could walk the line between The X-Files and Broadcast News , with just enough of that Maximum Effort twist. No casting has been announced yet, and the project is still in early development, but the premise alone has our antennas up. If you're into cold war conspiracies, alien lore, or just want to see what happens when Reynolds and Trevorrow poke around the Nevada desert together, this is one to keep your eyes on.
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
We Might Be Waiting Even Longer For That ‘Constantine' Sequel
Plus, Colin Trevorrow heads to Area 51 for new movie. Ralph Ineson teases the scale and aloofness of his Galactus. Joe Locke says he's in the MCU for the long haul. Plus, Wednesday's creative team plays down season 2's horror, and what's coming on the next Rick & Morty. Spoilers get! Untitled Area 51 Movie Deadline reports Colin Trevorrow is attached to direct a currently untitled film 'set in the late 1980s' that follows 'the local Las Vegas TV news journalist who first broke the story of Area 51.' Trevorrow will produce the project through his Metronome banner with the help of Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort. Constantine 2 In conversation with The Direct, Peter Stormare suggested Keanu Reeves is unhappy with the current script draft for Constantine 2. It's a lot of back and forth, because… I think Keanu [Reeves], which I know pretty good, is not so happy with the scripts and usually what comes out of the studios… Because the first one wasn't that successful in the beginning, it became a sleeper and became a cult movie, and now it is one of the biggest cult movies ever. But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes. It turns into an action movie, and not like going deeper and deeper into the characters. I think he wants to do his character again, Constantine, as grounded as it was in the first one. It took a long time for you to become a cult movie, it really worked, and it will work on the audience again. You don't have to add a lot of action and shootouts. You have other movies. Don't turn it into big Marvel… [Don't turn it] into us flying around in harnesses all the time and shooting each other up. Don't bring in the big guns. Let it be. Fantastic Four: First Steps In conversation with Empire, Ralph Ineson revealed he prepared for his role as Galactus by standing atop 'a lot of tall buildings.' He's a cosmic force. He's a god, of sorts. [I drove through the tunnels of Mont Blanc] 'just imagining that as his windpipe and his trachea. I also went to a lot of tall buildings. We went to a wedding at the top of the Gherkin building in London, and I spent most of the afternoon just staring out, ruminating. I got in trouble with my wife — she was like, 'You've got to say hello to the bride and groom at some point!' Ready or Not: Here I Come During a recent interview with Comic Book, Ready or Not screenwriter Guy Busick stated the upcoming sequel 'isn't even the same genre' as the first. Things that we reference … Radio Silence, the producers, Ryan and myself … over and over again are Aliens and Terminator 2. How do you blow it up in a way that isn't even the same genre, but hits all the notes and has the same DNA? Here I Come is a horror movie with humor, just like the first one. But what's the crazy, bigger world of it? A Bright Future In an ant-infested future specifically tailored to the needs of the elderly, chosen young people are shipped to 'The North' to make their families proud in the trailer for A Bright Future. Agatha All Along Speaking with The Playlist, Joe Locke discussed his forseeable contractually obligated future with Marvel, suggesting Billy Maximoff could be around for a good while yet. Kevin Feige doesn't ring you up, but when I signed my contract, I signed for my whole life. But so you sort of wait for them. You're in limbo to them, which is, there are worse things to be in limbo for. Ms. Marvel Meanwhile, Red Dagger actor Aramis Knight told Screen Rant he believes his time in the MCU is officially over. Referring to a potential second season of Ms. Marvel, Knight answered: I don't think so. I mean it's been a long time now, so I am not really sure. I mean I would love to. I was supposed to make appearances and other things but it didn't end up working out and some logistical stuff and COVID stuff and I think also creative stuff. But I mean that was also an amazing show, but I dunno, I'm still waiting for the call to be honest. Wednesday In conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Wednesday co-creator Miles Millar reiterated the show's more horror-focused second season will still be family friendly. Season 2 definitely has some moments which are more straightforward horror, and we're very aware that the show is watched by everybody in terms of the age groups. So we want to make sure that it's never torture porn, but that there's enough bite to it that it feels that there are real stakes and that people die in this world, and it's scary at moments. And I think that's the great tonal shift that the show makes between comedy and horror. Rick and Morty Finally, Space Beth's plan to assassinate the Gromflomite Queen goes awry in a clip from this Sunday's episode of Rick and Morty.
Eater
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
Welcome to Weird, Wild, Wonderful Nevada
To many outsiders, Nevada is just the desert landmass that surrounds the glamorous, neon-drenched dreamscape of Las Vegas — a state whose name is mispronounced as often as it's misunderstood (it's Nev- add -uh). Others know Nevada to be ghost country, not just for its literal ghost towns, but for the apparitions rumored to haunt its century-old hotels and saloons. The state is, of course, the backdrop to Area 51 and (allegedly) classified extraterrestrial activity. It's the collective memory of mushroom clouds blossoming over the Mojave Desert. It's the rootin'-tootin' Wild West. These images all coalesce into the tapestry of a state unified by the weird, wild, and wonderful. All of this to say, Nevada isn't just drawn to the strange — it depends on it. Its history, infrastructure, and identity have been stitched together in secrecy and by speculation, which, in turn, have shaped the state's appetite for the uncanny, the campy, and the downright surreal. I've lived in the Battle Born State since I was 14. Zak Bagans's haunted museum sits just down the street from my house. The bar where my friends and I regularly celebrate birthdays glows with Atomic Age memorabilia. My weekend road trips include renegade art exhibits of upturned cars and spectral recreations of The Last Supper , often bookended by stops at alien-themed gas stations and beef jerky stands. Here, roadside restaurants and watering holes serve as waypoints and mythmakers, where strangers trade ghost stories over hotel bar counters, gather in a restaurant near Area 51 to compare unexplainable night sky sightings, and refuel with cherry-steeped beer from a remote brewery that alone can justify an hourslong drive. My previous road trips throughout the state have featured stops at attractions that are pointedly bizarre — like artist Ugo Rondinone's psychedelic Day-Glo monoliths that comprise Seven Magic Mountains. I've journeyed to many geologically surreal destinations: Take, for example, the soaring spires and person-wide slot canyons that rise from the pale siltstone and clay shale of Cathedral Gorge State Park. For the past decade, I have been telling my friends that next year is the year that I'll join them on a silica-coated dry lake bed managed by the Bureau of Land Management for Burning Man, where some 70,000 people erect a city of tents, temples, and flame-spewing octopuses every August leading up to Labor Day. 'The West has long been a mirage — the draw of exploration, ambition, and self-invention shimmering like water: imminently ahead but just out of reach.' Nevadans may be uniquely predisposed to look for things that are weird , says Michael Green, chair of UNLV's history department. Consider the boom-and-bust mining towns of early Nevada and the resulting transience that lends itself to ghost stories. There's Area 51 and the patchwork of lore regarding what secretly goes on beyond its gates, just 80 miles outside of Las Vegas. Even today, more than 80 percent of the state's land is federally owned. 'There is some degree of secrecy associated with federal land; there is also a degree of secrecy associated with the mob,' Green says. Between the 1940s and 1970s, the mob — more specifically, the American Mafia — exerted sweeping control over Las Vegas casinos: It built them, ran them, and controlled the flow of money both on and off the books. The mob's goings-on were generally limited to verbal agreements and handshake deals, with documents minimally used and even written in code. 'There are so many things that have been done behind the scenes, under the table, that we figured there has to be more to the story,' Green says. Nevada's preoccupation with the weird isn't just about secrets; it's also about the inherent wistfulness of the American Southwest. There's the nostalgia shaped by the open road, Route 66, and cowboy iconography — all shorthand within pop culture for individualism and escape. For longtime Nevadans, that nostalgia may be more textured, based on yearning for a slower pace or the do-it-yourself era of Las Vegas before corporate monoculture took over the Strip. More broadly, the West has long been a mirage — the draw of exploration, ambition, and self-invention shimmering like water: imminently ahead but just out of reach. In April, I traveled 479 miles to see the weirdest and wildest lore-steeped sites in Nevada. Flying 80 miles an hour down the 95 — past sun-hardened rock faces and thorny desert scrub — I blearily had visions of making the same trip by foot and on horseback. In Tonopah, Nevada, I read an epitaph for a pair of brothers buried in the cemetery next to the Clown Motel: two boys who grew up in Montenegro, traveled to the shores of the Adriatic Sea, then boarded a steamship to journey to the United States — only to be killed by a runaway mine cart 200 feet beneath the desert town. I stood in the shade of the Mission Revival-style railroad depot in Rhyolite, now a ghost town, where fortune-seekers arrived by train in 1907 with the promise of building a life in the state's biggest mining camp — only to board that same train just one year later when the town began to decline. I traced my fingers over the bullet holes in the walls of Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, Nevada, and sensed the presence of the miner who lost his life over a poker game gone wrong. This highway-honed wistfulness has become an integral part of Nevada's folklore. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Nevada was in the thick of its mining boom, stories abounded of rich deposits gone lost. These narratives often took the form of an old prospector who emerged from the wilderness, unable to recall where he found the treasure, historian Ronald M. James writes in Monumental Lies: Early Nevada Folklore of the Wild West. Others involved 'a dog running off, leading its owner on an untrodden path, or a donkey kicking a rock that reveals the gleam of gold.' This trope is behind the apocryphal story of Jim Butler, the prospector whose accidental discovery of the Mizpah Ledge silver vein led to Tonopah's founding: One of his donkeys wandered off, and when he picked up a rock to throw at it, he was struck by the stone's unusual weight. If I wanted to better understand my state's fascination with the weird, I reasoned that I should follow Butler's path to what is now Tonopah, for a stay at the Mizpah Hotel. I want to be clear: I don't believe in ghosts. But that doesn't mean the idea of them doesn't scare me. So I passed on the opportunity to book the Mizpah Hotel's Lady in Red Suite — a room that had been the private quarters of a sex worker, known in thinly veiled misogynistic lore as the 'Lady in Red,' who was murdered by a jealous client more than a century ago and is rumored to wander the halls since. 'Visitors report seeing her. Some staff have seen her. She really likes to frequent the fifth floor,' says Chavonn Smith, the front desk manager of the Mizpah. 'She's not an angry ghost. But she does not like women very much.' Instead, I booked a room where my bed was an old-timey wooden wagon. Feigning bravery, I joined a ghost tour that began in the hotel's turn-of-the-century lobby — marked by burgundy patterned carpet, frosted-glass chandeliers, and Victorian camelback settees that seem made for collapsing onto should any of the basement's rumored inhabitants appear. Only when we reached the unfinished floor that once held the hotel's safe did our guide tell us the story of three enterprising miners who tunneled beneath the hotel and emerged through the bottom of the vault. After securing the hotel's riches, one of the miners turned on the others. The next morning, the hotel manager unlocked the safe to find the money gone — and two dead miners left in its place. Visitors still recount catching glimpses of the betrayed miners at the hotel bar, their heads translucent and capped with carbide lamp helmets. Sure, these tales are tall. But in Nevada, ghost stories are more than just marketing or tourism fodder. In Monumental Lies, James writes that from their earliest days, Nevadans have entertained the idea of ghosts. Long before mining towns spun tales of haunted saloons, Indigenous communities of the Great Basin — like the Paiute and Shoshone, and the Washoe near Lake Tahoe — shared stories of ghosts that warned of danger and spirits tied to sacred waters and ancestral places. As James notes, 'much was appropriated but then confused, while other traditions were imagined and projected onto the cultures of the American Indians' — a tangle that shaped the state's early folklore into a mix of belief, invention, and sometimes mockery of its earliest inhabitants. 'Tonopah has a population of about 2,000 people — 6,000 if you count the clowns.' What makes Nevada's ghost stories feel different — weirder, even — than those of other allegedly haunted states is how deeply they're rooted in its roads. In much the same way that cities like Tonopah, Goldfield, and Virginia City were built on the promise of silver, so too are they now buoyed by haunted tourism. 'For many today, a pivotal way to approach the past is by contemplating its spiritual residue,' writes James. Stories like those of the betrayed miners — tales of greed, ambition, and unresolved endings — are part of how Nevadans make sense of a landscape shaped by boomtowns, busts, and disappearances. In a place where so much has been hidden or lost, locals and travelers continue to try to conjure spirits that may or may not have reason to linger. Tonopah has a population of about 2,000 people — 6,000 if you count the clowns. The 33-room Clown Motel opened in 1985 with a modest personal collection of 150 clown statues. When former art director Hame Anand took over as the motel's CEO in 2019, he ran with the theme — adding thousands of clown murals, portraits, marionettes that probably come alive at night, masks that will almost certainly fuse to your face if you get too close, and one clown statue that I swear I saw wink at me. The whole thing is galling, baffling, deeply unsettling — and, naturally, a must-see tourist destination. The motel's property backs up to another supposedly haunted locale: the town's old cemetery. Here, century-old headstones are updated by the Central Nevada Historical Society to include causes of death. Wandering through the copse of wooden crosses and metal tombstones tells the story of small-town Nevada in the early 1900s — where the Marojevech brothers failed to halt a runaway mine cart in the Belmont Mine, where local hero Big Bill Murphy was killed rescuing others in a fire in 1911, and where the 'Tonopah plague' caused the deaths of 56 people in a four-month span in 1905. It's a ledger of early Nevada, an undercurrent of reality beneath the honky-tonk myth of the Wild West. Before hitting the road, I had lunch at Tonopah Brewing Co., where the walls are lined with awards for brewmaster Edward Nash's tart fruited sours. But the food here is a sleeper hit, far better than one may expect from a brewery in Middle of Nowhere, Nevada. A French dip sandwich piles tender roast beef onto a pretzel roll slathered with horseradish and flanked by a glimmering side of jus. Molten fried cheese curds beg to be dunked into their accompanying ranch dressing. A Nashville-style hot fried chicken sandwich gets topped with a stack of cooling pickles and coleslaw. It all paired well with a flight of beers — the Cherry 51 witbier, brewed with cherries, and the Honey Wheat ale stood out as my favorites. Driving back down to Las Vegas, I stopped in Goldfield (population: 231), with my sights set on the International Car Forest of the Last Church. Weird art in Nevada is hardly limited to the tech scion-curated display in Black Rock City. Dozens of junk cars, school buses, and ice cream trucks are half-buried like offerings, their hoods entombed in the hard earth, tail lights propped up like grave markers, chassis exposed like bodies after exhumation. These cars await wandering artists who will anoint them with spray paint. Is this a meditation on decay? A post-industrial necropolis? A bold indictment of consumerism's terminal velocity? Or — and stay with me here — is it just extremely funny to bury a minivan in the desert and hand out cans of Krylon like communion wafers? Art is subjective. Seeking more weird desert art, I ventured to Rhyolite (population: 0), a ghost town once so destined to be the largest mining operation in the state that a railroad was built in 1906 to connect it to Las Vegas. A Mission Revival depot soon followed, servicing the 50 freight cars that ran per day. But within months of its completion, more people were leaving Rhyolite than arriving, according to the Bureau of Land Management. Just downhill from the depot — and the crumbling remains of the bank and schoolhouse — lies the Goldwell Open Air Museum. Thirteen spectral figures, cloaked in gauzy white plaster, loom over the sand in a ghostly parody of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper . Rooftops peek out of the ground as if they're being swallowed by quicksand. A 25-foot woman made out of pink cinder blocks — with yellow brick accents to indicate both her blond locks and pubic hair — stares silently into the distance. Nevada's desert is part excavation site, part sandbox: a squared-off plot where some come to unearth buried histories, while others come to play — shaping odd monuments before the wind levels them flat. Nowhere is that tension more vivid than in Rhyolite, where past ambition and present-day absurdity share the same forsaken earth. Alongside its ghost stories and surrealist desert art, Nevada also deals its own brand of extraterrestrial weird. Driving south from Rhyolite into Las Vegas brought me to the Area 51 Alien Center in Amargosa Valley — a Brat -green gift shop/gas station/frozen yogurt cafe decorated in cardboard clip art aliens. It sells alien-face thongs; green-handed back scratchers; vials of soil allegedly sourced from Area 51; 'Interstellar Sandwiches,' including a triple-decker club and drippy 'Alien Burgers' with sauteed mushrooms; and, for $5, a turban-clad Alien Zoltar, who predicts that something lost will turn up very soon. This is the kitschy end of Nevada's alien fixation — part roadside spectacle, part intergalactic fever dream — joined by the E.T. Fresh Jerky bungalow in Lincoln County, the Outpost 51 Alien Museum in Boulder City, and the Alien Fresh Jerky compound just over the border in Baker, California, where a full-size UFO hotel is under construction. The next day, I drove up Route 375 — better known as the Extraterrestrial Highway. The official road marker bearing that name, perched atop two 12-foot-tall poles, had previously been stickered into illegibility. The highway winds past the legendary Black Mailbox, rumored to be a drop site for alien communications, and the arched, galvanized metal Alien Research Center fronted by a towering metal figure. (I'm pretty sure the latter is a gift shop, though it's never been open when I've passed through.) Follow the road and eventually you'll drive through the gates of Area 51. But about 25 miles before that, you'll arrive at the Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada (population: 48). Little A'Le'Inn has become a haven for the alien-obsessed, but its namesake stems from a typo, not anything out of this universe. After buying the Rachel Bar and Grill in 1988, owner Connie West tells me that her parents intended to name the cafe the 'Little Ale'Inn' — a nod to the ales they served. But a printer's error on the sign — an errant apostrophe — turned it into a name that just happened to rhyme with 'alien,' West says, around the same time Las Vegas reporter George Knapp was breaking Bob Lazar's now-infamous claims about working on an extraterrestrial spacecraft near Area 51. For West, the name feels almost like fate. Before Matty Roberts' viral Facebook event, 'Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us,' thrust the Little A'Le'Inn into the national spotlight, the restaurant had already cultivated its own community — one made up of UFO chasers and roadtrippers, or, as West puts it, 'people who want to travel, to see places, to get off the pavement and the beaten path.' Visitors come with photographs of their own UFO sightings in hand. They mail West Polaroids and handwritten testimonials, many of which are taped on the restaurant's gallery walls. The photos make me think about the unwavering light I saw bobbing over Great Basin National Park last summer. If I had snapped a photo, would it have made West's wall? Beyond the displays of photos and Area 51 memorabilia is a smattering of mismatched tables and chairs, a bar where customers sign dollar bills to be suspended from the ceiling, and a gift shop filled with bumper stickers and shot glasses ('Believe,' one reads). Outside, the restaurant is bordered by alien statues. A light-up flying saucer was a parting gift from the Galaxy Quest home-video release party, which took place in Little A'Le'Inn's parking lot. A tow truck suspends a satellite dish-sized metal UFO — plastered with stickers from travelers who've passed through — donated by a friend of West's father, Joe Travis. West says that a visiting artist asked for permission to paint on a blank wall. The artist left a purple mural of dead-eyed aliens, some engaged with humans in an interspecies kiss, that glows under black light. Over 'Saucer Burgers' and buttery white bread grilled cheese sandwiches, customers who commute among the Southwest's national parks — Zion to Yosemite is a common trail — pick up easy conversation at Little A'Le'Inn, comparing stories of unexplainable sightings in the night sky. West says it's this sense of openness and shared experience that has allowed the restaurant to continue to thrive. 'We have a unique place where you're free to communicate with each other [without judgment],' she says. 'I think that's why we have been in business so long.' Over time, Little A'Le'Inn became a nexus for weird Nevada experiences. There's a warmth in the conversations that happen here, knitted among friends and strangers — of strange bright lights in the sky, of encounters in the barren stretches of Nevada's night, of government secrets they seek to uncover. 'I personally believe that if you look up and you look out, it's too vast,' West tells me. 'There are strange things in the sky, things I can't explain. Hopefully, there's something else besides us.' In the 1950s, patrons at Atomic Liquors in Downtown Las Vegas looked up and out, too. They would gather on the roof of the city's first freestanding bar with cocktails in hand and watch nuclear test explosions bloom on the horizon, as if they were fireworks instead of fallout. Back then, atomic tourism was part of the spectacle — proof of progress and power. Today, that bar leans into its strange past, its walls lined with Atomic Age paraphernalia and standees of Miss Atomic Bomb in her mushroom cloud swimsuit. It's kitschy, yes, but also quietly haunting — a reminder that Nevada's fascination with the unknown has revolved around the existential as much as the extraterrestrial. In Nevada, weird isn't an outlier, it's the vernacular. From atomic tourism to ghost hotels, alien sightings to art cars, and all the tall tales of the Wild West, the state doesn't just tolerate the bizarre: It builds around it, sells tickets to it, leaves the lights on for it. Maybe all the UFOs were just weather balloons. Maybe the ghosts were just creaks in the night. And maybe that clown never winked at me. The stories here are strange, and the sights often stranger. But they help make sense of a place long defined by what slips through fingers — silver, water, time, truth. 'From the earliest days, the West was wilder, harder hitting, harder drinking, harder ... everything ... than elsewhere. We know this to be true because legends confirm it,' writes James. Call it mythmaking or marketing, but out here, weird works. Sign up for our newsletter.
Daily Record
21-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Record
Royal Navy's £1.3bn 'hunter-killer' submarine ready after secret tests at US Navy's 'Area 51'
HMS Anson is the fifth and most advanced in the Royal Navy's Astute-class of nuclear-powered submarines, which can circumnavigate the globe completely submerged beneath the waves The Royal Navy is preparing to deploy its £1.3billion 'hunter-killer' submarine, the HMS Anson, following weapons tests in the Atlantic and a visit to the US's maritime equivalent of 'Area 51'. The HMS Anson is the latest addition to the Navy's Astute-class of nuclear-powered vessels, which are capable of circumnavigating the globe completely submerged, making it the most advanced yet. This formidable vessel can launch long-range Tomahawk missiles to strike land targets as well as Spearfish torpedoes to combat enemy submarines, making the Astute-class the largest in the underwater fleet. HMS Anson has undergone trials off the east coast of the United States and in the Caribbean Sea, testing these capabilities alongside her state-of-the-art systems. Anson joins her operational sisters: Astute, Ambush, Artful and Audacious in this impressive class, reports the Express. Before being officially deployed on military operations, the sub will undergo further rigorous tests. Since leaving its shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness in February 2024, Anson has patrolled the UK coastline before sailing further north of Scotland to test her weapons systems. The Royal Navy describes these drills as consisting of "successful firings of both Spearfish and Tomahawk test missiles" before matters "intensified into the Atlantic as Anson headed to the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) in the waters around the Bahamas." AUTEC, nestled beside the Tongue of the Ocean's natural marvel—a vast deep-water basin hewn from coral reef—attracts top military tech experts from around the globe. The facility has earned a reputation as the US Navy's 'Area 51' due to the classified nature of its operations, and it even featured on History Channel's TV show UFO Hunters, where it was touted as a secret alien underwater base. In truth, the base spans 20 miles in width, stretches 150 miles in length, plunges up to 6,000ft deep in certain areas, and is packed with sophisticated recording gear to collect data on submarines, torpedoes, and sonar. While the precise outcomes of Anson's trials remain under wraps, the submarine must perform exceptionally well to confirm her capability to track enemy subs undetected. However, it wasn't all about the grind for her crew. "The opportunity for the majority of the Ship's Company to get to spend a few days on Andros was fantastic," shared one submariner, recounting the experience. He added, "This afforded us a few days of rest from the sea trials we were conducting and allowed us to spend time on the beach in the sun, relaxing and playing volleyball with base personnel."
New York Post
18-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
New UFO fears after potential sightings over Arizona
Score one for the aliens. A United States F-16 Viper combat jet has been damaged after being struck by an 'unidentified aerial phenomenon.' Advertisement It comes amid a fresh uptick in the number of strange flying objects being sighted over the southern US border state of Arizona. The News Nation media service reports seeing Federal Aviation Authority documents confirming 'numerous encounters' with strange craft. One reportedly struck the perspex canopy of a $100 million (US) F-16 fighter, causing the aircraft to be grounded for repairs. 8 A United States F-16 Viper combat jet was damaged after being struck by an 'unidentified aerial phenomenon'. Getty Images These aren't UFOS (Unidentified Flying Objects). Advertisement Instead, they are UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). So what's in a name? 8 3d rendering metal ufo or alien spaceship in the sky. phonlamaiphoto – Arizona shares extensive military testing grounds with neighboring Nevada – home to the secretive Area 51 testing facility that has been associated with otherworldly flying saucers for decades. Advertisement But it also borders Mexico. That is the focus of fresh invasion fears. President Donald Trump has invoked the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 in response to a 'predatory incursion' of the United States. Not the murderous alien Predators of Arnold Schwarzenegger fame, but the fundamentally human need to seek safety and security – or a quick buck. Advertisement Now, defense analysts are linking an uptick in the region's long history of alien invasion scares to a surge in the use of cross-border drug-smuggling drones. Something in the air 'There has been a lot of activity, particularly on the Arizona border. A lot of people are reporting a lot of things,' former director of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), Luis Elizondo, told News Nation. 8 Nighttime drone sightings over Morris and Somerset counties in New Jersey. @MendhamMike via Storyful One incident flared across local headlines in November. Strange lights were seen in the night sky above Bullhead City. Footage quickly went viral on TikTok. Despite being linked to the headlights of off-road vehicles driving through nearby hills, the incident has further fueled the state's reputation as an alien sightseeing destination. 8 New Jersey Drone Video submitted by an NY Post reader on Dec 13, 2024. Obtained by NY Post In 1997, photos of a V-shaped formation dubbed the 'Phoenix Lights' attracted global attention. Advertisement Few accepted the US Air Force's explanation that it was a group of A-10 'Tankbuster' aircraft practicing formation-flying with their night-lights on. Another incident, this time in 2011, convinced locals that the aliens had returned. Again, the explanation that the Arizona Skyhawks skydiving team was carrying high-intensity flares to kick off a nearby football match didn't appeal. 8 Defense analysts are linking an uptick in the region's long history of alien invasion scares to a surge in the use of cross-border drug-smuggling drones. Sasa Kadrijevic – Advertisement But now, the FAA documents suggest US Air Force pilots are adding to Arizona's collection of inexplicable sightings. At least until they're explained. Border patrols have been intensified in recent years and one of President Trump's first acts was to order 6000 extra troops into the region, supported by armored personnel carriers, surveillance aircraft, combat helicopters and two navy destroyers. Combined with intensified border police checks and patrols, this is making it more challenging for Mexico's cartels to feed America's illegal narcotics addiction. Advertisement 8 A 2011 incident convinced locals in Arizona that the aliens had returned. merlin74 – Evidence suggests they're turning to a new generation of large drones to haul their deadly cargo directly to market. Dones being used as delivery mules isn't exactly new. US authorities have been documenting seizures of small craft carrying about 11 to 22 pounds for more than a decade. But technologies developed for the likes of Amazon to deliver large parcels across an urban landscape are being adapted for the drug trade. Advertisement 8 Arizona has a reputation for being an alien sightseeing destination. vchalup – That means they're flying higher and further than ever before. The truth is out there New research from the Manchester Metropolitan University and Liverpool John Moores University has examined the tendency for people to attribute unexplained events to paranormal or extraterrestrial events. 'When faced with events we cannot control, our minds look for patterns and explanations,' the study's authors write. President Trump's new administration came to power, insisting it would tackle the UFO issue once and for all. And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did so in one of her first public appearances. She addressed last year's spate of strange lights in the sky in the American Northeast. They were not aliens. They weren't even Iranian drones. They were, she said, normal aircraft flying normal routes at normal times. It's just that people had suddenly started paying attention to them. 'In time, it got worse, due to curiosity. This was not the enemy,' she explained. Now, the Trump Administration has moved to shut down a secret FBI office dedicated to investigating 'unidentified anomalous phenomena''. 8 White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the strange lights in the American Northeast sky, attributing them to aircraft flying on normal routes. UPI It had been public knowledge for decades that the Pentagon had been running the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to examine strange sightings. But the FBI had never admitted – before announcing it was about to be shut down – that this team existed. Questions, however, remain unanswered. Tennessee Republican Representative Tim Burchett wants to know more. He's told the US Congress that extraterrestrial craft are operating from secret undersea bases. 'I haven't been briefed on this, just from what I'm putting together, but we have some secret sonar … (They) tell me something's moving at hundreds of miles an hour underwater … and this one was as large as a football field underwater, and this was a documented case, and I have an admiral telling me this stuff,' he told One America News. The research psychologists say it's a natural tendency for people to turn to paranormal and conspiracy-theory beliefs in order to deal with anxiety. 'Realising that life is unpredictable and has an end can be unsettling,' they write. 'Supernatural beliefs provide comfort by suggesting that a higher power controls human destiny.' The illegal immigration crisis, the militarization of the border – and increased military training and experimentation in the face of increasing global aggression – all converge on Arizona. That may help explain why every light in the sky is suddenly a UFO or UAP. 'Instead of dismissing such beliefs, it is important to recognise their emotional and personal significance,' the psychologists conclude. 'Particularly, how beliefs shape people's perspectives and coping mechanisms. 'While they may not align with logic or evidence, the comfort they afford is deeply meaningful to those who hold them.'
