6 Massive Secret Operations That Are Hidden All Around You

Ever had a sneaking suspicion that there's another world, a secret world, hidden just out of sight of this one? Good news: There totally is! Bad news: There's a reason they're hiding that secret world from you ...

The City of Angels: It's where many of our favorite celebrities work, play, go to rehab, get breast implants, relapse and drive expensive cars into trees. It's a land of magic, is what we're saying. But it's also home to the third largest oil field in the U.S. Now, isn't it a shame that all of that sweet Texas tea should go untapped, just because it's sitting underneath the nation's second biggest city?

"Just pretend it's a jungle gym, kids."

Well, don't worry: It isn't. In fact, oil rigs have been placed all over L.A. and are pumping away in secret even now. The city was so caught up in oil fever that in 1930, 95 percent of the town residents passed a law allowing them to drill in their own yards. Of course the modern LA resident would never allow one of the largest oil operations in the country to go down right in their own back yard. So where'd all those rigs go?

If it's tall, out-of-place and oddly phallic, it might be an oil well.

See despite it's reputation for being not in Texas, L.A. has been an oil town from the time black gold was discovered there in 1892 right up until today. As the city's hippie clogged arteries began to expand out over the reserve, oil companies got creative. After refining a new urban design in the 1930s, the wells were all but soundproofed; an innovation that allowed oil companies to start playing "hide the pumping station."

Get your minds out of the gutter. We're still talking about oil rigs here.

Where Are They Hiding?

Right here.

On street corners, on school grounds, tucked away behind shopping malls--hidden rigs are literally everywhere in Los Angeles. There's an unmarked building on Pico Boulevard in West Hollywood which houses one of the biggest hidden oil operations in the city. From the site, 58 wells have been directionally drilled up into the Beverley Hills area. Here's what 58 oil wells looks like everywhere else in the world.

And now here's the building in LA, busily drinking the milkshake right out from under thousands of unsuspecting Bel Aire residents as you read this.

But you know how the story goes: You go to Hollywood all hopes and dreams of making it big, and when things don't work out, you find yourself covered in crude, toiling inside a clock tower that houses a secret oil rig in Santa Monica. It's practically a cliche.

Government officials are elected to look out for you. They only want to make sure that you're healthy, safe and well protected... right after they make sure that they're healthier, safer and better protected. That's why FEMA has spent 1.3 billion dollars building secret bunkers all across the United States solely to house government officials in case the unthinkable happens. Cracked has a similar plan for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

Who are we kidding? Bunkers require patience.

Project Greek Island was one of these secret bunkers. The U.S. government made a deal in the late 1950s with The Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia to use their building as a government facility to house Congress in the event of a nuclear war. Construction on a secret bunker beneath the hotel began under the guise of an "above-ground renovation" on the West Virginia wing. They dug out the area beneath the new wing as it was being built and constructed their own little addition: a massive, multi-level installation with walls of reinforced concrete and 30-ton blast doors. Right beneath the tourist resort.

If there ever is a nuclear war, shouldn't the fuckers who started it be the first ones to die?

Project Greek Island was operated under a dummy company named Forsythe Associates. It was completed, but went entirely unused during the 30 years before the Washington Post brought public attention to its existence. Once exposed, the project was shut down. Tax dollars at work, ladies and gentleman: They're building play-forts with it.

Where Are They Hiding?

Similar government bunkers could be anywhere. If they were able to slip one under this beast of a hotel--a place so public it's actually a tourist destination--there's no telling where else they were able to hide the others.

Cell phones are a massively expanding market, which is odd because they're already ubiquitous. But to keep up with increased use and the occasional unfrozen caveman just signing up, they need to build cell towers. Big, ugly, eyesore cell towers. But if that's the case, where are they? Have you seen new ones being built recently? No? That's because they're all over the place; you just can't see them. They're disguising them

Not always well.

Where Are They Hiding?

There's one outside your window if you know where to look. San Bernardino County in California alone has over 500 cloaked cell antennas.

3G: Brought To You By Jesus.

The trend started small at first, only in upscale communities with tight zoning regulations, but now these towers are everywhere, even secretly shaping our cities at times. Murrieta, California, for example, recently approved a proposal by T-Mobile to build a 50-foot cell tower disguised as a clock tower. Which will go entirely unused as a time piece, because everybody's got clocks in their cell phones already.

What the fuck is that thing?