The Plateau d’Albion, located between the Vaucluse, the Drôme and the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, was the heart of the terrestrial system of the French nuclear deterrent force between 1971 and 1996. This unique site in France welcomed eighteen buried silos, deep about thirty meters, intended to shelter strategic SSBS SSBS nuclear and reprisal fire. Each missile pointed out on a civil or military territory of the former USSR. This program, initiated in the 1960s under the chairmanship of Charles de Gaulle, aimed to ensure French strategic independence during the Cold War.
The choice of the Albion plateau is explained by its low human density, its limestone soil favorable to the construction of silos and its proximity to other nuclear installations such as the sites of Marcoule (near Bagnols-sur-Cèze, in the Gard) and Cadarache (in Saint-Paul-lès-durance, in the Bouches-du-Rhône). Air Base 200 of Apt-Saint-Christol, in Vaucluse, served as a base-support for these French nuclear deterrence installations.
From 1996, dismantling was engaged. The missiles were removed from silos, deactivated, then destroyed in specialized centers. The last missile left the site in 1998, marking the end of the nuclearization of the plateau. Today, the old air base is occupied by the 2e foreign engineering regiment – which is part of the 27e Mountain infantry brigade and the Foreign Legion – and a listening station of the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), testifying to a military but not nuclear conversion.
The elementary particles of rumors and myths
The secret surrounding the nuclear and military activities on the Albion plateau has nourished an abundance of rumors and legends. The latter come from both the mystery inherent in the military sites classified as Secret-Defense, anonymous testimonies, unexplained observations and the local and national collective imagination.
Among the most persistent rumors, we find the idea that the ZL 1-4 zone (Launch area number 4 in sector 1) would have served as a secret laboratory to test advanced electromagnetic technologies, or even directed energy weapons. These speculations have notably appeared on ufological and defense forums, where anonymous witnesses evoke mysterious experiences without providing evidence.
The 2003 aerial accident, when a military plane crashed on the set, fed the discussions and various theories, some suggesting that electromagnetic interference would have caused the loss of control of the aircraft, although the official survey concluded that the pilot’s physiological failure.
Little by little, the rumor’s fire spreads in depth and becomes similar to underground fires. Little visible on the surface, they extend in silence, go from roots to roots to the point of making the Albion plateau a territory carrying mysteries and magic. Indeed, other legends evoke the presence of the inevitable UFOs and “strange” lights in the sky.
We even find at the height of these stories the French version of the famous men in black —Liés to a potential extraterrestrial activity on earth – whose fable is relayed by the forums and blogs of specialized circles, which relate the episodic presence of strange men. Dressed in black foot in the course, they would have temporarily taken possession of the premises with the consent of the officers of the French army.
No one heard them pronounce a single word, devoid of non -verbal language, the look hidden by tinted glasses and abnormally white skin. The Vox Populi Digital has made it representatives of extraterrestrial civilizations that have come to check the progress of technologies of human origin. As we will have understood, the Albion plateau has gradually imposed itself in the imaginary as the French zone 51, in reference to the famous American secret military base – if it is in Nevada – and its multitude of linked conspiracy theories.
The Plateau d’Albion is also surrounded by ancient popular stories, such as the legend of the coulobre, a mythical serpent, or else the mythology of Hercules fighting the giants Albion and Ligur, which give a symbolic and mystical dimension to this territory.
LSBB, a high-tech laboratory buried under the mountain
Under the Albion plateau, about 900 meters deep, is the underground low noise laboratory (LSBB). Galleries of several kilometers dug in the mountains of the commune of Rustrel (Vaucluse) sheltered the command post from zone 1 (PCT1), which depended on the highlighting of the eighteen nuclear silos of the launch zone. In other words: the LSBB took place in the device once dedicated to the nuclear button of the nation.
The underground research laboratory is attached to the universities of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Avignon, Aix-Marseille, CNRS and the Côte d’Azur Observatory. Transdisciplinary teams of researchers from around the world have set themselves to establish the research themes and the following objectives: “Low noise environment, high sensitivity observation and experimentation, solid earth observation, critical area, atmosphere, geophysical cosmic radiation, waves (deformation, translation, rotation), field of gravity, hydrogeology, transfers dynamics, geological reservoirs, high energy transitional phenomena in the atmosphere, neuroscience, biology and DNA in rocks.”
Little by little, we dig new tunnels there which constitute as many events in the very closed world of scientists who work in the underground laboratory at low noise, but also for all followers and historians of the Cold War. First of all because it modifies the topography and the original architecture of the PCT1, but also because it anchors in reality the change of destination of the device as a whole.
These tunnels welcome the necessary apparatus to listen and recording celestial bodies falling on the planet. Formerly intended to deploy chaos and crash, these mineral entrails are today attentive to the most archaic manifestations of life, a unique scientific research center in Europe. Managed by the National Institute of Sciences of the CNRS Universe, it offers an isolated environment of electromagnetic disturbances, ideal for studying sensitive physical phenomena: seismology, neutrinos, geophysics and fundamental physical.
If LSBB has become a civil laboratory, it continues to be the subject of many rumors. Some speculate on hypothetical secret military experiences, in particular in terms of long -distance communications or research on electromagnetic waves, even on humans increased by ultra secret technologies.
Based, these hypotheses that circulate in forums ignore an essential element: if the truth is elsewhere, it is as often more beautiful and wonderful than rumors. “Low noise underground laboratory, celestial body, cosmic radiation, biology and DNA in rocks …” With a lexical field of this caliber do we really need alternative accounts to vibrate our imagination?
