On Friday, September 20, 2019, the Facebook event “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” on the classified U.S. Air Force facility in Nevada occurred. The facility has been long-rumored to hold aliens and extraterrestrial artifacts, and millions signed up to attend the event and scope things out. However, Nevada officials say only about 40 people gathered at the gates, with 3,000 others coming to neighboring parts of Nevada.

In June, Matty Roberts, a 20-year-old from California, posted on Facebook about storming Area 51 to “see them aliens.” Memes immediately sprung up all over the internet, depicting joking plans to invade the facility and highlighting the discoveries people might make there.

Roberts has acknowledged that his post was a hoax, stating that he didn’t want anybody to actually go towards the military base and potentially get hurt or become a national security threat because of it. He believes pointing people towards mini Area 51 parties is the safer option. Capitalizing on this, he held an event Thursday night in downtown Las Vegas, using “Alienstock” as the name. Roberts plans on trademarking the name and taking the event on tour to reach people who couldn’t make it to Nevada.

For most people, the experience was a fun time spent at a festival or even taking pictures with guards at the facility. However, two YouTubers did attempt to visit Area 51 before the weekend, but were quickly arrested for trespassing.

Coincidentally, our homecoming this weekend was themed “Out of This World,” and there were many Area 51 jokes and references in the halls all week.

“I most definitely think there are aliens there. If I could find anything there, I’d probably want to find the elusive ‘shopping cart with FOUR working wheels,’ though,” junior Charlie Wehde said.

If we learned one thing from this weekend, it is that whatever is really inside of Area 51 will remain inside Area 51, for better or for worse.

Sources:

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-09-22/area-51-festival-nevada-earthlings-head-home

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/20/762897934/storm-area-51-fails-to-materialize

https://time.com/5682078/area-51-raid/