About 1.5 million people say they’re going, and another 1.1 million are interested, but how many, if any, will actually show up remains to be seen.
A Facebook event called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” is organizing people to rush the fabled Nevada Air Force base Friday to see aliens’ secrets, including ships and bodies, that some people believe the government has stashed there.
It’s being called a joke, but the event caught the attention of the Air Force.
A spokeswoman told The New York Times that “any attempt to illegally access military installations or military training areas is dangerous.”
No-trespassing signs in the area state that the use of deadly force is authorized.
The event caters to early risers — it’s set for 3 to 6 a.m. It has an “official” website, which is hawking T-shirts for $20 each.
“We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry,” the event’s Facebook page says. “Let’s see them aliens.”
Area 51 hasn’t had this much attention since it was famously featured in the 1996 Will Smith movie “Independence Day.”
One person, named Jackson Barnes, offered a “game plan” with a diagram for storming the base. But he doesn’t really seem to mean it. In a post-script to his plan, Barnes says, “Hello US government, this is a joke, and I do not actually intend to go ahead with this plan. I just thought it would be funny and get some thumbsy uppies on the internet.
“To anyone actually thinking of storming area 51, there isn’t any UFO’s or anything of extraterrestrial origin there it’s a research base, this has been confirmed by Bob Lazar (if you dont know who he is, google him).”
Lazar is a conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed physicist who has claimed to have spent some time in Area 51. He has strongly urged people not to show up there.
“Area 51 is a classified research base,” Lazar said. “There are no aliens or alien technology located there. The only place there was ever any alien technology was at Site S4, south of Area 51 proper.”
The federal government acknowledged the existence of Area 51 in 2013, when the CIA released a classified report on spy planes that were tested there.
