Last June, an event titled Storm Area 51: They Can’t Stop All of Us was created. Area 51 is, of course, the secretive military base located in the middle of the Nevada desert where, according to legend, the government stores its stash of crashed UFOs and aliens corpses. The theory behind the Facebook event (which started out as a joke) was that if enough people gathered outside the military base and stormed the gates at the same time, the government would be unable to prevent all of them from gaining access. I wonder if all these people believe that dead aliens and their abandoned spacecraft are on display in the lobby, right inside the front door? I also wonder if any of them have seen the opening of Saving Private Ryan.
As things often do on the internet, the event went viral. The number of people interested in attending the raid grew. When mainstream media caught wind of the so-called event, more than a hundred thousand people said they were going to attend the raid. When the number neared half a million, people really began to take notice. According to the event page (which is still online), 2.1 million people said they were going, while another 1.5 million marked themselves as “interested.” If all those interested decided to go at the last minute, that would bring the number up to 3.6 million people, or approximately 1.5% of the population of the United States.
Of course on Facebook, all it takes is a single, non-committal mouse-click to announce to the world you’re attending an event. In real life, it’s harder to get people to leave their home. Everybody who has ever tried to plan something online knows “I’m interested” means “I’m not coming,” and “I’m going” means “I’m probably not going.” The only thing these numbers prove is that a jokey Facebook event got more than one percent of the population to click a button on Facebook. In a world where the average adult spends four hours a day on their smartphone or tablet, getting people’s attention, even if it’s only long enough to click a button, says something.
Lest anyone thinks the United States military has a sense of humor when it comes to people threatening to raid an active military base, the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (under the Department of Defense) tweeted a picture of bunch of soldiers standing in front of a stealth bomber with the caption, “The last thing #millennials will see if they attempt the #area51 raid.” (The DoD has since apologized for the tweet.) And while (one would hope) military forces would not resort to bombing goofy revelers in the desert, the perimeter surrounding Area 51 is notoriously well protected. There are cameras equipped with night vision, fences, motion sensors, armed guards, and plenty of signs warning trespassers that lethal force is authorized.
Last weekend was the date of the big raid. The number of people who actually showed up varies depending on the source, but the most commonly cited number is around 1,500 people — approximately %0.05 of the people who said they were attending or interested in attending on Facebook. Some of those same reports say that around 75 people actually went to the front gate, where they were met by (surprise) armed soldiers. Nobody was forced to scramble the stealth fighters, although apparently at least one attendee was arrested for public urination.
To get that close to the gate, attendees would have had to pass those signs I mentioned. Susan and I stood at one of those signs back in 1994, during our infamous “let’s drop out of school and take a road trip out west” adventure. We weren’t brave enough to drive all the way up to the front gate — seeing a big sign that threatens lethal force was enough for us.
For what it’s worth, seventeen years later in 2011 we did another road trip out west (this time with kids) and visited the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico instead. It was a lot more fun than hanging out in the desert.
