What has driven millions of people to sign up to "storm" Area 51, the US government's military base? It's clearly just a bit of fun by internet jokesters, but the US military isn't laughing

The Area 51 Alien Center in Nevada where the group plans to meet. gary warnimont / Alamy

The truth is out there, but it’s probably not at Area 51, the secretive US military base in the Nevada desert that has been the target of alien conspiracy theories for decades. Now, millions of people have signed up to a tongue-in-cheek Facebook event called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” planned for 3 AM on 20 September 2019.

What do these people plan to do?

The creators of the page have stated their plans: “We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.” “Naruto run” is a reference to an anime television show in which the main character is a ninja who runs leaning forward with his arms outstretched behind him. Try it yourself. You’ll look ridiculous.

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Who are these people?

They’re internet jokesters. Their “plan” includes different battalions made up of “Kyles” (internet slang for aggressive guys), “People Armed To The Teeth” and “Undercover Aliens”, to mention a few. That is to say, none of this is real. One person who posted a map of the supposed attack added, “P.S. Hello US government, this is a joke, and I do not actually intend to go ahead with this plan.” The meme has spread to several social media platforms and spawned so, so many TikTok videos of teens joking about how they’d get along with their new alien friends.


What is Area 51?

It’s a real military base, run by the US Air Force and used for flight testing stealth planes. The projects there have long been held secret, and confirmation of the base’s location about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas and the first official mention of its existence came only in 2013, when the US Central Intelligence Agency de-classified a report on the history of the Lockheed U-2 spy plane.

The testing of those planes likely led to the numerous reports of Unidentified Flying Objects in the area, though none have been confirmed to be of extraterrestrial origins. The name comes from a convention of naming the plots of land on the base. There are other numbered areas on the base, which were designated by the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission.

What would happen if people did try to enter Area 51?

If millions of people did show up at the gates of Area 51, they would not be welcome. Laura McAndrews, a spokesperson for the US Air Force, told the Washington Post that they were aware of the event and said, “[Area 51] is an open training range for the U.S. Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces,” McAndrews said. “The U.S. Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets.”

But are there aliens at Area 51?

If this million-person horde did try to storm the gates, they’d likely find some fairly benign government buildings surrounded by barbed wire. Aliens are far less likely. “Could the federal government actually cover up the existence of aliens at Area 51? At first blush, it seems unlikely. The Post Office can’t even deliver the mail reliably,” says Douglas Vakoch, president of Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI).

On the other hand, the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb was kept quiet during the second World War. “It seems like the Manhattan Project would be have been harder to keep under wraps than a program to reverse engineer flying saucers,” he says, but adds, “I’m not convinced that the aliens are here, or that they ever were.” Based on the millions or billions of worlds that could possibly grow life, and the billions of years the universe has been around, it seems there may be aliens somewhere out there, he says. They just probably aren’t in Nevada.

Why is this happening?

It’s just a bit of fun. “Most laughter doesn’t follow jokes and other conscious attempts at humour. It comes from playful interactions with other people. One of the reasons why social media is as powerful as it is, it’s really an extension of the play group,” says Robert Provine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He studies laughter and how it spreads among people, and says the audience plays as much a role as the jokester. “If there wasn’t an audience, they wouldn’t do it.”