For years, curious UFO hunters have snuck around the outskirts of the United States Air Force facility in Nevada commonly referred to as Area 51, hoping to catch a glimpse of some advanced – possibly alien – technology. But that was never an easy feat, given the ‘enthusiastic’ security troops that patrol the borders of the base (see Blair MacKenzie Blake’s article in our Darklore series about his adventures there for evidence).

But what if that approach was the wrong way of going about things? What if the way to unveil the secrets of Dreamland was through people power, bursting onto the base and freeing any aliens held captive since they took a wrong turn just north of Roswell, New Mexico?

Well, we may be about to find out. A Facebook event, Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop Us All – which likely started as a joke and gained momentum through the Chans (given one of the creator’s names is ‘Shitposting cause im in shambles‘) – has now gone viral. As of the writing of this article, 196,000 people (update: now one million) have now indicated they will be attending: on the night of Friday, 20th of September, the UFO truthers will “meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry”, likely during the early hours of Saturday morning.

Hopefully someone has told the members of the enthusiastic Facebook group that Area 51’s security troops are literally authorized to respond to trespassers with “deadly force” (or, if you’re ‘lucky’, you could get a hefty fine and 6 months in prison). The only note about that possibility on the Facebook group is the message “if we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets” (‘naruto run‘ is a meme based on the peculiar running style of an anime character).

Given the Facebook event’s jokey nature, it’s likely that most people won’t attend, but one would think out of that amount of people there are going to be more than a few that take it seriously and do attempt something. Let’s hope the ‘camo dudes’ are forewarned and in a good mood (see below for what a camo dude good mood looks like)…