It might sound like a joke to some, but there are over one million people that are planning to storm the secretive Area 51 military base in Nevada.
While conspiracy theorists have speculated that Area 51 holds information about possible aliens, aircraft, and advanced technologies withheld from the public, never before in history have so many people come together to try and make an attempt to storm the facility.
Just yesterday, 400,000 people had joined a Facebook event page that called for the storming of Area 51, with September 20th being the proposed date they would attempt the plan. As of today, however, that figures have grown to over one million people.
“We can move faster than their bullets,” the creators of the page read, suggesting that if enough people rush the building, they can overpower the security. In addition to the million or so registered participants in the event, there around 980,000 people who put their status as “interested.”
Even if not everyone ends up following through with the event, the event could easily garner 10,000 to 20,000 serious individuals with just a fraction of a percent of everyone showing up. In response to what originally was seen as a sort of joke, the American military has officially made a statement discouraging the attempt.
Air Force spokeswoman Laura McAndrews went on to say last week that “[Area 51] is an open training range for the US Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces. The US Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets.”
People on social media are already tweeting among each other about the possibility of a massacre, as security personnel surrounding the secretive base have permission to use deadly force if necessary to prevent trespassers from entering the compound.
The intrigue surrounding Area 51 has been around for decades, although the official story seems to indicate that Area 51 is nothing more than an aircraft-testing facility according to the CIA, which confirmed the existence of the facility through documents obtained in a public records request by George Washington University.
Back in 2014, a tour bus carrying four passengers near Area 51 accidentally drove through warning signs and entered the base. Military personnel ended up stopping the truck and everyone in the vehicle was threatened with a misdemeanor charge and a mild $650 fine.
However, the past few months have rekindled much of the passion surrounding the UFO discussion. A few weeks ago, Senators received a classified briefing on UFO sightings from the U.S. Navy, although much of the discussion was framed in a way that dismissed an extraterrestrial possibility.
Even back in 2017, it was revealed that the Pentagon had set up a program to study the UFO phenomenon, interviewing multiple sailors and pilots who claim to have encountered supposedly advanced aircraft that defied the laws of aerodynamics. Many of these videos have since been made public.
While this plan to storm Area 51 isn’t likely to succeed, it does go to show that the public’s interest in UFO’s continues to grow.
