- yesterday
The truth is out there... and so were some determined believers! Join us as we explore the bizarre phenomenon that swept the internet when millions pledged to uncover alien secrets. From its humble Facebook origins to government warnings and competing festivals, discover what really happened when internet culture collided with America's most mysterious military installation.
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00:00Nevada officials are bracing for an invasion at Area 51 by humans.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're taking a deep dive into the notorious Storm Area 51 event.
00:12It was a joke, but one the Air Force is taking seriously.
00:17Number 10. It started on Facebook.
00:20More than 1 million people have signed up for the Storm Area 51,
00:24they can't stop all of us, event slated for late September, in which the post declares,
00:30we can move faster than their bullets, let's see them aliens.
00:34This all happened many years ago now, in September 2019.
00:39So you'd be forgiven for forgetting how exactly it began, but it was an event organized on Facebook,
00:45back when Facebook was still a semi-usable website, that quickly became a meme and attracted unprecedented attention.
00:51It started out just from a pure stroke of imagination, it's just meant to be funny,
00:56I want to do something cool out there now that we have a bunch of people.
00:58The architect behind this plan was Matty Roberts, who we'll be hearing about more later.
01:03And it culminated in 2 million people saying that they were going to descend on Nevada to attend,
01:09and another 1.5 million who were thinking about it.
01:13It took months to build up, and was set to be one of the biggest events of the year.
01:17This didn't exactly pan out, but it was still impressive coming from Facebook.
01:22The idea of having a raid out here is pretty wild to me.
01:25I don't know how people are going to Naruto run through shrubs and rocks and rattlesnakes.
01:29Number 9. Warnings.
01:31A lot of folks are taking the internet-fueled idea of storming Area 51,
01:37where conspiracy theorists think the government has aliens on ice.
01:40Area 51, the existence of which was only acknowledged by the U.S. government in 2013,
01:46is one of the U.S.'s most secretive bases, used to test classified experimental aircraft.
01:52As such, the U.S. Air Force wasn't particularly happy about people planning to raid its base.
01:58One of the many reasons Air Force officials don't want people to trespass on the base,
02:03they are worried some might be killed.
02:05The area is heavily guarded by soldiers, known as camel guys to ufologists and locals,
02:10and they are authorized to use lethal force.
02:13However, it would certainly be a bad look for the U.S. military to start shooting its own public,
02:19so they did their best to warn people to stay away from the base, saying it's illegal to break in.
02:25Various government agencies, including the FBI, were involved in trying to contain the situation.
02:30The Air Force, which denies any alien visitors or ships, issued a stern warning,
02:35saying, quote,
02:36it's not going to be like a military-based slaughter, it'll actually be something really fun, educational, maybe music and art.
02:50Along with the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration was also involved in the incident,
02:55with additional airspace restrictions placed over Homi Airport, the official name of Area 51.
03:01Of course, the area is already restricted airspace, especially considering it's an Air Force base that tests aircraft.
03:08The FBI agents that showed up, they showed up at 10 a.m., because I was kind of scared at this point, but they were super cool.
03:14You definitely don't want commercial or civilian planes seeing tests while they're underway.
03:20But the restrictions were increased ahead of the event, all to prevent drones and media helicopters from getting too close.
03:26But behind those barbed wire fences, officials are tracking something.
03:30I don't know what I think, dude.
03:31People were anticipating that millions would converge on the small towns of Rachel and Heiko,
03:37so you can see why news outlets wanted choppers in the air.
03:40In the end, though, the choppers were likely unnecessary.
03:44Number 7.
03:45Fire 2.0
03:46It was billed as a lavish, one-of-a-kind music festival for an elite millennial crowd.
03:51The biggest failed event of 2017 was the Fyre Festival, when fraudster Billy McFarland organized an elite music festival in the Bahamas.
04:00Unlike Storm Area 51, thousands did attend Fyre, overrunning the locals.
04:06We had no electricity, there was no showers, there was no bathrooms, there was no, like, running water.
04:10Ahead of this event, many claimed that it was going to end up being Fyre Festival 2.0, with locals similarly put out.
04:17While thousands did live on the island where fire was meant to take place, Rachel and Heiko had populations of less than 200 people combined.
04:26It is more and more likely to turn to Fyre Fest 2.0.
04:30It's a very quiet town.
04:31How they were going to cater for the 3.5 million who signed up for the Facebook event was anyone's guess.
04:38Though the owner of Little Alley Inn, Connie West, was going to allow as much camping as possible.
04:45Number 6.
04:46Competing Events
04:47How much money has been poured into this by the county?
04:51We have, at this point in time, appropriated $250,000.
04:55The original event planned to coincide with Storm Area 51 was called Alien Stock, a play on Woodstock.
05:02But it wasn't the only event that happened in Nevada that week.
05:05Alien Stock sprung up in Rachel, the better known but smaller of the two nearby towns, while Heiko hosted the Storm Area 1 Base Camp event.
05:13The turnout on the eve of Alien Stock was underwhelming to say the least.
05:16Which might be because Matty Roberts had dropped out of the Rachel event at the last minute to host another event in Las Vegas.
05:23However, there were some disputes over Alien Stock, since organizer Matty Roberts actually cancelled it and launched a third event, Area 51 Celebration, in Vegas itself.
05:34Certainly a location better suited to hosting millions of tourists at a time, attendees weren't happy, with many believing that Roberts took the money and ran, since he'd apparently gathered tens of thousands of dollars in donations.
05:47The decision to call it off was probably one of the best decisions I've made, so now we've moved to a much safer venue.
05:53Number 5, Connie West and Matty Roberts.
05:56We called Connie up, said, hey, you mind if we come out and set up a stage in your parking lot and bring a few friends' bands and have some music?
06:04Despite Roberts being a self-confessed broke college student at the time he posted the Facebook event, he soon hired lawyers to go after Connie West, the previously mentioned owner of Rachel's little Alien.
06:15This was all over West still using the name Alien Stock for the Rachel event, which she then said she'd organized herself almost single-handedly.
06:25How did you start this? What led up to you?
06:26I didn't start it. The internet started it. And it just dumped in my lap. Jeremy from Whitey Savage called, said they wanted to play.
06:36We were thinking like a little 12 by 12.
06:37This is almost certainly true, since the event went ahead as planned without Roberts.
06:42But he still wasn't happy, sending her a cease and desist over her use of the name.
06:46She didn't cease and desist, and talked to Vegas-based journalists about how much money she spent to fund an event that Roberts, who wasn't local, planned on a whim.
06:56He pulls out and leaves all this mess he started and created behind him?
07:01Well, I'm not impressed.
07:04Number 4, Copycats.
07:06I realized there was never going to be a mass trespassing.
07:10And standing under the stars gave us time to reflect on what the real point of this was.
07:13There were yet more events planned to capture the public's interest in storming secret facilities, some of them far away from the U.S.
07:22One of the more prominent events, also supposedly planned in the States, was to storm the vault of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah,
07:29as well as an event to storm the U.S. Capitol, which looks a little chilling in hindsight.
07:34Inspired by the Monk plan to storm Area 51, Scotland now has an event scheduled to prove the existence of its own elusive creature, the Loch Ness Monster.
07:44Further afield, and there was an event to storm the Vatican and see what the Catholic Church is hiding,
07:49as well as an attempt to storm Loch Ness and find the famous monster.
07:52While Loch Ness isn't guarded, people were warned to stay away because of the dangers of unpredictable cold lakes.
08:00At least 21,000 people have RSVP'd to an event called Storm Loch Ness.
08:06Nessie can't hide from us all.
08:08Number 3, Shooting Incident.
08:10They're not going to get on site, you know, it's not going to happen.
08:15Some necessary background for all of this is that earlier in 2019, somebody actually was shot by the so-called camo guys at an Area 51 checkpoint.
08:24It's believed that he was trying to get into the base and was pursued by deputies for eight miles until stopping at the checkpoint with a, quote, metallic syndical object.
08:33The National Nuclear Security Administration says the man failed to stop at the security gate, and then he drove another eight miles.
08:41He was shot and tragically died, serving as a stark warning to anybody who might try to infiltrate the base.
08:47And it's still not clear what the object was or what he was doing.
08:51But this apparently didn't dissuade any of the attendees heading to Lincoln County that weekend,
08:56because they remained gung-ho about their plan to break into the base.
08:59Instead, it says that Area 51 was a testing site for the government's aerial surveillance programs during the Cold War.
09:06Not that sensational, but it's likely to cause more fascination about this mythical place.
09:13Number 2, On the Day.
09:15And we don't even know if we're going to have 500 people show up or if we're going to have 50,000 people show up.
09:22So what actually happened?
09:24Did anybody really storm Area 51?
09:26No.
09:27In fact, hardly anybody went at all, despite locals anticipating tens of thousands at the very least.
09:34In total, it's estimated that around 1,500 people attended, far fewer than the 3.5 million who said they were interested on Facebook.
09:42Interestingly, one of the events, Alien Stock, the one arranged primarily by Connie West, was deemed a success, while the other was deemed a failure.
09:50There is a ton of media.
09:54Look at this.
09:55We got Channel 3, Fox, ABC.
09:58There's a stage.
09:59Many of the attendees were also journalists there to cover the story, rather than actual enthusiasts.
10:06Though the ones who were there looked like they were having a good enough time to say they were in the middle of the desert.
10:111. The End Result
10:29Nobody did storm Area 51, running like Naruto or otherwise, though apparently over a hundred people did go to one of the gates to try and get a sighting of one of the legendary Kemmo guys.
10:41One person actually tried to get in, but unlike the man earlier in 2019, they were warned away and not harmed.
10:49Probably because they weren't carrying a suspicious object.
10:52There were some arrests, however, but they weren't for trespassing.
10:55They were public urination and indecent exposure, among other things.
11:00Two people were injured in a car accident in Rachel and were able to quickly get help.
11:04It certainly wasn't Fyre Festival 2.0, drawing in next to nobody, despite marquee guests like ufologist Jeremy Corbell.
11:13They're the pinnacle of millennials, to be sure.
11:16What better death could there be than dying for a meme?
11:20Let us know in the comments whether you were one of the few who went to Area 51 that day.
11:24They walked away, leaving everybody high and dry.
11:34We'll see you next time.
11:40B
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