Area 51 is a U.S. Air Force military installation located at Groom Lake in southern Nevada. Acquired by the U.S. in 1955, the installation has been the focus of numerous conspiracies involving extraterrestrial life, although its only confirmed use is as a flight testing facility.
There are all sorts of mysteries surrounding Area 51, since regular people aren’t allowed to visit it. The conspiracy theorists have also had a field day about the area for nearly 65 years.
Anyway, Facebook, being Facebook, has the capability to make things go viral, so when Matty Roberts, a Bakersfield, CA college student, made a Facebook event to “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop Us All,” people took notice and, as of this writing, nearly 2 million people are signed up and another million and a half are “interested.”
If you’re one of those 2,000,000 who are planning on attending the event, you may want to have some extra plans that you might not use for regular travel. For instance…
- Click here for info about the meeting place, Area 51 Alien Travel Center
- More information about Area 51:
- Tripadvisor reviews of Area 51 (some are written in fun, some are reviews of local tours and towns. Fun reads, overall).
- The things that the nearby towns are planning for the event:
- Not really about the event, but for aviation geeks – the U.S. government’s secret airline, that points to being a shuttle for many of Area 51’s employees:
- If you chicken out on storming the gates, here’s what you can do in the immediate area legally. Operative word: legally.
- If you decide to storm the gates, I recommend you buy one of these. You’re probably going to need it.
- If you do go and it’s everything you wanted it to be (or even if it’s not) if you want to celebrate with a properly chilled adult beverage, Bud Light says they’ll make this Area 51 Special Edition beer can if they get 51,000 retweets.
As of this writing, they only have about 14.6K retweets to go 😉 (which is just as well because Bud Light is…meh)
- If you decide that storming Area 51 isn’t your speed and you’d rather just go to Walt Disney World, there’s a Storm The Imagination Pavilion To Rescue Dreamfinder event and a Storm Expedition Everest To Fix The Yeti event that are both happening in early October. Just sayin’. Oh, and here’s more information on why Dreamfinder needs to be found and why the Yeti needs to be fixed.
- Or there’s another event for a different one-in-a-lifetime chance: Storm Casa Bonita; Black Bart can’t stop us all (Details: “We will all meet up at the fountain and coordinate our entry. If we Cartman run, we can move fatter than their bullets. Lets see them Divers!”).
By the way, before you make plane reservations to get you to Nevada on September 20, keep in mind that the event is just for fun and not real. Unfortunately, it seems like a few people aren’t getting that it’s a parody. As Roberts said to WKYT:
“A few people that are really serious and I’m kind of worried about that. I’ve had a couple people DM the page where they’re like, ‘I’m willing to die for the government. Let’s do this.’ And I’m just like, ‘Oh my God.’ They’re all like hardcore strength in numbers, that kind of thing, but if there’s only like two of those guys out there, I think we’ll be OK.”
The popularity of the event also has him a little concerned:
“Like, I figured the FBI would be knocking on my door right about now, but nobody has shown up, nobody’s tried to contact me, nobody’s messaged the page. It’s interesting, for sure,” he said.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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