Friday, September 20th, people gathered to raid Area 51, a classified United States Airforce facility located in Nevada.  

The plan to storm Area 51 started from a viral internet joke on Facebook. It was posted in June by 21-year-old college student Matty Roberts from California, titled, “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us”. Despite the fact that over 2 million people pledged to raid Area 51, only around 3000 people showed up to the facility on Friday. 

The 3000 or so people flooded into Rachel, Nevada, a small town that only holds about 40-50 residents and is the closest town to Area 51. Locals started preparing for “Alienstock”, an alien themed festival that took place on Wednesday. This year locals feared there would be too many people for the small town to handle due to the viral internet meme of Area 51. Joerg Arnu, a resident of Rachel told reporters that “We (the locals) are preparing for the worst.” 

However, residents of Rachel were pleasantly surprised. People who came to see Area 51 did not cause much trouble and overall everyone seemed to have a good time. People dressed up like aliens and held signs with funny slogans like “Jesus was an Alien!” and “Let My People Go”. 

Despite the stigma around Area 51, the event turned out to be relatively peaceful, although a few people caused problems. 2 visitors were arrested, one for trying to get under the gate and the other for urinating in public by the gates. Authorities managed to deter the visitors from trying to get inside the facility. In the end not many attempted to cross through the gates to actually ‘storm’ Area 51.