Area 51 raid to be live-streamed. Will visitors spot aliens?
Months after the Area 51 raid commenced as a Facebook event, the madness shows no signs of stopping. People from across the world have started arriving in the small Nevada towns of Rachel and Hiko, located near Area 51, which is rumored to house aliens. The 'raid', which had briefly turned into a now-canceled music festival, will be live-streamed by the "immersive entertainment" company, AREA15.
AREA15 had first announced the live-streaming on Twitter mid-July, however, since then, the 'Storm Area 51' plan has been through multiple iterations. On Thursday, the company assured that it would go ahead with its plan to live-stream the event and requested followers to "stay tuned."
**𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆**
— AREA15 (@AREA15official) September 19, 2019
Everyone that signed up to #StormArea51 may have called it quits. Not us!
We found a small group who are still going to make a (Naruto) run for it to set the aliens free... and we're going in with them. Well, our camera guy is at least. #StayTuned https://t.co/oRtz4kxeiv
Well, it all started off with a joke. A California college student, Matty Roberts (20), created a Facebook event 'Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us' to "see them aliens." Over 2 million people ended up following the event and the "joke" took a life of its own. Eventually, the US Air Force was compelled to warn people against "storming Area 51."
Roberts, who never expected the joke to blow up as it did, planned to use the opportunity to announce a music festival, 'Alienstock,' featuring EDM, indie-rock, and upcoming artists. The festival gained sponsorship from Budweiser and was scheduled for the dates, September 19-22. Roberts was organizing the event in collaboration with Brock Daily (20) and Connie West, who owns Rachel's only business, Little A'Le'Inn.
Thereafter, Roberts withdrew from the event and instead decided to headline 'Area 51 Celebration'- a one-night concert and party at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center. Although West intended to go ahead with the festival, it was cancelled, fearing a "FYREFEST 2.0" owing to the "lack of infrastructure, poor planning, risk management and blatant disregard for the safety of the expected 10,000+ Alienstock attendees."
However, the lack of facilities around the Area 51 facility left many visitors unfazed as they thronged Rachel and Hiko. Rachel has seen a lot of cars, tents and RVs parked outside the now extraterrestrial-themed Little A'Le'Inn. As it remains unclear if people are actually going to "Naruto run" towards the military base, law enforcement officials beefed up security around it, just in case.
Rachel's administration warned, "So far we see a couple of hundred people in Rachel for the botched Alienstock event. Law enforcement clearly outnumbers visitors. There are no vendors and not much of an infrastructure." The statement said, "This has very clearly become Fyre Fest 2.0," adding "the Area 51 Basecamp event in Hiko is quite successful and people are having a great time."
"It's evolved into a peaceful gathering, a sharing of life stories," visitor Cayla McVey told Reuters. "I think you are going to get a group of people that are prepared, respectful and they know what they getting themselves into," McVey added.
