Area 51 raid, Alienstock were more like music fest with tin foil hats – CNET

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One festival goer was ready to bust out of Area 51.


Erin Carson/CNET

They came in peace. Crowds stayed calm and controlled on the first official day of the Alienstock festival in Rachel, Nevada. What started as a viral Facebook event to storm the gates of Area 51, and morphed into multi-day gathering in rural Nevada, proved what many familiar with Facebook invites know — just because someone marks “interested,” that doesn’t mean they’re going to show up.

Though local residents and officials were concerned an unknown of attendees (30,000? 50,000?) could engulf what’s otherwise a town of about 50 — with no gas station or street lights — the area was far from mobbed by thousands. 

Friday, there were no miles-long traffic snarls or empty-tanked cars by the side of the road. The parking lot for cars was mostly open and there was a healthy smattering of tents and campers parked off the road. The main stage, at one point, had an audience of three. And although the medical team on site declined to comment, by early midday Pacific time, they were sitting around the First Aid tent, unoccupied.  

This event, which is actually one of three scheduled for Las Vegas, Rachel and Hiko, initially grew out of a Facebook event that went viral in July. Bakersfield, California, resident Matty Roberts created the event titled “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” as a meme page. 

Roberts told CNN he got the idea after listening to an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast with filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked at Area 51 in the ’80s. Lazar is the subject of Corbell’s documentary, currently on Netflix, Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers. By the end of July, 2 million people had RSVPed to the event, whose description was: “We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we Naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Let’s see them aliens.”

Those 2 million folks in question left Lincoln County budgeting $250,000 to deal with the potential chaos in Rachel and Hiko, the Las Vegas Review Journal reported. 

Though no giant hoard of people turned up wanting to free aliens from Area 51, festival goers seemed content with the event. 

“So far it’s turned into exactly what we thought it was going to be like,” said Analisa, a Sacramento resident who asked to be identified only by her first name. “I didn’t expect a whole lot, except something cool in the middle of nowhere.” 

Jesus Bravo took the day off work and came in from Carson, Nevada, after following the event page. When asked if Alienstock was living up to his expectations, he said, “It’s more. I literally thought it was just going to be a group of people in the middle of the desert — not as big, and with vendors.” Bravos also said he appreciated meeting so many attendees from different places outside Nevada.  

“It seemed like it was going to be a good time, we’d have a lot of fun, and there was nothing going on today,” said Christopher Reid, a Reno, Nevada, resident who drove down last minute with a friend to make tin foil hats for attendees for fun.  

Although the day stayed relatively calm, local residents Bob Clabaugh and Pat Jordan, both retired pilots, expressed concern Alienstock will become a recurring event, bringing bigger and bigger crowds to little Rachel every year.

In the residential section of Rachel, residents invested in flood lights they’ve never needed before, and plastered up No Trespassing signs. One house put up signs that said “No Alien Stock” and another that said “Go Home.”

Still, attendees, milling about and fielding a growing group of media, seemed to be enjoying the novelty of the happening, even if there wasn’t much to do. 

One goer explained to another that he was there with his grown son as a father-son outing. 

“If not for the probing last night,” he quipped, “it would have been a great weekend.”


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Originally published Sept. 20, 7:35 p.m. PT. 

source: cnet.com