Call to raid Area 51 draws hordes of alien hunters on Facebook
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Area 51 may be facing an invasion.
Half a million people have signed up for a Facebook event to “storm” the restricted military base in southeastern Nevada, which has captivated generations of conspiracy theorists convinced that the 4,000-square-mile patch of desert might hold advanced technology from space aliens who have visited our planet.
The call to join the event — labeled “Storm Area 51 : They Can’t Stop All of Us” — is a presumably playful invitation for a volunteer army to raid the Air Force base around dawn Sept. 20.
According to the event’s organizers — who otherwise seem interested mainly in Internet memes and video games — the raid will require the invaders to run “faster than their bullets,” but it will be worth it to “see them aliens.”
An Air Force spokesperson told NBC News the service branch was aware of the Facebook post but declined to provide additional comment.
For decades, alien hunters and conspiracy theorists have been saying that government officials are using Area 51 to store and possibly test alien spacecraft. If that’s the case, the officials have never 'fessed up. And military historians and scientists involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) dismiss the conspiracy theorists’ claims.
“Area 51, as a rationale in support of visiting aliens, is an argument from ignorance,” Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said in an email. “Yes, Virginia, there really are extraterrestrials, but they’re in a place where you can’t see them. That’s not very convincing.”
Area 51 is officially an outpost of Edwards Air Force Base in California. The site was first used for development and testing of the U2 spy plane in the early 1950s, Chris Pocock, a London-based journalist who has written several histories of the U2, said. He said CIA officials and employees of Lockheed Skunk Works — the California-based engineering program that built the U2 — picked the remote location near the Nevada nuclear test site as a suitable place for the secret project.
“It was out of sight of anywhere else,” he said. “A dry lake, surrounded by high ground, so it was ideal — it was completely desolate.”
Warning signs at a road to the U.S. military base known as Area 51 in Rachel, Nevada. James Aylott / Getty Images fileThe U2 program left Area 51 in 1957. Later, the site was used for testing of other advanced military aircraft , including the supersonic SR 71 “Blackbird” and the F-117 stealth fighter, according to Pocock.
By maintaining the secret site and restricting public access to it, the government has fueled all manner of speculation about what might be going on at Area 51. In addition to the claims about alien spacecraft, some people think the secret facility was used to fake the Apollo moon landings .
“It is kind of ironic, because Area 51 was never involved with anything like that,” said Peter Merlin, a Los Angeles-based aerospace historian who has written extensively about Area 51. “But because of the secrecy surrounding it, it has sort of become this blackboard on which you can pretty much draw anything you want, and that's what the conspiracy theorists have done.”
The facility is “strictly a place for testing and evaluating aircraft and associated weapons systems,” Merlin said, adding that anyone who actually shows up Sept. 20 may find the biggest threats they face won’t be bullets but the unforgiving desert terrain.
“The security guards could just sit back and wait,” he said. “They don't have to do anything if they don't want to. The desert will take care of these people.”
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So is the truth out there? What do you think?
I am a firm believer that there are beings from outer space that have, and are, here in our world. Given the size of the universe there is no reason to believe that there are not other intelligent beings besides human beings.
JMOO
I would have to agree with you Raven.
I myself am a bit conflicted, I believe in the possibility that there may have been an intervention at one point or another ( if for no other reason to explain the unexplainable ). Once they realized exactly how self destructive and belligerent we were, they quickly exited for the home planet, deeming us unteachable.
Sorry for the cynicism Raven, if they are out there they are most likely waiting until that time that we truly become civilized and discontinue the practice of eating our own.
No problem luther. It is a very interesting subject, and everyone has their own opinion on it. I just happen to believe that there are other worlds with intelligent beings that have existed longer than our own planet and its inhabitants.
To think that humans are the only intelligent life forms in the entire universe is really rather questionable.
To think that alien beings are out to destroy human life and our planet is also questionable, in that if that was truly their intent human beings would have ceased to exist long ago.
Just my opinion, but, I think the subject deserves serious consideration.
Where you so nicely say questionable, I would replace with arrogant. I dismiss the possibility of very few things but I also require evidence as to the existence of those things
I suppose we must color me undecided at this juncture, but hopeful.
According to Col. Philip J. Corso (Ret.) who was the pentagon official in charge of the artifacts recovered from the 1947 Roswell crash site; Integrated circuit chips, fiber optics, lasers and Kevlar exist as a result of reverse engineering alien technology. He was also directly involved in the government's cover up of the spaceship crash. Read his book The Day After Roswell.
I have my doubts (being a natural skeptic).
After reading the book I researched Corso. His military career and bona fides all check out.
Things like this make me wonder about the truth in the book:
Kevlar inventor Stephanie Kwolek dies
And your point is? All of the alien technology was farmed out to big business.
Read the book. She invented nothing. She was given a gift.
That the inventions have inventors and that the credit is given to those inventors.
The book is the claim, not the evidence. I took you at your word that you accurately represented the book. But the claim, as I noted, is extreme and thus my natural skepticism kicks in: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
In other words, it is easy enough for a man to embellish events in his life compared to:
It is possible, but I am skeptical. As I noted.
there is no reason to believe that there are not other intelligent beings besides human beings.
I would tend to disagree....
....with your characterization of human beings as being "intelligent beings"...
Welll.....I do try to give the benefit of the doubt.
Area 51 may be facing an invasion.
It would make for an interesting diversion from the mundane. They may come across Jimmy Hoffa in their travels.
Been there, done that!
Yep, your avatar says dessert fighter. I fight for strawberry shortcake and push young children aside.
It is extremely unlikely that beings from another part of the universe have visited earth. Beings that were that advanced as to be able to figure out how to get here would have no reason to come.
The only way I could see that as happening is if it is as easy for them to get here as it is for us to drive to Florida or New Orleans from the Midwest. Our greatest minds haven't been able to figure that out yet because of the incomprehensibly large distances of space travel, but its not impossible that another race on another planet far far away has done so.
Space alien invader stories are like ghost stories. Back in the 19th century and even early 2oth century people were obsessed and fascinated with ghosts and "spirits", people held seances and worked Ouija boards. Famous writers like Arthur Conan Doyle investigated apparitions and ghosts.
In the "space" age the curiosity shifted over to "space aliens". It is not a coincidence that with the advent of jet flight just post WW2 , and the use of rockets and A-bombs in that war, people's eyes would be more focused on the sky than ever before. Science fiction became very popular in the late 40's and fifties, both on film and in novels. Another 10 years or so and all of the sudden there were stories of "close encounters" and abductions. Ghost stories for a new age.
I think it's likely that life exists somewhere other than Earth, just based on the sheer number of planets out there. I doubt that we have been visited, nor do I think it likely that we will encounter extraterrestrial life in my lifetime. Time and distance are not in favor of that.
Well, from our perspective, that's true. Humans, (in our current state), have been wandering around aimlessly for ~300,000 years, which is nothing compared to the overall age of the universe, (~12 billion years). In that roughly 12 billion years, there could have been many highly advanced civilizations that rose and fell before the Earth was even formed. To narrow that some? With current technology, even reaching the nearest star that isn't our own would take 10's of thousands of years, but what if there is a civilization out there that has been able to move between the stars for say, a million years. They could get to us, for all we know, in the blink of an eye.
The real problem is that we have only been broadcasting with signals strong enough to reach space for about 80 or so years. So, if there is a civilization that is listening that are say...100 light years away, it will be another 20 years before they even know we are here. But then, for all we know, a bunch of alien college students stole the ole mans space ship and after a drunken kegger, flew past this rock 80 years ago and heard us. <shrugs> Never know...space...and time are vast, humans? Not so much.
In other words, you're spot on, I totally agree with you.
I personally believe that any alien species that has the technological ability to cross interstellar distances just cannot really be interested in us as a species other than to use us for study as lab rats. I tend to go with a idea I heard many years ago
Consider this, two aliens having a drink at a bar many light years away. One alien tells the other that he just got back from a backward and unimpressive planet out in the spiral arm of the galaxy. The indigenous life form there were very primitive and highly aggressive. The planet's name was Earth. The other alien looked totally shocked and disgusted said, "You mean you actually set foot on Earth? Uhhgg that's disgusting! I hope you incinerated your boots and clothes before getting back on the ship! And what about your ship? There's a good ship wash place just the other side of Alpha Centauri..."
Area 51 as a collection point for top secret exolife evidence is no doubt pure conspiracy theory. As Sandy notes, the likelihood of life outside of our solar system reaching our planet is extremely low. The distance to the nearest solar system, Proxima Centauri, is over 4 light years. The technology to bridge even that, the shortest gap, would be staggering. The aliens from Proxima Centauri would have to be explorers and likely would be generational travelers (i.e. their descendants are the ones who finally reach Earth).
Given even the closest solar system is beyond practical reach, that should illustrate that almost all of our own galaxy and all 100 billion other galaxies in the known universe are entirely isolated from us when it comes to space travel.
The most likely contact we will get is sensing life through cosmological means (long distance) rather than through proximity.
Yeah, you ever heard about the stuff that allegedly goes on out at Dulce Mesa in New Mexico? There is some way out conspiracy theory stuff there. Besides, rumor has it that most of the good stuff at Area 51 was moved years ago to Area 52, otherwise known Dugway Proving Grounds in Northern Utah.
"Presumably tongue-in-cheek Facebook post calls on people to "storm" the restricted area, which has captivated generations of conspiracy theorists."
That should go well...…
There are really people out there that think this stuff is going to lead up to a "Good' thing for all involved ?
Really ?
I always get a kick out of reading things like the comments on this subject. there is always someone that brings up comparing us as humans to any possible other forms of intelligent life in the universe like we are supposedly automatically belong in the top ratings of intelligence, for all we know technologically emotionally and sociolocically , the inhabitants of this planet could be the equivalent of the inbred , retarded , hicks every so called intelligent person I have ever met has made fun of for whatever reason. WE very well could be the mental patients in a galactic insane asylum , that no other really intelligent life wants anything to do with .
Who is to say it isn't like gene roddenberrys star trek and that other intelligent life forms dont have a so called prime directive of non interference , or that a first contact cannot be made until a species exibits certain societal / technological advancements ?
I think to believe that the human species represented on this planet is the absolute pinicale of technological , societal advancement in the universe , is basically retarted and worse yet , shows the arrogance of the species. maybe we are so low in intelligence on the universal scale , we just are not worth it to other life forms .
Well, Zefram Cochrane's warp flight is just a few decades away. Maybe we'll meet some other species, after all.
lol
Star Trek: First Contact.....exactly this...^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Whatever is out there is still considered highly classified and I think our government will go to great lengths to protect them. Anybody group stupid enough to try to force their way through the base's perimeter is inviting a potential bloodbath that is on their hands, not the governments. There are more than enough warning signs posted against trespassing.