Call to Raid Area 51 Attracts Hordes of Extraterrestrial Hunters on Facebook



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Area 51 may be faced with an invasion.

Half a million people 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 desert of more than 4,000 square kilometers could contain advanced technologies offered by extraterrestrials. visited our planet.

The call for the event – entitled "Storm Zone 51: They Can not All Stop Us" – is a playful invitation to an army of volunteers to raid the Air Force Base around dawn of September 20th.

According to the organizers of the event – who also seem to be interested mainly in Internet memes and video games – the raid will force the invaders to run "faster than their bullets", but it will be worth the " to see as extraterrestrials ".

A spokesman for the Air Force said that the service branch was aware of the publication on Facebook but declined to comment.

For decades, alien hunters and conspiracy theorists have stated that government officials were using Area 51 to store and possibly test extraterrestrial spacecraft. If that's the case, the officials never gave in. And military historians and scientists involved in the quest for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) reject the claims of conspiracy theorists.

"Area 51, as justification for the support of visiting aliens, is an argument of ignorance," said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute of Mountain View, in a statement. California, in an email. "Yes, Virginia, there are really extraterrestrials, but they are in a place where they can not be seen. It's not very convincing.

Area 51 is officially an outpost of Edwards Air Force Base in California. The site was first used for the development and testing of the U2 spy plane in the early 1950s, said Chris Pocock, a London-based journalist who has written several U2 stories. He said that CIA officials and employees of Lockheed Skunk Works – the California-based engineering program that built the U2 – had chosen the remote site located near the site. Nevada nuclear testing, as a suitable venue for the secret project.

"He was out of sight from nowhere else," he said. "A dry lake, surrounded by highlands, so it was ideal – it was completely desolate."

Warning signs on a road leading to the US military base known as Area 51 in Rachel, Nevada.James Aylott / Getty Images File

The U2 program left Zone 51 in 1957. Later, the site was used to test other advanced military aircraft, including the SR 71 "Blackbird" supersonic and the F-117 stealth fighter, according to Pocock.

By keeping the site secret and restricting public access to it, the government has fueled all sorts of speculation about what might happen in Area 51. In addition to claims about an alien spacecraft, some people think that secret facilities were used to simulate the situation. Apollo moon landings.

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