Sep 20, 2019 6:18 PM

The Area 51 Raid Was the Worst Way to Spot an Alien or UFO

Dozens of revelers gathered near the top-secret base, purportedly hoping to glimpse some extraterrestrial life—but all they got were memes and selfies.

Normally, when you turn onto Highway 375 from Crystal Springs, in Nevada, a big green road sign sits near picnic tables and shade trees baking under the relentless desert sun. EXTRATERRESTRIAL HIGHWAY, the sign reads, in a retro-futuristic font suggestive of a space computer. This road was so named—around the time Independence Day came out—because it’s the stretch of asphalt closest to Area 51. Many a curious visitor have traveled its miles, watching for jet tests and drone forays, hoping to see something they might later boast was a UFO. For decades, some have thought the secretive base holds not just jets within its boundaries but also maybe aliens and their technology. This, of course, is conspiracy theory, based on not much but strange aerodynamic sightings and the word of a man named Bob Lazar. But the region kind of embraces its notoriety with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge.

This week, though, the sign disappeared, removed in advance of the Storm Area 51 events taking place in the towns of Rachel and Hiko, Nevada. Officials were afraid that too many people would stop to pose for selfies, snarling the intersection. If the festivities so far, including Friday’s early-morning “attempt” to “breach” the base, are any indication, that is exactly the kind of trouble officials should have been worried about.

The joke Facebook event that started it all—by suggesting people storm the gates of Area 51—purported to be about uncovering government secrets. In reality it was about launching a meme and rocketing its creator to fame. It worked.

At the “raid,” there was no storming, there were no aliens, and there were no steel-eyed demands to expose government secrets. There wasn’t even really any serious UFO-truthing. There were just a bunch of kids in bright clothes, pointing cameras at each other, shouting meme text in ragged unison.

When I drove down Extraterrestrial Highway on Wednesday evening, around half of the cars I passed were law enforcement. Their white sides whooshed by, their presence anomalous in this valley where almost no one lives.

Photograph: Sarah Scoles

With so little human-friendly infrastructure, and a lot of secrets to guard, the region had many reasons to beef up security. Curiously, though, so far there’s no sign of Area 51’s actual security—which know-it-alls call Camo Dudes, the contract intimidators who drive unmarked Ford Raptors, cruise the dirt roads between the ET highway and the base’s perimeter, follow you, visit your campsite after dark, and sit on a hill above the front gate.

They don’t speak to or interact with you until you break the rules; in fact, they often cover their faces as they pass oncoming cars. Their function, for the most part, seems to be to act so scary that you don’t consider breaking the rules. When I visited last fall to do some reporting for a UFO culture book, the tactics worked.

The police here for Storm Area 51, though, were friendly—jovial even. They encouraged people to go up to the gates—perhaps in a “nothing to see here, ma’am” kind of way—and seemed mostly curious about what would happen. Plus, this early in the week, they probably outnumbered the visitors. A meaningless digital RSVP, it turns out, isn’t just a problem for your dinner party. It’s a problem for secret-base raids, too.

On Thursday morning, a few people meandered around the Little A’Le’Inn, the only business in Rachel, Nevada—not just an inn but a bar, restaurant, and alien-themed souvenir shop—the base for an event formerly known as Alienstock and now, after befalling some misfortune, called A’le’Inn Stock. With not many people onsite, I headed to Area 51’s back gate instead, a 20-ish-minute drive from Rachel, in search of the crowd.

Dust rolls out from behind my car like a wave rip-curling. It’s so dry out here that any guards could see cars coming for miles and miles before they arrived, evidence of their progress showing up like tiny, turbulent tornadoes. And indeed, the officer is ready for me when I arrive. He was called in from Lake Tahoe, he says, greeting me and a man from Ohio, who pulls up with a “LET’S SEE THEM ALIENS” sign. He asks if I would take his picture. “PHOTOGRAPHY OF THIS AREA IS PROHIBITED” blares a red sign right behind him.

“Can I take a picture?” I ask the officer.

“Sure, go ahead,” he says.

Later in the day, I go to the other gate, where there’s now a roadblock maybe a quarter-mile before the gate itself. Lincoln County police mill around, thumbs in belt loops and vest hems. The car can’t go any farther, they say, but I’m welcome to walk right up to the gate, with its cyclops cameras and razor wire. As I press on, the officer begins to walk and chat with me, and another officer follows behind us. It’s a low-key version of escorting, one that makes it seem like they just enjoy my company, keeping the mood light. They’re not going to stop anybody from storming the gate, they say. That’s for the people on the inside.

By Thursday evening, the crowds have begun to arrive, though not in droves. Yes, the A’le’Inn has rows of RVs parked in dusty squares. Yes, camps constellate the Bureau of Land Management acres throughout the valley, cases of Bud Light’s special-edition green-man cans stashed in coolers and camper refrigerators and Camry trunks. Pulling up, I see people in true tin-foil hats, a guy mooning a camera with his alien boxers, and two young women in skin-sucking green suits. But up by the stage, where a band begins to play before the scheduled time (a miracle), the number of people counts in the dozens. Behind them sprawls an enormous dust parking lot, empty except for some twentysomethings practicing “Naruto running” beneath the floodlights, off-leash dogs uneasy with the bass levels, and people coming and going from the PortaPotties that probably outnumber the permanent residents of Rachel.

Photograph: Sarah Scoles

I listen for an hour or so before heading back to my off-site camp to set an alarm for 1:30 am—so I can see if anyone will, in fact, try to storm Area 51. When I get to my spot, a few miles away from town, the rumbling of military jets throttles the sky. I look ahead of the sound, where the fast-traveling craft would be. And there I see two triangular-looking somethings, flying close together and high up. I wave.

This, of course, is what visits to Area 51 are traditionally about. It is the isolation, the quiet, and the darkness that brought the military here in the first place. It is the lack of everything that makes it an appealing secret spot. It is the experience of that environment that feels meaningful and transgressive, historically.

It’s different now. To visit when speakers drown out aerospace-y sounds, when stage lights blind you to the aircraft that might be hovering above, when there are so many eyes that the Air Force would be crazy to test anything actually advanced—it kind of makes a trip to Area 51 not very much like a trip to Area 51.

When my alarm goes off in the middle of the night, I can see headlights on Back Gate Road. Hovering low over the higher ground in the distance, they look vaguely UFO-like. Still, when I approach the gate—where there’s now a roadblock—the number of cars parked there is underwhelming. Dudes in a giant Dodge Ram truck are playing extremely loud electronica that seems to be the same 30-second loop over and over.

“If BLM comes up here they’re going to be extremely upset,” an officer says to them through a loudspeaker. They do not change their volume.

I get out of the car and stand hesitantly in the middle of the road, unsure if it’s just our cars that aren’t allowed close to the entrance, or if we ourselves are breaking the rules. The officer sees me and speaks again into his mic. “You can go up to the gate,” he says to me but for all to hear. “You can jump it, but I’d highly advise against it.”

I give a thumbs up and approach the gate, where I am surrounded mostly by people a decade or more younger than me. The number of video cameras and video-taking phones they hold nearly outnumbers them. A kid wanders around wearing a white sweatshirt with a YouTube logo on the front and the words CREATOR CREATOR CREATOR CREATOR CREATOR in a column on the back.

“That’s Macklemore,” jokes a police officer, as a young guy narrating into a lens walks our way, wearing a too-big fur coat and patterned joggers. Journalists film the YouTubers filming themselves. The police stand to the side, some taking pictures too.

Trying to get out of everyone’s shots takes more evasive effort than it might to get past the actual Area 51 gates. There is much more capturing of experience than experience.

At 3 am, the appointed time for the raid, a Bluetooth speaker starts playing The Final Countdown. The creators take footage of each other posing like they’re about to sprint for it. One person Naruto-runs parallel to the gate. Their lenses stare into one another, their gazes meta.

“Do it for the meme!” someone yells from the back.

“Do it for the Vine!” shouts someone else. “I was told if you go in, they’ll bring back Vine,” he adds, a little more quietly.

UFOs, their purported alien pilots, and the secrets shrouding both have always reflected the culture that birthed them. Anthropologists sometimes call them some version of a “mirror,” in which we look out to space and see ourselves. They probably didn’t mean for the creators to take it quite so literally.