‘Storm Area 51’ Could Be a Disaster for Lincoln County

Linda Looney, a manager at the Alien Research Center in Hiko, Nevada is no stranger to unlikely theories and wild schemes. Even so, when she first saw on Facebook that thousands of people were planning to storm the nearby Air Force base known as Area 51, she thought it was a joke. She didn’t understand what it meant to “Naruto run” or how doing so would allow anyone to “move faster than… bullets,” but she was sure the military would put an end to the shenanigans.

Looney has spoken with believers from all over the world. Some come out of curiosity, others are adamant that aliens secretly live among us. So, when the guest list for the “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” Facebook event began to climb into the tens of thousands, then the hundreds of thousands, then the millions, Looney understood that, for many people, this was more than a gag. It would be fun, she thought, not to mention great for business.

“I got excited,” she said. “And then I got worried.”

So did much of Southern Nevada. More than half -dozen local, state, and federal agencies are involved in the planning, including the Las Vegas Police, the Nevada Department of Public Safety, and the state highway patrol. Governor Steve Sisolak’s office has been briefed and is monitoring the situation, and when the alien enthusiasts arrive, police officers, medics, and firefighters will be hand.

“We have been nonstop preparing for the past few weeks,” said Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee, who has been convening daily with county officials and weekly by phone with the state’s Department of Public Safety.

By mid-August, more than a month before the event, visitor traffic had already spiked 1,700 percent.

So far, Lincoln County has sanctioned two events for the weekend of the supposed storming. A lineup of prominent ufologists and dubbed Alienstock.

“Maybe the won’t come, maybe all this is for naught, maybe we’ve done all this planning and 500 people come,” Lee said. “But we feel like we can’t be behind the eight ball here. We’ve got to plan ahead for the worst-case scenario.”