Area 51, an air force base in the middle of the desert in Nevada, has always been like Mecca for conspiracy theorists, who speculate that it's jam-packed with government secrets and alien tech. But now it's more famous for a viral social media initiative, which charged participants with storming the facility en masse to discover the truth, Mulder-style.
The trouble started when a tongue-in-cheek joke event was posted on Facebook, called: "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us." The stunt was a humorous invitation for Americans to overwhelm the guards, and investigate the facility through sheer force of numbers, to find out if there really are any extraterrestrials there.
Today is officially the day of the raid, and despite prior speculation that it would be called off, people are reportedly flocking to the base.
Now one such runner has been caught on camera rushing behind a news reporter as he delivered a segment on the event. KTNV news reporter Joe Bartels was reporting live, stating to the camera: "There's lots of campers and RVs because there's no hotel rooms in this isolated area."
Check out this hilarious video of the incident below:He added: "But there are people, we're told, coming in from around the world and especially across the country interested to see what happens after that viral idea to storm Area 51 - that secret military base not far from here. Authorities are expecting up to 30,000 people to show up during the course of this three-day music festival which begins tonight."
Just then he was brilliantly upstaged by an anonymous raider, who dashed behind him dramatically while the cameras were still rolling.
In a recent interview with CNN, Matty Roberts (who created the original Facebook event) claimed that he was somewhat disconcerted by the global phenomenon he incited.
Roberts told KLAS-TV: "I waited for like three days and there were like 40 people and then it just completely took off out of nowhere. I was just like, the FBI's going to show up at my house and it got a little spooky from there."
Meanwhile, the US military has cautioned people against participating in the event. US Air Force spokesperson Laura McAndrews told The Independent: "[Area 51] is an open training range for the US Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces. The US Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets."