Area 51 Raid: How Many People Actually Showed Up?

Getty A photo of the Area 51 raid.  So, did anyone actually show up for the Area 51 Raid that was a big viral craze during the summer? After all, more than 2 million alien enthusiasts said they were interested in storming the gates of the secret Nevada military base, and the date has arrived.  The original raid was actually cancelled when its organizer said it was all just a joke and the Air Force warned it wasn’t a great idea, but some people stuck to the original start time: 3 a.m. PDT on September 20, 2019. The raid was supposed to end at 6 a.m.  Journalists at the scene said that, at most, a couple hundred people showed up. One Las Vegas newspaper put the number at about 100 people. Reuters described the crowd as “several dozen revelers.” The Guardian said 75 people were at the gate. There were some entertaining live videos that popped up, though. Photos from the scene give a sense of the crowd. Some people wore spacesuits. Some people wore tinfoil hats (literally). Some people carried inflatable aliens. Some people let inflatable aliens carry them. According to the Guardian, more people showed up for various alien festivals tied to the raid than were at the actual raid, estimating that number at about 1,500. According to the Guardian, the gate is located “on washboard dirt roads,” and is a “rugged” journey, but about 150 people managed “to get within selfie distance.”  GettyAlien-hunters gather to “storm” Area 51.  The Area 51 raid was started by a Facebook event that went viral. The page reads, “We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.” Area 51 is a secret U.S. Air Force military installation that is located at Groom Lake, Nevada. There’s a website for the Area 51 raid, which you can see here. The event was originally called, “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us.”   An attendee is detained then released after briefly physically crossing a security line.  Here’s one of the live videos. It shows people in space helmets and in the dark, insisting they were still going to storm the gates. But the video states outright that they failed. This is backed up by local news reports from the scene. “A bunch of random people in weird costumes standing outside of a government base, why would you want to miss that?” said a man on YouTube, and police told Reuters that people just seemed like they were having fun.  At 3 a.m., on September 20, 2019, some people did show up. Not a lot of them, though. “Hundreds show up at #Area51 gate around 3am. One woman in her 20s tried to cross, but was detained,” wrote journalist Gerard Ramalho, of KSNV-TV. He also reported a crowd outside the gate, but no major incidents. You can watch some other live videos from the scene here.   The Independent reported that “at the gate to Area 51 itself, some people did gather. They gathered round, chatted, took some photos and joked. While the

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