The Aliens Aren’t Coming for Us, But Climate Change Is
Forget storming Area 51 and join the Global Climate Strike instead
It started with Joe Rogan. On June 27, a 20-year-old college student named Matty Roberts caught an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience featuring the subject of a new documentary, Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers, currently streaming on Netflix, and promptly posted the now-famous Facebook event, “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All Of Us,” as a lark. Apparently lots of people needed a lark. Within two weeks, more than 540,000 of them had signed up to bum-rush the top-secret Air Force facility, with its fabled repository of spaceships and alien corpses. Their promise to congregate in the desert on September 20 and make a run for the base with their arms trailing behind them in homage to the anime character Naruto, prompted a military spokesperson to issue a warning. “The U.S. Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets,” she told the Washington Post. But the statement’s deterrent effect remains in question; the number of Facebook users promising to go “see them aliens,” is now well over 2 million, at least a few of whom are presumably serious. (Indeed, a couple of guys from the Netherlands already gave it a go, with predictable results.)
