LATIMES.COM A
RACHEL, Nev. — Jebb
McAfee drove down the nar-
row desert road as far as he
could and parked near some
other cars alongside the
scrub brush. In front of him
and his two friends was a
barricade, a stop sign and a
dream.
The three had traveled all
the way from Florida to get
here: The back entrance to
the top-secret military base
Area 51.
Caleb Lower said they
hadn’t slept in 24 hours. It
was the big moment,
though, and they weren’t go-
ing to screw it up.
“Hey, we need the sword,”
McAfee said.
Lower opened the door
and produced a small plastic
saber. McAfee waved it a few
times and nodded.
“Do I need to be dressed
like an alien?” Dajah Potter
asked.
“Only if you feel like it,”
McAfee replied.
Potter did feel like it. She
slid a green mask over her
face to match her tight body-
suit.
The trio strode past the
barrier toward the entrance
a few hundred yards away.
Police vehicles came into
view. So did cameras on top
of tall poles that watched
them right back. An armed
man in military fatigues —
along with a German shep-
herd — stood behind a red-
and-white gate arm.
Barbed wire extended
into the desert. Signs
warned people not to enter.
McAfee and his friends
stopped. It was all they had
hoped it would be.
“We’ve seen pictures, but
this is amazing,” he said.
“We’re here.”
They weren’t alone, ei-
ther.
Hundreds of people be-
gan arriving at the gate Fri-
day. They came in tinfoil
hats and orange jumpsuits.
One guy arrived in his paja-
mas holding a bottle of li-
quor. They posed for pic-
tures. Many sprinted the last
100 yards before stopping at
the gate.
Their adventure had
been inspired by perhaps
the most unlikely Internet
phenomenon of the sum-
mer.
At 2 a.m. on June 27, a 21-
year-old Bakersfield college
student named Matty Rob-
erts was bored and decided
to create a Facebook event:
“Storm Area 51: They Can’t
Stop All of Us.”
It was his idea of a joke —
one Roberts said he believed
so absurd, nobody would
ever take it seriously. How
wrong he was.
By July, his Facebook
event, scheduled for Friday,
had gone viral. By August,
more than 2 million people
had said they were going to
storm Area 51, longtime fod-
der for conspiracy theories
about aliens and UFOs. The
town of Rachel, population
58, was suddenly faced with
an existential crisis: What if
they all show up? An alien in-
vasion might have been eas-
ier to handle.
The town — led by the
Little A’Le’Inn — gamely
tried to prepare. Located in
a vast bowl of Nevada high
desert, it is so remote that
there isn’t gas within an
hour. No grocery stores, ei-
ther. Just vast expanses of
land where dust devils can
be seen spinning for a few
minutes before vanishing as
if they were never there.
Roberts tried to dissuade
people from rushing the mil-
itary base by offering them
an alternative: “Alienstock,”
a music festival that would
be a cross between Burning
Man, Woodstock and Comi-
con.
Lincoln County, popula-
tion 5,000, approved permits
and geared up for the un-
known. The Air Force was
ready, too, with public state-
ments warning people to
stay away from the base.
But after Roberts and
the owners of the inn had a
falling-out, he moved Alien-
stock to downtown Las
Vegas. It was held Thursday
night, and according to a
promoter drew 10,000 peo-
ple.
Pat Travis, the owner of
the inn, pushed ahead with
her own concert festival, a
three-day event she called
A’Le’Inn-Stock.
Another event Friday in
Hiko, about 45 minutes from
Rachel, was expected to
draw a few thousand to the
Alien Research Center for a
series of talks by UFO ex-
perts and people who say
they have seen them.
As people began arriving
in Rachel on Thursday,
Travis stood behind the inn
bar, selling cans of beer and
doing interviews for televi-
sion and YouTube channels.
Travis has owned the inn
for more than three decades.
It’s a series of blue-and-
white buildings whose
rooms sold out almost im-
mediately after Roberts’ In-
ternet joke went viral.
“I hope everyone has fun
and that nobody storms the
gates,” she said.
By Thursday night, a few
hundred people had begun
pitching tents on the dirt
field east of the inn. One of
the performers, a 13-year-old
rapper named Prymrr, said
she had planned to sing her
song “Gamblin’” and debut a
few new songs from her
forthcoming album.
“I think this has the
chance to be a cool event formany years down the road,”
said her mother, Lisa
LoBasso. “It’s definitely the
most unusual event we’ve
been a part of.”
The live music began in
the evening. In the early
hours of Friday morning,
some attendees began toventure out to the gates of
Area 51. Police said a crowd
of about 75 showed up
around 3 a.m.
Kevin Aquino and his 18-
year-old son, Haven, vi-
deoed themselves running
away from the gate in the for-
ward-leaning style used byanime ninja Naruto Uzu-
maki to increase speed and
outpace security. Aquino
said law enforcement was
“really cool” about it all.
“As long as you don’t
cross the barrier, they were
fine,” he said. He said no-
body tried to cross the gate.Not far down the dirt
road, two women sat on a
purple couch and a round
chair separated by a wood
coffee table adorned with
flowers. Underneath them
was an area rug. Cassie
Cazessus explained they
wanted to come but didn’t
have any camping gear.
“We just brought the liv-
ing room with us,” she said.
They listened to Rascal
Flats as people walked by in
tinfoil hats handcrafted by
Christopher Reid and Justin
Wainscott, who said they
had brought 750 square-feet
of foil. Some hats featured
horns, and one was a full-
faced alien mask.
Not everything was free.
T-shirts were being sold to
commemorate the non-
event-event. Food trucks
dotted the concert area.
Some stopped in Hiko and
nearby Alamo to pick up
Bud Light, which had made
green cans for Alienstock.
Travis said she wouldn’t
be opposed to making the
festival an annual event,
though she said the current
one has taken a financial toll
as they’ve sprung for port-
potties, security and insur-
ance. Lincoln County has
also been concerned about
the cost of increased law en-
forcement and possible
cleanup efforts. The district
attorney has said he is con-
sidering a lawsuit against
Roberts and Facebook.
But that wasn’t on the
minds of the people attend-
ing the Rachel event over the
weekend.
Jacob Dowdle, a 23-year-
old who arrived with his dad
at the back gate Friday, wore
a UFO around his waist —
made by hand with wall in-
sulation and plaster. “I still
think there will be some idi-
ots who try and storm the
gate,” he said. “I came hop-
ing to see a few get tackled.”
His father, 54-year-old
Jared Dowdle, adjusted his
tinfoil hat as his son — along
with Jacob’s brother — sold
doughnuts for $2 a bag and
posed for pictures with
strangers.
He promised it wouldn’t
get crazier than that: “I’m
the voice of reason.”UFO fans stop just short of Area 51
ROB KULASof Chicago carried an alien baby doll around the Little A’Le’Inn grounds Thursday in the Area 51-adjacent town of Rachel.Photographs by Brian van der BrugLos Angeles TimesHundreds of people
— not 2 million —
show up near the
secretive base after
a viral Facebook gag.
By David Montero
TINFOIL HATS— and sometimes full masks — were popular among the UFO
enthusiasts who roamed the high desert town of Rachel, population 58, on Friday.THE LITTLE A’LE’INNmotel took the lead in preparing the rural area for an
influx of tourists. Over 2 million had RSVP’d that they’d help storm Area 51.military force and a desire to
steer clear of another Middle
East conflict.
“The easiest thing I can
do, like I could do it right in
here, would say, ‘Go ahead,
folks, go do it,’ ” Trump told
reporters in the Oval Office
on Friday, referring to mili-
tary action.
“And that would be a very
bad day for Iran.”
He added, “It’s all set to
go, but I’m not looking to do
that if I can.”
Speaking at the Penta-
gon, Esper reiterated claims
that Iran was behind the
attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil
industry.
“The weapons were Ira-
nian produced,” he said,
“and not launched from
Yemen.” Iranian-backed
Houthi militants in Yemen
have said they launched the
attack.
Esper did not say
whether the attack origi-
nated on Iranian soil, howev-
er. Saudi officials have also
stopped short of publicly
making that assessment.
Tehran has denied re-
sponsibility, and Iranian
Foreign Minister Moham-
mad Javad Zarif warned on
Thursday of “all-out war” if
the United States or Saudi
Arabia launched a retaliato-
ry strike.
In addition to deploying
U.S. troops, Esper said
Washington would send
more military equipment to
Saudi Arabia and the neigh-
boring United Arab Emir-
ates “to enhance their ability
to defend themselves.”
The announcement was
an implicit acknowledg-
ment that Saudi Arabia,
despite its purchase of bil-lions of dollars in American
weapons systems, was at
risk of another attack from
Iran without direct U.S.involvement.
“The fact is, the Saudis
were attacked by both
drones and cruise missiles,and are still vulnerable to at-
tack,” Esper said. “So asking
allies and partners to con-
tribute resources ... I don’t
think is too much of an ask in
this situation.”
Gen. Joseph Dunford,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, said the U.S. would
help provide “a layered sys-
tem of defensive capabilities
to mitigate the risk of
swarms of drones or other
attacks that may come from
Iran.”
Tensions between the
United States and Iran have
risen since last year, when
Trump abruptly withdrew
from the international nu-
clear accord forged by Presi-
dent Obama in 2015.
None of the other world
powers who signed the deal
backed Trump, and all have
tried to keep the deal alive.
Trump has sought tocripple Iran’s economy
through sanctions in an un-
successful effort to force it
back to the negotiating ta-
ble. Tehran has responded
with its own provocations,
including seizing a British
oil tanker and shooting
down a U.S. reconnaissance
drone this summer.
Trump recently offered
to meet with Iran’s presi-
dent, Hassan Rouhani, but
that seems increasingly
unlikely.
Both will be at the U.N.
next week, but the Iranians
have ruled out a meeting.
“We have many other mil-
itary options available
should they be necessary,”
Esper said. “We urge the Ira-
nian leadership to cease
their destructive and desta-
bilizing activities and move
forward on a peaceful, diplo-
matic path.”U.S. defense deployment described as a ‘first step’
DEFENSE SECRETARY Mark Esper said that Iran
was behind last weekend’s attack in Saudi Arabia.Susan WalshAssociated Press[Defense,from A1]