Anyone with a Facebook account in 2019 probably remembers the mass event suggesting the whole world storm Area 51 to see what’s inside.
The logic held that, if enough people joined the event, the military wouldn’t be able to kill everyone if we all rushed the secretive military facility located in the middle of the Nevada desert.
Now, six years on, the event - which saw a combined 3.5 million people click interested or going on Facebook - is the focus of a new Netflix documentary.
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The latest instalment of Netflix’s ‘Trainwreck’ series, the documentary looks at the Facebook event which started out as a joke and ended up with the US Military having to make plans in case it actually happened.
Well, it has been revealed that an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, inspired the bizarre plan to infiltrate the research facility en-masse.
The Area 51 event was set up by Matty Roberts, a California college student who was 21-years-old at the time and working in a vape shop.
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Whilst working there he decided to watch an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, in which Rogan had Bob Lazar on as a guest.
Lazar is considered a legend amongst the UFO community, having claimed to have studied them at Area 51.
Matty became convinced that there must be something being hidden in Area 51 as a result of Lazar’s appearance on the podcast and started the event titled: "Storm Area 51, they can’t stop all of us."
The episode itself has over 64 million views and is the most popular of Rogan’s podcast, earning five million more views than his interview with President Donald Trump and 30 million more than his interview with Elon Musk, which saw the tech boss smoke weed with the podcast host.
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Lazar was appearing on the podcast alongside Jeremy Corbell, a filmmaker who had produced a documentary on the UFO expert for Netflix titled Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.
Speaking about the event in the documentary, Matt says he just thought it was a ‘hilarious idea’ and that he didn’t expect what came next.
1,000s began responding within hours, all planning to ‘Naruto run so the bullets don’t hit them’ motivated to try and break out the aliens they are convinced are held in Area 51.
The US government spent $11 million fortifying the research base and the FBI even paid Matty a visit as a result of the event.
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In the end he did not end up being amongst the 150 who ‘stormed’ Area 51 (they ran a bit towards it and then turned around).
He had originally planned to host a Burning Man style event in the nearest town of Rachel, Nevada, but abandoned that plan in favour of hosting a ‘celebration’ event in Las Vegas.
Trainwreck: Storm Area 51 is available to stream on Netflix now.
Topics: Area 51, Netflix, Joe Rogan, TV and Film, TV, Documentaries
Michael Slavin