It started as a bit of a joke, but now the US Air Force (USAF) has told people not to go near Area 51.

As we have reported last week more than a million people have RSVP’d to an event on Facebook, planning a raid on Area 51 in southern Nevada to “see them aliens.”

The event, titled, “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” would see a group of alien hunters meeting at 3 a.m. on Sep. 20, 2019 near the top-secret USAF Base to coordinate a plan of attack to reveal the truth behind the curtain. Thousands have commented on the page, which reads: “We will ‘Naruto run’ with our arms stretched behind us like Naruto Uzumaki in the Japanese anime series “Naruto.” We can move faster than their bullets.”

A spokeswoman for the Air Force has told The Washington Post it is “ready to protect America and its assets”.

Facebook user Jackson Barnes wrote on the event page: “Hello US government, this is a joke, and I do not actually intend to go ahead with this plan”.

“I just thought it would be funny and get me some thumbsy uppies on the Internet. I’m not responsible if people decide to actually storm area 51.”

But the Air Force isn’t seeing the funny side.

“[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 spokeswoman said.

Area 51 has the been the focus of enormous interest among a significant segment of the public for decades — an interest that inevitably spawned books, articles, and a variety of documentaries. For some enthusiasts Area 51 was a clandestine site for UFOs and extraterrestrials, but it is better understood as a U.S. government facility for the testing of a number of U.S. secret aircraft projects — including the U-2, OXCART, and the F-117. Declassified documents help demonstrate the central role that Area 51 played in the development of programs such as the F-117, and the operational employment of the aircraft. Other declassified documents reveal Area 51’s role in testing foreign radar systems and, during the Cold War, secretly obtained Soviet MiG fighters.

This first appeared in Aviation Geek Club here.