[creaks]
[man] You can be anyone you wanna be on the internet.
Criminals can conceal themselves from being held accountable
for the things that they say and do.
That is the new frontier for law enforcement.
[rock music playing]
In the past, you would have detectives in a patrol car,
uh, looking out the windows, hunting for bad guys.
[siren wailing]
[officer speaks indistinctly over police radio]
[Chris Tomaino] But now you have threats that come through social media.
In 2019, I was the commander
of the Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Center.
I was informed that an individual
who lived with his mother in Southern California
had, uh, put information out on social media
that he was trying to organize, uh, an event where they would storm Area 51.
[laughing]
I was pissed off.
But I did not wanna be the person that ignored something
that you could see coming a mile away.
And then the questions were gonna be asked afterwards
of why didn't law enforcement do something about this?
We gotta get this thing under control.
- [exhaling] - [Tomaino] Now.
- [helicopter blades whirring] - [sirens wailing]
[slow-tempo music playing]
[reporter] More than two million people say
they're going to storm Area 51 next month.
The Lincoln County Sheriff has some big concerns.
[Kerry Lee] We're reaching out to all of our partners, federal and state.
We don't know. We're only planning for the worst and hoping for the best.
I got a call from the Las Vegas Police Department.
They were getting together every government agency they could
to deal with this Storm Area 51 thing.
So I jumped in my patrol car and headed to Las Vegas.
I walked in that room
with all those different players sitting at a big U-shaped table.
[chattering]
[Tomaino] We had Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department,
the FBI, the State Department, US Marshals.
It really brought things home. This is big league here.
[Tomaino] We had US Air Force personnel.
Captain Tomaino was running the whole event.
He came in, and we went around the room voicing our concerns.
[chattering]
If a large amount of people decided we're going to storm the base,
how are we gonna handle this?
[Cavan Craddock] Imagine someone has a gun.
If people start shooting and suddenly, hundreds or maybe thousands of people
get shot over this event, you're looking at one of the deadliest mass shootings
in the history of our nation.
This isn't a joke. This isn't play. This is definitely serious.
It's all fucked up.
We asked the Air Force,
"Are you really gonna use your weapons on a crowd of nerds?"
[Craddock] There are foreign intel operatives out there
that are gonna infiltrate the crowd of these Naruto runner alien seekers.
They're gonna look like 'em, smell like 'em.
Gonna talk like 'em, act like 'em.
Therefore, we will treat all of them as hostile until proven otherwise.
[camera shutter clicks]
We knew our best chance of getting the thing turned off
was to have the organizers of the event
well aware that there would be consequences
for their actions if they continue to carry on.
We needed to be able to put somebody on the doorsteps
since this guy's hundreds of miles away.
And so we all turned and looked at the FBI.
- [gunfire] - [explosions]
[indistinct chattering]
I'm at my friend's house when I get a call from my mom at about 10:00 a.m.
- [vibrates] - I don't answer it, and then she texts me.
[chiming]
And now I'm scared to the point I'm about to cry.
[doorbell rings]
I was scared. I've never had federal agents at my door.
They said, "Do you know where he's at?"
They took my phone to talk to him directly.
The agent is just wanting to know where I'm at and when I'll be home,
and I am telling him neither of these things.
[Malinda Ortega] I said, "You have to come home. If you don't,
that's when they're gonna start looking into what you've done."
[Matty Roberts] I'm sheer panic.
I've got very militant anti-government people, um,
sending me scary messages, threatening to kill other people,
threatening to kill the guards at the base.
And what happens to me if one of these people goes in there
and tries to do that shit under my name?
I'm running through any lawyers I may have met in passing.
I'm looking up online of anybody that might have the qualifications
to help with this weird fucking scenario I found myself in.
And after I am on the edge of giving up,
I called Jeremy Corbell.
Oh, fuck.
He was pretty terrified. I advised Matty he should have a lawyer with him,
just 'cause we didn't know.
We didn't know what the nature of this contact was.
I have seen the pushback.
When you're dealing and reporting on Area 51,
they wanna keep things secret.
These are accusations of a cover-up.
This is accusations that we have been holding non-terrestrial materials.
Tell the basic truth.
[Roberts] I'm hearing about all this bad shit, not only from Jeremy,
but just from stuff I found online myself on these different forums.
[typing]
Our government is just not transparent with us.
- [clicking] - [typing]
I'd like to ask the government, "Why are you keeping it from us?"
- [clicking] - [typing]
Our government has been working on black ops.
[character] Disturbing truth about Area 51.
You could get shot for giving our secrets away.
- [scrolling] - [typing]
What the fuck?!
[typing]
It's easy to write it off as just all internet lore phooey.
But then, the FBI's knocking on your door,
and suddenly, it's a lot more real.
[man 2 clears throat]
- [taps phone] - [swooshes]
[Jeremy Corbell] I mean, I was like, "Fuck, Matty."
"That meeting you have to take seriously."
[Roberts] I'm just sitting there shaking,
thinking I'm about to get a bag over my head
and thrown into a van and shipped off to God-knows-where.
And they're grilling me about my social life,
my backstory, what kind of religious beliefs I hold.
Like, just to feel out whether or not I am actually a terrorist.
I'm telling them the truth. I'm not actually planning on doing this.
We're actually planning a music festival. Look, see? You can go through my messages.
Just anything to save my own ass at that point.
But they essentially let me know that it was my ass
if anybody decided to go in there and storm this base.
After this meeting, I needed to figure out a way to move away from Storm Area 51
and rebrand this so I can keep myself out of prison.
[prisoners clamoring]
[Roberts] We started spitballing a bunch of ideas.
We collectively got together and kind of threw out names.
[Roberts] We start looking at Woodstock.
[chanting]
What's more peaceful than Woodstock?
[man 3] There's supposed to be a million and a half people here by tonight.
[man 4] It looks like some kind of biblical, unbelievable scene.
And so we take the theme of aliens and just mash 'em together.
We got Alienstock.
[techno music playing]
Alienstock. It worked.
It was kind of a beautiful, just come-together moment for all of us.
Alienstock. I mean, it's a little cringe when you think about it, like the '60s.
I mean, you know, fuck the Boomers, but also,
what is our version of Woodstock?
[man 5] Let's go! Let's go!
[character moans]
[both grunting]
Pretty sad to me, I guess. It's pretty cringe.
It didn't make the concept any less stupid.
The whole meme is based on trespassing on a US military base.
[airplane engine droning]
[Craddock] "Alienstock." You have got to be kidding me.
Nothing changed by renaming it.
We were still monitoring the situation very closely.
What did Alienstock mean now? Nothing.
Some people were trying to put lipstick on a pig.
Every time Matty tried to calm things down, it just got more crazy.
[dance music playing]
This is gonna be fucking epic. The first of its kind.
Alienstock, a three-day festival.
And I'm just gonna say it, I think you're out in the desert.
A lot of people are gonna get high, gonna be doing other things.
They're probably gonna storm Area 51, and we're gonna be there.
All of a sudden, this is no longer a meme. I mean, this is a real festival.
Alienstock was hot. So all these brands, like, jumped in on it.
Everybody wanted a piece of it.
[character whistling]
And Vice was, like, absolutely along for the ride because it generated clicks.
If you're not getting abducted by aliens, you are fucking up.
We knew we had to go. We knew we had to make a documentary.
It started as a Facebook post to storm Area 51,
and then went to a music festival.
As the event continued to grow,
anybody who wants to get a toe in on this thing is reaching out.
We've got country bands reaching out.
We've got R&B people reaching out.
We've got hip-hop artists reaching out.
[character] Yee-ha!
Lil Nas X said he would perform. I was like, "I have to go!"
It was gonna be completely wild.
Kind of like this little real-life internet meetup.
So now you've got this festival with potentially millions of attendees,
and who's gonna be putting this on?
That kid in the Naruto costume? Good luck.
[laughing]
It's like we are looking at seven Woodstocks.
- Fourteen Coachellas, 50 Burning Mans. - [cheering]
And this whole time, I'm sitting here
with less than $1,000 in my bank account.
How the fuck do we make this happen?
[Disco Donnie] So now we're five weeks out.
We have a venue, an audience
and a ton of hype, but we have no money.
That was a big problem, 'cause somebody was gonna have to put up the money,
and I wasn't gonna do it.
[Roberts] What Donnie started doing was searching out sponsorships.
I talked to Arby's.
They said they'd send free food.
Bud Light. Because they were making their own alien can.
And then along comes PornHub.
[moaning]
[laughing]
[Disco Donnie] PornHub was all-in.
They gave us $70,000 to sponsor the event.
PornHub offering to sponsor this.
It couldn't have been more perfect.
- [clicks] - [woman moans]
[Roberts] I was stoked.
[Disco Donnie] I told Matty $70,000 was enough to pay for a stage
and a couple of staff.
But when you're doing a show in the middle of nowhere,
you have to bring everything yourself.
Porta potties, fencing, uh, staff, the water, the staging.
It doesn't pop up overnight.
We were building a city from nothing.
It was hard thing to do to put on a music festival
in the middle of nowhere.
I was starting to get the info on things,
and I got the sense that people were panicking a little bit
and starting to have doubts.
[commentator] How do you create a music festival in the desert?
[commentator 2] Where are they gonna eat and sleep?
[commentator] There's no cell service, no internet.
No stores, no gas.
The planned music festival near Area 51
might turn out to be more like the disastrous Fyre Festival.
[cheering]
It is an absolute disaster.
[Zeke Spector] Fyre Fest.
It blew up for all these millennial influencers
who paid all this money to go to this Caribbean island. A total shit show.
With Alienstock, there's an element of schadenfreude,
where it would be almost, like, satisfying for the whole thing to blow up.
We were drooling over this.
[computer chiming]
[Roberts] 'Cause everybody's talking about "Fyre Festival this, Fyre Festival that."
I go and look it up.
Billy called and said, "Andy, we need you to take one big thing for the team."
The more I learn, the worse it gets.
"Will you suck dick
to fix this water problem?"
[laughing] And it was fucked up!
The guy who put that on ends up in prison.
So one of my main objectives is to not end up in prison.
How the hell did it come to this?
[officer laughs]
[Craddock] I didn't know what Fyre Fest was,
but this had "humanitarian disaster" written all over it.
We were beginning to get worried
that we would have the desert overrun with casualties.
[Craddock] We're gonna have folks that are literally starving or dehydrating
out in the desert during the scorching heat.
Naysayers. It was coming in one ear, coming out the other.
I did not care what they were saying.
If this just turns out to be a disaster, we'll have a front-row seat.
Our fans were gonna love it. It was gonna be perfect.
I was excited by the idea of a bit of carnage.
If millions of people are gonna starve and die, at least I wanna witness it.
[screams]
And if we get killed, at least have it be on livestream.
[laughs]
All these voices are starting now to ring true,
and I'm stuck here wondering if I'm sending four million people
out to the middle of nowhere to die.
[Joerg Arnu] The residents of Rachel said, "We don't want this in our town."
I tried to warn people on my Area 51 website.
[clicking]
[typing]
It's just a very hostile environment.
There's desert critters. There's scorpions, uh, snakes.
This could potentially be a really bad situation.
So we approached the commissioners
in hopes that they would not allow this event to go forward.
[man 6] There's the county commissioner.
When people are up in arms, they're pissed off,
they're not afraid to come and talk to you.
In the store, in the post office,
at church even.
When I first heard about this, I thought it was a joke, you know?
It's like, do they really think
they're gonna be allowed to storm through the Area 51 gate?
What do they think they're gonna see or do?
So we decided to call a meeting.
- [line ringing] - [Lee] I figured that it was a no-brainer.
The county commissioners would just stamp it "no."
There is no way on God's green earth that this is gonna get permitted.
Storming Area 51, it is illegal.
You deny the permit. You don't let it happen.
It becomes an illegal event. It goes away, and the problem is solved.
But we had no control over the county commissioner's decision.
[reporter 2] Thousands of people will pack into rural towns near Rachel, Nevada.
[reporter 3] The tiny community is preparing for an invasion,
for a new event, Alienstock.
[Connie West] I headed to the courthouse.
All of my disgruntled neighbors
were going to be there.
Joerg was doing everything in his power to stop Alienstock.
[Arnu] I learned that they were planning
on putting a helicopter landing right next to my house.
We're worried about people invading private properties.
Was it gonna get overrun, burned down by an angry mob?
My dilemma was either piss off the people in Rachel
or piss off a million people or whoever, how many were showing up,
'cause they don't have a venue.
As a commissioner, my focus was on the protection and security
of the people that pay taxes in my county.
- [dramatic music playing] - [vocalizing]
I was really hoping that this would put an end to this madness.
So it has all come down to this moment. All our eyes are on the commissioners.
They are the only people that can stop this event from happening.
There was some heavy discussion between the commissioners.
It was kicked back and forth.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Now these people intend on coming.
They said, you know, "All in favor, raise your hand."
Now that these permits are approved, the festivals are happening.
[reporter 4] The county approved permits for the owner of Little A'Le'Inn.
[reporter 5] Alienstock, put on by Connie West, permit approved.
I was gonna make sure this went off without a hitch.
[Arnu] I felt let down.
There was nothing that we could do anymore that would stop it.
I called my girlfriend.
And I said, "I just got my butt kicked. You wouldn't believe it."
- [dance music playing] - [typing]
[Tomaino] Local yokels thought they were doing the right thing for their area
and didn't really think in terms of the big picture.
I was sitting there in disbelief.
The US government is spending millions of dollars,
but the people having to deal with this decision are the Lincoln County folks.
They don't deal with crazy every day.
They're normally dealing with the theft of a cow.
It's ludicrous. If this many people are gonna show up anyway,
let's at least give 'em a venue
or give 'em some place to go and congregate.
That's what's best for the county.
A lot of people were upset that those, uh, permits were approved.
But that approval meant the promoters are on the hook financially.
[West] There was a lot we had to do in order
to be able to handle this amount of people that were coming.
We had to go and start clearing land
and finding the space
and organizing where the stage was going to be.
Do you have an idea of where we're gonna put the vendors?
Not quite sure exactly where we're gonna tweak the stage at.
Matty had a designated list of things to do.
[yawning]
I had mine.
I already had the land, I already had the liquor license,
and I already had the permit.
Matty and Donnie were supposed to be managing everything else.
But I wasn't seeing anything was being done.
At the courthouse, I was approached by a security company,
and I'm hit with over $100,000 worth of bills
that I'm not supposed to be having to pay.
I didn't know what to do.
I'm not getting help, and Matty's telling me that it's Donnie.
You know, I called Donnie.
And that's when things started going haywire.
You know, somebody drops $100,000 bill on you, where is it gonna come from?
There's supposed to be all this sponsorship money coming in,
and I haven't seen it,
but it was coming. It was on its way.
And you know, I came out of the meeting, um, thinking, "Oh, my God."
"Where am I gonna come up with this money?"
I called my son and told him I guess I'm gonna sell my house.
And then the guy who handed me the bill
said to me there were these festival guys in Las Vegas,
and they were willing to help because they had money.
I told Donnie that we should hear them out and see what they have to offer.
Connie had messaged us about this guy, Frank DiMaggio.
- [typing] - So I looked him up.
He's posing with all these celebrities,
but I've never heard of anything he'd ever done.
So to me, that's a big red flag.
I was like, these guys are no good.
My reputation in this town depends on who you talk to.
I don't let people fuck with me,
and I don't back down to anybody for any reason.
My partner John said this woman that owns the Little A'Le'Inn
where they're doing the event is in over her head.
He said, "Can you help her?"
I said, "Maybe."
We had an investor that was willing to put up a large sum of money.
But we have to find out what they have in place
before we can make any decisions
on whether or not we're gonna be even involved.
So we asked Connie and Matty to sit down for a meeting.
The event is happening in a couple of weeks,
but I don't really have any clue what's going on,
and there's all these fucking people I don't know getting involved.
It's confusing.
[West] We're down to the wire. I've got people hounding me for money.
So we just decided collectively that we would hear them out.
And Donnie's like, "I won't be there."
Connie said, you know, that she was gonna work with Frank.
I said, "Thank God."
People were already starting to call this Fyre Fest 2.0.
The weight of the world was off my shoulders, right?
I didn't have to deal with it anymore.
I just thought, "Two weeks out, Frank running the show."
"Good luck. I'm out."
[West] The meeting with Frank and company was scheduled for the 6th September.
I was the first one to show up.
Matty was on his way.
[Frank DiMaggio] We talk. We were smiling, laughing.
Matty showed up.
We assumed that they had
this massive, organized event ready to go.
They just didn't know how to pull it off.
And we needed to find out what they had in place.
I said, "What are you planning?"
"And how's it gonna work? How much are you gonna charge?"
We don't know anything.
Frank says, "You know, you want, um, stages from us."
"You want lighting from us."
"You want this from us, that from us. We need to see your bank accounts."
"Open up your bank account." The fuck I will.
And they're like, "Um, excuse me."
"You need our help."
[Roberts] Connie's not answering any questions.
Everybody's yelling, screaming at each other.
And then all of a sudden, Frank starts slamming his hands onto the table.
Bam! Bam!
"Get the fuck out. I'm done."
And I stood up.
[Roberts] It just completely explodes out of nowhere.
It's like everybody's gone absolutely fucking bananas,
like chimpanzees at the zoo.
What the fuck is going on?
What the fuck just happened?
Fuck you. Our relationship with Connie ended when we told her to leave the house.
I asked Matty, "What would your parents tell you to do right now?"
"'Cause I can tell you what my parents would tell me to do, tell me to run."
"This could ruin your life."
"If something happens out there,
and you're not prepared for it, somebody gets killed, you're gonna get sued."
"Even if it's not your fault, you're gonna get sued."
I told him it's not worth going to jail or throwing your life away.
"I don't want you to get shot either, Mathew."
[Roberts] Connie's gone home in tears.
And I'm watching this cool thing
that we've built up until now just disintegrate.
[DiMaggio] I said to Matty, "We can help you."
"But not with Connie and not out in Rachel."
We had a venue ready to go here in Las Vegas.
[Roberts] My heart says, "Let's go to Rachel."
It fits the spirit of the event. It's right by Area 51.
But then my brain is telling me
that it's the worst fucking idea we can possibly have
because there's infrastructure in Las Vegas.
There is security in Las Vegas.
Everything's set. It's safe.
I've got a really tough decision to make.
Do I go with Connie, or do I go with Frank?
And at 5:00 a.m., I've gotta go on TV,
and the world is watching.
[reporter 6] Matty Roberts is scheduled to be on Good Morning Las Vegas
around 6:45 tomorrow morning to talk about the event. You won't wanna miss it.
[reporter 7] Final countdown is on for the human invasion near Area 51.
[reporter 8] The man behind the viral event to storm Area 51
will be here at Channel 13.
[crowd chattering]
Fuck.
- Nice to meet you. - [reporter 9] Matty, right?
[chattering]
[reporter 9] Thanks for coming in. Something's still happening there, right?
Frank.
We're hoping.
I'm so sorry. I don't understand.
What are we on promoting if there's no event happening?
[Roberts] Sitting in the newsroom,
I'm really fucking anxious.
I have no idea what's going to happen.
[West] It was six o'clock.
I have the morning show on, and I'm watching it live.
People in Lincoln County are gearing up for the Storm Area 51 invasion.
And there's been lots of talk about it. Joining us this morning is Matty Roberts.
He created the Facebook event.
In as far as, um, you know, what's gonna take place in two weeks,
uh, you're still not sure yet.
You could just see him sitting there.
He seemed-- his body language just seemed so stressed out.
- [reporter 9] Will you be there? - [Roberts] I'll be in Nevada.
For the rest of September.
So wherever we do an event, there will be an event there.
What?
[laughing] "I'll-- I'll-- I'll be around!"
- But it's two weeks away, so... [laughing] - Yeah.
Kind of gotta, like, figure it out, I guess, somewhat soon, right?
I know that that's what you're in the process of doing.
We'll have more information later today.
What? What the fuck?
Like, this is now fully out of his control even.
He does a taped interview with Frank.
[reporter 10] If you had a message for anybody that's gonna be there,
what would you tell them about coming out?
[Roberts] Not gonna send them out to nowhere,
where there's no infrastructure.
I can't have my name associated with something
that could be a Fyre Fest 2.0.
What the fuck is going on?
[reporter 10] What is the likelihood that something is actually going to happen?
It'd take a miracle.
But you can see this look on Frank's face.
He kind of, like, looks very satisfied with himself
that he was able to convince Matty to move it.
It needs to go away before it becomes the biggest disaster
that southern Nevada has ever seen.
I cried.
I was heartbroken because I didn't understand what was going on. [sniffles]
[voice breaking] I just wrote over $100,000 worth of checks
to pay for these people to be in Rachel,
and I am finding out live this isn't happening,
and the world is being told that I have created disaster.
I'm sorry. [sniffles]
[reporter 11] And we can confirm there's been a falling out
between the man behind the idea to storm Area 51
and organizers on the ground near Area 51.
This interview that I do with Frank just goes absolutely ballistic.
Now the organizer behind the Storm Area 51 event says he's pulling out.
[reporter 12] Roberts told 23ABC
that they're in the works at bringing it to downtown Las Vegas.
Connie said despite all of this, Alienstock is still happening.
Oh, it was chaos. It was chaos.
And because it's America, everybody starts suing each other.
A cease-and-desist letter was sent to Connie West to stop Alienstock.
[reporter 12] Alienstock organizer Connie West is now suing
Storm Area 51 creator Matty Roberts and his associate.
I'm like, "What the fuck are you guys doing?"
"You asked us for help, and then you sued me."
"Fuck you."
You know what? Fuck Frank DiMaggio and fuck Matty.
What do people want me to do? Run out and get shot?
There are claims here of sabotage and secrecy.
The keyboard warriors, they now hate me.
[man 7] ...is not the face of the event.
[man 8] He doesn't give a shit about anybody.
[man 9] Matty is an alien.
- [man 10] That guy is a tool! - [crowd clamoring]
I never asked to be anybody's hero.
I just put up a prank post at 2:00 a.m.
[DiMaggio] I didn't steal Matty from them. Matty had a choice to walk away
from an event they didn't have a contract for.
Yeah, Matty could walk away, as he did. I couldn't.
- [typing] - People were still coming.
Here's what I thought. Where's Area 51?
Is it in Las Vegas? No.
Area 51 is near Rachel.
That's where I thought the majority of people were still gonna go.
They bought airline tickets. They rented cars.
They took time off work.
They were coming.
"No, it's canceled, Kev. Don't go, it's canceled."
You know what I mean? Fucking losers.
Oh, my God. We were freaking out.
We flew to LA. We loaded up with supplies.
Do we need walkie-talkies?
That would be epic. I think we should get the diapers.
We got everything at Target. I mean, coolers, water, snacks,
the sexy alien costumes.
- [tape rewinding] - [shouts]
The day before I was supposed to storm Area 51, I broke my neck.
Doctors recommend that I just lay down and recover for the next couple weeks.
But I'm not doing that because we're storming Area 51,
and we're gonna find some aliens!
We had a warlike mentality.
We were preparing for desert survival.
We were preparing for conflict with the military.
We were preparing for anything.
[Craddock] One of the most difficult parts of my job is telling my young airmen
that they may have to take deadly force against their peers.
Use of deadly force is authorized.
Why risk it? Even if there's nothing at Area 51, why would you risk it?
[Craddock] We got some additional people, additional vehicles, additional weapons
to make sure that we could deal with multiple things happening.
This was by far the largest defense of the base
that has ever happened on the installation.
[reporter 13] The Federal Aviation Administration
announced a temporary flight restriction
for areas surrounding Area 51.
[Arnu] We knew we're gonna have to prepare for the worst here.
When things had fallen apart between the organizers,
it became clear that the Little A'Le'Inn
was completely out of their league.
So we did whatever we could to keep our town safe
and to keep this event from being a total disaster.
There's no turning back.
It's beyond the point of coming back. People were coming.
When I saw that Connie was still going ahead with it, I wasn't really surprised.
The people that wanted to go were gonna go regardless
of whether or not I told them not to.
We are full steam ahead on the event in Las Vegas.
With Frank's connections, it just all came together really quickly.
[crowd clamoring]
Who could have predicted this? Make a post on a page that has 62 likes.
And now you have thousands of people that are ready to come out to your show.
It's just-- it's absolutely amazing.
We knew that we weren't really gonna go
to the Bud Light event in downtown Las Vegas,
'cause it seemed lame to us.
So we knew that we were gonna go right into the hornet's nest,
whatever this supposed humanitarian crisis was gonna be.
As we're heading out to the desert, we didn't really know who
was there to party and who was there to storm,
but we expected, like, everything to go wrong.
We wanted to go out there. We wanted to see some shit.
20th September 2019, I posted, "Today is the day."
[dance music playing]
Headed to the infamous Area 51 takeover!
Away to Area 51!
To Alienstock!
The only thing that we had on our maps was "Area 51."
So, like, we literally drove towards Area 51.
It's so far, man. I mean, I wasn't even out of Las Vegas.
I started losing signal,
but I just went on faith, man. Pure faith. I knew I was gonna get there.
As we were getting closer, we're seeing more and more people
and seeing more and more law enforcement.
- [siren wailing] - Oh, they're coming for you.
Oh, they are coming for you fast.
Like, I remember seeing SWAT on the side of the road. Police cars lined up.
It felt like, "Aww, fuck, we're about to enter something crazy."
[officer] We repeat, anybody breaching Area 51 will be shot.
[Unicole Unicron] We start to see vehicles with large antennas on their roofs,
vehicles with, um, blacked-out windows.
What's it gonna look like when we get to that base?
[Lee] Everybody was holding their breath.
We're all ready to go. Uh, people are coming in.
Okay, now what?
We've gotten some information about a suspicious vehicle headed to Area 51.
To me, it had a potential to be bad, and we wanted to avoid it.
- [indistinct police radio chatter] - [Lee] So I jumped in my patrol vehicle.
I was able to locate the pickup truck.
And he identified himself.
I looked inside the vehicle.
I thought, "Oh, man, we have a problem here."
He was saying he was gonna go to Rachel, to Area 51.
I was able to talk him into allowing me
to keep those weapons until the event was over.
Made us think, "Okay, well, if this guy could have firearms,
how many others could have firearms as well?"
[helicopter blades whirring]
[man 11] Are we live? Let's fucking start this!
- [crowd clamoring] - [man 11] Wow, 3:00 a.m. Things get crazy.
[man 12] They can't stop us all!
[man 11] What happened to Matty Roberts? Matty Roberts, why ain't you out here?
[man 12] They can't stop us all! They can't stop us all!
[Craddock] Started approaching 3:00 a.m. on September 20th.
Started getting hyper-concerned about what was going on.
- [man 13] Let's go! - [shouting]
[Craddock] On the original Facebook post,
this was the point that they're gonna go storm the gate.
So all of our forces are ready.
We've been monitoring the situation, starting to see some increased activity.
We're fully prepared, ready for anything that might happen.
Let's go!
[shouting]
Can't stop us all.
[crowd chanting] Clap them cheeks! Clap them cheeks! Clap them cheeks!
[man 14] Only wanna see one alien!
[man 15] Two million people will be here in two minutes!
- Really? - Clap them cheeks! Clap them cheeks!
Clap them cheeks...
I don't care if you have guns. Still wanna know.
The manpower was at its peak. Everybody was ready to go.
I was like, "Yo!"
"I'm about to storm this base!"
I was like ten...
We're still gonna storm!
Nine...
- [Rackaracka] And I turned around... - Eight...
[crowd] Seven...
- Six... - [crowd] Five...
They were reporting like there was a fucking crowd. Four!
[crowd] ...three, two, one!
- They can't catch all of us. - And they began to run.
[shouting]
And they stopped.
[clamoring]
[laughing]
[sighs] Yeah, um, it was a joke.
[laughing]
They got their moment of fame. They got their picture, and it was done.
[laughing]
[man 15] Aww!
[Lee] Three point five million people turned out to just be a few hundred.
[man 16] Oh, my gosh.
[man 17] Yeah, you had a good-looking fall, man. You really rolled.
[chanting] Clap them cheeks! Clap them cheeks! Clap them cheeks!
I was, like, just trying to make, like,
something entertaining happen for those camera crews.
We're here to rescue the aliens!
- Rescue the aliens! - [Rackaracka] Everybody, no more games!
I think there was more cops than there were people.
- So they called in reinforcements? - They sure did.
They could definitely stop us all.
- [officer] Get off the gate! - [man 18] Get off the gate he said!
We topped two million people!
There were no Chads there.
There were no Kyles. There were no Karens.
- Game of limbo! - [woman 2] Whoa!
No one was even wearing the Naruto band. It was a letdown.
Stop looking at me. I'm about to commit something illegal!
It was just a meme.
- Open sesame. - It doesn't work that way, brother.
We had spent months preparing for this event.
And that was it. That was the biggest activity we saw.
Those poor aliens were stuck in there, thinking they were gonna get busted out.
They're still stranded there.
[Spector] We'd heard there was gonna be a big raid at 3:00 a.m.
But we woke up, and, uh, there was nothing there.
I felt trolled. Fuck me, right?
[laughs] Fuck us!
We did everything in our power to, like, hype it,
and ultimately, the joke was on us.
- [dance music playing] - [cheering]
[Roberts] I wasn't watching what was going on in Rachel.
I was just having a fucking blast.
Once the stage comes alive with music,
and those people are dancing,
all that stress that you've gone through before just completely disappears.
I grab the microphone, and I step out on stage.
- How are you guys feeling? - [cheering]
The crowd went insane.
Awesome! Give a shout-out to those two dudes in the alien costumes!
[cheering]
Because it's Matty, the guy that did the meme.
[Roberts] Enjoy the show!
It's just a sea of people having a great time.
It's that moment that makes everything that I've done so far worth it.
Alienstock was never the desert.
It was never Area 51. It was Matty.
- [dance music playing] - [Spector] A lot of lights and lasers.
Like, that doesn't impress me very much.
I just didn't think that that was how
the meme should go down in history.
Like, it should go down as this ragtag piece-of-crap stage.
[rock music playing]
Alienstock!
[Killa Kev] Once we realized nobody was gonna raid Area 51,
everybody just started dancing and vibing.
[man 19] Here's your thousands of people that were gonna show up.
Okay, that was worth going out to the porta potties for.
People were just having a great time.
- Snack! Whoo! - I know that you love Reese's Pieces.
We are so grateful for this space here in Rachel, Nevada,
of understanding that aliens are real.
Everyone was having fun, and I felt like the aliens were dancing with us.
I wanna be a human. You know, you guys are just funner. [laughs]
Every time I turned around, there was nothing but cameras everywhere.
- [indistinct chattering] - I'm glad I got to be the host.
I did my best to make sure that everybody was going to be taken care of.
The world's cameras are here in Rachel, Nevada.
I was, like, pretty much surrounded by booms and by cameras the whole time.
So many news, so many YouTubers.
YouTube, YouTube, YouTuber.
Everyone was trying to, like, be like,
"This is my moment to be famous and try and get in front of the cameras."
- What's your name? - Killa Kev.
- Is that your actual name? - It's my actual name. My birth name.
The residents of Rachel, Nevada, literally brought out lawn chairs
and were watching us like we were zoo animals.
- [horn honks] - I live here!
[man 20] Yeah, not right here!
We were cautiously keeping an eye on things going on from the distance.
Countdown. Three, two, one...
There was a lot of these social media wannabes interviewing each other.
[shouting]
We are there to document the scene of a humanitarian crisis.
Then I realized at the end of day,
it was a few people partying in the desert...
- [dance music playing] - [cheering]
[Spector] ...talking about aliens.
[shouting]
I mean, shit, that's exactly
what it was supposed to be the entire time, you know?
- [dance music playing] - [Spector] It was cool.
When I saw the videos from the Rachel event,
like, it honestly looked kind of cool.
Like what I had pictured our event being to begin with.
- [dance music playing] - [cheering]
[Spector] Sort of the opposite of Fyre Fest,
where they built everything, but then there's not enough people.
There were more porta potties than there were people.
And I started to think about my own role in this
as a blood-hungry media producer, who was like, "We want the conflict. Ahh!"
And I think we got ahead of ourselves
by wanting this Fyre Fest 2.0 story to come to fruition.
We're driving back past all the media trucks.
There's this mobile police headquarters they've erected in the desert.
All the different, like, emergency vehicles.
I just think to myself, I'm like, "How much did this all cost?"
We did exactly what we needed to do.
If it would've gone bad, they never would have let me forget it.
And I would've had to live with that till the day I retired and beyond.
You wanna know how much money I won in the lawsuit?
She can chase me to the ends of the earth. They can put me in jail.
She'll still never get the money.
Mobilizing a lot of resources, that costs money.
$11 million?
That's how much the military lost?
For what? Added security?
What the fuck? That's insane!
You can easily say, well, we shouldn't have done it.
We shouldn't-- should not have wasted those resources.
Uh, my argument will be
that there were too wide a range of possibilities,
with the worst-case scenario being a mass casualty event.
And I will defend to the final day
that we did not overspend in our preparation for it.
Every day, people are doing crazy stuff because of the internet.
- [dance music playing] - [singing]
[chanting] USA! USA!
You don't really know which stuff is real.
[chanting] You will not replace us!
You will not replace us!
- So you have to take everything seriously. - [shouting]
[Tomaino] If lots of people were shot, killed,
all the finger-pointing and recrimination
would occur afterwards, where, "Who knew what when?"
"How come they didn't have a better plan?"
[shouts]
The problem in this day and age is how do you police a joke?
Any future plans? After this weekend passes, do you have anything in store?
What's next on your bucket list?
I have no idea. Do you know what happened to Matty?
I've just gone through the most surreal
and exciting moment of my life.
And then one week later,
I'm back on the clock at the vape shop.
[slow-tempo music playing]