How Joe Rogan's record-breaking podcast fueled infamous Area 51 'storming craze'

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

The most popular episode of Joe Rogan 's podcast has been credited with inspiring the viral movement to storm the gates of Area 51 in the summer of 2019.
Netflix released a new episode of its 'Trainwreck' documentary that featured Matty Roberts, who organized the Facebook campaign 'Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All Of Us,' which saw two million people commit to rushing the Nevada base.
Roberts said the idea came after he watched Area 51 whistleblower Bob Lazar, who claimed to have worked on projects involving the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial spacecraft while staffed at the base in 1989.
Lazar's viral sit-down with Rogan further detailed what he did at the facility, including his work on an extraterrestrial 'anti-matter reactor,' working on advanced flying saucers built by the military, and climbing inside a real UFO.
The June 2019 has been viewed over 64 million times, the most of any of Rogan's episodes.
'I thought, 'Oh, my God, this finally explains the flying saucers stories,' Roberts said.
Excited by what he heard during that two-hour interview, he sent out a rallying cry on social media on July 27, 2019, hoping he would find others eager to force the government to admit that aliens and UFOs were real.
'It just seemed like a hilarious idea to me,' Roberts said in the docuseries Trainwreck.
After just three days on Facebook, Roberts' call to charge the gates of the US Air Force facility turned into an internet sensation.
Area 51 has been tied to extraterrestrial lore for decades, with UFO researchers and conspiracy theorists claiming that secret government projects have been conducted there since the 1950s.
However, it wasn't until Lazar's 1989 interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS that the classified base became nationally famous.
Lazar has maintained for 35 years that he was a government physicist who worked at S-4, roughly 15 miles from the main Area 51 complex, reverse-engineering alien spacecraft and extraterrestrial technology.
'When did things get weird? At what point in time did you say hey this is not normal work like this doesn't even seem like it's from this planet?' Rogan asked Lazar during their 2019 conversation.
'There's this facility that is at S4. It's in the side of a mountain,' Lazar described.
'I went into the hangar door and in the hangar door was the disc, the flying saucer that I worked on. I saw it sitting there and we walked by, it had a little American flag stuck on the side,' he continued.
'I thought oh my God this finally explains all the flying saucer stories this is just an advanced fighter,' the engineer told Rogan.
Even after that interview, the Air Force kept a tight lid on what was happening in the desert until 2013, when the CIA finally admitted Area 51 really existed.
Daily Mail has reached to Joe Rogan for comment regarding Roberts' comments about the Lazar interview.
Roberts revealed that his entire campaign just started out as a gag for the few followers he had on social media.
'Jokes are funnier when they're edgy. So, I'm going to make it sound like a real call to arms,' he said in the Netflix special.
'I just thought it would be a funny post for my page of 40 followers,' he added. 'I didn't think it would go anywhere.'
However, the viral invitation quickly drew the attention of the US government, who took the possibility of two million people rushing the gates of Area 51 very seriously.
The federal government reportedly spent $11 million reinforcing the security around Area 51 before the September 20 event.
Roberts revealed that the FBI questioned him after he posted the event on Facebook.
The military even warned anyone attending the gathering that deadly force would be used to keep the base secure.
'I had no idea what I'd started,' Roberts added.
The small crowd began forming at 3am outside Area 51, and only 2 people were detained by police
While the federal government and US military was ready for a showdown at the top secret base, it turned out that the public wasn't.
Of the two million people who RVSP'd for Roberts' attempt to storm Area 51, only 150 people showed up.
'We're about to storm one of the most heavily guarded military bases in the world. Why? Because the internet told us to,' another attendee commented in the docuseries.
Only a few thousand people traveled to the towns closest to Area 51, like Rachel, Hiko and Alamo, but they never met at the base.
According to the new documentary, this came as a great relief to the roughly 50 residents of Rachel, who feared they were about to be overrun by more than a million visitors.
Only half of the 150 people who showed up at the 2019 event actually ran towards the gates of Area 51
According to Forbes, only two individuals were detained by local sheriff's deputies, but a reason was not given at the time.
While Roberts and the 150 attendees never got past the main gate of Area 51 in 2019, the site has continued to draw unstop speculation that the US government working with extraterrestrial technology there.
Several of Rogan's podcast guests since the Lazar interview have stated that they believe UFOs are studied at that facility and others throughout the US.