Skip to main content

FAA closes airspace around Area 51 ahead of alien raid event

Area 51 Raid No Fly Zone
Signage is posted outside a gate of the Nevada Test and Training Range, commonly referred to as Area 51. Bridget Bennett / Getty Images

To deal with any extraterrestrial-seeking attendees of the viral “Storm Area 51” event, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that airspace around Area 51 will be temporarily closed this weekend. 

Recommended Videos

The FAA issued temporary flight restrictions between September 18-23 for “special security reasons” in the Nevada desert where U.S. Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range — commonly known as Area 51 — is located. That means no one can fly aircraft in the surrounding area, including would-be alien hunters hoping to send a drone hovering above Area 51.

Digital Trends reached out to the FAA for comment on the temporary no-fly zone, and we’ll update this story if we hear back from them.

The closures could be a result of the popularity of the Area 51 Facebook event called, ‘’Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” which has captured the interest millions of people. According to the Facebook invite, 2.1 million have RSVPed as attending the event, though there’s almost no chance even a fraction of that number shows up when it kicks off on September 20. The event’s description reads, “We will all meet up in Rural Nevada and coordinate our parties. If we Naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Let’s see them aliens.”

The viral Facebook event spurred the creation of a more “formal” event known as Alienstock, which promised to be a festival featuring live music, food and drink, and “otherworldly encounter” in Rachel, Nevada, near Area 51 from September 19 to 22. The event has since been renamed to Area 51 Celebration was moved to the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center amid what organizers described as a lack of infrastructure and poor planning. The free event happens Thursday, September 19 and promises a “classified” lineup of live music.

Still, the change in the fest’s location isn’t stopping people from descending upon the Nevada desert to get in on the alien hype. According to Mashable, people have already been arrested for trespassing near Area 51. The Department of Justice’s website says that anyone who is caught trespassing a government military base could receive a $500 fine, a prison sentence lasting up to six months, or both. 

The recent obsession with Area 51 even made its way into the gaming industry. A new alien “Traveler” leaked earlier this week, complete with an Area 51 badge on its chest and sleeve.

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more
Apple TV+ just got a price slash that’s tough to resist, and it won’t last long
The Apple TV main screen.

Apple has just quietly announced that it will be slashing the price on its Apple TV+ offering for a limited time deal.

While Apple prices the service at a standard $9.99 per month usually, it has just cut that way down to $2.99 per month.

Read more