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Hello, I am Joshua P. Warren, and this is Joshua P. Warren Daily. And you know what? It's late September of 2020, and one year ago is when the Storm Area 51 Alien Stock event took place. Do you remember that? It's amazing to think that was a year ago. And to think back on those times fondly, right? A year ago, we were living in the good old days, and we didn't even realize we were in the good old days at the time. Oh now we we go look at the shit we're dealing with. Oh, how I wish it was like the it was in September of 2019. So let's hope, let's hope now, that a year from today that uh we will look back on this time and say, ah, 2020 was a terrible year. I'm I'm so much better off now. Because guess what? These might actually become the good old days if you don't do your proper manifestation work and you don't vote wisely if you have the option to do it. Vote for freedom. Vote for freedom. Think for yourself, okay? So it's interesting, though, to take a look here and say, okay, after one year, how has that event affected the people who live in this sparsely populated area of the country? I mean, they already are, I'm sure, having a really tough time because tourism is so dramatically down. Uh, and then a lot of them also uh still are suffering from some of the investments that they made last year. And of course, you know, the whole a storm Area 51 thing, it was one of those sort of viral flukes. I mean, a young man, I think he's in California, he had just put together a Facebook page as sort of a joke saying, hey, let's all just get together and storm Area 51 and they can't stop us all. Let's see what the heck's in there. Let's see them aliens. And it just caught on fire. And so it eventually it got enough publicity and real event promoters stepped in and said, Hey, there's some potential here. Let's do something real with this. And then it just became a big miss because people who have never been to Area 51, which is just north of Las Vegas, where I am right now. I mean, if you drive, I mean obviously you can't drive to Area 51, but if you drive to Rachel, which is the closest quote unquote town, okay. Town without a gas station. So that shows you what I'm talking about. When I say town, there's a diner there, and that's it. Um it takes you, oh, I think like two hours or something like that, if you're just hauling ass to get from Vegas to Rachel. But uh it is one of those areas that, you know, people think, oh, it sounds like going to Disneyland. Let's go to Area 51, and then they start driving and they realize, uh, no, this is not Disneyland. It's like people who go to Death Valley and don't realize it's it's not Death Valley theme park. They just found a dead hiker there two days ago in Death Valley. I think he was like in his 40s, early 40s, and they say, well, you know, it was 120 something degrees, and people overestimate themselves. You you don't mess around out here in the desert. You you don't have cell phone signals half the time. And there's no water. I I mean, if you if you don't know what you're doing, you will die out here. It's still the wild west. But anyway, um, today there was an article published in the the big newspaper here in Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review Journal. I subscribe to their newspaper. And uh so I figured what I would do is just read some of this article to you to give you an update on what's you know what's transpired a year after that event, because all these people were supposed to show up and go there, and a lot of people that I mean there was a much, much smaller amount of people that actually showed up for this event than they were expecting. And it was just it was real sloppy, and there was no real organization, and it was so overly hyped, however, that a lot of the locals um were preparing for something big which didn't materialize, and uh so they're suffering to this day. They put themselves in in a bind by preparing for something huge that wasn't huge. Uh, and that shows you the difference between all the crap that you see online and the reality that you deal with when you know you're you're you're out there actually physically traveling to places and trying to experience things. Um of course last September I sent Nick Weird and his girlfriend Christina out there uh and he did live reports whenever he could catch a signal and gave us updates, and I don't know of any other uh show that did that actually. So you can go back and listen to that. But he said, you know, it was just kind of quiet. I mean, nobody stormed Area 51. You can't. It it's it's just stupid. The whole thing was silly to begin with, and I can't believe anybody ever took it seriously and invested money in it. But anyway, look, here it is. Part of this article from the Las Vegas Review Journal. So uh this was published Sunday, September 20th, 2020. It says Sunday, which is today, as I'm recording this, marks the first anniversary of the day on which more than two million Facebook users responding to a college student's late night goof had pledged to storm Area 51 to see them aliens. As a result of that random joke, Lincoln County is out of two hundred thousand dollars, two small business owners lost a combined two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, litigation is pending, and Rachel has become divided with many of its residents, all of whom could safely gather without violating the state's fifty-person coronavirus guidelines, no longer speaking to one another. Did you get that? There are so few people who live in this wide spot on the road that they don't even have COVID restrictions there. And uh yet people there are not speaking to each other because of what transpired. Isn't that sad? Uh goes on to say I'm not, and let's see who wrote this article? Uh I'll get back to that in a minute. But again, this is the Las Vegas Review Journal. Uh says, as a result, wait a second. Oh, here we go. I'm still not unwound. In this last year, we've been hit so hard we're barely treading water, Connie West says. As the proprietor of the only business in Rachel, the nearest thing resembling a town to Area 51, she and her little alien were thrust into the international spotlight in july twenty nineteen as that Facebook prank went viral. Plans to breach the nearby gate of the secretive military facility morphed into an ambitious music and arts festival dubbed Alien Stock. The event was thrown into disarray days before on September ninth when the man who coined the phrase Storm Area fifty one severed ties with it. The resulting four day festival put together at the last minute offered the couple of thousand people curious enough to attend more of a do-it yourself vibe. Quote, I'm still not unwound from it, West says of that wild summer that found media from around the world wandering into her small cafe, quote, because I have to deal with the aftermath of it every day, end quote. That aftermath includes a lawsuit and counter lawsuit involving the meme's creator and his team, as well as the wrath of some neighbors of her once close knit group of neighbors who remain angry with the way things played out. Quote, I've known these people for a long, long time. Alien stock made me see some ugly in people that I never thought were that deep and ugly right here in my community, end quote. West estimates the event cost her two hundred thousand dollars, and that tab keeps climbing because of the legal bills. She's due in court again in late February. None of that, though, is deterring her from attempting to host another festival. Quote, I put a hell of a lot of work into it, she says of the 2020 edition that was scuttled in May as a result of the pandemic. Quote, I had some awesome sponsors. Due to COVID, I kind of pulled the plug on it because I knew that my commissioners and everybody else in the county and the state had other things that they needed to worry about, end quote. She says those sponsors are willing to work with her again whenever it's deemed safe to try, be it next year or 2022. A handful of enthusiasts camped out across the highway from her establishment last weekend. When this year's festival would have taken place, quote, all year people have reached out to me, West says they want this to happen again, however it happens, and whenever it happens, I'm grateful to try to do it again. Next section of this article says a lot of animosity. George Arnew wishes with all his might that West would just throw in the towel. Quote Quote here, the event has deeply divided our town into two camps. The Rachel resident says, one group backs West and her plans. Arnu leads the other. Quote, there's a lot of animosity all of a sudden. Rachel was a very friendly town where everybody knew everybody, everybody greeted everybody, everybody waved at everybody, and now it's come down to the exact opposite. Nobody even wants to talk to anyone anymore. End quote. Last summer, Arnu used his position as the webmaster of Rachel's official online platform to attempt to scare away visitors during that fateful weekend. A year later, the most prominent feature of the website is a link to his sister's site reading No Alien Stock in Rachel. The retired software developer represents a group of eight families that he says own about 30% of the property in Rachel. And since the Alien Stock Festival, Arnus says he's been harassed, had strangers trespass on his property, and has been photographed inside his home via long lenses. He complains of tourists driving through the residential areas of Rachel, and he has reinstalled the security lighting he bought last summer after hearing cars near his property at night. It may sound extreme, but you typically wouldn't relocate to a spot so remote. It's forty-five miles from the nearest gas station and eighty from the closest emergency room. If you're even somewhat tolerant of being bothered. Quote, our town that was a very peaceful and quiet place and friendly place has changed, Arnou says. At this point, a year after the event, I don't know if it will ever mend, if it will ever go back to how it was, end quote. One thing that won't change, though, is his animosity towards similar large scale festivals, and Rachel, quote, I will fight another alien stock, Arnu says, with everything I have, end quote. Continues all over the world, with so much of the focus on alien stock, you could be forgiven for not remembering that it wasn't the only alien-themed festival that weekend. Area 51 Base Camp at the Alien Research Center in Haiko, Nevada, also had grand ambitions. Pioneering British DJ Paul Okenfold was so excited by its prospects he flew from England on his private jet to perform for free on opening night, says George Harris, who owns the tourist attraction. Let's see here. Still so few gawkers showed up. Plans for the rest of the festival were scrapped, and those tickets were refunded. Quote, I don't think we have anything to be embarrassed about, Harris says. And by the way, I lost a lot of money because I really thought there was going to be about 25,000 or 30,000 people, so we prepared for it, end quote. Instead, 8,500 people stopped by over the course of a couple of days, he says, and that discrepancy cost him $42,000. And Harris says it will take him four or five years to pay off the bank loan. Still, he sees only the positives. Quote, I got at least eight million dollars in worldwide advertising, Harris says. Quote, we were literally all over the world for four days. We were probably in the news cycle for a good solid 30 days, end quote. The alien research center was busier than normal for the next several weeks, and Harris says visitors can still can't get enough of his eye-stormed Area 51 merchandise. And like West, he plans to do it all over again. This article keeps going. This is a long ass article. The next section says it was very stressful. Look, I'm not going to read the whole article. Looks like it was written by Christopher Lawrence. Great article. Again, the Las Vegas Review Journal. You can just look up their website if you're interested, reviewjournal.com. But it's kind of weird, isn't it? You have these people who are like, Well, I lost my ass on that, but I saw the potential. And so let's try it again and let's do it right this time. So, you know, I guess they'll figure something out. It's a shame that it divided people on little old Rachel like that. And uh, it's funny for me to read about the guy saying, Well, I got millions of dollars worth of publicity, because sometimes uh in my past, when I was sort of a little more naive and I was trying to get involved in media, uh, you you'd have these assholes that would contact you and say, uh, well, I want you to come on this uh TV show. And I go, okay. And they say, uh, yeah, we're not paying you anything, but it's great publicity. You'll get an enormous amount of exposure. And I go, uh, are you getting paid? Uh this is a business, right? This is not a charity. Like, uh, are you doing your job for free? Oh, okay. No, I didn't think so. Uh if the TV show is making money and I'm on the TV show, then uh I think I should get a little something also. You know, I mean, come on, guys. It's it's a job. So anyway, I hope I hope they're they're happy. But uh what a bizarro thing, huh? I just figured you'd be interested in having an update one year later on how people are feeling about what happened there with the uh Storm Area 51 event. Uh before I close out here, I want to share an interesting email with you that I received today. You know, I did a Joshua P. Warren Daily recently where I was talking about, you know, what's your earliest memory? What's the very first thing that you can recall seeing? And um I've gotten a lot of, you know, wild stories from people, uh, and some people did see, you know, kind of weird stuff, and then they turned out to investigate weird stuff. So who knows how much of an impact that makes. But this lady who is a listener named Mary, who has written me some really interesting stuff over the uh past year or so, she wrote this to me. She said, uh Hi Joshua, I just listened to your podcast about earliest memories, and I have an interesting story. My then two-year-old son and I were watching a PBS program about development of children from the sperm and egg through a little beyond birth. It had to be the middle of March 1982, because in three weeks he was going to be three. They said that children will remember being born if you can ask them before the age of three, because after that they will forget the experience. I figured, what the heck, it's worth a try. So I asked my son if he remembered, and to my shock he said yes. Now he has an older brother and sister, so he was pretty articulate. I asked him if it hurt, and his eyes got real big, and he nodded in the affirmative, and I asked him to tell me about it, and he said it was very dark, and he was being squeezed and squeezed, and then all of a sudden there was a bright light and he was cold. I was amazed to say the least. One of my grandsons was also very articulate at that age. So my daughter asked if he remembered being born, and he did. He said it was warm and dark, and all of a sudden there was a big bright light and he was cold. And he was born by C-section. So if you're ever around a two and a half to three year old who is pretty good at talking, you might ask if they remember being born. Take care, Mary. Wow, how about that? So if you are listening to me right now and you have access to a kid under the age of three, wouldn't that be interesting for you to roll a video camera and just ask that question and see what happens? And if you get and don't do any coaching, you know, don't plant suggestions. Just say, Do you remember being born? What was that like? And uh you know, if you want to document that and send it to me, it'll be interesting. I'd like to see it. It's kind of it's just a bizarro thing, but it shouldn't be. I mean, we all go through that process, but yeah, how how many of us can remember it? And what happens when you get a little older? Why does that memory disappear? Very strange stuff. You can contact me, of course, anytime. If you go to my website, joshua pwarren.com. There's no period after the P. I hope that you'll go there for a number of reasons. You'll find my email address there if you want to contact me. It's on the homepage there if you scroll to the bottom. 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My new product is almost ready to launch. My new book will be coming out probably sometime in October. Uh oh, there's a lot happening. So thank you for listening. Thank you for your interest and support. Thank you for staying curious. And I will talk to you again soon.