Theories

Joe Rogan 

"Three months earlier, on 20 June 2019, the podcaster Joe Rogan released an interview with Bob Lazar. Lazar is a cult figure in UFO circles; he claims to have studied flying saucers at Area 51, the classified air force base in Nevada where the US government is rumored – by some – to make secret contact with extraterrestrial beings. Rogan’s millions of listeners heard the interview" (Conroy).

Unknown 

"Soon most human settlement was gone. There was nothing alongside the highway – no strip malls, no fast food joints, and, I noticed, worryingly few gas stations. I had at least two hours of driving ahead, though I knew I was going in the right direction: every vehicle I saw was a police car, an RV or a news satellite van" (Conroy).

"As I drove I listened to rightwing talk radio, then Top 40, then country, then a Bible discussion call-in show, then some Spanish-language stations, then static. A talk station interviewed the mother of a police officer killed by an undocumented immigrant. Sean Hannity made fun of the climate strike, and every talkshow discussed the New York Times’ recent, partly retracted accusation against Brett Kavanaugh. It was, they pointed out, yet another sign of bias in the liberal media" (Conroy).

Rachel 

"On the way to Rachel, I stopped at the rival festival at the Alien Research Center in Hiko. It was heavy on souvenir sellers, though there were some hardcore ufologists. A group called the Mutual UFO Network (Mufon) gave me a pamphlet offering certification to be a “field investigator”" (Conroy).

"If anything, the ufologists were more the exception than the rule. I had expected most Area 51 Stormers to be conspiracy theorists, 4chan types, or people on the fringe political spectrum, but a lot – probably most – were normies on a lark, or foreigners in search of peak Americana. Two young men – one Swiss German, the other Japanese – told me they were friends who’d met at an English as a second language program in New York. A group of Britons told me they’d been taking a road trip up the West Coast, heard about the Area 51 business, and decided to take a detour" (Conroy).