DOD Forced to Apologize for Tweet Threatening to Bomb Area 51 Festival | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's note: This informational nugget was sent to me by Ben Shapiro, who represents the Daily Wire, and since this is one of the most topical news events, it should be published on BCN.

The author of this post is Emily Zanotti.

    The Department of Defense has been forced to apologize for a tweet it sent out on Friday, threatening to stick the Air Force on the hundred or so revelers who showed up for the "Area 51" fest.

    The tweet, which took aim at Millennials (even though attendance seemed multi-generational), suggested that the "last thing" party-goers who gathered at the edges of the government's secretive desert base in Nevada would see would be the B-2 spirit bomber, rather than the aliens they'd hoped for.

    "The last thing #Millennials will see if they attempt the #area51 raid today," the tweet read over a photo of the stealth bomber parked on a runway behind a host of Air Force personnel.

    It didn't take long for social media to panic, even though it was clear the Department of Defense probably didn't actually intend to bomb the event.

    "The military should not be threatening to kill citizens, not even misguided ones," one respondent chided.

    The DOD realized their mistake on Saturday and deleted the offending tweet. DVIDSHub, the Air Force outreach account that originally posted the photo, apologized publicly.

    "Last night a DVIDSHUB employee posted a tweet that in NO WAY supports the stance of the Department of Defense," the group wrote. "It was inappropriate and we apologize for this mistake."

    Thousands of people descended on Nevada and parts of Arizona last week for the "Area 51" festival, which evolved out of a Facebook event purporting to organize a mass on-foot invasion of the storied government facility that allegedly plays host to the government's collection of alien spacecraft (and, if you believe the Facebook event, a handful of actual aliens).

    The event, "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop Us All," had millions of RSVPs and residents of the small towns that surround Rachel, Nevada, where the main event was set to take place, had worried earlier in the month that as many as 50,000 people could descend on the military facility, taxing local resources. At one point, organizers even officially "cancelled" the event, fearing things might get out of hand.

    Only a few thousand people actually showed up to "storm" the base, though, with most event attendees preferring to stay in Las Vegas, where a handful of concerts and parties took place. The ones that did manage to find their way to the "alien base" spent most of their time in the desert partying to sets by DJ Paul Oakenfold and other B-list musicians. According to CNet, which sent reporters to cover the event, at one point only three people were at the event's main stage, grooving to the alien-themed music.

    But if the attendees didn't take the alien mission seriously, the Air Force certainly did. The Air Force Times reports that, although the B-2 bomber probably wasn't going to be deployed to the Nevada desert to strike an impromptu electronic music festival, Area 51 is still a secret government facility and the government intended to protect it.

    "Our nation has secrets, and those secrets deserve to be protected," Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told the outlet several days before the planned event. "People deserve to have our nation's secrets protected."

    The security plan, though, was pretty standard: "There's a lot of media attention, so they're expecting some folks to show up there. We're prepared, and we've provided them additional security personnel, as well as additional barricades," acting Air Force Secretary Matt Donovan added.

    The festival went off without a hitch - mostly. The two-day event reportedly fizzled after a single day and one cow was killed, though not at the hands of a chupacabra or from alien experimentation, as many attendees probably hoped. It perished in a car accident.