Lincoln County, Nevada, population 5,200, has drawn up an emergency declaration as it prepares for as many as 40,000 alien conspiracy theorists to make contact with their remote Area 51.  

As of press time, two million people are marked as “Going” on Facebook to an event on September 20 called Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us, with an additional 1.5 million people marked as "Interested." One would imagine this is a prank, considering the event is "hosted by" a group called Shitposting cause im in shambles, and the event’s invite reads “We will all meet up in Rural Nevada and coordinate our parties. If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.” The official Storm Area 51 website has since toned it down, merely promoting some manner of vaguely described festival near, but not at, the Area 51 Air Force Base that is reputed in conspiracy lore to hold alien bodies and all manner of other top-secret artifacts.  

But local officials have become concerned enough by the online interest that they’ve drafted an emergency declaration to deal with the surge of alien enthusiasts, according to the Associated Press. The county realizes it lacks the infrastructure, hotel capacity, medical service and cellphone coverage to handle what Fox News describes as “100,000 people who show up to party and breach a military base where the government is allegedly keeping aliens and UFOs.”

“With the possibility of 35,000 to 40,000 people showing up, yeah, this is serious,” Lincoln County Commission chair Varlin Higbee said at Monday’s meeting, noting the September 20-22 event being held in a county with only 184 hotel rooms. “The cellphone system is going to go down. You get more than a couple of hundred people there, and it’s going to crash. Cell service won’t be available.”

The tenor of the event has switched from a supposed military base-storming to a couple of more mild-mannered festivals. The cult-favorite hotel The Little A'Le'Inn has been granted conditional permits to host a festival called Alienstock. Some 30 miles away, the Alien Research Center will be hosting their own Storm Area-51 Festival, whose organizers note, “neither the Lincoln County Sheriff or the United States Military will tolerate any illegal activity, so in simple terms, check yourself before you wreck yourself.” So, somebody's going to make money off this madness!

Despite all the attention, crowds might not even show up at all for this glorified prank. "We passed this with the caveat that this may or may not happen," said commissioner Kevin Phillips, according to the Reno Gazette Journal. "We're just trying to do the best we can to prepare for something we know not of. We have no pickin' idea what we're going to face — if anything."

Meanwhile, in another part of Nevada, a certain utopian village is currently under construction once more and awaiting its own invasion of tens of thousands of tourists.

Related: Jeff Goldblum On Jazz, Amy Winehouse, And Visits From Aliens [SFist]

Image: Airwolfhound via Flickr

Proving that a good UFO story never gets old, a Mission man's admittedly tequila-influenced witnessing of lights in the sky has gotten some traction on the Web, with the Drudge Report linking to a KCBS story on the incident. Enrique Barrios was headed home from drinking in the Mission with his wife on Saturday night when he witnessed a formation of strange lights in the sky. Whipping out his iPhone, he captured video of the event, complete with commentary track:

"I wasn’t sure if at first if it was another Tequila hazed mirage, but myself and a few bystanders were all in complete awe at the lights we saw on Valencia. Please excuse my drunken reaction," Barrios told Mission Mission. "This was the first time I ever saw something like this. There’s also a yellow speck which is from my iPhone lens but it’s clear which lights I’m referring to. At first glance, I thought it might be fireworks but when they started to form a triangular formation, I knew this was uncommon. You folks be the judge. My final conclusion….UFO’s are here for Papalote salsa."

A handful Mission Mission commenters also reported seeing the strange lights while walking through the Mission and Castro, with multiple descriptions of seven lights that resembled candles and eventually lined up in a triangle formation. (One commenter also claims she saw them in southeast Ohio.) The FAA didn't report any unusual activity in the Bay Area over the weekend, though.

KCBS sought an expert opinion from the excellently named Bing Quock, assistant director of the planetarium at the Academy of Sciences, who says they definitely weren't part of the night sky, and thinks they were probably balloons with lights attached. Our guess? Sky lanterns, probably sent up from someone's wedding or holiday party. We hope someone wrote "I wish I could start a useless media cycle and play into people's weird 2012 superstitions" on the side.

Meanwhile, in New York: our overlords at the Gothamist mothership report several people claim they saw similar light formations hovering over Brooklyn last week. Which totally makes sense that America's hipster enclaves would hear about aliens first. Endtimes, folks.

[Mission Mission, KCBS]

At 11 a..m. (PST) today, radio broadcasters and TV will take part in the first-ever nationwide emergency alert system test. Although emergency alert system tests have been done at the local level, we've never had one performed at the national level. This type of alert should come on handy when, say, slimy aliens attack (because they will), nuclear warfare erupts, a huge comet comes barreling toward planet Earth (you must see Melancholia; it's an actual masterpiece), or Harold Camping's premonitions of apocalyptic doom come true.

Expect to hear a 30-second "eeeeeeee" and familiar "this is only a test" messages during your TV or radio broadcasts.

Again, this is only a test. Don't panic. Not yet, anyway.

In case any slimy, green Maritans appear, brandishing pointy laser guns--and all experts agree that there will be--keep track of them and the Mars Phoenix Lander on Twitter. It's scheduled to land on Mars this evening at 4:53 p.m. (PDT). Or so.

For those of you not outside getting ripped at a barbecue today, you can also check out Mars Phoenix Lander coverage live on NASA TV.

Via Laughing Squid.

See what happens, conservative counties of California? Whenever you do something like this, we then have to do something like this. It's the way we balance things out. Tis the circle of life.

Yesterday, Mayor Newsom signed into action the Tommy Ammiano-introduced legislation that requires the city to handout ID cards to undocumented immigrants and other residents who either can't or just won't apply for driver's licenses. The good news is that these IDs will help (formerly) undocumented residents gain access to the wonderful world of banking, a sense of peace before calling the fuzz, as well as "health services at city-run clinics, public library privileges, and resident discounts at museums and other cultural institutions." (Entry fee discounts at the Exploratorium: the American dream realized.)

And the down side? These cards do not parallel Social Security numbers "for those seeking employment." What's more these cards could simply start signifying "alien" and the assumption that said card holder is here illegally.

Still, we want one. For kicks. And the program will go into effect in August of 2008. Also: good.