1 death reported at Burning Man while festival attendees remain stuck in the Nevada desert from heavy rains
1 death reported at Burning Man while festival attendees remain stuck in the Nevada desert from heavy rains
As thousands of people remain unable to leave the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert after heavy rains inundated their campsites with ankle-deep mud Saturday, authorities say they are investigating a death at the event.
As thousands of people remain unable to leave the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert after heavy rains inundated their campsites with ankle-deep mud Saturday, authorities say they are investigating a death at the event.
Attendees were told to shelter in place in the Black Rock Desert and conserve food, water and fuel after a rainstorm swamped the area, forcing officials to halt any entering or leaving of the festival.
The remote area in northwest Nevada was hit with 2 to 3 months worth of rain – up to 0.8 inches – in just 24 hours between Friday and Saturday mornings. The heavy rainfall fell on dry desert grounds, whipping up thick, clay-like mud that festivalgoers say is too difficult to walk or bike through.
Climate change is only going to make this event harder and more dangerous in the future. I just hope the death toll stays at 1.
90Honestly, for an event this size, a single death should surely be in the odds.
5I believe the death was unrelated to the weather.
5
Story time! My friend is a private pilot for an obscenely rich person. He dropped them off wherever the nearest airport is and man in a luxury RV picked them up. He drove them there, set the whole thing up, and left them to have fun. Apparently this is not an abnormal thing they do.
I guess last night they got a hold of the dude, who drove to an area a couple hours walk away, and they hiked to his truck. He went to the RV and they drove the truck 4 hours to Reno, and they're staying at a four seasons or something. My buddy had to cancel his own vacation to go and pick them up this morning so now I'm at a beach watching his kids.
Whatever it was before, burning man is a playground for the 1%. When the shit hits the fan, their money will always get them out of any situation.
68Was your buddy obligated to go pick them up, or was the money that good that he couldn't say no?
11I think being a kept man is a well paid gig. Sometimes the hours really suck though.
4He's salaried and essentially on call
4
I said in an earlier post that this was rich people's problems.
People with cash looking for life transcending moments, but are just drugged up festival chasers hanging out with those who font hide the delusions. They're there for the drugs and the festival.
And could afford it, too.
5People gonna shit on the wealthy for going and still having the resources to get a way out almost no matter what.
People gonna shit on the middle class for trying to find a fun activity and deciding this looked like the best option for the week.
People gonna shit on the poors for being stupid by going and having no way out, possibly needing to be rescued.
People gonna shit on those who have enough time and resources in their life to go camping in the desert for a week and to see a bunch of wild people who are trying to get away from whatever square world they come from.
People gonna shit on everything no matter what. Ignore 'em.
Nobody should never "need" to be rescued and should always plan accordingly (10 essentials for us boy scouts, lol).
Anyways, rant over.
5We aren't shitting on anyone, just amused that perhaps less rich people exist now, and their own stupidity despite their ridiculous fortune. Same as the submarine thing. Tale as old as itme - sometimes it seems there's a correlation between stupidity and wealth...
2
If they changed the name to Salty Millennial Man, would the event have wider appeal?
2
When Diplo and Chris Rock are attending it’s not Burning Man anymore. It’s just another event for trust fund kids and middle managers clinging to their long past youth. Add a sprinkle of tech bros for flavor and you get an event I don’t mind not attending.
Not that the folks who do attend Burning Man are regretting my absence in the least 🤣
43I wanted to go to this when I was a teen because it was so counter culture and free spirited. Now you couldn't pay me to go. It's gross what techbros and 1%ers have turned it into.
18I went out to the black rock desert in middle School in the late 90's as part of a school trip. We launched rockets in the desert. It was super cool. I remember hearing about this burning man thing they did there every year in the summer and it sounded so cool. Then I got older, and we got this. Good riddance.
5
0.8 inches...
Funny how so little fucked them so much!
38They're also at the lowest drainage point for that whole valley. Plus, the properties of the lakebed make it so that water is very slow to soak into the ground, so it's going to take a while for things to dry out.
64Hey, 0.8 inches is completely acceptable and it gets the job done. It's not the size of the dingy but the motion in the ocean...or in this case it's not how much you fill the graduated cylinder but how dry the soil is.
On a more serious note, this has the potential to become a huge tragedy; there are 10's of thousands of people out there with limited resources and more rain is coming. I hope that things stay under control.
34That dry lake bed is like powdered mud, it's so fine that any water instantly makes mud.
32Burning man is held on a dry lakebed, funny thing about lakes is that they tend to form in the places water naturally tends to accumulate, it just happens that it's a desert, so normally there's no rain so no water. So basically any rain that falls in the area tends to drain to the burning man playa, while only .8" fell directly on burning man, a decent amount more accumulated there.
The soil there also tends to turn to mud, and there's no real plants with root systems and such to help hold it together.
14Why would Dr Dolittle do this
8
everyone loves to have a hate boner for this festival so how would you feel if it closes? one less fun thing in the world, even if it may not be your cup of tea. all the good festivals shut down where i am and it just feels so 'sterile' now
11people die at burning man all the time. this wouldn't end the festival.
it's a fun time, but it's definitely not for people without some disposable income. many people will budget a thousand bucks or two as the logistics required to camp there are serious.
we all know that you could spend a thousand dollars on something more useful to society or whatever, but most of the people hating on it aren't doing shit.
3
Oh no all the billionaires are stuck in the desert.
-6There are 3194 billionaires in the world. If all of them were at Burning Man there would still be 69,000 non billionaires there.
5My childhood friend's brother is there. He is a veteran who saw combat in the Iraq War. Far from a billionaire.
-1
All you folks bashing Burning Man obviously have never been.
-8Been to Alchemy in Georgia. I can say that's awesome, Burning Man is for rich white people.
-2
I hate to sound callous, but I don't feel much sympathy for a rich person who went out to the desert to pretend to be a hippie and didn't check the weather forecast.
-46I used to run in a party crowd that had a LOT of burning man folks in it. There were a couple of them that had middle class incomes, maybe even leaning upper middle class. Those are usually the ones that had an art car or whatever that they sank some money into, instead of the crap that most upper middle class Americans blow their money on.
But the rest of them? They worked at restaurants, did massage therapy, teachers, etc. normal people with median or lower incomes that would forego other expenses to set aside a little a money for their annual get high in the desert trip.
Yes, there’s a bunch of elitists at the core of the event, but it’s not the majority.
132With that attitude, the only difference between you and the type of rich person you seem to despise, is wealth.
45I hate to sound callous
No, you fucking revel in it. Why the fuck else would you feel the need to post this?
First you replace them with your straw man (“rich tech bros”) and then burn it down (“tech bros just deserve what they get”)
Well, stay in your basement you smug piece of shit. Mommy will have tendies ready soon.
39Most people at Burning Man aren't rich. I hung out with a bunch of people who go regularly last night and I imagine less than half even own their own property.
So yeah, you sound pretty callous tbh
26Permanently Deleted
24Apparently the weather stations in the SoCal desert didn't see it coming at all. Not sure how that's possible, but that's what they said Friday. Tons of flooding in Palm Springs and Vegas too.
9
I wonder if any of them called the cops to suggest that the puddles had a gun. Any reports of the popo ramming the rain?
-48