Why this festival in the desert was always a disaster waiting to happen - Burning Man 2023

In the middle of the desert in Nevada, The multi million dollar non-profit organization called the Burning Man Project has been holding an annual festival for 70,000 attendees for the past 31 years! Once considered an underground gathering for bohemians and free spirits, Burning Man has since evolved into a destination for social media influencers, celebrities and the Silicon Valley elite.

According to organizers, the 9 day festival is dedicated to community, art, self-expression and self-reliance in the middle of the black rock desert.

This remote, harsh environment has become a gold mine for bringing in profits into the millions each year, where festival tickets can cost up to $1000 per person, collectively spending more than $200 million to attend

In addition, participants spend uncounted millions more in donated materials and labor to create works of art for the festival, which then needs to be transported into the festival’s temporary metropolis, known as Black Rock City, and eventually torn down or burned after the event.

There are no paid artists and no official music lineup only spontaneous musical experiences

according to the 2017 tax documents. Nearly 40 percent of Burning Man's money, more than $15 million, was spent on salaries and other employee benefits, that year Marian Goodell, the CEO took home $261,000

whilst Festival goers are expected to be self reliant bringing everything they need for this 9 day event, including enough water, food supplies and even poo buckets which was especially needed this year due to the over flowing of the porta potties.

You could say they this years event was a more than just a wash out, its a total shit show.

Getting wet, muddy and bogged down is normally what a festival typically looks like where I’m from in the UK but the worst that can happen is getting a little bit sodden,

but for burning man this wash out is actually quite a dangerous situation, torrential rain in deserts is not something to take lightly, since there is little vegetation and extreme flash floods can occur.

Burning man 2023 is officially over but tens of thousands of people are trapped at the site, vehicles cant move due to the mud and clay, attendees have been told to ration supplies. Attendees are ultimately responsible for their own health and safety.

Extreme heat, extreme cold, and even extreme flooding are all on the cards, the nearest city, Reno is 93 miles away, approximately a 2 hour drive and on top of that the festival is located in The Black Rock Desert, which is 70 miles (110 km) long and up to 20 miles (32 km) wide.

Its essentially a huge, flat, prehistoric lake bed known as the playa, composed of a hardpan alkali, surrounded by majestic mountains, Daytime temperatures routinely exceed 100°F, with extremely low humidity. Just because this ancient lake bed is for the most part dried out it doesn't mean that it always 100% going to stay dry, since the geographical location is literally a giant basin with no outlets and it serves as a sink for the Quinn River.

Wildlife is everywhere in Black Rock Country, even on barren parts of the playa, whenever there are storms normally in spring, the dry lake periodically comes back to life dormant fairy shrimp eggs hatch when the dry lake bed floods. More than 250 species of neo-tropical migrant birds and many other water birds stop by for varying lengths of time. Migrating birds feed of the bounties the lake that's only a few inches deep has to offer. The dunes that surround the barren Black Rock Desert playa are habitat for kit foxes, antelope, ground squirrels, kangaroo rats, horned lizards, badgers, and rattlesnakes.

So what do you think?

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