The map that keeps Burning Man honest

https://www.not-ship.com/burning-man-moop/

by speckx • 3 months ago

767 335 3 months ago

So a giant party can clean up after itself, but 4th of July in Tahoe for example is a toxic mess. I wish more people would practice these principles. It’s impressive how well this is cleaned up.

phillmv• 3 months ago

it helps that there's a regulatory agency that verifies the cleanup happened! if the 4th of july might get canceled the following year ppl might be more aggressive around cleaning up.

pstuart• 3 months ago

Participants also have to feel like they are part of the event rather than passive spectators.

browningstreet• 3 months ago

There are volunteer opportunities to help clean-up after the 4th of July festivities in Tahoe.

gosub1006• 3 months ago

The giant party just dumps their trash in the Reno Sparks area on the way home. Search for burning man at /r/Reno if you don't believe me

rickharrison• 3 months ago

This 100%. They only care about their playa. As soon as they are off, their considerations go out the window and they trash every other town they want to.

donkers8• 3 months ago

There are some shitty Burners and those cause the most visible problems, but there are a lot of conscientious ones too (I think it’s the majority of them). Painting them all with the same brush isn’t quite right, a lot of us work hard to do things the right way (like spending hours in line to pay to dump trash at the Reno municipal transfer station). I don’t know how to get the shitty ones to do the right thing though, besides lots of public shaming. It’s hard to avoid having any jerks in a city of 70K people.

kayfox2• 3 months ago

That subreddit complains about trash dumping the other 11 months of the year, its just for a little while it can all be blamed on Burning Man.

(Also, despite having lived in Portland, Reno seems to be the worse city in my experience with people complaining about everything on Reddit.)

stouset2• 3 months ago

Which makes it even more infuriating to me when people use the MOOP map as evidence that burners leave trash everywhere and destroy the desert every year.

It’s certainly worse than not having the event in the first place, but it is quite literally better about garbage than any large scale gathering on the planet. Burners do still need to be better about leaving their trash in Reno, but even with that it’s hard to see how it’s not monumentally better than virtually anything else.

saila• 3 months ago

If I understand correctly, you're saying that leaving trash in Reno is bad, not that that's what people should do? I first read your comment as saying that people should leave their trash in Reno, but a sibling comment makes me think it's the opposite.

seb12042• 3 months ago

Japanese visitors were applauded for cleaning up after themselves in the stadium. So it is an attitude thing too.

Litost• 3 months ago

Much as I love Glastonbury festival, even though I stopped going a few years back, the amount of waste generated definitely seems problematic. I think the festival does a great job of trying to deal with this problem, from the large number of lovingly decorated bins, through to all the site clearup teams both during and after and all the messaging.

But as highlighted elsewhere, it's definitely more of a cultural problem than anything. It's always depressing just casually observing the amount of abandoned tents on the way out and the amount of litter either put in the wrong recycling bins or just discarded less than yards from them. And the problems isn't just the cost which could be spent on good causes - £750,000+ [0] but the accidental effect of say a cow eating a tent peg (it's a working farm).

As someone who litter picks and talks to litter picking groups it's definitely a big problem nationwide sadly.

Probably unsurprisngly this always seems to be much worse in the higher traffic areas with the main stages than it is in say the Green or Healing field areas though their might be demographic and contextual reasons for that also. I've not been to any of the other main UK festivals in a long time, e.g. Reading, V Festival etc. but I'm guessing they aren't going to be any better?

[0] https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/whats-on/music-nightlife/glas...

berkes2• 3 months ago

It's always depressing just casually observing the amount of abandoned tents on the way out

Not just tents, but all sorts of camping gear, carts, clothes, food, gimmics, and so on. Many in good condition. Aside from the waste having to be cleared, it's very wasteful to throw away good stuff.

I am convinced this is a cultural problem indeed. Stuff like a tent or a gas-burner is cheap. Cheap compared to what it cost (in % of monthly income) decades ago, and cheap compared to the ticket and other spendings on that festival.

The cost of a tent (or the costs of some cans of food, some shirts, a funny hat, an inflatable flamingo, a chair) is nothing on the total bill of a festival. That new tent you bought, costs about as much as that beer you spilled when you bumped into that drunk dude.

So, purely economically, it makes sense to just leave it behind. Why carry your (now dirty) tent, food, cloths, etc home, when you can leave it, have a more pleasant return trip, and just buy new stuff next year.

I think this is a very good analogy for why we are unable to stop ruining the world in an ever increasing pace.

soared2• 3 months ago

Imagine if environmental regulation, pollution, etc looked like this.

ceejayoz3• 3 months ago

This is an environmental regulatory requirement by the Federal Bureau of Land Management.

john_strinlai2• 3 months ago

for the curios or those that skipped over it:

"Black Rock City is only allowed to return to the playa each year if it passes a strict post-event inspection from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM): No more than one square foot of debris can remain per acre (0.23 m²/ha)."

Jarwain8• 3 months ago

They aren't referring to the regulatory requirement, but the response, I think?

Like if people can put in this much time and effort in a remote desert environment to meet regulatory requirements, and document their efforts so thoroughly, why can't corpos?

soared2• 3 months ago

I fairly obviously meant outside of this specific instance, if pollution etc were policed and responded to in such a manner.

MattGaiser• 3 months ago

This is driven in part by regulatory pressure.

cmiles8• 3 months ago

My respect for Burning Man just went up a lot.

These big events usually leave a giant mess behind. Glad to see they take the cleanup and restoration so seriously.

quux6• 3 months ago

To paraphrase Captain Malcom Reynolds: "My days of not taking Burning Man seriously are definitely coming to a middle."

testing22321• 3 months ago

I’d have a lot more respect and the whole thing would be a hell of a lot easier if each person just picked up after themselves and there was no herculean cleanup required

charles_f• 3 months ago

its release inevitably fuels a bit of public finger-pointing

Is this what's helping with that?

the most striking trend is that the community has steadily improved at Leave No Trace

Probably not only? But shame and avoidance of shame can be good motivation

john_strinlai2• 3 months ago

the full map image for 2025: https://webassets.burningman.org/largeimages/MOOP_Map_2025_0...

ortusdux• 3 months ago

r/burningman moop map shame thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/1rtzumg/moop_ma...

dylan6044• 3 months ago

Only 146 cigarette butts? That's amazingly much lower than I would have expected.

wnissen• 3 months ago

That's not just amazing, it's inconceivable! I can go on a hike on almost any trail in the SF Bay Area and pick up a half dozen in a couple hours.

jtokoph• 3 months ago

I think that’s how many were actually found over the limited testing areas. You would need to multiply by the testing area ratio

Worf• 3 months ago

Is "plant matter" weed?

ceejayoz3• 3 months ago

You think they’re leaving any of that behind?

mrWiz• 3 months ago

Mostly no. Dead leaves that were just lying on a trailer without getting cleaned in advance and bits of decorative plants that broke off are probably the worst offenders.

quux6• 3 months ago

Worth noting: Plants, living or dead, are banned from Burning Man because they turn into moop really easily, but some always end up there anyway

Jarwain8• 3 months ago

If it was that'd be an absurd amount of weed being left behind to make a mark on the map.

fontain• 3 months ago

In 2025, lag bolts were by far the biggest problem. They anchor tents, art pieces, and other infrastructure into the ground, and can easily disappear beneath the dust.

I thought of a few potential solutions but then clicked through to the journal entry for last year and it turns out they're way ahead, the journal article is very interesting with some ideas: https://journal.burningman.org/2026/03/black-rock-city/leavi...

s0rce• 3 months ago

Marking whiskers, as mentioned, seem like a good solution if you can keep them attached. They are designed to be easily visible on the ground.

red_admiral3• 3 months ago

As long as they really stay attached and don't come apart, otherwise you're now creating plastic debris.

Jarwain8• 3 months ago

My camp, while doing our moop sweep in 2023, found lag bolts from prior years!

2023 was a weird one, because of the heavy rain and so many people not being used to it.

But it also seriously churned the Playa, revealing what was hidden for a whiiile

gorfian_robot2• 3 months ago

the moop map used to be a analog creation with pics of it uploaded every day of the resto(ration) process. some years ago they switched to digital tools and now they don't release it for several months after the event. huh.

actionfromafar• 3 months ago

I want to know more about this analog upload! :-)

dekdrop• 3 months ago

what sort of tool they use?

stonegray8• 3 months ago

The analog version still exists, and gets hand updated every day (though we don’t upload photos). You can visit it the following year at the appropriately named camp, Moop Map.

rdl• 3 months ago

If the issue are tent stakes/lag bolts which get buried under surface, clear solution would be metal detectors available to borrow/rent (or brought by each camp). Also probably could do a drone or ground robot with a metal detecting loop on the bottom.

wffurr• 3 months ago

Or just count them before and after. Know how many you're supposed to bring home.

Jarwain8• 3 months ago

The problem isn't that there aren't solutions, the problem is getting everyone on board

raldi3• 3 months ago

The best solution I know of is to get three-link segments of chain and put one on each screw as it goes into the ground. That not only marks the spot, it also gives you a flexible attachment point which is useful in all sorts of situations. (Two links would be pinned in a stationary fashion.)

Biggest problem is it’s a pain in the ass to chop up all that chain, and nobody sells them in pre-cut lengths.

brotchie• 3 months ago

Closest I've been to losing vision in one eye was creating these 3x chain links for Burning Man.

Naive thought: I could use a large bolt cutter to cut chain links. Started trying to cut a link, felt it was sketchy, went and put on some safety glasses.

Restart cutting (had these bolt cutters with like 1m long arms), apply full force, jaws slip a bit on the chain, jaws bite hard. Chunks of steel fly into my chin and face, metal chunks embedded in chin, cracked safety glasses. Dodged a bullet.

Ended using a small welded up jig so I could stretch the chain and then use angle grinder to cut the chain links. Still sketchy, but no flying metal chunks.

Wish I had a plasma cutter.

Jarwain8• 2 months ago

I'm a big fan of bolt hangers personally. They also mark the spot, provide a nice anchor point, and don't require chopping!

7373737373• 3 months ago

Could use one of those metal detecting car trailers used in meteorite search, that might map out things pretty quickly

I can't find it right now, but I think it was used in deserts in the US or Australia

zootboy2• 3 months ago

Sounds to me like there ought to be a MOOP cleanup deposit charged upfront, that only gets returned after this inspection. If the cleanup crew has to clean your site, you forfeit part or all of your deposit. Repeat offenders get charged increased deposits each time. Repeat inoffenders(?) get their deposit reduced.

ceejayoz3• 3 months ago

Seems likely this would result in a lot of disputes over windblown debris and neighbors dumping their stuff on your spot after you leave.

lkbm• 3 months ago

This is definitely a concern. We've pretty much always been green, but it's hard to police after you leave, and usually we're gone before Temple Burn. (One year two of our camp mates stayed for Temple Burn and they ended up having to pack out two extra bikes that got dumped, in addition to having to deal with multiple people trying to camp in our empty spot. Maybe those people would've been fine, but given that they didn't understand the open camping situation, I'm unsure they understood LNT either.)

0xbadcafebee4• 3 months ago

This results in affluent people leaving all of their moop because they don't care about the deposit, which creates so much trash it requires a lot more staff and time to clean up. Existing system works: you clean up your moop because you're a good community member, shamed on Reddit if you don't, and if you're a problem multiple times, out you go.

zootboy2• 3 months ago

...affluent people leaving all of their moop because they don't care about the deposit

This is why I suggested an increasing deposit for repeat offenders. Leave a huge pile of trash? Next year's deposit is $100k. Do it several years in a row? $10MM deposit.

Jarwain8• 3 months ago

This penalizes honest mistakes, or moop from prior years resurfacing, or wind blowing trash into camp, or any number of things that are outside of a given camp's control

The moop map, and community holding itself accountable, seems to be a decently functioning system.

Not to mention the administrative overhead, at the org level and at the camp level.

Frankly being a camp of 100+ people, not just taking dues but also handling this Deposit, and distributing the cost fairly?

Running a camp is enough of a pain in the ass without adding on this kind of thing.

Monetary incentive systems like what you're suggesting are just a way of enforcing culture. If culture spreads organically, why bother with the overhead of bringing money into the picture?

sonzohan5• 3 months ago

This would lead to less compliance.

There are lots of people out there who would happily pay fines or not get deposits back if they didn't have to do the less glamorous parts of the event. You have to take something away that they actually care about.

If a camp does a really bad job at moop cleanup, Burning Man organization talks to leads to understand what happened. Frequently what they will take away is the camp's placement in the event, or sometimes even the ability to attend the event as that camp at all.

For reference: I am one of the leads for a fairly large and famous Burning Man camp. We camp on Esplanade most years. We do exactly what you proposed: We have deposits, and the more people put into the camp before, during, and after the event, determines if we offer them a refund and an invitation to camp with us next year. One of the factors is if you help us during setup and strike.

An invitation to camp with us guarantees them a ticket at one of the cheaper tiers. We have plenty of campers that come in, pay the dues, do nothing for the camp, are generally useless during the event, and bail out leaving a huge mess.

Conversely, we have a very small (10-20%) team of highly dedicated individuals who stay past the event and pick every piece of string, fuzz, fluff, lag bolt, rebar, and debris out of the dust and take it out. These people get nearly their entire camp dues back. If they attend next year, the social capital that they've built doing so compounds into them becoming increasingly popular and famous on Playa.

If there's one thing that Burning Man has taught me, it is that very few people are motivated by financial incentive. If you really want to motivate someone, figure out what they genuinely desire. It's rarely money.

red_admiral3• 3 months ago

Your claim is backed by psychology research. The most well known study is the "Israeli Nursery" one where a fine was introduced based on how late you were to pick up your kid.

Parents started treating "x shekel fine for y minutes late" as "buy an extra y minutes for only x shekels!".

julianeon• 3 months ago

Would it though? It seems like it could work, even if people opt to "not comply" aka pay the fine.

Charge $1,000 fee per acre (eyeballing it, that seems reasonable). There are people who will clean an acre to be spotless for $500: not bad for a day of honest, actually contributing to the environment, outdoor work!

If I'm missing something and it actually costs more than I know, raise it to $2,000. If heavy trash needs to be removed also, charge that too, by weight.

And if you don't pay, you're banned.

It's worth a try if you ask me.

zdragnar• 3 months ago

If people pay for something, they feel entitled to take advantage of it. I've literally seen people fail to clean up after themselves and explain it as "that's what janitors are paid for".

Requiring a clean-up deposit up front will encourage people who were already inclined to clean up to do so, and encourage people disinclined to do so to leave trash behind.

The communal honor / shame culture that is in place is much more effective- people tend to care more about their reputation than they do money they've already spent.

smsm427• 3 months ago

There's actually research that making people pay for noncompliance (either upfront or post-factum) leads to less compliance, because people that can afford it treat it as a service. And giving that these events are visited by literally billionaires and a lot of affluent SV tech folks, making it a pay service would bury the volunteers under the mountain of trash. If the rules are "you MUST clean up", you get some trash slipping by. But if the rules are changed to "you clean up, or you pay a small fee and don't worry about it" - the amount of things to clean up would raise exponentially, unless you make the deposit so high the vast majority of people can't afford it - which would kill the event completely.

jobs_throwaway• 3 months ago

Actually an enormous whitepill on Burning Man. Modest amounts of debris, real accountability, and improvement over time despite overall growth. You really can't ask for much more.

Waterluvian2• 3 months ago

I won't pretend I grok the underlying spirit of Burning Man. But I find it deeply fascinating to see the interaction between desires for counterculture, anarchy, free spirit, etc. and the benefit and ultimate necessity of organization, planning, rules... governance, essentially. And where there's those things, there's always maps and data.

quux6• 3 months ago

The natural tension between chaos and order is one of the things that makes Burning Man so interesting.

DonHopkins3• 3 months ago

More like the natural tension between what you say and what you do.

Jarwain8• 3 months ago

Honestly, that contrast is what draws me in. In the same way ultralight hiking forces you to think about and let go of extraneous weight, going to Burning Man and doing the whole camp thing and seeing the city work showcases the "dead weight" of "making things happen".

throwup2382• 3 months ago

It’s fun to read everyone's preconceptions about Burning Man. Its ten principles are published [1] and include stuff like “radical inclusion” and “civic responsibility” and “gifting” (the latter of which is taken very literally, there is almost no currency use on the playa and everything is gifted except ice and coffee at center camp).

Those principles tend to attract the kind of people associated with counterculture and anarchists, but it’s hardly representative, especially when you include the family zone and all the specialized camps.

[1] https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/

niwtsol• 3 months ago

FYI - Coffee at center camp was canceled as of 2022

realo• 3 months ago

Don't get me wrong, but on one side you have the gift culture, and on the other side the exception that one of the only things sold the the community in one of the hottest, most arid deserts in the world is ... ice ...

Got a chuckle out of me there.

smsm427• 3 months ago

Those principles tend to attract the kind of people associated with counterculture and anarchists

And Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Elizabeth Holmes, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt... you get the idea.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-ceos-founders-attended-...

bsimpson• 3 months ago

A friend introduced my to CouchSurfing in ~2009.

The idea that a stranger would effectively be a free Airbnb host (back when Airbnb actually had hosts) was baffling. Turns out:

1. Travel is expensive in time and money. Hosting someone gives you a travel-adjacent experience without having to leave home.

2. People who are willing to host strangers tend to be cool/open/interesting/friendly people. Opting-in to CouchSurfing is a good filter for someone you might enjoy spending time with.

Burning Man is similar.

One of the mainstays of Burning Man is the Hug Deli. It's like a lemonade stand, but instead of sugary beverages, they serve affection. You can order hugs ranging from warm + fuzzy to long + uncomfortable, each for 2 compliments to your server. Want an extra pep in your step? Add a kiss or a spanking for an additional compliment.

The staff at the Hug Deli are all volunteers. You just roll up, toss on an apron, and start serving. (The guy who started it isn't particularly affectionate. He's a performer from LA who wanted a way to get strangers to try on characters.)

You would never stand in Golden Gate Park offering kisses to anyone who asked. Burning Man is a container that allows experiences like that to flourish, because opting-in to Burning Man is a good filter for the kind of people you might be willing to try stuff with.

almostdeadguy2• 3 months ago

I think the counter-intuitive examples of people who attend that you and others in the replies are pointing out are a demonstration of how many contradictions exist in these principals.

I am the type of person who thinks many, many things about the way the world currently exists need to change, but I am incredibly skeptical of the purported mission of the Burning Man Project to "extend the culture" of these principles to the wider world.

ghostly_s2• 3 months ago

*people associated with counterculture and anarchists who also have thousands of dollars of discretionary income.

some_random• 3 months ago

The people who hate Burning Man don't care about paltry things like the principles it's based on, they simply don't like the people that go for completely unrelated reasons.

dizhn2• 3 months ago

It's actually pretty compatible with "capital a" Anarchy.

gghh3• 3 months ago

Right. "Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion."

From: "Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!", David Graeber, 2009, https://davidgraeber.org/articles/are-you-an-anarchist-the-a...

nathan_compton2• 3 months ago

People think of anarchism as against organizations and rules, but its just against hierarchy. Western people in particular are so used to hierarchical thinking that its difficult to even imagine an organization that isn't hierarchical in nature.

simonask• 3 months ago

Hierarchy is “Western” now?

lukan• 3 months ago

And "eastern culture" is largely not hierarchical by heart?

Also, I have been to quite some anarchist places, but I did not found one without a hierachy. It is usually just informal. (But at times even formal and everyone pretends it is still not hierachy)

foolfoolz• 3 months ago

there’s an interesting side to this that better cell coverage, starlink, and others have made burning man more phone friendly. purists will say don’t bring a phone. or the event only works because no one has phones that work

but the event isn’t possible to run without internet. DPW has wifi at every station. internet has become a core planning and organization tool

borski• 3 months ago

It’s obviously possible to run without the internet. They did it for many years.

elif2• 3 months ago

Trashing the planet is mainstream. Taking care of it is counterculture.

contingencies• 3 months ago

Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

block_dagger2• 3 months ago

I like this but doesn't Burning Man itself constitute a hugely inefficient use of fossil fuels and unsustainable material use? The name has "burning" right in it. The climax is a bonfire. What about the air pollution? Perhaps it would be better for the planet if Burning Man didn't exist at all.

saltyoldman• 3 months ago

Yeah, well it's all fake really. Still filled with people that are terrible, from the organizers to the goers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0_u1ZvHOu4

jamal-kumar• 3 months ago

Ah yeah I've seen that video. What blows me away is that in the end all the accused did to get suspected for sexual assault was somehow made contact with her thigh

Seeing stuff like that makes me glad I left the anglosphere

zabzonk• 3 months ago

People that don't mind SF might want to look at these for some examples of anarchy in fictional action:

The Day Before The Revolution, U.K. LeGuin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_Before_the_Revolution

The Dispossessed, U.K. LeGuin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed

Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

libraryatnight• 3 months ago

The Dispossessed has one of my favorite quotes, “A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.”

mbesto• 3 months ago

Burning Man forces you to really think hard about social contracts.

For example - you won't get kicked out for leaving trash all of the ground but you will absolutely be shunned and shamed by everyone around you for doing so. That notion simply doesn't scale to a place like the US with 350M people with varying cultures, values, etc. because the social contracts are simply all over the place and inconsistent.

Jtarii2• 3 months ago

It's a week long party for rich people. I don't think it's that deep.

ruleryak2• 3 months ago

Last year was tough - it rained for hours 5 nights in a row and the first rain night was accompanied by 70 mile an hour winds that did a massive amount of damage to camp infrastructure throughout the city. The roads in half the city were ruined by emergency traffic that kept on running throughout the storms, and the result was a lumpy nightmare that shook things loose from cars and bikes at a much higher rate than most years. The mud absorbed and hid things and made cleanup a far more grueling process than it usually is. We endured and did our best to still find and remove everything - breaking up mud clumps and raking/sifting through the dirt at the end of the week to find all that embedded trash. There are no public trash cans, no event dumpsters, etc. I can say from having been there almost every year since 07 that this was by far the hardest year for "mooping" - the process of spotting and picking up any item that shouldn't be on the ground - but that the group mindset endured and we somehow still trended downward in terms of overall trash.

I think the main difference between this and 2023 (the previous "mud burn") was that this time we had all the rain in the first half of the event, and then had relatively great weather for the second half. In 23, it closed out with the mud and people fleeing, leading to a spike.

joenot443• 3 months ago

Yeah, last year we were calling it Building Man cause the first three days were just rebuilding the setup from the previous day's storm.

quux6• 3 months ago

We called it "Continuous Improvement Man" because by the 3rd round of building our camp we had the process really dialed in

ruleryak2• 3 months ago

lol, yeah - we got really good at tearing down the public space and getting everything into the container truck and then pulling it back out and building again. Party for whatever portion of the day we could, and then speed-run the teardown when the first drops of rain started coming down.

inside_story• 3 months ago

*Rebuilding Man

SoleilAbsolu• 3 months ago

Hmm, group mindset...or moop grindset? Either way great work to leave no trace!

sonzohan5• 3 months ago

Theme camp based on an area famous for getting hit with hurricanes and other natural disasters here.

During the rains we were one of the few places still open and where you could party, eat, and grab a solid drink. Being on Esplanade also meant we were a shelter for people to wait out the weather.

Loads of great moments by doing that.

evilelectron2• 3 months ago

Two of my GP&E shifts got rained out. I had walk from Black Hole to 2&E one night with garbage bags over my shoes. The next time when they had to close the gate and all traffic over night, we had to come back in SxS with mud flying everywhere and in places it should not be. It was an experience, all good, still an experience to remember. The caked roads next morning were a sight :D

SOLAR_FIELDS3• 3 months ago

The unanticipated side effect of all roads being so bumpy after that from being torn up by the vehicles in the mud then solidifying to rock also made biking the remainder of the week quite the teeth chattering experience

leptons7• 3 months ago

Since experiencing a deluge the day after the event ended in 1998, I know that the end of Burning Man will be a massive rainstorm at the wrong time.

Fortunately in 1998 it happened after almost everyone had left. It was Tuesday after the burn, and we were packing up. Clouds coming in from Gerlach were worrying, we could see the downpour happening over there and heading our way rapidly.

We closed the trailer door as the rain started. It came down so fast that by the time we were half way to the road it became almost impossible to drive in the mud, we were jackknifing with the trailer, almost losing control. There was an RV also racing to the exit that I witnessed doing accidental 360 spins in the mud, they totally lost control of the vehicle. I'm not sure they made it out.

I heard that the heavy rain continued for a few day, and the cars that were still there sunk into the mud. If you didn't get out before the rain, you were stuck there for weeks.

Now imagine this happens on Saturday, burn night. People have gone through almost all their food and water by then. Then the rain makes it impossible to leave, for weeks. All the vehicles sink into the mud. You can't even really walk through that mud to make it to the road, because it sticks to everything. "Playa platforms" are what you get when you try to walk through the mud. Now add 70,000 people, running out of food and water, and unable to exit the playa for possibly weeks? That's National Guard rescue territory. I doubt Burning Man would be allowed to continue after that.

Ever since 1998 I watch the weather closely, and you can bet I'll be the first one out of there if it's looking serious.

fragmede2• 3 months ago

Wetsuit boots, for scuba diving, are the cheat code for walking on muddy playa.

quux6• 3 months ago

2023 came pretty close to your nightmare scenario

tetha• 3 months ago

I can't even imagine that scenario with the remoteness of burning man.

Wacken got really bad a few years ago. Like, it's normal to rain here, and it's normal for cars to not get off campground, so a dozen of farmers or two are around with their tractors to evacuate people back to asphalt. Except that year, the rain escalated to badly that cars sunk deep enough into the mud that their undercarriage sat on the ground and the mud started to seep into the belly and the engine area.

At that point, dragging the car out has a decent risk of ripping rather important resources out of the rig, and then you got a scrapping job left. That was a fucking mess. They also closed off the Autobahn near Wacken that year, because the massive amount of mud the cars dragged onto the Autobahn turned into a rather slippery affair -- and hitting slippery mud at 100km/h, 60mph without expecting it can easily turn into a life-changing ad-hoc roller coaster.

Doing all of that at your distances in the middle of fucking nowhere would not be enjoyable or fun. Folks drowning in mud in northern Germany is now mostly a funny story among metal heads and rescue folks.

aorloff2• 3 months ago

Well I can tell you the counterstory about the massive storm that didn't ruin BRC.

Firstly, there's a ton (TONs) of water left at the end of the burn, unless things have changed a lot in the past 20 years, nobody is running out of water. I'm guessing a few people have snacks left over.

Some people are getting pissy and hiking out, and the rest are going to party on until the road is rebuilt, helping one another the whole time, and some will be dancing their butts off.

I remember being with a group that had a van breakdown on the way into the playa, and the only sensible thing to do was tow it into the playa to get help from mechanic friends who would help fix the van on the playa.

ashdksnndck2• 3 months ago

The org has huge amounts of food and water. It won’t be fine dining but nobody is going to starve.

retired• 3 months ago

People have gone through almost all their food and water by then

Isn't the whole point of Burning Man to be self sufficient? Why not bring food and water? It is not that difficult to pack a few weeks of rations in your RV.

SOLAR_FIELDS3• 3 months ago

Last year was my first burn, and boy was it an experience. The most insane and hilarious part of the rain is how the lakebed silt mud attaches to your shoes. It gradually accumulates in layers as you walk so you get taller and taller as you walk and heavier and heavier and eventually end up walking around on these 6 inch tall dried mud platforms barely able to lift your legs normally anymore.

The tactics to avoid it are also hilarious, there is one where you put a sock on, then a plastic bag, then another sock on top. Apparently this makes you immune to the mud stacking

stonegray8• 3 months ago

My tactic is walking around barefoot then having a "oh no" moment when I get to my tent and realize I have no plan to get the mud off my feet :)

gosub1006• 3 months ago

There are no public trash cans,

That's okay, your attendees just dump it on the roadside or overflow public trash bins at random businesses and parks along their way.

swerner2• 3 months ago

If you think that’s dedication: I met Dominic (DA) who they interviewed in this article almost 20 years ago in the Spanish desert, where taught us Euroburners the art of MOOP cleanup. He’s been at it for a long time now.

4ggr02• 3 months ago

i've always felt like going to Burning Man, something just attracts me to it. but i'm a eurodude, going to the US just for a festival sounds idiotic and i currently don't want to visit the US anyways.

are there similar events in europe? you sound like an experienced oldhead :)

swerner2• 3 months ago

https://burningman.org/global-events-groups/

cosmojg• 3 months ago

Look up whatever regional burns[1] exist in your country or neighboring countries, and attend one of those. Ideally, join whatever online community exists around it first, and then reach out to some of the camps that interest you about joining and helping with whatever it is they like to do. I love Burning Man, but I can honestly say that I've had a lot more fun at my local regional burns than I've had at the big burn.

[1] https://burnerguides.com/europe-burner-events

gorfian_robot2• 3 months ago

his full nomenclature is "Dark Angel of the Playa"

topherPedersen• 3 months ago

From my experience, people are pretty good about cleaning up. The first year I went I camped solo, so I theoretically could have left a bunch of crap, but I didn't. The second year I camped with a camp, and they were really thorough with check out and break down. We had a formal clean up of certain areas that I participated in where I remember people finding the tiniest things, like little pieces of thread and what not. And then when I personally went to leave, we had someone come and inspect my area and whatnot. So in my opinion, I think people do a pretty good job. And even if people didn't do a good job... we are not talking about a beautiful national park here, it is a desolate wasteland where literally no life can survive. I saw maybe ONE bug while I was out there. Not even bugs can survive out there. It's like the surface of the moon.

donkers8• 3 months ago

There’s a lot of fairy shrimp that live there and wait for the right conditions to come out. I think there’s a camp dedicated to them.

theultdev• 3 months ago

It's not a wasteland. Plenty of insects live in the mud. Plus the pattern of the playa is special on its own. I honestly hate that burning man ruins the ground. Never the same after so many cars and people drive on it.

exabrial• 3 months ago

Burning man is the biggest recurring environmental disaster purportated by humans in the name of entertainment. A place of pristine nature is literally destroyed by humans with zero fks given, in a manner where it can never be recovered from.

IanGabes• 3 months ago

this is so far from the truth its baffling.

in a year where the world cup is taking place, counter-examples are readily available in numbers. I doubt FIFA will be releasing environmental impact datasets...

gleenn• 3 months ago

That seems pretty harsh. Have you been? If you go out after the rain has washed the playa flat again to hide the bike tracks through the soft powder, it looks like there has never been an event. As per the article, they do a fantastic job cleaning, unlike any event I've ever been too. Hardly "zero fks given", in fact quite a few were given and that's why we get to keep doing it.

paintbox• 3 months ago

Read the posted article before commenting.

It's literally written to refute your point.

pkcoskfiwjfj• 3 months ago

Now this is some next-level “I didn’t read the article, have no context, and understand little to nothing about the subject matter” type of comment. I’m actually impressed.

sonzohan5• 3 months ago

in the name of entertainment.

Does the purpose change how the act should be interpreted?

A place of pristine nature is literally destroyed by humans with zero fks given

Burners give so many fucks that we willingly do a thing historically reserved for punishment in the military (de-mooping)

in a manner where it can never be recovered from.

Environmental sustainability is an actual goal not just greenwashing. I encourage you too look into Playa Resto https://journal.burningman.org/2022/10/black-rock-city/leavi... and note that the term volunteer is used meaning these people don't get paid.

perarneng• 3 months ago

70,000 people during a week. It would be interesting to compare this with some other kind of event with the same duration and similar amount of people or perhaps make a

grams of garbage per humanhour unit

siren20262• 3 months ago

I went to an AMC Theatre last week and amazingly the room was absolutely trashed after the movie. For only maybe 25 people in the room.

Concert two weeks ago, same thing. The venue was full of garbaghe. It is really amazing how great most burtners are about those principles. For my camp at least we spend a solid 3 or 4 hours before leaving to rake our whole area and make sure we don't leave anything behind. Most people do the same.

dmarcos• 3 months ago

I was part of the temple build last year and cleanup is extremely serious. We spent two days cleaning after the burn with magnetic rakes looking for minute pieces of metal. We take samples of dirt at different spots and count the number of MOOP fragments to measure progress

schindlabua2• 3 months ago

Austria is a small country but festival-wise it does host a couple superlatives -- Donauinselfest as the largest festival in the world, Novarock being the largest rock festival depending on how you count. And then theres so many great other festivals in austria and the surrounding countries, big and small.

People keep raving about burning man so I kind of want to go but I wonder whether I'd just be slightly disappointed. Or whether it's an american media influencing europeans thing where expectations become overinflated compared to what we have here.

scottyah• 3 months ago

It's not a music festival like the ones you listed for starters, and while those are like an all-inclusive resort in that you just show up with money, Burning Man is more like camping in that you take everything there (and back).

schindlabua2• 3 months ago

Nova Rock is mostly camping on and inhaling dry dirt, camping in and being covered in mud, not going to the toilet for 2-3 days, and eating canned food. But I hear you.

jumploops• 3 months ago

Burning Man isn’t really a festival, and you’ll likely have a bad time if you approach it that way.

Many people seem to think it’s some hippy Woodstock or Coachella-esque event, but It’s more like an anarcho-punk temporary city, where your survival is in your own hands.

American media loves to bash it, and Instagram influencers love to flaunt that they went, but it’s most certainly not for everybody.

I don’t recommend going unless you do your research and really want to go.

I’d also encourage any first-timers to go solo their first year.

lioeters• 3 months ago

Like most (counter-) cultural phenomena, you should have seen it ten or twenty years ago when it was an authentic experience, before they sold out and became commercial. Joking of course, but it's true. It's a gentrified shadow of its former glory.

yieldcrv• 3 months ago

This is one principle and shared ethos done really well

Burning Man would get a lot less criticism if they dropped their 22 year old principles out of its 40 year run

Being part of a camp is the least inclusive social chore I’ve seen of any similar event, it is optional while making the “radically inclusive” trek a lot easier. Its a fairly high bar if you don't know the people

“Radical Self Reliance” can be interpreted in completely opposite ways when convenient. The person mooching off of everyone may call that self reliance to themselves, not realizing they are just attractive, while the person “gifting” resources to be around the attractive person can withhold it under the edict of expecting radical self reliance. Its a desert, are people really more or less prepared because that principle is taking up space on a list of commandments?

Larry Harvey didn’t expect people to make these things their whole identity. He was just having fun pontificating some guidelines in 2004.

The guidelines-now-principles are also outdated. Many “Regional burns” that have been inspired by Burning Man have added additional principles more relevant to the times, such as ones focusing on consent and shared consent frameworks.

Time for a new arc

justin3• 3 months ago

What I love about Burning Man is that it is an event where all the programming is created by the attendees. All the art, sound stages, art cars, experiences.. if you want something to exist in Black Rock City, then it is up to you to just go figure out how to bring it, solely for the benefit and joy of those who get to experience it. It is a tremendous amount of work, but the rewarding feeling of seeing your creation manifested into reality is worth it.

So much of our daily lives in society is consuming experiences that other people create: the jobs we work are defined by other people, we buy products created by other people, we eat food made by other people. For me, Burning Man is a reminder for the rest of the year to be the creator of my own experience in the world.

cma5• 3 months ago

fix oida

jamwil• 3 months ago

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” —Jobs

milkytron• 3 months ago

This, combined with the serenity prayer [0] have helped push me to try getting involved in fixing problems I never thought I'd be involved with.

We can all make a positive difference in the world for those still living, and those who have yet to live.

[0] God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

komali26• 3 months ago

That's an incredibly cynical thing for a man like Jobs to say, given his life, especially late in it, was mostly just ordering people to invent things, and then acting like a generational genius because the massive amount of people under his purview invented things.

seb12042• 3 months ago

Hm, so when Carl Cox plays a set he's bringing all the gear?

justin3• 3 months ago

He is part of a camp called Playground (alongside other people). The camp collectively brings the speakers, AV, fire effects, generators and structures, sets all of it up, and Carl and other artists perform. He’s probably not setting up the gear himself but he is part of the collective that puts the show on. I do know that he plays Playground fundraisers during the year to raise the money to pay for the costs of the camp, which is a forum of contribution / volunteering.

HoldOnAMinute2• 3 months ago

I wish I had gone before the billionaires discovered it

dpc050505• 3 months ago

The small regionals don't attract billionaires, some even unaffiliated from the BMorg over certain billionaires being involved with it.

yellowapple• 3 months ago

When I was a kid my stepdad was big into amateur rocketry, so we'd go to a lot of launches, including at Black Rock. One of them (could've swore it was LDRS, but given the timeline it would've had to have been XPRS or maybe BALLS) was at the same time that Burning Man's MOOP crew was doing their thing, and that was my exposure to how much work goes into preserving the playa for future users/visitors (including us). It's impressive to watch, even from long distance via binoculars. Of course the rocket launches have similar requirements, but they involve a lot fewer than 70,000 people (but on the other hand, a much larger area of potential litter, given that rockets fly far and sometimes don't come down in one piece).

I live in Reno nowadays, and the locals either love or absolutely despise Burning Man, in the latter case for good reason: while Burning Man as an organization clearly cares a lot about “leave no trace” (as I've gotten to see firsthand), the Burners themselves have a tendency to leave pretty giant traces throughout Reno. A big one is bikes getting left behind (by people who don't want to deal with a bike caked in excruciating-to-fully-clean playa dust), and there's a whole supply chain of companies here that'll find those dumped bikes (or encourage Burners to bring them directly), clean 'em up, fix 'em up, and resell them (often back to Burners the following year; rinse and repeat). A lot of other, less-lucrative-to-refurbish-and-resell stuff unfortunately ends up clogging up every dumpster in town.

vonneumannstan• 3 months ago

Burning Man is just polyamarous glamping for the Coachella set...

bogometer• 3 months ago

Thank you for not "mooping" around.

pratzc07• 3 months ago

My respect for Burning Man just went up a lot.

stonegray8• 3 months ago

I’ve done this for a couple years now, cool to see it pop up here. I believe the scale is a touch larger; 3935 acres in 2025, plus a small amount outside the fence line.

On the technical side, we not only log but photograph everything, down to each clump of toilet paper. We check our progress by doing hundreds of tests identical to what the BLM does, both ahead and behind our main crew; bagging up any debris to be photographed on green screens where the pixels are counted to ensure we’re under the 2.29×10^-3 percent limit.

It’s a stupendous amount of walking, with no shade, a moop stick and a bucket. But it’s a hell of a feeling to be part of making sure we remain undefeated against an impossible task that the future of burning man depends on.

swah• 3 months ago

Any kind of tech for this? Spreadsheets...?

stonegray8• 3 months ago

We use tablets running custom software for everything

GaunterODimm• 3 months ago

Have you tried any computer vision for automatic categorisation? Happy to take a look into the data if helps.

getupyang• 3 months ago

I had the same thought when reading this. Even a lightweight CV system that pre-sorts items for human review could save a lot of effort. Happy to help look at a small sample of the data if that would be useful.

justinator• 3 months ago

That's really cool. Props.

INTPenis• 3 months ago

I'm from a completely different country, never been to burning man, have no plans to visit, but I've been to other hacker camps and the most magical thing is being part of the build/clean up crews, because the 1 week camp is actually a 3 week experience. And those extra 2 weeks there is no bar, no lecture tent, no infrastructure, just you and a bunch of really fun people, in tents, in the wilderness, having a lot of cozy moments together.

Am I right to assume, that maybe this cleanup crew experiences something similar?

stonegray8• 3 months ago

Yeah, we definitely have a lot of great moments together, that's the biggest reason I come back. But otherwise, I imagine it's very different. We stay in the city and bus in each day. I had a dishwasher the year before last so doubt it's the same wilderness feel.

barbs• 3 months ago

What are these hacker camps you speak of?

throwup2382• 3 months ago

At burning man you can even get early access if you’re working on an art installation. It’s really fun hanging out, drinking beers, assembling art, and watching a mini Vegas sprout of nothing but a trash fence over a week or two.

flylikeabanana• 3 months ago

Burning Man culture draws a distinction between participants and spectators - one of the best ways to get the “participant” experience is by working and actively being a part of putting it on. This definitely includes build and strike. There are people (many paid by the Burning Man Org) who get there months before the event and stay for months after.

FernetBronco4• 3 months ago

The camaraderie is similar. Although I experience more of what you’re talking about immediately following the event rather than the tightly constrained and well oiled machine of the moop mapping process.

wdr1• 3 months ago

It’s a stupendous amount of walking, with no shade, a moop stick and a bucket

That does sound taxing. Is it volunteer or do people get paid?

stonegray8• 3 months ago

I'm a volunteer, there are both volunteer and paid roles

AcerbicZero• 3 months ago

Is there anything more "Burning Man" than taking something we've been doing for decades (A FOD walk), giving it a worse name, and bragging about it on some random blog?

I mean, hats off, the author really did nail it. This is as honest as I've ever seen BM get, and the juxtaposition of the unintentionally contrasted with the title makes it even better.

louthy• 3 months ago

The leave-no-trace aspect of Burning Man is one of my favourite parts of the event. I've been 10 times in my life, I haven't been for a few years, the trek from the UK is a bit much sometimes! But each time I go to a UK festival I'm always reminded of how bad it would be if leave-no-trace was not a thing. It sickens me seeing the rubbish just strewn everywhere and, at the end of a festival, tents and general piles of waste left "for someone else to deal with".

Burning Man is a real breath of fresh air from that viewpoint and seeing everyone (pretty much) adhere to it is pretty special. Individually you take responsibility, not just for your own mess, but if you see MOOP, you clean it up regardless of who made it. It's not somebody else's problem, it's ours.

Seeing the camp MOOP report is always pleasing (obviously if you take the cleanup seriously, as most do).

ChrisMarshallNY2• 3 months ago

I've never heard of this blog, but it's great.

Glad to hear of it. I wonder if one of the reasons for the improvement is the "corprotization" of the event. From what I hear, people are increasingly showing up with prefab shelters, or the VIP tents probably have entire cleanup crews.

Not like the old "a couple of stoners with a lean-to" kind of thing that probably featured heavily, in the old days.

lordalch• 3 months ago

Burning Man itself does not sell VIP tickets.

Since 2022, the organization has significantly pushed back against camps trying to package and sell "VIP packages" by restricting them from getting early setup passes, water deliveries, trailer & intermodal container delivery, etc. Without those support services, the model has become pretty unattractive.

Also, Burning Man is very intentional about its culture, with de-commodification as one of its main principles. The spotlight that got put on this issue a few years ago has really pushed these camps out, as of 2025.

As far as housing, most people sleep in tents, including specialized dome tents with reflective coating for the heat, but those are still essentially tents. Others sleep in RVs/trailers/vehicles. There isn't anyone building a condo tower in the desert.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 3 months ago

Thanks. Good to know. Not something I was ever involved in, but knew a few people that went. They seemed to do it “the right way.”

I just know a number of tech bros, and it’s difficult to reconcile what I know of them, and “roughing it.” The stories I heard about VIP tents, aligned a lot more with my observations.

kazinator• 3 months ago

I bet you there would be far less MOOP if a spot at Burning Man didn't cost so much money. When people pay hundreds of dollars, entitlement tends to creep in. They tend to regard themselves less as a participant and more as a customer.

"I'm not sweeping my spot look for a tiny screw; I paid hundreds of dollars to be here; I'm packing up in the most convenient way to me and getting the heck out."

Of course, that depends on personality, outlook and circumstances. Given enough people, you get lots of variety in these parameters.

readthenotes1• 3 months ago

The whole event is one of excessive entitlement...

stackghost• 3 months ago

Years ago it was truly countercultural but now it's just a place for multimillionaires to come, sit in the air conditioning, oogle the Instagram/tiktok influencer girls, and talk about how money just, like, doesn't matter, man.

NickNaraghi• 3 months ago

Doesn’t sound like you’ve been there

DonHopkins3• 3 months ago

Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Elizabeth Holmes, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt have been there. Ask them how much trash they left behind or cleaned up.

I bet Jeff Bezos didn't carry out all his urine in plastic bottles with his private jet.

FernetBronco4• 3 months ago

I’ve been to regional events, and it’s absolutely true that $90 tickets awarded to last years volunteers moop less than $550 face

joshfraser• 3 months ago

Reinforcement training. Camps that leave too much moop don't get invited back.

m463• 3 months ago

People do high-speed driving on the smooth lakebed. Encountering a lag bolt might be quite dangerous.

ghostly_s2• 3 months ago

infamous: adjective

    1. Having an exceedingly bad reputation; notorious.
    "an infamous outlaw."
    2. Causing or deserving severe public condemnation; heinous.

CobrastanJorji• 3 months ago

Yeah, they knew what it meant.

nikanj• 3 months ago

The real moop map is the absolute mountain of unsorted garbage that gets dumped at the first rest stop / dumpster / trash can.

Yeah cool you did not leave your plastic trinkets in the desert, but you did leave all of it next to the trash can on your first gas break

fsckboy• 3 months ago

That MOOP map is overlaid on top of the actual Burning Man POOP map: all those attendees who stream to the desert from their urbanized homes? they are People Out Of Place, and eradicating them and all the carbon footprints they leave would completely eliminate the MOOP problem while also generating positive externalities.

arian_• 3 months ago

An event built on radical self-reliance now needs a public shame map to keep people honest. Every community that scales past the point where trust works eventually reinvents compliance.

andrewflnr• 3 months ago

Sort of. The "compliance" here is just transmitting pressure applied by the regular, boring, government. But certainly the cleanup would not happen without serious pressure from somewhere.

Daishiman• 3 months ago

The process of setting up a camp for the first few times and attempting new art installations is positively gargantuan. There are a lot of considerations happening and MOOP is just one of them. Unless you expect people to get camps and installations right the first time, you need this.

Animats4• 3 months ago

There's a machine for this, and you can rent it - the Barber Litter Picker.[1] It's a large tractor-pulled machine, like an agricultural implement. It's a variation on their Surf Rake, which is used for beach cleanup. The Litter Picker is built for dirt, hard ground, grass, and pavement. It's used for large outdoor festivals. Scoops up everything from cigarette butts to lawn chairs. Video of cleanup after a big festival.[2]

Big festivals are cleaned up in a few hours with this heavy equipment.

[1] https://www.hbarber.com/litter-collection-equipment/litter-p...

[2] https://videos.files.wordpress.com/IxQgz6Oo/lp-concert-jiffy...

beAbU• 3 months ago

Did you read the full article?

The whole point of the manual cleanup duty is the meticulous mapping of MOOP. This information is used by the community to learn and improve for next time. This has resulted in measurable improvement over the years, despite the event growing massively in size during that time.

I feel a big commercial machine that cleans the site up in a couple of hours will result in a community that does not espouse the 'leave no trace' principle. Because why would you care? A big machine is going to clean it all up anyway.

Animats4• 3 months ago

Right, needs a drone pass for mapping before and after cleaning.

Needing 150 people for weeks to clean up is too labor-intensive. Are they paid?

tgtweak• 3 months ago

You can definitely add some telemetry to this that records and analyzes realtime location to "map" the litter, even when using a device like this. The conveyor actually seems very well suited to an external camera that records and analyzes the mess to a degree that should be suitable for the purpose of "recording" litter types and concentrations based on the location, without resorting to manual sweep/dust bins which actually sounds pretty insane at this scale.

c-hendricks• 3 months ago

I've met enough people that have that same attitude towards other people having to clean it.

ghshephard• 3 months ago

You are getting a bit of grief down thread- but this is cool as all get out.

The best use of these systems would be to combine the various procedures:

First, and foremost - don't leave garbage behind in the first place. Think twice before bring sequins and feathers in costumes (the biggest culprit in my experience from 2003-2010). Film cannisters for cigarette

Second - Every Camp does a combination of complete-grid clean up on their own "lot" - I've done that three times - and it was honestly great - plus an hour of "community time" - where you walk the play off your lot and clean it up as well. Your camp packs off 99% of the garbage, and then a grid search, plus heavy rake, finds the last 1%. About the only debate my camp ever had was whether it was acceptable to just dump their potable water onto the Playa (I thought it was fine - as long as you didn't just pour it all in one place - within 15 minutes you would be hard pressed to ever find out where it was poured out).

Third - the two-week "walk the line" where the detailed MOOP maps get created. 150 people for a 80,000 person 7+ day festival seems entirely reasonable - and it's a big part of BRC.

Finally (and I really mean do finally, it's almost a thing that shouldn't be really visible) - show up with the heavy gear to find all the submerged stakes/rebare/moop). Just rake the hell out of the Playa (absolutely fine - I've never understood people who think that it's a problem - it really isn't - you sure as hell aren't going to disrupt any ecology - except for a few random sand-fleas - it's entirely devoid of any life) - and the first bit of rain completely and 100% eliminates any trace of what you did.

Animats4• 3 months ago

As a practical matter, that's backwards. One pass with the heavy raking machinery will remove 99% of the trash. That's the heavy lifting. Record GPS-tagged video of what the rakes are picking up. Then make a pass with a strong trash magnet on a pickup truck to get small ferrous metallic junk that made it past the rakes. Then do a foreign object walkdown with the team, to catch sequins, nonmagnetic stainless steel needles, and rebar and lag bolts that need to be pried or dug out. It's the final inspection that needs humans.

Do you have to clean up glitter?

DonHopkins3• 3 months ago

Why not just hold Burning Man on a garbage dump instead of the playa?

hobofan• 3 months ago

Scoops up everything from cigarette butts to lawn chairs.

From some of the videos you can find of it on Youtube, the cigarette butt claim doesn't look believable. It can definitely leave smaller debris behind, and certainly won't pull lag bolts out of the ground.

jh00ker• 3 months ago

Kind of crazy this is so successful, considering it's hosted in a country where it's the norm for (so many, but not all) people to leave their bags of popcorn and cups of soda at their seats when they leave the movie theatre or ball game, under the assumption, "someone else will take care of it."

giarc• 3 months ago

But that's all based on societal norms. It's kind of understood (whether it's right or not) to leave popcorn etc under your seat at a theatre or a stadium. At Burning Man, it's obviously not acceptable.

reubenlavin• 3 months ago

Hearing all the issues with lug bolts in the ground I'm curious whether metal detectors were used during cleanup.

askbjoernhansen• 3 months ago

Nice to see el pulpo magnifico's camp be spotless on the mini-map in the blog post.

pocksuppet• 3 months ago

I'm not going to be Gell-Mann Amnesiated. At least not without calling it out.

Marblelous music. Wintergatan is a quirky instrument that relies heavily on marbles to make music. It's beautiful to watch, and doesn't sound anything like you expect.

No. Wintergatan is the artist name of the guy who made and played the instrument.

The infinite buffalo sentence. It's a grammatically correct sentence, using just the word buffalo. The video explanation benefits from some useful visuals, but you'll still probably hate this. Or absolutely love it. There's definitely no middle ground here.

The visual below this point is completely useless and does not explain how to make an infinite sentence.

Scroll_Swe• 3 months ago

Is burning man still the hot cool rich tech thing or have you people moved on?

I think the next upswing will be forests, lakes and such.

glemmaPaul• 3 months ago

Isnt Burning Man known to destroy the Microbial Life inside the mud bedding of the festival location?

qmslkdjf• 3 months ago

This looks nice, but Burning Man’s “Leave No Trace” reputation doesn’t seem to hold up when you look at what is actually left behind. This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoOd0It_1Tc) reports trash dumping in Reno and along the highway, burn scars and soil damage left on the playa, a cleanup that leaves debris visibly behind and an inspection process that borders on corrupt.

Additionally, the people behind the camera are being intimidated and harassed on public grounds, even though the permit to close the had expired. Even the local police seems to ignore this fact and just do whatever they are told by the Burning Man crew.

stonegray8• 2 months ago

The playa flooded that year so we started late and were still working when the closure expired. A video of us working claiming that’s how we left it is disingenuous; otherwise what are we still doing there?

In a way it’s proof that we did in fact leave it clean; anybody doing a hit piece like that would 100% have included video of post-resto trash if they were able to find any.

fssys• 3 months ago

it is quite on the nose that they have this quirky sf-tech-bro coded word for "waste" or "litter". Hey I've got this crazy idea, what if instead of cars we all rode in one big car and it had metal wheels and roads to reduce friction... it's only at Burning Man you can find people with big ideas like this

NoSalt• 3 months ago

I would love to see a listing of some of the more interesting Burning Man clean-up finds.

The map that keeps Burning Man honest

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