A very good respirator is probably going to be a requirement for everybody consdering the smoke on the playa at present is about to be combined with all the dust that will be kicked up. That will probably reduce the covid spread.
There will be volunteer medical teams working.
The poop and trash are likely to be a major ssue.
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Yeah, it’s technically Paiute property/reservation isn’t it?
So BLM or tribal authorities could kick them off, but they may think that it may be better to isolate them in one area away from the rest of the Rez, rather than potentially expose tribe members to covidiots from all over hell’s half acre.
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Hm. None?
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The part of you that expects better must not know any burners.
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There’s a big difference between Kid Rock and Lollapalooza. Also a big difference between Sturgis and Burning Man. I don’t see the problem with vaccinated adults camping on BLM land.
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I mean looking at the map, they’re going straight to BLM land. So.
Yeah, nobody.
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If they were going to be camping in a safe and sanitary way, maybe. This is promising to be hordes of people with no clue and no structure setting up without toilets, no restrictions on use of motor vehicles, no community to keep behavior in check. BurningMan has managed to minimize damage to the site and to participants by deliberately creating boundaries and providing a level of infrastructure. I suspect there will be a lot of sexual violence, possibly just general violence, and loads of medical emergencies. Not to mention the follow up of COVID, as well as gastrointestinal illnesses. This crowd does not look like responsible people.
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Username checks out.
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I believe (without proof) that the average intentions of a Burning Man attendee are more peaceful than a Sturgis attendee.
I’ve met enough Burning Man attendees to doubt they have better average logistical and conflict resolution skills. You need those skills by the bucket-load when you get more than 100 people together at once. ETA: Particularly when you consider that we’re talking about the ones that looked at the pandemic risks and said “sure, it’s worth it”. We’re not talking about the brightest and best of the bunch.
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POOP: Recursive acronym for POOP out of place.
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Nope, that’s the area around Pyramid Lake and sourth almost to I80.
This is all BLM land and they do not fuck around. I expect most to be turned away at the entrances. And woe to those who slip past.
If people manage to get on the playa, this will be the biggest danger. Do not underestimate how fucking dark it is out there without infrastructure. Fuckwads will kill people.
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And there will be carnage if it rains.
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Check out the live video that @Taniwha links to in post #20, above. There’s lots and lots of people there. (It’s dark right now, so you can’t get the full sense of it, although there is some lighting. For sure check it out in the daylight tomorrow.)
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Story time! Was out there with a small group a few years back - our camp had the good fortune of getting struck by lightning. Ms. LastChance got knocked on her butt by it. (She was fine, after resting for a bit.)
One of our party had brought their newish car which did not fare as well after the enormous ESD. It was a long wait for the tow truck from Reno…
Thanks, I missed that!
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Say what you will about BM in a normal year (and I have, quite snottily if I do say so myself), the people running it basically get one thing right: that in order to have a bunch of free spirits express themselves in the desert, you need a lot of draconian rules enforced with an iron fist. To the extent it succeeds at whatever it’s trying to be these days, that’s why.
Not every dreamy libertarian figures that out, either. There are plans on the drawing board (which they’ll never leave) for floating cities where residents can be free of all those silly rules they have on land. As though boats haven’t been dictatorships since the dawn of sailing for any good reason.
The 19 different police agencies with jurisdiction here will probably just hassle this to death before it gets started, in which case we’ll never know how quickly this would have gotten into Lord of the Flies territory.
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Or you can make some popcorn and enjoy the livestream posted earlier in the thread.
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That’s a huge assumption, that ALL burners are in most ways similar to the few you’ve met. It is a fairly pale gathering, for the most part, but that is where the similarities end. One could just as easily say, the part of you that expects the worst of burners doesn’t know many…
RVs have bathrooms and black water tanks, many camps bring their own portable toilets, of the wheeled or personal/sealable bucket variety. Hand washing, inside area PPE, and windy, open air, communal spaces, covered in the fine patina of alkyline dust, are the norm, in fact and practice.
And of those coming from CA and other countries 
, at least 80% are very likely vaccinated. So lighten up screen folk, enjoy your weekend however you like, I’ll enjoy my dusty desert celebration with a friendly, “welcome home!”
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That’s what I don’t understand… all these calls about how COVID is going to ravage everyone. But haven’t we established communing in open-air environments is the ideal way to interact?
I have concerns about violating regulations and impacting the reputation of Burning Man proper. But I’m not seeing how this is irresponsible in the COVID domain.
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Open air environments are lower risk than enclosed spaces, to be sure. But being outdoors does not fully negate the risk of close and prolonged contact with large numbers of people.
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