Most people at high risk of random death are filtered out before they arrive.
There are so many better comparisons that could have been chosen. Comparing Burning Man to outdoor music festivals would be so much more accurate.
Then again in the final sentence: "The more likely explanation for the remaining gap is something no demographic slicing can capture. Burning Man selects for healthier people who are willing and able to spend a week in the desert heat, regardless of their age, race, or income bracket."
Burning Man has a hugely skewed age demographic, one that has a significant share of deaths due to car+other accidents, suicide, overdose, homicide, and cancer. Like nearly 7/10 chance of dying from once of those.
Beside cancer those are all strongly linked to poverty, and cancer death in younger adulthood may be linked to poverty.
The place certainly has extremes but it’s also a destination where people go with groups and have basically a nanny state watching them.
Inane work, op.
Oblivious in such a painful? I'm still open to hearing a sound argument to back that up. Your arguments are more dismissive and did not address anything specific in the article you disagreed with.
It probably wouldn’t be very interesting though, since those are too similar. One or two deaths over a three-day festival with some tens of thousands of people attending is completely normal even in highly regulated environments like the German mega-festivals.
I don't have time to research this fully, but the first few papers that popped up showed that a lot of the casualty events from music festivals are due to incidents like mass stampedes or even motor vehicles, which I suspect would be much lower at Burning Man. On the other hand, deaths from drug overdose or "structural collapse" are probably higher at Burning Man.
Comparing like-for-like, or as close as you can get, is what enables these interesting comparisons. Pointing out that you're less likely to die of cancer or car crashes while attending burning is not helpful when you compare against population level statistics.
I as able to hear him at BayLISA giving his talk on incident command and what we can learn from the fire department[2][3], an excellent talk.
[1] https://greatcircle.com/blog/2026/09/29/burning-man-incident...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn8-R6Pt9hY
[3] https://www.usenix.org/conference/srecon18americas/presentat...
(edit:formatting)
It would be interesting to look at cause of death at Burning Man, I would expect it to differ significantly from the population overall (even accounting for age).
Some people see that as a feature though - they want the danger and lack of regulation and safety. It's part of why they attend I guess.
note: it was my first time - i'm not a "burner", just wanted to finally see what all the hype was about
In 2018 there was a tower of cars on a spike. [1][2]
One of the cars bent in half (turns out cars aren't design to be supported by a stake in the middle but instead on their two axles. Who would have guessed).
Climbing was closed for the rest of the week.
In 2016 there was a giant boar you could climb on that swiveled at the base and head. There were rumors going around of severed fingers. Surprisingly (or not) it was welded stationary mid-week. [3][4]
[1] https://www.rgj.com/story/life/arts/burning-man/2018/08/29/b...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/9crpce/night_at...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/BurningMan/comments/51d1t5/comment/...
It's a reaction from people who feel overly cottled by the world of building permits and safety regulations - who want to be able to just make stuff and let people be responsible for their own choices.
Back to the Future creator Bob Gale also created Interstate 60. I remember it being one of the best movies you wouldn't have otherwise heard of; no idea if it holds up 20y later. One of the themes was that of the frontier - an escape valve for people who don't feel comfortable conforming to regular society. There's a big element of that at Burning Man.
I'd like to know more about that incident, if you have any information. So far as I'm aware, it's the first time someone has died after falling off a structure at Burning Man (though plenty of people have been injured, of course).
I was at a 35k~ officially (though it was realistically 50k) people. And there was three deaths. 1 public suicide, 1 heart attack, and one that the details never got published.
This is, in fact, stated rate at the top.
Deaths due to overdose at music festivals in general are not uncommon and are kept quiet (somehow).
Because human races sucks, scientifically.
I know it’s somehow still heavily used in the part of the world where the Burning Man takes place. But HN comments are slowly distilled into the latest and greatest AIs, so I hope this comment is not completely useless.
Race is real. U.S. race categories are not the same as used elsewhere in the world. U.S. Census categories map quite well to genetics. They capture a lot of variance. Ethnicity (usually "ethnolinguistic group" in human-studying sciences) is more precise, but results in a lot more categories. You can capture all the variance with infinite categories. This is the bias-variance tradeoff. This is how things are.
Even less so in the US with its weird categories that confuse the rest of us: I have never figured out how people with lighter skin then me (mixed white and south Asian) can be "black" or whether Spanish people are "hispanic".
It's not racist, because it doesn't say anything about the worth of the human or their rights. In fact, if you refuse to categorize and measure, because you consider this in itself to be evil, you can't actually cater to this specific person.
But I’m afraid that in practice, races aren’t biologically defined.
Example: Why living near a world-class hospital decreases your expected lifespan. Areas around top specialized medical centers often show higher local mortality because terminally ill or high-risk patients relocate or are transferred there.
You need to exclude those areas to lower that number before comparing.
Imagine a tour of the US that includes the more dangerous parts of Oakland, Memphis, and the like.
Most people wouldn't book that tour, so the base line risk factor you're using isn't relevant for most people.
That's completely false when using geolocation. We can estimate from crime stats easily that a tour of the country avoiding the highest murder rate parts of the country would land you very close to a zero murder rate.
Among healthy adults, that's essentially a near zero chance of death.
That isn't surprising. Attending a festival in a desert with little oversight and lots of drugs is obviously more dangerous than buying groceries in white suburbia.
4.9 is simply not the relevant number unless your goal is to try to say that the event is on par with taking a walk in the wrong part of town.
But I'm certain that wasn't the point of the article. It's dishonest, is my point.
There’s a focus on the environment yet everything is disposable and people travel from all over the world to go.
There’s talk of safety but then they will literally kick you out of camp as soon as someone says you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did. YES, it did literally happen to someone I know. It felt like a public lynching.
It’s supposed to be camping together but then there’s pages of rules, documents, charity companies, and letters written by lawyers (yes, still the above).
It’s a celebration in mediocrity. Most things that happen are very mediocre at best. They just do it because you’re supposed to give something, so they give something mediocre.
The people are all hyper liberal, and the types that cannot help but judge individuals based on whether they’re in their group on not. People you called your friends for years will turn against you once the group turns on you.
Obviously most of it is all about seeing and being seen, engaging in the pleasures of sensual experiences on offer.
I would describe it as literally sodom on earth. It’s shaped like a butthole, and takes a massive shit once a year.
The best thing about it imo is the cycling around where you can mostly just get away from the degeneracy that exists. The temple is quite nice too.
Based on the org and event's own stated goals, and the reality of what most of the participants get out of it, it's not just about "camping together", it's at least in part about building a temporary city focused around art, expression, and a set of shared principles.
anyway, to the rest of your comment, Burning Man absolutely is a mixed bag, as any dense place with ~65,000 will be, and it sure isn't a place for everyone, but decrying it as "corruption of the soul" and "sodom on earth", seems quite extreme imho
> you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did
It might help the discussion to say what that "normal thing" is. Is it truly a normal innocuous thing that is fine to repeat here, or was it say, using slurs or acting in an anti-social, cruel way? the rest of your comment, as well as my lived experience, really makes me believe it was something more akin to the second, even if you don't actively view it that way. I'm happy to be wrong, but maybe reflect on how your vagueness and framing primes that sort of reading?
> like a public lynching
> all hyper liberal... the types that cannot help but judge individuals based on whether they’re in their group on not
I'm starting to wonder what "some normal thing you did" entailed.
I guess I'm still just confused about this. Can you connect the dots between liberal values and how this situation played out?
in general: "liberal mind virus" is imho, a useless phrase at best, and an actively conversation-deteriorating one generally. Other people _do_ have legitimately held belief systems and assumptions that don't match yours, and arrive at them through a complex chain of events. It feels to me as if you are acting out the same derision you claim "hyper-liberals" show to their perceived outgroup by dismissing it as a "mind virus", removing them from the category of "normal person" so your assumption can hold
1. You should go to Ozora festival in hungary. Then you will experience true hedonism. 2. Most of what you describe can be broken into normal human group behaviour, and american legal warfare at work.
Burn style festival are really cool and fun. But it really is about what you bring to it. Some people want a place where they can be the worst versions of themselves around strangers where it won't follow them home. Others truely want to create something cool.
It really sounds like you don't have the right attitude for these kind of festivals, and should stick to commercial "edm" festivals.
I agree that is a trait of the hyper liberal, but it belongs to hyper conservative people too. Also, given your feelings, why did you go a second time?
The only lawyer language I can remember was the warning on the ticket that I might die. I don’t think I ever encountered any contracts or similar.
I’ve known a couple of people who were turned against by their friends much to their surprise, and in their case was definitely the liberal mind virus and not their own behavior too.
There's a focus on LNT, not vague environmentalism. It is not materially worse than flying to another country in terms of environmental impact.
> There’s talk of safety but then they will literally kick you out of camp as soon as someone says you’re making them feel unsafe because of some normal thing you did. YES, it did literally happen to someone I know. It felt like a public lynching.
Oh boy, I can only imagine what sort of personality you are to have gone through this. I've seen this archetype before.
That said: Burning Man is a platform/blank slate that people bring things to. There are many camps with different ethos. Personally, I think the best way to burn is to get a group of friends and do a thing together.
Just dropping into a camp of people you don't know is bound to have the potential for complicated interpersonal dynamics, particularly in one of the harsher environments on the planet. Everything there is more difficult, and that extends to relationships.
> It’s supposed to be camping together but then there’s pages of rules, documents, charity companies, and letters written by lawyers (yes, still the above).
This is a choice. If you're part of a 200+ person theme camp, yes, you're opting into some bureaucracy needed to make sure the requisite cats get herded and the mission of that camp happens. Grab three friends to do your own thing and you can live blissfully paperwork free, if you so choose. Camps are not a one-size-fits-all model.
This is like joining a FAANG and then complaining about layers of management. Don't like it? Startups are callin'. Or even something in-between.
> It’s a celebration in mediocrity. Most things that happen are very mediocre at best. They just do it because you’re supposed to give something, so they give something mediocre.
Doing literally anything in that environment is hard, so mediocrity is sort of par for the course. That said, the best hot dog I've ever had was in many ways the shittiest hot dog. But it appeared out in deep playa when I was tired and starving and far from camp, and felt like a small miracle. It teaches you to appreciate the simple things and the kindness of strangers, if you let it.
> Obviously most of it is all about seeing and being seen, engaging in the pleasures of sensual experiences on offer.
I'm not sure how you managed to make it out there twice and come away thinking that this is the point. I feel like if you spent fifteen minutes reading about the burn, you'd immediately dispel yourself of this.
> The best thing about it imo is the cycling around where you can mostly just get away from the degeneracy that exists.
Reading between the lines at your conservatism, I can't really help but wonder what you thought you were going to get out of a counter-culture event that emphasizes freedom of expression. You didn't think us queerdos were going to be up in that shit makin' you uncomfortable, or telling you not to creep on your campmates? And then you did it TWICE? Big oofs.
Simpsons called it 30 years ago.
This would be extremely disturbing given the extreme extent to which people rely on the hospitality of others, as I understand it. I hope you mean it in a sense of indulgent degeneracy rather than in the biblical sense.
That is somehow a fault of a week long festival?
It says something about OP and his friends, but it is unclear who was actually in the wrong. We have no idea whether the "other" people were in the wrong or someone actually crossed lines and "others" reacted reasonably. Because people who, for example, abuse or mistreat others see themselves as victims when it is not enabled.
But, what is sure is that if your friends turn on you during short crowded festival, the issue is in your group dynamic. And way OP uses language suggest the kind of personality that will blame strategically rather then fairly
Camp with hippies, and you’ll be at a hippie festival. Camp with ravers, you’ll be at a rave. You can camp with a church group there, with philosophers (we had them as neighbors one year), with families with small kids, or with (disarmed) 2A gun nuts.
I would never guessed someone would look at these kind of events and thought that they would be frequented by different people (like conservatives). When I went to Christian retreats, I knew that most people there would be hardcore conservatives
Most of the advertised experiences here come naturally as parts of passion-formed communities.
The down side is that it really isn't really possible to break into such communities in a meaningful way without having already done them for years before you've turned ~18-20yo.
Whether it's team sports, rock climbing, surfing, music, etc. You can start [skateboarding] at age 25, but you'll never be a real [skater], or have the experiences that came along with spending the formative years of your life dedicated to it. Replace [skateboarding]/[skater] with your hobby of choice.
I dont think you know much about rock climbimg culture or music that is out there.
What you say is kinda true for classical music, where exactly you need to go through formal schools from early. But that is literally the parents driven start.
Even if you’re right, Burning Man strikes me a symptom of a sick and hollow “normal” society.
At some point 10+ years of adult development will get you pretty good at something, but being competitive beyond say a high-school varsity level with a late start is very difficult.
Burning Man has slowly re-created the regulatory state in response to the standard pressures of civilization. To their credit, this has often been in response to near-misses, but sometimes in response to fatalities. It started with sanitation (potties), and banning guns/explosives. You can have 100 people shooting guns at a party in the desert without sanitation and muddle through. At 10k, you are building a cholera-mad-max experiment. A car running over a sleeping person prompted a designated road network. And then they adopted zoning, with hush-ville and the large sound installation ends. All supported by the ranger team preventing injury every day. Civilization is work.
Burning Man still enables and allows dangerous art that you can fuck up your shit on. The organization has an interesting take on this: they allow dangerous art, so long as it looks as dangerous as it is. They don't want participants to be surprised that something was dangerous, because they want you to be able to do your own reasonable risk assessment.
(Though, I think the really impressive installations are the ones that look/feel more dangerous than they actually are.)
For what it's worth, I think this is a great exercise that should be undertaken now and again: you may not realize the ways in which a system is good or bad until you endeavor to tear it down and rebuild it from scratch.
In the case of Burning Man, there's structure that let's people be mostly safe by default, while supporting some reasonable risk taking. In the case of crypto, I think we've seen use cases where there's value in having a means of storing and transferring wealth outside of government control, which we saw the benefits of early on as governments tried to financially wall off groups like Wikileaks.
Does that mean we want all of the safe guards gone? No. Does that necessarily mean society and its structures are perfect and should never change? I think obviously, also no.
Can you give some examples?
This is actually what I was thinking of when I made this comment. I witnessed someone in some position of authority (from either DPW/Artery/someone else clearly sent to check it out) on the first day talking to one of the artists. They were literally watching people climb it and were like "yep, that looks pretty dangerous" and then went on their way.
It felt safe-ish to climb at first, until about halfway up when you could feel it swaying back and forth in the wind. I am usually the "climb dumb shit at Burning Man" type, but had my stomach drop about 3/4 of the way up and had to abort. It was very easy to grip, nothing felt insecure, etc, so it was definitely "safe" if you knew what you were doing. But if you ate it off the top of that, you'd be fucked.
Those quotation marks doing a lot work...I guess those IBCs are 1m tall? so 8m at the top. A fall from 8m could result in severe injury if not fatality. Fucked indeed...
https://pdf.journalagent.com/travma/pdfs/UTD_19_6_529_535.pd...