Roughly 73,000 people attending the Burning Man Festival in a remote stretch of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada are now trapped, after heavy rainfall turned the dried lake bed into thick mud. 

For those unfamiliar, Black Rock City is a temporary community that pops up each year in the middle of the desert knowns as “the playa” for the Burning Man Festival. It hosts roughly 70,000 people for year and is easily a three-hour drive from the nearest airport, which is 100 miles away from Reno. 

Videos on social media are coming through via StarLink connections and it shows the nasty conditions out in Black Rock City. Rain started on Friday and continued into Saturday and this morning, as officials blocked off entry and exit at the gates, leaving everyone trapped inside Black Rock City until further notice. 

Attendees have been told to shelter in place and conserve food and water until the ground is dry enough to leave the event. Of course, social media is having a field day with this and conspiracy theories are popping up in regards to “what’s really happening” at Burning Man, with reports of an Ebola outbreak happening. 

Apparently it’s been declared as a national emergency?

Who knows, but check out this video for footage from the event. 

Burning Man Festival Declared a National Emergency?

The always interesting part of conspiracy theories is that they are quickly deemed to be false and then the counterpoint is quickly “of course that’s what the media would say” so you really have zero idea what’s actually happening. 

My guess, there’s not really any type of virus outbreak.

We just have a bunch of rich people pretending to be poor out in the desert with their fancy outfits and vehicles now trapped in a storm that made the ground too muddy to actually leave.

The gates are blocked off because they don’t want these entitled dorks to try to think they are bigger than Mother Nature and attempt to leave, just to be stuck in the mud somewhere out in the middle of the desert. 

Check out this crew who tried to leave in a Wrangler. Jeep’s marketing team must be pissed that this is now plastered all over the internet.

Bad Look for Jeep Wrangler

It’s also probably important to note that all of these people are most likely tripping their asses off in the desert and are uploading videos to the internet, not having any clue what the hell is happening. 

At the same time, who the fuck knows. Everything unfolding is definitely pretty interesting and I have to admit, I’m a sucker for tweets like this drumming up some chatter about a conspiracy. 

Burning Man Declared National Emergency because they are Joe Biden supporters, obviously

Do these people know what they are talking about? No. It’s entertaining though so whatever. 

That sounds absolutely horrible, but in the video below, at least “The Oracle” got to see a double rainbow. 

A Complete Mess from the Start of Burning Man 2023

The entire Burning Man Festival gained headlines from the start this year with those climate protestors initially blocking the entrance before a police SUV decided to just run right through it and draw arms against them, arresting all of them. That was pretty cool actually but as you can see above, everything that’s happened after has been a complete shit show. 

Thank God: Chris Rock and Diplo Escaped Burning Man

Well, the good news is that Chris Rock and Diplo managed to catch a ride out of Burning Man, so really the total number of people trapped is now at 72,998. 

Messy situation. I’m sure there will be a million more videos and articles about what’s happening out in Nevada but maybe everyone should just relax and let the ground dry up and then go home.

It’s literally been less than 72 hours.

Burning Man Festival was supposed to go until Monday anyways. Everyone will be just fine. 

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