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Burning Man death rates – A short lesson in statistics

179 points · 243 comments · viraj_shah

  1. michael1999 · · focus · HN ↗
    Some of this is selection bias, but lots of this is active work by the organizers.

    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.

    1. poulpy123 · · focus · HN ↗
      Kinda insane they needed a death to reinvent streets imho.
      1. xboxnolifes · · focus · HN ↗
        It's not insane, and it was just explained how it happens. You don't need streets when you have 10 people. Or 100 people. But there comes a threshold where you do need them. The question remains, how do you recognize or determine this threshold? A lot of the times, a death is the wake up call.
        1. bmitc · · focus · HN ↗
          It seems like you need a road as soon as cars and people mix, does it not?
          1. xboxnolifes · · focus · HN ↗
            Do you need a road if you went out with 10 friends off-roading together and camped out over night? What about if you went with 3 other groups?
            1. poulpy123 · · focus · HN ↗
              Yes, you need it and you build it, even if it's unconsciously and informally, by not driving cars in the middle of the tents
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