On Friday, a giant sculpture of a man and woman titled "Embrace" was burned to the ground at Burning Man.

Made from 160,000 lbs of wood, "Embrace" is a 72-foot-tall wooden cathedral-like sculpture on the same scale as the Statue of Liberty.

Built by The Pier Group with help from a Kickstarter campaign that raised over $52,000, the giant sculpture is meant to be a "celebration of all our relationships." All in, "Embrace" took about $266,000 and tons of volunteers to create.

But the area where sunlight previously streamed through the eyes of the 26-foot head was replaced by fire on Friday as the structure was ceremoniously burned to the ground.

It wasn't long before the entire statue was engulfed in flames.

Here's a view from further away, showing how much distance was actually between the burning structure and the people on the playa.

While many art sculptures are ignited at Burning Man, material must first be placed on a preapproved "burn platform," elevated from the playa surface for the land's protection.

As part of Burning Man's "Leave No Trace Policy," all remnants of the burn must be cleaned up and removed from the land at the end of the festival.

Watch the full video below (burn begins at 6:45).

When the "Embrace" Kickstarter first launched, lead artist Matthew Schultz explained: "We've already raised about $106,000, but we still need to raise another $160,000."

According to the "Embrace" website, it wasn't easy to raise the extra money:

"To make this whole operation happen we have independently raised funds, held fundraisers, used coordinators/volunteers, sold swag, operated a website, run advertising, created proposals, written grants, solicited transportation; engaged design, build team and lighting crews. In all, it has taken thousands of people-hours."

 See how "Embrace" was built below:

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MORE: Watch a livestream from Burning Man

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The 27th annual Burning Man — a crazy, weeklong festival in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada — is well underway.

In honor of the Labor Day weekend festival, a new book "Burning Man: Art of Fire" details the elaborate art structures displayed throughout the past years of the event.

The book, by author Jennifer Raiser with photography by Scott London and Sidney Erthal, is the only authorized collection of the best of Burning Man art with incredible photography.

The book contains more than 200 striking photos and interviews with the artists about their inspiration and how they transport such large structures to the middle of the desert.

With permission from Race Point Publishing, we have 12 of the stunning images here.

Every August, over 50,000 people gather to celebrate artistic expression and social freedom in Nevada's barren Black Rock Desert. In extreme elements, over 200 works of art are created and intended to delight, provoke, involve, or amaze.

New book "Burning Man: Art of Fire" details the many art pieces in the desert, like this piece titled "Evolution Man," which was made entirely of irregularly shaped wooden triangles intended to represent the chaos at the heart of life.

There is ritual surrounding every aspect of the Man’s creation and destruction. He is traditionally 40 feet tall, standing on a tall wooden base that participants can enter and climb. The blueprints for his construction are a closely guarded secret, provided only to the carefully selected crew, largely volunteers, who gather at Burning Man’s Nevada work ranch in June for the process of carefully cutting, assembling, joining, and sanding of the Man with a level of craftsmanship befitting an antique piece of fine furniture.

(Photo: Courtesy Race Point Publishing/Sidney Erthal and Scott London Photography)

Artist Marco Cochrane's "Truth is Beauty" 2013 structure of the female body was held up with steel and mesh.

Cochrane credits the open-minded culture of Burning Man for inspiring the sculptures. He says: “I’m trying to demystify nudity. I see how free women are on the playa, how they can possess a playful energy here that they cannot do in real life.”

(Photo: Courtesy Race Point Publishing/Sidney Erthal and Scott London Photography)

Last year, I went to Burning Man for the first time.

Despite having attended many different festivalspreviously, Burning Man was unlike anything I have ever seen.

Burning Man, as the website proclaims, is "an annual art event and temporary community based on radical self expression and self-reliance in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada."

Last year, over 61,000 people attended, many of them in the tech industry.

While most people go for the full seven days, I only did four, so my experience may have been different from others. But the beauty of Burning Man is that everyone can have whatever kind of experience they want.

Check out my trip last year here >

For me, I loved biking around during the hot desert days looking at all of the beautiful art installations constructed in the middle of nowhere and taking advantage of strangers' generosity by way of wine tastings, zip lines and fried chicken.

For others, the festival comes alive at night. As the sun goes down, the lights of Black Rock City come up and the pulse of the music keeps people awake until well into the following day.

Since most people who haven't been to Burning Man seem to be confused by what it actually is, here are some photos that sum up my trip last year.

It all started with this: a cheap, leopard suitcase I purchased on the streets of NYC. Everything you bring to Burning Man you risk getting seriously dirty or losing. I felt okay sacrificing this.

I packed it full with costumes, sunscreen, sunglasses, flashlights, food, and other items on the official checklist. Everything is in plastic bags to keep it clean from the impending desert dust.

Upon arrival in Reno, the closest airport, I hit a Walmart to grab last-minute necessities such as jugs of water. Walmart was clearly prepared for all of the "Burners" driving from Reno.

When it's nearly 100 degrees in the middle of the Nevada desert, clothing is limited, and sometimes even optional at Burning Man — "an annual art event and temporary community based on radical self expression in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada."

But for those who do choose to wear clothing, it's all about the costumes.

And the ornate outfits have become a huge part of the festival.

Bikinis, body paint, tutus, masks, headdresses, wigs, floral crowns and feathers — it's all there. Often all worn at once.

We attended the festival last year and documented what we saw...

Everyone used bikes to get around the Burning Man desert, but that didn't stop people from breaking out their best costumes.

Like this guy, who went all out in green.

Or this creative dog-in-a-cage costume.

On Sunday, Will Smith posted the below photo to his Facebook page, announcing he was headed to the desert for Burning Man:

The photo has nearly half a million "likes" and counting, but it doesn't even compare to the 19-second video of Smith doing an amazing synchronized Segway dance. Watch below:

Party in the city where the heat is on.

SEE ALSO: I went to Burning Man and it was even crazier than I expected

MORE: The craziest costumes at Burning Man

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If you aren't already an entrepreneur, you may become one by the time you leave Burning Man  — in some shape or form.

You won't make money in the desert; the exchange of money isn't allowed at the annual, weeklong arts festival held in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. But you will have created something for someone. You will have seen a need and met it. You will have innovated a solution to a problem or decided to spontaneously create a new service or product for yourself and your fellow Burners (that's what attendees are called).

And that energy, that entrepreneurial spirit, is priceless. It's what so many management consultants charge top dollar right now to bring to stuffy corporate offices.

As a business owner, it may not be feasible to take your entire company out to the desert to get them to start thinking more entrepreneurially. So, what is it that Burning Man has? How can you set the stage so that kind of innovation will grow in your community, business or brain? 

Whether your goal is to get your creative juices flowing, or to facilitate a more experimental and productive workplace, you need to start by eliminating unnecessary regulations and burdensome structure. At Burning Man, "an entrepreneurial spirit is going to come to the forefront very easily because there aren't a lot of rules, but there is opportunity,"Harley K. Dubois, a co-founder of the event, told Entrepreneur earlier this fall at The Feast, a social innovation conference in Brooklyn, N.Y.

In the nearly three decades that the Burning Man festival has been around, 10 philosophical principles have emerged as guideposts for behavior in the community. But there aren't expectations or schedules. The community self-regulates, encouraging creativity and discouraging judgment. "It is unrealistic to think people aren't going to judge. People are people and they do, but when they do and somebody calls you on it, you have to reflect on yourself," says Dubois.

Burning Man, like entrepreneurship, is an event that requires equal parts organization and whimsy. Festival participants — of whom there are tens of thousands — dress in elaborate costumes and spend significant amounts of time and money preparing accommodations for their stay in the desert. They have to bring everything they'll need to camp out in the desert and, at the end of their stay, clean up so that the desert is exactly as it was. Participatory art installations dot the landscape of the "playa," as the area used for the festival is called, and the weeklong celebration culminates in a massive structure of some sort being burned.

Part of the entrepreneurial culture at Burning Man, says Dubois, is that there are no repercussions or penalties for failure when you are out in the middle of the desert. "Failure is part of it. I mean, you should be happy you failed because that means you can get it right next time!"

Burners attempt everything from building airships made of color and light to sail across the Burning Man playa at night to creating man-made mobile "icebergs" for Burners to cool off in and listen to music in. And then there are more practical entrepreneurial operations, like the mobile "Dust City Diner," which serves hot grilled-cheese sandwiches and coffee to fellow Burners. "We create a vessel and the participants who come to our event bring the content. We are vessel creators. Without the people coming and bringing those costumes, bringing their ideas, bringing their art, bringing everything they bring themselves, this wouldn't happen," says Dubois.

While the first iteration of Burning Man was largely about stereotypical "hippie/artist" sorts sleeping in tents on the desert for a week, the last few festivals have been increasingly attended by the Silicon Valley elite in a sort of hedonistic party meets business networking opportunity. Entrepreneurs get funded, co-founders meet and come together and deals are made, all against the backdrop of dust for days and almost-naked revelers. Dubois wishes the Burning Man team had been tracking the businesses that were incubated in its dust-covered-temporary city.

"If we had tracked all these businesses that had come out of the inspiration of Burning Man, we would have a really amazing tree to look at," she says.

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Burning Man — the annual weeklong festival that draws wealthy techies and artists alike to a stretch of desert 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada — is coming up in August, which means attendees are starting to think about how to build their elaborate camps.

The idea behind Burning Man is for tens of thousands of campers to come to the dessert and build a new arts-focused, DIY metropolis that functions without the use of money. They'll erect tents, temporary buildings, stands, and outposts to live in and create their own creative, artistic, and out-there community.

These so-called burners spends months leading up to Burning Man getting their costumes, decorations, and living areas prepped — but some are opting to get ready-made storage container camps from a company called Quick Space instead of constructing their own from scratch.

Gene Temen, president of Quick Space, has been supplying the Burning Man event with office trailers for the event’s hospital and administrative buildings for seven years.

Three years ago, the team at Quick Space realized they could repurpose the trailers as living quarters. The units come with insulation, air conditioning, lights, and flooring, Travis Lekas, the operations manager for Quick Space, told Business Insider. This makes them perfect for campers who would rather not deal with the realities of living in the desert for seven days.

They call them “Burner Bungalows.”

Burners can paint and add onto the trailers however they wish, for an additional fee of $300 for the exterior and $200 for the interior. So instead of building a camp ground from scratch, they can either use the trailer as a shelter or build around it and use the trailer for storage. 

“You can paint it if you want to paint the inside or the outside — whatever you want to do,” Lekas told Business Insider. “It also comes with three five-gallon bottles of water, a first aid kit, a fire extinguisher, and a garbage can along with additional garbage bags.”

This might not sound like the whimsical and artistic camps that Burning Man is known for, but the idea is to give campers the base on which to build their dream camp, Lekas explained.

And although they don't look like the typical Burning Man structure, which can range from a yurt to a tent to an RV, the trailers are practical. The ready-made storage units come with necessities like water, insulation, and air-conditioning, and can be used for storage both during and after the event.

The company will also come and remove the trailer after the week is over, fitting with Burning Man’s “leave no trace” policy after the seven day event is over, which is included in the price. You can store your Burning Man gear in the trailer until the next year and not worry about shipping it or needing to fly back with all of your stuff for $750 per year of storage.

“My camp is seriously looking at getting a shipping container that would be delivered before the burn opens and picked up after close,” one Reddit user said about the bungalows. “We'd use it to store gear year-round that otherwise would waste fuel going back to random points around the country to sit for a year.”

The cost for the trailers is about $3,745 plus a $1,000 security deposit — more if you want to decorate the interior and exterior and store the unit all year. Generators also bear an additional cost of $250.

The trailers might also be a good compromise for burners who were previously planning to rely on the fully-furnished luxurious camping options, or “turnkey camps,” that have been recently banned from the playa.

That means no more built-in personal chefs, sherpas, or other luxurious features associated with concierge camping. But with the trailers, tech millionaires can still have air-conditioning in a pinch and protect their belongings from the sand and dust.

Lekas told us that the company currently has 50 orders for units this year, and if the rise in interest over the past few years is any indication, they could double their orders by 2016.

“Our first year we started off, we just built a camp,” Lekas said. “The next year and the second year, we started off with five bungalows, and then our next one went to 40 bungalows. We’re hoping next year to supply 100 bungalows.”

You can find out more information on Burner Bungalows here.

SEE ALSO: I Went To Burning Man And It Was Even Crazier Than I Expected

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Monday morning, thousands of people left the sleepy farm town of Manchester, Tennessee after the four day music and arts festival known as Bonnaroo.

This year's festival — the 13th installment of Bonnaroo — featured some 200 live performances as well as numerous surprise guests, celebrity cameos, and unlikely collaborations. 

From Jon Hamm and Zach Galifianakis singing an 80's power ballad to Chance the Rapper preforming an homage to the Notorious B.I.G., here are some of the must see photos from these weekends Roo'.

Jon Hamm and Zach Galifianakis crashed the stage to sing "We Are the World" during late-night Superjam on Saturday.

66-year old Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin preformed with The Sensational Space Shifters on the main stage.

Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons sang his heart out.

(Reuters) - U.S. land managers have asked operators of Burning Man to provide them with VIP accommodations and flushable toilets in the Nevada desert during the annual counterculture festival, triggering a political firestorm on Friday.

The demands drew the ire of two U.S. lawmakers from Nevada who described the requests, which also included a standing supply of ice cream, as excessive.

Burning Man, named for the burning of a wooden effigy that marks the climax of the week-long festival of art and free expression, brings nearly 70,000 people to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada and adds an estimated $35 million to the local economy each year.

Organizers of this year's event, taking place from Aug. 30 to Sept. 7, say fees and facilities they have provided the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for law enforcement and other services at the event surged from under $1 million in 2011 to an anticipated $5 million this year.

This year, the bureau asked for a so-called Blue Pit lodging facility that would have restroom trailers with flushable toilets, a washer and dryer room for laundry, and VIP accommodations in so-called "container apartment" units, according to documents seen by Reuters.

They also made specific food requests, including 24-hour access to Chobani Greek Yogurt and a standalone freezer with Drumstick and Choco Taco ice cream, the documents said.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, in a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, criticized what he called "outlandishly unnecessary facilities."

"Part of Burning Man's philosophy is self-reliance and living with the elements is part of the experience," Reid wrote. "Flush toilets and laundry facilities can be found about 10 miles (16 km) away in Gerlach, Nevada, if BLM’s employees need such amenities."

U.S. Representative Mark Amodei, a Republican representing the part of Nevada where the festival is held, said in a phone interview the requests raised ethical questions and appeared to demand "the Black Rock Desert version of the Four Seasons hotel."

Gene Seidlitz, bureau district manager in Nevada, declined immediate comment but told the Reno Gazette-Journal it was important to consider the safety of bureau personnel at the event.

"It's safe to say that if you were working 14 to 16 hours a day in white-out conditions on the hot playa, you don't want them to be unrested," Seidlitz told the paper.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Lisa Lambert)

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Grover Norquist is going back to Burning Man — and he said he's set to take Rep. Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina) with him this time.

The influential founder of Americans for Tax Reform visited Business Insider's office on Thursday. Amid a discussion of ride-hailing apps and the free market, Norquist mentioned that he's renting a recreational vehicle to return to the weeklong annual festival in the desert.

"Uber works very well and you can see lots of people renting ... all sorts of stuff. I'm renting an RV to go to Burning Man," he said. "I don't want to buy an RV. I don't particularly want to rent a new one."

Burning Man is relatively surprising place for a conservative policy leader to show up. The festival is famous for its embrace of psychedelic drugs and hippie-like atmosphere, culminating with the burning of a huge wooden effigy.

However, more Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and tech executives are increasingly attending the festival as well. Norquist said Burning Man's founders invited him three years ago while they were feuding with the Bureau of Land Management, which reportedly wants money for a VIP compound in the desert.

"They were in DC because the Bureau of Land Management was screwing with them. They were charging them $2 million; now it's $5 million. Because all the BLM staff like to go and hang out and pretend they're running it or protecting the ground or the desert or something," Norquist said. "The only thing living on the playa out there is some crustacean, some shrimp that when it rains sufficiently every three years there's a huge rain that lasts long enough for these things hydrate, have babies, and dry up again."

Asked if he planned to take anyone with him, Norquist said Sanford would "crash" with him.

"My wife's going to come. And Congressman Sanford, I believe, is going to come as well and crash with us," he said.

Sanford — whose office did not return requests for comment Thursday and Friday — was briefly a national figure in 2009, when, as South Carolina's governor, he disappeared for multiple days before admitting an extramarital affair and ultimately resigning. He successfully ran for his former congressional seat in 2013 and returned to the House. 

For his part, Norquist discussed his first Burning Man trip in a Guardian op-ed last year. The government-reform activist — who gets presidential candidates and vast swaths of Congress to sign his pledge to never raise taxes — praised the festival for its culture of self-reliance.

"Burning Man is greater than I had ever imagined," he wrote. "Some day, I want to live 52 weeks a year in a state or city that acts like this. I want to attend a national political convention that advocates the wisdom of Burning Man." 

Here are some photos of his 2014 trip:

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(The Ferenstein Wire) — On the barren flatlands of the Nevada desert, children ages 5 to 14 weave unnoticed between ecstasy-tripping ravers, elaborate penis-shaped art cars, and an endless sea of topless young women. The children of Burning Man, and their nearby parents, don’t seem to mind the NC-17-rated madness. 

Why? Because these children are on a scientific exploration. The Black Rock Scouts, Burning Man’s own (less christian) version of the Cub Scouts, roam the 5-mile campus earning badges in astronomy, sharing, and artistic expression.

“The best time I have with my daughter is at Burning Man,” gushes Black Rock Scouts director, Jay Bartlett.

Yes, you’re reading this right. Burning Man, a 10-day Interactive arts festival better known for outlandish partying and Silicon Valley billionaires, is a family destination for many long-time participants, who plan a vacation to Black Rock City, just as any Joe-American plans a trip to Disney World.

Why would any sane parent bring impressionable young minds to a desert full of 70,000 partiers? Bartlett says that “the idea is the kids will grow up to be good burners.”

The temporary city of Burning Man has always been a sort of techno-utopian experiment and was founded by two parents to teach their children the values of inclusiveness, open-mindedness, and creativity.

“We’re pro-family,” Burning Man founder, Larry Harvey, tells The Ferenstein Wire. Harvey brought his own son to the very first event in 1986 and chooses not to charge tickets for children under 12 because he believes “a culture isn’t authentic unless it’s multi-generational.”

The festival itself is more of a large-scale social experiment, of which the wild parties are one aspect. All 70,000 temporary citizens are expected to supply their own camping needs and something to gift the wider community: food, a giant interactive structure, or a mind-bending experience.

Indeed, all of the parents seem to think that Burning Man was a deceivingly educational place, where children were too busy having fun to know they were learning important life lessons. “It’s one of the most creative environments they’ve ever encountered and they want their children to be creative,” says Harvey.

Real Science, Really

Burning Man is the playground of Silicon Valley’s most venerable companies. From Google to Tesla, engineers see a temporary city of creatives as an ideal place to test the limits of innovation. Google’s co-founders reportedly hired their Chairman, Eric Schmidt, because he was a loyal Burner.

According to Stanford Professor of Communications, Fred Turner [PDF], Google sent a plane to take aerial photos of the city in what became an early pilot to Google Maps back in 2006.

It’s not just Google: avid Burning Man supporter and friendly mad scientist, Elon Musk, supposedly brought an early version of a Tesla car in 2007 (picture below).

Like their grown up Silicon Valley brethren, the Black Rock Scouts treat Burning Man like a scientific mecca. For instance, to earn a coveted badge in scientific exploration, the Black Rock Scouts traverse the windstorm-wracked planes to star gaze with a camp of professional astrophysicists.

I joined an eager group of younger scouts on a late afternoon trip to the camp of the Bureau of Land Management, a local agency charged with helping the festival minimize its impact on the local environment.

The agency did not really prepare the kind of kid-friendly event I had anticipated, opting for a rather dry lecture on desert species biodiversity. Surprisingly enough, it managed to keep the scouts’ rapped attention. 

“Isn’t that supposed to be ‘heat’ ?” said one precocious young boy — no greater than 12-years old — who was paying close enough attention to notice a missing “t”, tucked away in a slide about the survival tactics of the area’s aquatic shrimp species.

Burning Man University was in full effect and the children were eager to learn. Suffice to say, I did not expect this.

What about…what about the penises?

There’s a lot of nudity at Burning Man. Many Burners don’t just go naked — they celebrate it. It’s not uncommon to see a roving art car in the shape of a giant phallus spitting fire out of the tip.

Parents here argue that once you take the taboo out of nakedness, kids stop caring.

“My children just don’t care. It’s a non-issue” says Dawn LaPierre, the coordinator of KidsVille, one of Burning Man’s largest umbrella theme camps — housing about 110 smaller camps, each with multiple families.

But, what happens when kids ask questions about a giant penis, as one would expect them to do.

“‘Yeah that’s a boys thingy and that’s pretty much the gist of our conversation’,” explains Bartlett, who is used to defending his decision to judgmental parents.

“I don’t think any person on earth has been corrupted by a giant penis car,” concludes Harvey.

At least one parent expressed less concern for elementary-aged tots, who are too young to even conceptualize sex, but more for teenagers entering their impressionable pubescent years.

“It is a very sexually charged environment,” says long-time burner, Bill Gillman. “It also probably sets an unrealistic expectation of what it means to interact with whoever you’re attracted to.”

Gilman says he’s going to feel out his children’s evolving reaction to Burning Man as they age and make a decision whether to eventually bring them back.

Yet, it was the teens themselves who showed unexpected self-awareness about the appropriateness of adult-themed content.

“No, it’s not harder to instill the fact that, like, drugs and sex and stuff is not appropriate until you’re old enough to make your own choices,” interrupted a 14-year-old child of the Thaolkes, a suburban southern California family who brought their entire clan to the Burn.

My question was actually posed to his parents, yet the teenage Thoalke felt compelled to argue that drugs and sex are just as available at Burning Man as they are in his high school. “It’s as hard here, as it is at your home, because at home, you’re interacting with other people as much as when you’re here and you’re interacting with other people.”

His parents, Chris and Tina, seem to think that the display of lascivious behavior provided an opportunity to talk about adult choices in a way not available back in suburbia.

“Every lesson you would try to instill in your child at home is out here,” said Chris Thoalke, “I want to be part of the discussion on those choices.”

His wife, Tina, chimed in, noting that at Burning Man, she could say “ ‘Hey William, look at that stupid high person over there,’ ” continuing, “they get to see consequences about things they keep hearing about.”

“I always wanted to share this with my children” explains Bill Gilman, who brought his first child when he turned 4 — old enough for the nascent family to share a bonding experience at the festival.

Burning Man has managed to construct a rather oddly enthusiastic culture of giving. The city functions on a gift economy, where both money and bartering are fiercely discouraged. Instead, everyone is expected to take joy by gifting something for free: art, food, or an experience.

For instance, Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow billionaire co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, handed out free grilled cheese sandwiches 2 years ago at their theme camp, lovingly named “Om Skillet”.

True to form, Gillman and his son crowdsourced a peanut butter and jelly kart on Kickstarter.

“We are also moving to Kidsville this year, and as part of Black Rock Scouts, burner kids can earn a PB&J badge by grabbing their moms and dads and taking the cart and buggy anywhere on playa to serve the gooey goodness to the masses,” wrote Gilman, on the successful crowdfunding page that raised over $4,000 to construct the (above) vehicle of carb-y delight.

For the many parents who espouse the Burning Man ethos of curiosity and altruism, the festival is a unique place to instill those same values in the next generation. This, Harvey concludes, is why so many parents choose Burning Man as their vacation of choice.

“I like Burning Man better than Disney World,” says 11-year old Lucy Bartlett, who was busy earning her photography badge during our brief talk. “Burning Man has a million different things and every year it’s different. You have no idea what your experience is going to be like. But, at Disney World, everything is pre-manufactured.”

SEE ALSO: I went to burning man and it was even crazier than I expected

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Breaking news out of the Black Rock Desert: Burning Man is infested with huge, biting bugs. 

The weeklong festival — which has become increasingly popular among the tech elite in recent years — hasn't started yet. Still, horrifying photos of swarms of unidentified bugs have surfaced on Twitter over the last few days.  

The infestation was confirmed by John Curley on the Burning Man blog:

You may have seen the bug rumors on the internet. We are here to tell you that they are all true. Well maybe not all of the rumors, but the bugs are real. They’re everywhere. They bite. They crawl all over you. They get up and in you.

...

What’s going on? We don’t know. We don’t know how the little critters survive in the heat and the sun. All we know is that if you pick up some wood, you’re likely to uncover hundreds or thousands of the things. They’ve blown up inches deep against the sides of the Commissary tent. They’ve covered the carpets at the Depot. They’re all over the Man Base. So it’s not a localized occurrence. It’s everywhere.

We don’t know where they came from, but there are two main theories: One is that all the spring and summer rain has hatched critters that lie dormant, or usually come to life at a different time of year. Or maybe they hitchhiked in on a load of wood from somewhere. Or maybe, as Shade postulated out at Man Base, there’s a Johnny Bugseed making the rounds at night, sprinkling them anywhere and everywhere.

Burning Man officially begins August 30 and runs through September 7. Here's hoping the unwanted visitors are gone before the burners arrive. 

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On Wednesday, word from theBlack Rock Desert was that huge, biting bugs had infested the land where the annual Burning Man festival is set to take place starting August 30.

Organizers on the "playa," as the area is called, wrote an ominous blog post about the bugs and have been tweeting frightening photos, warning the 70,000 festivalgoers to be prepared for them to "get up and in you."

So what exactly are the creepy crawly bugs that have tech elite heading to Burning Man in a tizzy?

Gizmodo talked to entomologist and insect photographer Alex Wild, who identified the bugs based on photos and descriptions from people currently on the Burning Man site who said the bugs bite, swarm together, and have a very strong aroma.

According to Wild, we're dealing with two different kinds of bugs here.

The first is a scary-looking large green bug. Gizmodo writes:

According to Wild, the big green bugs you see above are probably stink bugs in the family Pentatomidae. These bugs are very common in the US, and emit a strong odor when disturbed. Some people compare the smell to coriander. These insects are also attracted to light, which is bad news for a festival that is famous for its amazing light displays.

The second is a smaller bug that appears in swarms.

According to the Burning Man blog, "if you pick up some wood, you're likely to uncover hundreds or thousands of the things."

Gizmodo notes that "these are most likely Nysius,or seed bugs":

Another entomologist, Karl Magnacca of the University of Hawaii, thinks there are actually two other species here along with Nysius, one of which is probably in the family Miridae. These guys also release a terrible smell, and they like to poke their probiscises into people’s skin. Which hurts. But they’re actually not attacking — a probiscis is more like a long, hollow tongue. These are desert bugs, and they look for water everywhere, including in your skin.

While the Burning Man playa is usually free of most bugs to the dry, hot desert conditions, Wild tells Gizmodo that there may be a reason for this year's infestation: "Desert species are prone to boom/bust cycles. [They] may just be passing through."

The infestation was first reported by John Curley on Tuesday on the Burning Man blog:

You may have seen the bug rumors on the internet. We are here to tell you that they are all true. Well maybe not all of the rumors, but the bugs are real. They’re everywhere. They bite. They crawl all over you. They get up and in you...

What’s going on? We don’t know. We don’t know how the little critters survive in the heat and the sun. All we know is that if you pick up some wood, you’re likely to uncover hundreds or thousands of the things. They’ve blown up inches deep against the sides of the Commissary tent. They’ve covered the carpets at the Depot. They’re all over the Man Base. So it’s not a localized occurrence. It’s everywhere.

We don’t know where they came from, but there are two main theories: One is that all the spring and summer rain has hatched critters that lie dormant, or usually come to life at a different time of year. Or maybe they hitchhiked in on a load of wood from somewhere. Or maybe, as Shade postulated out at Man Base, there’s a Johnny Bugseed making the rounds at night, sprinkling them anywhere and everywhere.

After their initial post freaked out festivalgoers, Burning Man organizers are now trying to do damage control.

In a new post on Thursday, organizers wrote that "despite the rampant rumors, these bugs are more of a mild nuisance than a full-blown infestation that should cause any major concern."

So are there bugs in Black Rock City? Yes. Due to unseasonably wet weather, the grass on the hills is unusually verdant, and that’s resulted in more bugs showing up in the desert than usual. There are green beetles called stink bugs (so-called because they emit a coriander-like odor when disturbed), mosquitos, and gnat-like seed bugs called Nysius. One entomologist reports that they might be causing skin irritations not because they’re biting, but because they’ve likely been eating mustard seed, which has been proliferating in the region recently, and the mustard oil irritates the skin when the bugs are smashed...

We’re hoping that continuing hot weather and a huge swarm of Burners descending upon their Black Rock Desert home sends them packing before long.

But it appears the bugs may be dying down.

"The people out there said that the numbers seem to be going down," Nevada Department of Agriculture state entomologist Jeff Knight told the Reno Gazette-Journal on Thursday. "A lot of these things last only a week or two."

SEE ALSO: The Burning Man site is infested with swarms of disgusting bugs

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The internet was a buzz last week with news that two different types of smelly, biting bugs had infested the land where the annual Burning Man festival is set to take place starting August 30.

While the pesky pest report initially came from the official Burning Man blog last Wednesday, the same blog was quick to dismiss the severity of the rumors on Thursday in a post titled "Don't Believe The Buzz."

By Friday, the blog claimed: "The bugs are gone. not every last stinking one of them, but pretty much. The swarms have dried up and blown away. People are working unmolested. Nature has run its course."

So what's the real story? It appears there was a severe infestation when organizers first arrived on the playa (as the desert land is called), with bugs "everywhere" that "bite, crawl all over you, and get up and in you," according to official first reports.

But by the weekend, the bugs had apparently subsided.

The Burning Man blog wrote a new post on Saturday easing the anxieties of the 70,000 future festival-goers, assuring them that "the billion wood-boring beetles that descended on the Man’s legs at Man Base have evidently been exterminated":

Burning Man will not be brought to you by Citronella and DEET this year. Behind us are the horrific fear-saturated nights of swarming green beetles, clouds of fluttering moths, biting flying ants, stinging noseeums and locusts so thick we had to don Hazmat suits and run in sheer terror from container to container to avoid being eaten alive. 

So what happened to the bugs? It could have been a few things...

We aren’t sure if it was the water trucks spraying vegan and gluten-free Malathion that did the trick. Or it may have been the initial deployment of our BRC Drone Bug Zappers that took out the first wave of stink bugs on Wednesday. They rose from the Depot, all flying in formation into the incoming swarms trillions thick, zapping blue and littering the playa with millions of twitching sizzling bug corpses. Some attribute our victory to Ranger Rico and his Roughnecks who were equipped with armor exoskeletons and flamethrowers that allowed them to capture the Brain Bug. We may never know, but somehow we prevailed. We witnessed, persevered and we survived.

Or, as entomologist and insect photographer Alex Wild explained to Gizmodo last week during the outbreak: "Desert species are prone to boom/bust cycles. [They] may just be passing through."

SEE ALSO: Multiple smelly, biting bugs have infested Burning Man — here's what they are and how bad it will be

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Burning Man doesn't even start until August 30th, but it's already off to a rocky start.

First, there was the infestation of giant green bugs that, according to Burning Man's official blog, "bite, crawl all over you, and get up and in you."

The bugs have apparently since "dried up and blown away," but in a new blog post from Saturday, festival organizers sarcastically warned that "Bugpocalypse was just a warm up to our possibly most menacing problem. The clowns are waiting with painted smiles to welcome you to Black Rock City."

Burning Man's official art theme this year is "Carnival of Mirrors," hence the imminent scary clown costumes.

According to the blog post from the weekend, "This is not going to be a good year for clown fearing folks... prepare for Sad Clown Town."

They wander around town even now, shapes in the darkness, ducking behind containers, appearing then disappearing at meetings. They’ve applied their make-up that is becoming caked with alkaline playa dust and is slowly fading each day. Prepare for Sad Clown Town. And beware Plug and Players, the clowns have your number. Locate, Tag, Track and Acculturate. Participate or clowns will eat you. My advice is to befriend a clown as soon as possible upon arrival. They are a hive mind and they can sense your intentions and fear.

...And don’t worry about the bugs. Clowns are far scarier.

This year's festival will be set up a bit like an old-fashioned carnival, complete with a funhouse at the center that "will contemplate the puzzle of self-consciousness."

At the heart of this disorienting maze, a final passage will reveal a courtyard that surrounds the Burning Man. Photo booths will here record the faces of participants, merging them into a swirling stream that will envelop the entire body of the Man. The brittle mirror and the occulting mask will melt away, and at this point there’ll be no gag, no swag, no souvenir of self; the show will be you.

The "Carnival of Mirrors" theme was first announced on the Burning Man website with this creepy video:

Don't forget your ticket of entry:

SEE ALSO: The Burning Man bugs are gone — here's how they disappeared

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Burning Man, the annual festival that celebrates art, counterculture, and radical self-reliance, begins Sunday in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.

The weeklong event has long drawn a wild crowd that eschews modern society and technology in favor of partying and constructing strange buildings in the middle of the desert. 

You won't find cell service or any other connection to the outside world anywhere in the seven-square-mile camp. 

But there's at least one way to communicate with your fellow burners should an emergency arise.

FireChat, an app developed by San Francisco-based Open Garden, creates a local network that makes it possible to instantly communicate with anyone, even without an internet connection.

"The question we try to answer is, 'what do you do if you really, really need to reach someone?'" Open Garden CMO Christophe Daligault told Business Insider. "We developed it for any situation where you might have unreliable internet access." 

FireChat works through what's called a "mesh network," which uses the WiFi or Bluetooth port on your smart phone to connect directly with another phone. As phones connect, they form a local network, or mesh. 

"People think that WiFi means internet access, but you can also use that transport layer to connect directly with one another," Daligault said.

The technology could conceivably be useful for chatting with friends on public transit while underground, during a flight, or while attending other big events with a high density of people and no internet access.

Launched in March 2014, FireChat saw its first big use case at last year's Burning Man, when thousands of burners encountered mud that made it difficult to access the playa. Daligault said that thousands quickly took to FireChat to communicate, helping their fellow burners to work around the mud. 

When the app first launched, you needed to be within 200 feet of another FireChat-enabled phone for the technology to work correctly. But this year, FireChat is partnering with Hub Culture to build a 30-foot pole that will expand the mesh network even further. 

Dubbed a "Signal Totem," the tower uses wind-generator power and routers, but it doesn't connect to the internet. 

They plan to build the totem near the center of the playa, near the Geek A Transformation Station. 

Daligault said that the totem is relatively cheap and easy to build, and he could see the design being replicated elsewhere. 

That could come in handy for situations like this year's stink bug infestation, which Burning Man organizers say has disappeared. 

Such an advanced technology is bound to get a reaction from some of the event's more radical attendees, many of whom use the week at Burning Man as an escape from the noise of the modern world. 

"Anything you put in front of burners will have a polarizing reaction, and some won't like it," Daligault said. "But others might be going with a bunch of friends or family, and we can see them needing a way to send a quick message to say that everyone is OK." 

Since it doesn't provide internet access, however, burners need to download the FireChat app before they leave for the playa, if they intend to use it to chat. The app is free to download on iOS and Android. 

SEE ALSO: The Burning Man site is infested with swarms of disgusting bugs

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Burning Man — the annual week-long counterculture festival that attracts techies, raving hipsters, strange art, and burning effigies — has evolved to become one of Silicon Valley's go-to social networking spots.

Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos have made pilgrimages to the Nevada desert and lived lavishly in VIP supertents that boast WiFi, pool tables, and top notch chefs. 

And just when you thought things couldn't get more bizarre, a team of people are trying to honor that intersection of festival goers and techies by creating Burning Man: The Musical. 

The plot is about Joe, a young entrepreneur portrayed by Travis Kent, who hopes to become a multimillionaire. He jumps at a chance to make this a reality by crashing one of the elite Burning Man campsites. He eats a few magic mushrooms before venturing into the desert and adventure ensues.

Matt Werner, a technical writer at Google, created an Indiegogo campaign to raise $20,000 from the rest of the world so that the musical can become reality. The team behind the musical is a mixed bag of veteran "Burners" (people who have attended Burning Man), writers, singers, and a crew complete with producers and directors. 

The crew is releasing little chunks of songs here and there throughout the course of the Indigogo campaign.

The production's opening number shows Burners prancing around in costume, juxtaposed against the suit-and-tie self-starters of a Silicon Valley office. You can watch it here: 

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Burning Man doesn't even start until August 30th, but it's already off to a rocky start.

First, there was the infestation of giant green bugs that, according to Burning Man's official blog, "bite, crawl all over you, and get up and in you."

The bugs have apparently since "dried up and blown away," but in a new blog post from Saturday, festival organizers sarcastically warned that "Bugpocalypse was just a warm up to our possibly most menacing problem. The clowns are waiting with painted smiles to welcome you to Black Rock City."

Burning Man's official art theme this year is "Carnival of Mirrors," hence the imminent scary clown costumes.

According to the blog post from the weekend, "This is not going to be a good year for clown fearing folks... prepare for Sad Clown Town."

They wander around town even now, shapes in the darkness, ducking behind containers, appearing then disappearing at meetings. They’ve applied their make-up that is becoming caked with alkaline playa dust and is slowly fading each day. Prepare for Sad Clown Town. And beware Plug and Players, the clowns have your number. Locate, Tag, Track and Acculturate. Participate or clowns will eat you. My advice is to befriend a clown as soon as possible upon arrival. They are a hive mind and they can sense your intentions and fear.

...And don’t worry about the bugs. Clowns are far scarier.

This year's festival will be set up a bit like an old-fashioned carnival, complete with a funhouse at the center that "will contemplate the puzzle of self-consciousness."

At the heart of this disorienting maze, a final passage will reveal a courtyard that surrounds the Burning Man. Photo booths will here record the faces of participants, merging them into a swirling stream that will envelop the entire body of the Man. The brittle mirror and the occulting mask will melt away, and at this point there’ll be no gag, no swag, no souvenir of self; the show will be you.

The "Carnival of Mirrors" theme was first announced on the Burning Man website with this creepy video:

Don't forget your ticket of entry:

SEE ALSO: The Burning Man bugs are gone — here's how they disappeared

Join the conversation about this story »

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Since it started in San Francisco in the 80s, Burning Man has gone from a countercultural afterthought to a mainstream phenomenon. The annual pilgrimage of those seeking an alternative living experience — for a week — has exploded in popularity among the tech elite.

Many flush with tech money now spend thousands of dollars to stay in air-conditioned storage units, and Sergey Brin and Elon Musk are rumored to have toured a property that Burning Man organizers are considering turning into a full-time Burning Man community. There's even an app that lets techies chat without cell service or WiFi.

But all this interest, especially from the tech community, has driven up the cost of the festival, even as the number of attendees has skyrocketed. This chart from Dadaviz shows exactly how much the ticket price and attendance of Burning Man has exploded over time:

SEE ALSO: This year's Burning Man festival has a frightening theme

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