“I am the Nightrider. I’m a fuel injected suicide machine. I am a rocker, I am a roller, I am an out-of-controller!”
– Nightrider, Mad Max (1979)
Somewhere in the California desert, there is a place that for 98% of the year is a sandy, barren wasteland. But, for 5 days every year, it is transformed into Wasteland Valley (with a capital “W”), an immersive, post-apocalyptic playground of music, art, games, and revels open to anyone who ever fantasized about living beyond the A-bomb. What began ten years ago as Road Warrior Weekend, a fan-led event inspired by the love of Mad Max films, has grown out of its humble beginnings to boast a nearly 4,000 person attendance.
If you’ve never seen or heard of Wasteland Weekend, it’s an impressively immersive experience. Costumes inspired by the Mad Max franchise and games like Fallout are required to enter, and post-apocalyptic camp decor and vehicles are encouraged. Many come with their “tribe,” those with a shared identity and story that come together with other tribes and individuals to make Wasteland City. With it’s tenth annual fest on the horizon, we talked to three members of the Dayglow Raiders, a tribe with years of history at the event, who came together with the help of Stephanie Taylor and her friends, Niki Smith and Lu Moo.
Horror Geek Life: How did you get involved with Wasteland?
Stephanie Taylor: I used to be involved with the Fallout cosplay community. I did Fallout vault dweller cosplay when I went to cons. A lot of people would give me Wasteland Weekend cards. I didn’t want to go by myself. So until I actually met a tribe to go with, a couple years later, I actually went for the first time.
HGL: What year did you start going?
Stephanie: 2015
HGL: Niki and Lu, what about you?
Niki Smith: I started going three years ago. I found out about it, my friends had gone for years and years and years, and kept wanting me to go. I kept having to work at the time. I finally ended up saying “screw it” one year. I had met up with Stephanie. I joined her camping area before it was a tribe and so I decided to go. I’m very close with it.
Lu Moo: I got sucked into Wasteland by just knowing the right people at the right time. Niki had found this couple, Steph and Mike, who took her one year, and, by the next, I was ripped and ready to go. Pete (Lu’s fiance) was hesitant, but he’s just in it to have fun with his nerd girl.
HGL: How did your tribe, the Dayglow Raiders, come to be?
Stephanie: I can’t be involved with anything without trying to manage something. I don’t think I have that ability inside of me. We were just kind of like, ‘okay, let’s make our own thing with just our friends.’ We had some of the building materials to make our own camp, and the year after we went with our old tribe, we had enough friends to make our own little tribe at that point.
HGL: When you first went to Wasteland, what was that like?
Stephanie: My first year pretty rad. It’s like every other event you go to, you have to let it wash over you at first. There’s no right way to do it. So, just walking around and experiencing everything was pretty awesome. The first year I went I felt like, ‘Oh, I’m at home.’ These are weird people, people I felt like I fit in with. I really liked all the creativity and the Mad Max theme. Fury Road had just come out at that point, it was awesome seeing all the Fury Road stuff they had incorporated that year. It was just awesome, and I loved it.
Niki: I was speechless. It was a post-apocalyptic adult Disneyland. It was absolutely insane my first time. I didn’t know what to do, walking around and seeing everything and going into towns. Walking through the Wasteland gate was just, ‘Holy Crap, this place is insane!’ The amount of freedom you feel when you first go in, you can do whatever the hell you want, pretty much. You’re there to have a good time and not care. It’s like you’re in another world. The real world doesn’t exist for that little bit of time and it’s amazing.
Stephanie: I would echo that, too. You are totally away from reality and that’s one of the best things about it. You almost forget that you have work. You have emails waiting for you in your inbox at home, and you totally forget about them the whole time you’re out there, it’s fantastic!
Lu: It was kind of overwhelming at first. Even having gone to many conventions over the years, I’m never one to fully prepare myself for what’s to come and what I want to do. I spent most of my time walking around aimlessly and clinging to my new tribe mates. Fighting in the Thunderdome and winning, being taken in and accepted by every person I met, watching Vibrator races while screaming bets of bent bottle caps, riding around on incredible machines made from blood, sweat, and tears. It was really something.
HGL: What was the take away?
Lu: I’d say I had a lot of fun that first year, but in reality I left with a sense of wasted time. I didn’t realize until we left the entire SCOPE of this event and how much hard work each and every person puts into creating a fun and inviting space for not just themselves, but anyone who crosses their path. I missed out on a LOT of things, which just inspires you to want to go next year. It’s also story-building. It’s like a giant, post-apocalyptic Dungeon & Dragons game. It’s also five days of drinking and escape, let’s be honest. People love their stories of themselves and fake tribe wars and alliances. I didn’t even have a name or story until the second year.
HGL: Speaking to your name and story, what inspiration do you draw from to create a wasteland persona?
Lu: Lu Moo isn’t just a nickname, it’s what I love and appreciate: Cows. I’ve always had this weird spirit animal shit with bovine and loved all subspecies in the Bovidae family. So I created WarBo (short for War Bovine). I use only bovine-related bones and am a bit of a tribal-inspired mercenary. Whatever the hell that means.
Stephanie: Everyone has that different look to their costuming where they kind of have character or persona. It’s hard to even know where I started because it was just, ‘lemme throw this shit on and let me dirty up this piece of clothing that I have.’ Before you go, it’s hard to know what to do at all. You buy a bunch of stuff and just try to figure it out. But after a while, I went more towards the Fallout Raider-type of look. A Road Warrior-raider type of look. With helmets and spikes, and I had skull masks after a while, so it became a spooky-raider type vibe.
HGL: It sounds like you guys started drawing for each other too?
Stephanie: Yea, I think everybody does a little bit.
Niki: Once you’re there, you look at everybody and you pick up, ‘oh, that looks cool on that person, and that looks cool on that person,’ After the first year, we said ‘okay, we’ll just put together rare things that we would find.’ Think if it were the end of the world, because we were going to be raiders, we were going along and picking things up and raiding places. Just getting pieces and putting them on yourself. Then after seeing everyone outfits the first year, you see how to make it your own, and you start to get a vision in your head of what you want. For instance, I put tons of crap in my hair because I can. Especially after seeing everyone else, you make it your own. You see movies and play Fallout and you get an idea. It’s not really hard to do, honestly. You could roll in in a dirty pair of panties and you’d fit in perfectly.
Lu: Every one always wants to be some one they’re not once in a while and if someone says that’s not true, they’re a f*cking liar. So I think it’s important that when you put on your armor/attire you feel like someone else. Hopefully braver, or smarter, or more fun and outgoing. Maybe you want to be rugged because you’re such a softy in the regular world. This isn’t to say that that anyone (from my experience) LARPS out their characters, but there’s a definite difference between who you/they are in the Wastes and when you’re/they’re not.
Stephanie: We have people in that community who are professional makeup artists or professional costume designers who are just doing crazy things, and you don’t have to be that. There are even tribes who will throw dirt on you. The Rustorationists will dirty you up for free if you feel like your outfits isn’t dirty enough or if you think you’re not fitting in – it’s really cute.
HGL: What does being a “raider” mean?
Stephanie: I think the idea of being a raider or post-apocalyptic road warrior – I mean someone had to say it in Mad Max at some point – but once you get to Fallout, it was more that the Raiders are the bad guys you would run into along the way. They were into making all the weird drugs. They were the people who would randomly attack you as you were trying to get from one place to another.
Niki: Yea, I think Fallout gave it the name, but there’s always been the bad people. One of my inspirations for a lot of things is the movie Doomsday, and there were the bad people who would go out and raid and pillage the places and take all the stuff, and it’s the same in Mad Max.
Lu: Who the f*ck knows, really. I’d like to think you can be a good or a bad raider. I’d like to think I’m neutral-good.
HGL: You guys work jobs at the event. How does that work?
Stephanie: I started working at the Atomic Cafe after my first year. They have a volunteer program in which you can work part-time or full-time to pay part or full of your ticket, so you get your ticket cost reimbursed to you. You apply for positions to work, there’s all sorts of things you can do. You can work security, checking people in, or if you have medical experience you can work in the med tent.
I worked at the Atomic Cafe which is the full donation bar. It also goes to Burning Man, too. All the bottle and liquor goes through security check, and then we serve mixed drinks at a bar from 6pm to 2 in the morning. It’s totally free and people just give the bartenders a lot of cool things to trade. It’s free as long as you have your own cup.
Lu: The first year I just cruised, but seeing as I felt like I didn’t do enough the first year, I decided to get put to work the second year, to make friends and feel more immersed in the community (I also got lucky because my friend’s new hubby ran the Atomic Cafe). It was two 8-hour shifts, covering the cost of the ticket, slinging drinks, and it was so much fun. Really got to know a lot of people who in turn recognized me while I wasn’t working the cafe.
Niki: I thought about working jobs, but I’m there to have fun. You can’t really pick your hours, some lucky people can, but it is a job. I can say, from the perspective of participating in events, it’s hard because Brian being a Jugger*, he couldn’t drink all day. And they get done super late.
*Jugger is the post-apocalyptic sport of the future created by David Webb Peoples for his 1989 film “The Blood of Heroes,” aka “The Salute of the Jugger.” The film was written and directed by Peoples, and stars Rutger Hauer and Joan Chen. Jugger is described as a “brutal form of football with a dog skull.” Much like the evolution of Quiddich into a playable sport, it was first played in Australia and Germany, and has been adopted by the Wasteland community as the official sport of Wasteland Weekend.
HGL: So, there is definitely a trade-off. If you work a job, you get to meet people and be a part of the action, but there’s also lots of action to be missed, too.
Stephanie: It is tiring. I totally agree with Niki. I work myself into a corner in all aspects of my life. It’s cool because you talk to a lot of people, and you meet a lot of people, but you work eight hours, you stand on dirt in boots.
Niki: And you miss other events. You miss Thunderdome and performances of different bands and burlesque.
HGL: How accurate is the Thunderdome?!
Niki: If they had foam bats in Beyond Thunderdome, it would be totally accurate.
HGL: Lu, you actually participated in the event.
Lu: So, it’s put on by this tribe called Death Guild. They bring the dome to Burning Man and Wasteland every year. Entering Wasteland, you already sign a liability waiver. Death Guild also has you sign an additional waiver, and you attend a safety and rules short seminar if you’ve never been in the dome before. They start when the sun goes down. When I arrived for my “time slot” (apparently a loose term as some people never show, and others show up unannounced), my partner was already waiting, and people were starting to scale the dome. I brought a flask to share with others in line. The people in front of us had flown all the way from England. We all shared in drinks and anxiety as we slowly inched into the gated corridor that led into their incredible “suiting” area, fitting you into the harnesses to be attached to a giant jungle gym. It all happens so fast.
You’re latched into the springing tethers that send you into the air. It’s a grand show as a man with a staff enters between us and speaks our names and our tribes to the jeering crowd around us. Once ready, the man raises his staff, the staff goes down, and we’re pulled back by operators and launched at each other, foam staffs in hand, latching onto each other and swinging wildly. The crowd is screaming so loud, it boosts the adrenaline even harder. We go match after match and, finally, I’m deemed the winner! A cap is given to those favored by the Thunder Dome. A token of victory.
HGL: That’s insanity, and congratulations! What other preparation goes into the event, other than the costuming?
Stephanie: Tears and a lot of crying
Everyone takes a minute to laugh and agree.
Lu: Food is a big one. Luckily for me my fiance is a chef and spent an entire Sunday before the event prepping $200 worth of food into full course meals for all 5 days for a tribe of 8. Being able to wake up and just boil a perfectly balanced, healthy meal is important. At least to me. Making sure you factor in water usage (grey and potable), having the right equipment to hold down your tent in case of a windstorm (which happens every year), shade to escape the scorching desert heat, and LOTS of sunblock.
Niki: If you’re in tribe and you want to camp by the city, you have to prepare your tribe ahead of time. You have to set up your entire camp. You have to send it to them [wasteland admins] ahead of time and they have to approve it to be right outside the city or in the city.
HGL: So, you have to send in an application?
Niki: Yea, you have to send it into the “rulers.” So poor Stephanie decided to throw herself into that. So it’s a lot of stress and a lot of crying, we have a designated cry day when we get there.
Lu: It was also imperative to our tribe (for themed camping) to be able to meet up and do setups beforehand of our entire camp to take pictures to send in, and get an idea of what our lot and tent sizes were. We had to make sure we could fit everyone in a way that also presented our themed camp to the public.
Niki: Other than that, though, if it’s your first year and you’re not doing the theme camping, then it doesn’t matter. You can bring whatever the hell you want because you’re off camping in the back. And they don’t care what you do back there.
Stephanie: Yeah, there’s even two levels of that [theme-camping], too. There’s inside wasteland city where you really have to be themed. All your real world stuff has to be covered up. We were always in the theme zone where we have a little more leeway to have a cooler sitting out or something. But you still have to look good because you’ll show up in press pictures.
HGL: If you could impart one piece of advice to anyone who’s going for the first time, what would that be?
Niki: Don’t worry. Don’t worry about anything. You can go look at old pictures of Wasteland, because obviously you won’t be allowed into the city if you’re going to walk in in a Batman outfit. That’s what makes it so cool. Renaissance festivals, for instance. It takes away from the experience to see people walking around in blue jeans and a tee-shirt because I think ‘why can’t you be a pirate for a day?’ It makes it feel more fun. That’s the only thing you have to worry about. If you’re going to go and just camp, read the Wasteland Basic Training stuff, pack lots of water and enough sticks to keep your tent down because the winds out there are insane. Other than that, just have fun.
Stephanie: Put effort into it, but it’s not as much as you think. I feel like it looks hard from the outside but it’s really like “what old thing can I make look older.” Just dirty up or spray paint your outfit. I think people get stressed out about looking up to par with these people who have done professional costume design. Like I would say with any event, again, just go be a sponge. There’s so much more now than our first year. There are camps that have their own private bar. Meet people, and just experience things and have a good time. Don’t commit yourself to anything your first year. Just go have fun.
Lu: Never let gatekeepers and debbie-downers make you feel like the work you put forward isn’t good enough. Never forget that you are on vacation and you’re supposed to have fun!
When they aren’t at Wasteland, Stephanie works as a communications specialist, Niki is an animal husbandry expert, and Lu is a general manager and brew assistant (working to become a brew master). But for five short days a year, they are The Dayglow Raiders, pillaging Wasteland City and having a damn good time doing it.
The tenth annual Wasteland Weekend takes place September 25th through 29th, 2019. To learn more about the event, and grab your tickets (this year’s event is almost sold out!), check out the official website.
