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Comment by lanstin | Hacker News Reader

Awesome documentary on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_%26_Pleasures_on_the_S...

John Waters narrating.

I took my family there in a trip we also saw Las Vegas, the Mt Palomar telescope, LA tar pits, and Palm Springs. It is too disgusting to be educational. At least when we went it stank to high heaven and we ended up with rotting fish flesh all over our pants. The dumb dog liked it. Everyone else uses it as a cautionary tale about letting me chose destinations for vacation. Getting 10x existing Lithium production would be great use of it.

There are some extremely good date palm farms north of it. It you like figs and dates, check them out.

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It is free to watch (legitimately) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TjGAWxL23c

It's a pretty unique/interesting watch.

Good work dad. One day they will appreciate it more.

You should have added slab city to the itinerary.

I drove around the Salton Sea, but didn’t know the history. Every little “town” around it was dead (although there were signs of restoration in progress). It’s an amazing American post-apocalypse experience, mad max in America style.

My curiosity is getting the better of me, why would you choose the Salton Sea as a vacation destination?

Historically, it was a pretty popular vacation destination.

> In the 1950s and into the 1960s, the communities expanded as the area's reputation as a resort destination and sport fishery grew.[18] Hotels and yacht clubs were built on the shore along with homes and schools.[19] Resorts in communities like Bombay Beach hosted entertainers such as Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys and Bing Crosby.[20] Yacht clubs held parties at night and golf courses provided recreation.[19] Many people came for boating activities such as water skiing and fishing as stocked fish proliferated.[21] Lakeshore communities grew as vacation homes were built.[15] More than 1.5 million visitors visited annually at the peak.[22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#Agriculture,_touris...

Was there ever any hope that the environment was sustainable or was it basically a real estate pump and dump?

The future could be calculated from a salinity chart and still people bought and sold expensive homes.

It could've lasted much longer if agriculture runoff hadn't poisoned the lake and killed all the fish. It would've lasted until enough evaporation had taken place to concentrate the salts and kill the fish.

Nearby Slab City is an interesting place to visit if one is into weird stuff. It's an old abandoned area that was once a military base that people have turned into a very unplanned squatter community. It's notable because there are some impressive community art pieces.

The place has managed to avoid accumulating the truly destructive squatter elements (e.g people with severe mental illness or substance abuse problems,though meth is a problem) because it is remote, there are no services, and it is dangerously hot during the summer time. Thus, it's pretty hard to live there without at least a modest RV and some planning, which has made it a bit more inviting and interesting than the usual homeless encampment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City,_California

Slab City is featured in the movie Into The Wild. The movie sends you through many of these out of the way places on Chris’s journey through the North American West.

With Starlink you will be able to have a few real cyberpunk squatters out there. Plenty of solar power too.

$100 bucks a month and 100W power usage might keep it out of most people's hands for a while.

That's $200 worth of solar panels? If Starlink and food is your only expense...

Too bad they don't have Starlink, but for water and food.

It is the second largest lake in California. I was new to California and just looking for interesting things. My quick googling was clearly insufficient. Tho it was interesting in some sense. Also it’s kind of in the area of the other places that were ok. Tar pits are awesome. Mt Palomar very cool. Las Vegas unique and notable if not actually my cup of tea.

OP replied with their reason, but I personally have visited the Salton Sea numerous times when in southern California. I find it truly fascinating. It has a very post-apocolyptic feel. From an ecological perspective it occupies a very unique niche. It's 90 miles form the nearest ocean and has large populations of oceanic birds such as Brown Pelicans.

Post apocalyptic is right. When we drove by it we also encountered a number of large ATV groups driving around, mad max style

My irrational hope is that parent is a GM executive, dragging their family along to the site of future business deals.

Like Ludendorff holidaying covertly to the fortifications at Liège in Belgium prior to World War 1.

Kids sour faced in the back seats wishing you worked at Disney.

Just west of it is Ocotillo Wells. You can rent a quad bike and tour around it for an afternoon. There is a fossil reef (oyster shells), an odd rock formation called the pumpkin patch, some mud with mysterious subterranean gas that bubbles out, and general desert scenery. A little further west is Anza Borrega. More desert, but there is a nice hike through the desert to a palm tree oasis which just sort of pops up out of nowhere. Outside the town are inexplicable (unless you read about it) huge steel sculptures.

I had my family stop by a few years ago because I had heard about it in a What-If? https://what-if.xkcd.com/152/

I wouldn't recommend it. The route we took was through a residential area. The neighbors did not seem like they wanted us to be there. We went to the water's edge, smelled the "objectionable," "noxious," "unique," and "pervasive" odor (as described by the US Geological Survey), looked at the shitty beach, and left. There's not much to do.

That's because it's slum tourism and residents hate being the unwilling cast of a sideshow attraction. "Oh honey, look at the locals inhaling the toxic plume wafting off this mess we can safely leave behind forever in a few minutes. Say cheese!"

There's a neighborhood by me which has earned a similar reputation and the residents have been known to tell slum tourists to leave.

Its gross. Don't do that.

I disagree. People who don't go to see the Salton Sea and its consequences are free to ignore it. But seeing it will put an likely-indelible memory in your head that will stick with you, and might give you some much-needed context about why people are fighting to do something about it.

The key of course, is to travel with respect. Bombay Beach is probably not a place for casual selfies and party times.

There is still beauty there, for people who can look past the unpleasant. A state visitor center with the whole wild history of the place. Beaches made out of pulverized tilapia bone and shell. Fields of obsidian. The zonked-out but earnest spirituality of Salvation Mountain. Date shakes from Westmorland. Endless sun.

Yeah, most people are there because they grew up there and its their home and most of them are too broke to leave. It's pretty gross. If you want to support the locals, go buy a few dates and gas.

I agree. I didn’t realize before we made the stop that there were still people living there. It felt gross for all the reasons you describe, plus the Salton air.

For the same reasons people may enjoy playing Fallout 4.

For me, it would be because of a great ("great" as in Ed Wood style film-making) movie "The Monster that Challenged the World" (even the title seems low budget).

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050722/

tl;dr "An earthquake in the Salton Sea unleashes a horde of prehistoric mollusk monsters. Discovering the creatures, a Naval officer and several scientists attempt to stop the monsters, but they escape into the canal system of the California's Imperial Valley and terrorize the populace"

Fitting in a thread about a documentary narrated by John ‘Pink Flamingoes’ Waters

My big question is, how are there still fish living there to die? I would have thought they would have died out years ago.

The documentary talks about this. The salton sea has one of the world's largest tilapia populations. Mass die offs occur, and the dead fish acts as fertilizer. This causes algae blooms to form, which provides an ample food source for the tilapia, and they have a population explosion, rinse and repeat. That said, it sounds like the water is getting saltier all the time, so eventually, it will just be a dead sea if things continue the way they are going.

Sounds like a machine to evolve salt and toxicity resistant super tilapia.

“The tilapia raised on Mars were taken from the Salton Sea population…”

Life... uh... finds a way

Then why did they die?

There are fish that can survive various levels of salt and other conditions. But if the conditions were right for them to survive, reproduce, etc, then why suddenly die? It seems like there could be a cycle since other said they experienced the same die off, but then what is the cause of the cycle and how do any survive to create the carcasses for the next die-off?

The salinity of the Salton Sea is very high. All of the fish that were introduced have died except for tilapia and the desert pupfish. They are the only fish that can tolerate the high salt levels.

https://speciesfishing.com/fishing-the-salton-sea/

There are periodic mass die offs. The most common is because of botulism.

Avian botulism, caused by bacteria, usually occurs in the spring time when the winds are very strong and push all of the old, deoxygenated water from the bottom of the Salton Sea to the top, depleting the oxygen available for the fish, causing them to die. As the fish die, the birds eat them, and get sick from contracting the bacteria. The birds then die and get feasted on by maggots which then infect birds feasting on the maggots. This can result in massive bird mortality. The species most affected by avian botulism are waterfowl and shorebirds.

https://wildlife.ca.gov/Regions/6/Salton-Sea-Birds

Thanks!

The fish and bird population has been in continuous decline. The lake used to get enough freshwater replenishment to maintain a relatively balanced salinity level and saltwater ecosystem. Now, the salinity is continuously increasing over time. The most hearty specimens are able to survive and reproduce, but much of the wildlife has died out. Large amounts of biomass soak in the saline solution, becoming pickled fish and birds, adding to the scent that others have commented on.

Collapse is not instantaneous. Nor is it all-encompassing. Even left unchecked for another 100 years, you would still find some forms of life present, but not the ones you see today.

It's boom and bust cycles. Big booms of fish when the conditions are right and the food is plentiful; big die-offs when the conditions swing the other way. There's always been enough fish that survive the bad times to spark the next boom.

except the dog. truly our best friend. pretended to like even that awful place. :)

She is a very sweet dog tho not very good signal for will humans like something.

These are my favourite dates: https://www.chinaranch.com/

In Tecopa (sorta) - right next to Death Valley.

Wow that font

Everyone else uses it as a cautionary tale...except your dog!

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