#desertpunk

"Dust carries the memory of extinct machines. We archive the decay, to decode what replaced life" - Earthpunk Protocol

Part 1 of a 3 Video Series

In this episode we see the incredible work that Brad Lancaster and his community are doing to make the Dunbar Spring Neighborhood in Tucson a cooler, more pleasant and human-friendly place to live by using plants as infrastructure and creating a food forest using native plants that are adapted to deal with the desert heat perfectly because they evolved there.

"Punk" as a suffix is inherently about anti-establishment. Therefore:

Cyberpunk -> Mega-corporations control the media and hoard resources and anyone not consuming mindlessly is a threat

Desertpunk -> Water is hoarded by either petty warlords or mega-corporations and the hero is often someone fighting or existing outside the system. Mad Max comes to mind but Tank Girl also. Basically, any setting where drinking water is treated as crude oil and all the conflict that entails.

Oceanpunk -> Not quite the opposite of Desertpunk. Instead of arid deserts, it's vast swathes of ocean with little islands (floating or stationary). An authoritarian regime controls or wishes to control the waters and its inhabitants. Land can be a resource or ancient technology from the "old world" can drive the conflict. One Piece, Waterworld, Flapjack, any setting where boats are used frequently as transportation and the setting. I wanna see more submarines in this genre.

Hi! Thanks for getting in touch. Just wanted to preface this by saying I don’t live in a desert, I never have lived in a desert, and I don’t know a lot about deserts (I come from one of the rainiest places in Europe lol). So I may not be the best person to ask.

That said, I have seen some cool stuff floating about. The whole liquid trees debate that circulated recently was a good example - obviously these are redundant in a temperate climate where trees can grow, but in a desert a machine that captures carbon and generates electricity using algae would be pretty useful! I have also heard of various anecdotal stories of people greening or farming deserts, though I’m a bit more iffy about that - should we be changing the ecosystem?

Large swathes of uninhabited desert, with their constant hot sun, could be really good places for big solar parks, though, and the panels in turn could provide shade for plants and animals.

I’d recommend reading up on the lifestyles of indigenous and traditional desert societies across Africa, Asia and the Americas, looking at what technologies they use to keep cool, supply drinking water, etc. Lots of desert plants can have edible or medicinal functions that people don’t know about, so looking into them would be pretty neat - I know people have talked about vegan cactus leather and stuff though I worry that could become mass-commercialised and damage the desert.

The Northern Kiithid are acting up again...