Four teenage girls walking home from school encounter a homeless man who reveals himself to be an anthropologist studying homelessness by living among the community, and he leads them into a hidden forest encampment to educate them about the `throwaway people` of society. The girls, who are part of a Navy-sponsored program studying cultural survival, discover parallels between the camp's parasitic economy and indigenous communities, while the psychic member of their group senses the research may be crucial for an impending societal collapse.