Project Mayhem

Firstly, you should know THE RULES OF PROJECT MAYHEM.

The goal of Project Mayhem is to teach everyone in the project that they have the power to control history (and to bring about the complete and immediate destruction of civilization).

Project Mayhem Meets on the following days:

• Arson Committee (Monday)
• Assault Committee (Tuesday)
• Mischief Committee (Wednesday)
• Misinformation Committee (Thursday?)

If you wish to be considered for Project Mayhem you must bring the following items at the time of you application. (NOTE: Bringing the required items does not guarantee admission to training, but no applicant will be considered without these items):

• Two black shirts
• Two black pair of trousers
• One pair of heavy black shoes
• Two pair of black socks and two pair of plain underwear.
• One heavy black coat
• One white towel
• One army surplus cot mattress
• One white plastic mixing bowl
• Five hundred dollars personal burial money

This was Chuck Palahniuk's analogue to the Cacophony Society in the book Fight Club and subsequently the major motion picture. The spirit of both organizations is the same, but Project Mayhem has a much more radical and violent approach towards promoting social disruption. The renaming of the group in question is a device often used by authors to incorporate a real world concept into a fictional work allowing the author to alter the concept as he sees fit without a backlash from those who are familiar with the original concept.

See: Finux.

United States men's national team soccer fans also have their own Project Mayhem.

To the Central American countries where the U.S. team plays most road World Cup qualifiers, American success in futbol must be prevented at all costs. Thus, all kinds of gamesmanship takes place. In Guatemala, for example, the game was moved to an inland city at high altitude with high temperatures and humidity, despite the fact that Guatemala City's stadium could hold 50,000 while the local stadium could barely hold 10K. The U.S. team was forced to stay at the one hotel in the town (the host team stayed elsewhere), and a local radio station set up its remote studio for an all-night block party outside the Americans' rooms the night before the game. At the game itself, the crowd was right up against the field, raining objects down on the U.S. goalkeeper all game (there was more toilet paper at the U.S. end than actual grass by game's end), throwing bags of urine at U.S. players, etc. Needless to say, the officials were intimidated as well.

Project Mayhem was conceived to make life nearly as difficult for these teams when they visit the U.S. Welcoming parties of sorts showed up at the airport in Columbus to harass the incoming Mexican team; their host hotel was found out, and the prank calling began at midnight pre-game, not to mention an endless sequence of pizza delivery attempts. Fortunately, US PMers have a rule not to cross the line of decency, and throwing objects at players on the pitch is frowned upon.