One morning, a high-rise in the city is vandalized. The exterior is painted over in a five-story smiley face, and its eyes are broken-out windows set aflame. The public tries to figure out what it could possibly mean, and who might be behind the damage. When the fires are put out, the smiley face’s dead eyes seem to stare down at the street. Newspapers suggest Project Mayhem is responsible, but the police have no real leads. The Narrator claims Tyler would know, but “the first rule about Project Mayhem is you don’t ask questions about Project Mayhem” (119). The Narrator explains the different committees within Project Mayhem: Assault, Mischief, Arson, Misinformation, Organized Chaos, and the Bureaucracy of Anarchy. He compares them to support groups. Each committee meets on a different day of the week, and Tyler assigns them a task to complete the following week that aligns with Project Mayhem’s goals.

One week, the men on the Assault Committee must pick a fight at random in public with the intention of recruiting new men into the movement. The Committee member must lose the fight to “remind these guys what kind of power they still have” (120). For the most part, the homework assignments consist of physical violence and routine vandalism, but some escalate into very public disruptions or endangerment of human life.