by D. Ritchey, as originally posted to Bison Survival Blog
A “biker” is a marauder on a motorcyle. A marauder is a plunderer, killer, slaver and rapist. So a “biker” in this text is one of the threats we should look for during anarchy. A biker will do what criminals do, and use the opportunities of anarchy to plunder. We should expect marauders from all angles, using every technology, appearing in many forms and strategies.
The biker is a powerful image in the American mind; we have a firm idea of what he is. The main image is the pack raider, made popular by films. The bisexual Marlon Brando wasn’t the true type to round up all the maidens and carry them off. But that’s what the American public is tuned to expect from bikers. The film “Easy Riders” is an exception to this genre; but it was meant to be political. You will note in these films, however, that the locals are always sheep. The few who step up are cut down. The bikers get what they want. Nobody can stop ‘em.
Which won’t be true. Those who decide to resist will find that bikers are easy to neutralize. We need to study the bikers more. Let me start by saying what they are, and not. They are exaggerated in several ways, hence over-rated. The ones we have to worry about are the 10 percenters; the five percent that have criminal minds, and the five percent who are sociopaths. Sociopaths aren’t necessarily criminals, but they will roll with criminals in order to carry out their destructions on society.
So that eliminates 90 percent of the bikers you see out there. The 90 percent are the wannabes and part timers. We might call them, unkindly, fantasists. They are misfits or carry grudges; they are weekend tourers, bar hoppers. Generally they are harmless because they don’t have criminal minds. In anarchy we can count on this 90 percent to melt away. For now, I focus on the 10 percent—the “white” gangs, the Harley-Davidson type. These will be primarily working class guys. They are very good with technics and machines, they are physical, many are military veterans; and they will be marginalized more than any other group. By marginalized I mean they will have been pushed to the edge of secure life by decades of economic streamlining and displacement by immigrants. They will hate the government and the upper middle class and rich. Some will be race killers, some anti-racist.
In conditions of anarchy our event horizons will shrink. Your subdivision, your frontage road, will be your world. Your ZIP will be way too big. If you arrange a defense force you will be prepared; you can drive marauders out. They will look for softer targets. They will thunder away.
Here I should ask, why would criminals choose bikes? It is the worst technology for crime in several ways. Bikes are unstable and they carry very little plunder. More on that later. But not all “bikers” will use a bike. Many will be sensible and use something practical—like a one ton van. On raids they might deploy bike outriders for security and recon. But of course some criminals will prefer to raid on their bikes. This will be the highest exercise of their ideal, the mounted outlaw. The frontier is strong in the American mind. It won’t go away; this is why gun control has been stalled for 20 years and will remain stalled. Gun culture is good for the prison and intelligence-military industries. Americans like outlaws and guns. Romantic as hell.
But we know that the serious criminals will drive four wheels, especially vans and trucks. On the other hand, the dick-cutters, not out for loot but pleasure, will ride bikes. There is a psycho-sexual connection with the “freedom” of the bike and the mounted raider fantasy. There always is in all-male outfits. But in criminal biker gangs there will be females, too, and some will be frightening psychopaths. Some will be under the influence of pornography.
On the positive side, bikes can outperform a police cruiser in a city environment. The biker who knows the alleys and shortcuts intimately, can lose pursuers, if he has a plan. A biker courier could bypass electronic surveillance, and move more easily and quickly than a car. Bikes are easier to hide, too. Bikes are incisive. But in open country, bikes lose. Street bikes don’t last long off-road.
From those lame-ass “biker” pictures we have a solid image: bikers rolling into town en masse and taking whatever they want, starting with your wife and daughter. Of course, the local population are always sheep. They don’t organize, they don’t shoot the bikers, who are easy targets. The image of the locals as sheep is lodged in the biker’s mind as well. Thus, both parties, in anarchy, are likely to act according to this model.
A “survivalist’s” response should be to act outside this meme. He will have built up a disgust for marauders and so be mentally prepared to terminate them. He will know when a gang is approaching. He will have put out videttes and a core defense force. He will have marked attack zones, and shoot the bikers down when they enter. A motorcylce is easily neutralized. If you are so foolish that you don’t have firearms, you could deploy caltrops, lubricants, balks, cables, burning oil, to stop them. You can throw rocks. Determined resistance will drive them off.
The birth-event of the biker is not well known: the 1948 Hollister “riot.” The media has exaggerated the affair. One text described them, “the pissed off bastards of Bloomington.” I don’t know where Bloomington is; California, I think. It doesn’t matter, because was a metaphor in the minds of those young men. What it meant to them, I don’t know. I am pretty sure that these veterans “rioted” against the consumerist cage that was being built around them. I suspect that a future as an economic widget horrified them. After all, they were just out of military slavery, for which they were rounded up and forced to fight in a cataclysmic war. They sensed what was coming.
Gelling this resistance, giving it details, inflating it, was Hunter Thompson’s book “Hell’s Angels” (1965). This is what implanted the “biker” meme that we hold now. Read it. And this is when the “altered state” phenomenon came into the culture. Alternative reality and the outlaw rider have combined into an escapist model. Can’t stand it any more? Ride away, take drugs to alter your perception. Get a gun. (This works for some people.) So you see that we are dealing with a complex issue. Bikers are criminals—but romantics, too. Should we expect they will have a code of ethics? Yes. Will it dispense mercy? I don’t want to test it.
In a prolonged anarchy (five plus days) the bikers will start amalgamating. This will be to access fresh territory (market); competition will quickly use up the local territory. The gangs will start killing each other off. Some will disintegrate and their survivors will join other gangs. There will be mergers and defections. The hybrids will be more efficient and some will endure. The process could take months. If LE reestablishes control, the hybrids might fight LE and defeat it; (I doubt it); else they will disband and desist, or go underground. At this point the biker marauders will no longer be a threat. So you see, the mounted raider will be the first sort of gang eliminated.
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