Apollo Helios blazed across the skies of myth in his flame-wheeled chariot and his sisters the Heliads turned to trees and cried amber tears when he met with tragedy. Ever since our kind first enslaved the horse, winging across the world in a conveyance of one kind or another has obsessed us. Even though I am a lowly pedestrian I have written numerous fantasies centered on the power complex that is Man’s relationship with the automobile. As with many aspects of our complex society it is part reality and part delusion.
From Cart to Car
The car is the direct lineal descendent of the chariot. Like the modern car the ancient chariot was used for war, racing, and the ceremonial procession of dignitaries. Unlike the car, it was not an everyday method of transportation.
The most famous conjoined twins in history, the Sons of Aktor, raced against Herakles in a chariot.
Achilles was brought to the battlefield and set down to rage across it via chariot.
Ramses was driven across the battlefield in a chariot, feathering foes with his composite bow.
Caesar was paraded in his triumph aboard a chariot.
Be warned though, from the groaning depths of sorrowful antiquity, the Sons of Aktor were mangled, and chariot racing was far more deadly for the driver than boxing was for the boxer. Consider, also, that Achilles did not drive his chariot, but rode in, and then dismounted and speared the lowly chariot drivers that served rival heroes with cruel impunity. Consider that Ramses’ favorite targets were the drivers of his enemy warlords. Be mindful also, that the war chariot was eventually driven from the battlefield by the lowly, lightly armed, foot soldier.
This lesson has echoed down through the ages.
Did Napoleon drive his carriage?
Did Rommel drive his staff car, or was he driven by an enlisted man?
Did Ike, Patton or Macarthur drive their jeeps, or did some disposable GI do it for them?
Cars in Urban America
The modern car may be used as a weapon—either a bomb or battering ram—but remains a light transportation device, a veritable deathtrap for its occupant. And, if you choose to use it as a weapon, your are still nothing more than the software, the guidance system.
The timeless lesson of the light transport’s vulnerability was clearly illuminated when the Baltimore City Police Department and the Maryland Transit Authority Police lost numerous vehicles to teens less well-armed than the barbarian infantry that drove the chariot from the battlefield in early antiquity. Indeed some MTA police are now taking legal action against the State of Maryland for not protecting them against the children of Baltimore City! One of their vans—which we might as well call a pussy wagon—is pictured burning as our Baltimore Travel Guide Icon on this site.
I personally have, in the streets, alleys and lots of Baltimore, been attacked, chased, and stalked from such automobiles numerous times, and have successfully defeated my enemies with a stone, a pipe, a brick, a hammer, a tomahawk—I kid you not, and those were two scared-ass hoodlums—a razor blade, a utility knife, and my lonely brain.
When some asshole in a car follows you down an alley at night and discovers that you have a brick and he needs to execute a K-turn while you cave his window and head in, then he is prone to surrender and even apologize for trying to run you over for firing him.
Perhaps my most memorable moment in consideration of the vulnerability of motorists in stopped cars was when I was walking north on Belair Road in 1992 with Mike, a crack dealer who had been working the corner across the street from the clothing store in Harlem where “Iron” Mike Tyson broke his hand on Mitch “Blood” Green’s face, when the non-fight went down. I had made this walk many a time and had been attacked and threatened by blacks. Mike, a black dude, told me that with him there I was probably safe from his brothers, but that now we had to worry about having the police called on us. Still a little naïve about the police and my fellow whites, I questioned him. Then, as we crossed Frankford Avenue before a dozen or so cars stopped at the light, he whispered, “Listen!” and it sounded like popcorn popping as all of those white people locked their car doors.
So, while seated within our magical plastic carpets, our ape brains do, at some level, process the fact that we are just sitting on our ass next to a potential attacker on foot. But for most of us our materialistic peasant yearning to be the big powerful man in the car overcomes us and we feel like the king of the road while it is moving around, forgetting that the only people who are worthy of the royal attribution in this world are passengers, with some peasant schmuck carting them around.
I have often been in automobiles with people who are not in any way effective combatants, who, while sitting in a light conveyance, will break bad with obvious criminals. Most of the time my rage at the driver for getting me in a fight at a traffic stop is mistaken by the other road raging asshole as intent to do harm and they speed off. Only one driver spared me, a girl named Megan, who I was dating when three red necks in a pickup cussed her out. She ignored them and then said, after they passed, “I wouldn’t do that to you. They just wanted me to give them an excuse to kick your ass.”
Megan, to date, is the only driver I have ridden with who understands that if they mouth off and get caught at a stop, than I, the passenger, will have to do the fighting.
The Purge Mobile
Until the Mondawmin Riots in April cops felt invincible one to a car. Then, when the riots kicked off one of the first film shots was of a handful of rock-armed hoodrats driving one pig from his car, a pig who all of a sudden found himself in the twig hut with wolves at the door. To resist the hoodrat offensive the cops had to dismount, just as war fighters do in urban environments when they don’t want to get roasted alive in their unarmored vehicles.
The only effective police use of vehicles was by the tactical squad who—even though they had an armored vehicle—walked beside it and used it as a mobile base of operations, not as a refuge.
As for motorists, 8-year-old hoodrats were stopping them with barricades made of dropped bicycles!
When I discuss cars as deathtraps I am not talking about Hummers, jacked up steel-frame Jeeps and monster pickup trucks. These are what you want as a minimum if you want to consider driving through enemy territory during a purge. In rural and suburban environments a car often offers a huge advantage. But in a built up urban area with hostiles on foot a car is a deathtrap, small pickups as well. The key thing to consider is where your head is as you sit behind that panel of light glass, at the height of the attacker’s hips, where his maximum force may be applied to whatever he is doing. I have spoken to large men who have dragged drivers out through windows. Then there is the vulnerability of trying to get out under duress, of standing under someone while they can kick the door shut on your shins.
Saving Your Ass On Wheels
Below I offer a minimum of advice for the motorist in an urban purge environment. I also encourage our online military readers to offer additional tips, or correct me, based on your experience operating light vehicles in urban threat zones.
1. Do not drive alone. The cops got jacked up back in April so bad because they were used to hunting fleeing individuals by using multiple single occupant cars to converge on their prey and then dismount and pursue on foot. For the month of May cops buddied up, which is the only sensible thing to do, and the military contractors—who actually know what the hell they are doing—drove 4 to a car. The Baltimore Pig Dee has since dispersed its officers one to a vehicle again, making them ripe for the next purge.
2. The most qualified combatant should be the passenger. Have your wife drive—hell that’s the only time white women get aggressive enough to be scary is when they are behind the wheel. Use that.
3. The passenger should have a short crowbar or tire iron or heavy flashlight at hand and be prepared to kick the door into the knees of anyone getting too close before braining them with the weapon. Someone is going to use that door as a weapon, and it might as well be you, cracker. The BPD chopper is hovering over my house again. When this shit breaks loose again it’s going to be nasty.
4. If there is a second combatant—who is only viable if this is a 4-door—place him behind the driver.
5. If you seriously expect to be in a position where you will have to drive through a purge zone, buy a hockey helmet with face cage—if it’s good enough for the PBR [Professional Bull Riders] it’s good enough for you—and keep it handy.
6. Do not, ever, go into an American city low on gas. Never use city gas pumps.
7. Keep a pair of safety glasses handy to put on incase of trouble.
8. Never, ever drive through an urban environment with windows down, or even cracked.
9. The passenger side door is the favored entrance point for a carjacker. Make sure yours is always locked.
10. If you are ever bumped by another car in an urban center, and you do not judge yourself capable of defeating the occupant[s] of that vehicle in hand-to-hand combat do not leave your vehicle to exchange information, but call the police and wait—forever most likely. The cops actually want you to be carjacked exchanging information rather than referee the thing when they could be making their monthly ticket quota.
11. In a stop situation the passenger-combatant, should call the shots, not the driver. Tell your girl, your wife, your son, your dad behind the wheel that when anything goes down and you are in the passenger seat that you are calling the shots, as your range of vision and tactical response will be better, and also not impeded by involvement with operating the machine.
12. If you have a woman behind the wheel who won’t melt down immediately, she is still likely to go stupid under stress and not be able to make decisions. So you should rehearse basic commands ahead of time. One word commands such as ‘reverse,’ ‘turn,’ ‘u-turn,’ ‘stop’ and ‘go’ should be made by you and obeyed when the stress level amps up.
13. Between the passenger seat and the door should be a steel extension weapon, such as a crowbar, a crowbar, or a crowbar, for use by the combatant in a dismount situation.
Ideally, for any trip through an urban purge zone, you have a mean little dude behind the wheel, a big aggressive guy armed with a tire iron and a crowbar in the passenger seat, and a vicious knife-armed creep seated behind the driver. If this seems crazy, imagine you are at work, you and three other motorists. To get through a purge zone and out of town you are better off all piling into the most durable 4-door car, or the biggest goddamned truck. Perhaps you drove to work and two co-workers did not. There is your foot support right there. Put the dishwasher in the passenger seat with a frying pan and the cook in the back seat with his butcher knife.
In a sane world it would be three decent men with firearms. But in most cities where purges are likely I suspect the government has already curtailed the rights of citizens to carry firearms to the extent that not one member of most conceivable pairs or trios of everyday people are likely to have a concealed carry permit. If someone does have a gun it certainly should not be the driver. I have no handgun experience or training, so would like to ask those of you who do, to post a comment as to where the man with a handgun should be in a car occupied by three or four civilians.
During the writing of this piece, between 1 and 3 p.m., I heard three different police sirens attached to speeding cruisers roaring down my street, separated by at least 15 minutes each. There were also two search passes by the chopper, and two ambulance scrambles. My neighborhood has had more police and emergency service activity than at any time I can recall since moving here in 2010. My best friend is bringing me a bunch of food this weekend as she is abruptly leaving town without even selling her house. She’s been biting at the bit to get the hell out of Harm City every since April. She is one of three personal friends of mine moving out this summer. Ajay is a doll and I will miss her, but this town is no place for a lady.
It is 3:11 as I post and the chopper is back and more sirens are screaming.
I am totally jacked up on a gallon of coffee and will be heading out this evening with my heterosexual umbrella of invincibility to research a major Poor Tour location, which should post tomorrow, 8/7/15.
Why do you specify a crowbar for the side passenger, and a knife for the passenger behind the driver?
If someone yanks the driver out of the car you're screwed, and I say that prick needs to lose a kidney ASAP. The knifer behind the driver is the guy that saves the driver from grappling attacks by slicing off fingers, slashing wrists and necks or stabbing.
If you are not highly trained in the use of a blunt extension weapon the crowbar is the longest, hardest, bone-crunching tool that you will be able to use without swinging it and with minimal risk of being disarmed. It is a tool and not classified as a weapon.
The simplest tool for most people to effectively use as a weapon is a claw hammer, but this is not a good weapon for avoiding the clinch against larger people.
The common item that people tend to think of first is the baseball bat, which is a terrible weapon if you are smaller or outnumbered.
Also, the crowbar is effective against cars. My roommate and training partner in 2013, Erik, used a crowbar to scarp cars for a salvage yard. It only took him 2 hours to turn a Buick into parts and scrap. The passenger is ideally your big strong aggressive guy and it would fall to him and whoever else was on the passenger side to remove obstacles.
James since you asked, if three people are riding in a four-door car with only one armed with a gun, the best place to position the gunner would be in the back seat. That way the “tail gunner” can shoot to both the left and right sides, through the rear window and even partially cover the front without risking hitting either the driver or the front passenger. One of the problems that will arise if the front passenger, the “shotgun rider”, is the only one with a gun is that he will not be able to fire his gun out the left side windows without touching it off right in front of the driver’s or rear passenger’s face. That will at least temporarily blind, deafen and stun them if they aren’t wearing eye and ear protection. The only way for the shotgun rider to avoid doing this when engaging targets on the left would be to shoot over the top of the roof, which of course will expose him to attack in a number of ways. The best kind of motor vehicle to have in such a situation will be one with a turret or a sun roof that will allow the gunner to stand up and cover all sides of the vehicle and then duck down behind cover when objects are hurled at him or shots are fired at him. The down side is that an open sun roof can leave you vulnerable to having bricks, firebombs or grenades tossed into the passenger compartment of your vehicle, so be wary of that. Besides the hockey/lacrosse helmets and the safety glasses it will be a good idea for everyone in the car to be wearing earplugs if you expect to be firing guns from inside. It is very likely that the muzzle of a gun will be close to someone’s ear when it is fired from inside the car during the chaos of battle. You will not believe how loud and how painful it will be to have a gun go off near you in a confined compartment. The cheap disposable foam earplugs will be good enough to protect you and you can easily buy enough for everyone. The Sonic or 3m Peltor Combat Arms ear plugs, while much more expensive, will be better for individual purchase since they shut out only the loud damaging noises and allow you to hear normal speech clearly. Naturally if you have Kevlar body armor it would be a real good idea to wear it while taking a Sunday drive through the combat zone.
For further study check out the 1986 Miami Massacre. It serves as a pretty good catalogue of many of the things that can go wrong when firing guns from inside moving or stationary civilian cars. Like when the veteran FBI agent who was the best shot on the team got his glasses knocked off his face when his car collided with the perp’s vehicle which apparently impaired his ability to hit what he was shooting at in the ensuing gun battle. To be fore warned is to be fore armed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout
bing.com/videos/search?q=miami+massacre+1986&FORM=VIRE3://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=miami+massacre+1986&FORM=VIRE3#view=detail&mid=DE076931C05E338773ECDE076931C05E338773EC