And Now, Something Really Wild

As Robot Wars got underway, the buzz among many of the spectators was not of the carnage unfolding in front of them, but of a group that stages clandestine robot shows where “things get really crazy.” Judging by the descriptions of people who said they’ve seen them, the spectacles put on by San Francisco-based Survival Research Laboratories makes Robot Wars pale in comparison.

“Oh yeah, those guys use road kill in their shows. They tie dead pigs on the front of their machines,” said Peter Abrahamson, a contender in Robot Wars who has attended SRL shows. “They’ve got flame throwers and huge machines; we’re talking major destruction.”

A Web site for the group states that SRL was founded in 1978 as an organization of “technicians dedicated to redirecting the techniques, tools and tenets of industry and science away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare.” The group, headed by founder Mark Pauline, has staged more than 40 “mechanized presentations” since its founding, according to the Web site. SRL’s official site is https://www.srl.org.

One such event, which reportedly took place in the mid-1980s in San Francisco, employed “shock wave cannons” (which direct the blast from a stick of dynamite) and a “fluorescent tube gun” (firing tubes at 200 mph from its eight barrels) and detonated “leaflet bombs” over the crowd, which rained a message that began “Radiate influences of despair and defeat wherever you go.”

If Robot Wars is the techno-nerds’ competitive sport, SRL shows are seen by some as the community’s performance art. “I have a lot of respect for Pauline’s art and integrity,” said Marc Thorpe, the founder of Robot Wars. “Pauline is a beacon of anarchy.”

Abrahamson agrees it’s art. “They are making a statement,” he said. “I’m just not sure what it is. I’m not sure how to interpret it.”