Matt Nissenbaum doesn’t want a typical, mundane birthday celebration on Jan. 14.

If everything goes as planned, about 5,100 participants will help him celebrate in the middle of downtown Chicago as soon as they hear an air horn sound at 5 o’ clock sharp. At that point, he said, the world’s largest snowball fight will commence at Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington St.

The Long Grove, Ill., resident’s plans are to break two world records on his 23rd birthday. Taking the mass-participation snowball fight record from Michigan Tech University-who currently holds the title with 3,745 people-will be the first task. The second will be in setting a flash mob participation record, which is not currently recognized by Guinness, where people quickly assemble, do something bizarre and then quickly disperse.

“Best case scenario, we all have a giant snowball fight in the middle of Daley Plaza,” Nissenbaum said. “Worst case scenario, I look like a fool and throw one snowball.”

But the determined plan to cause some “harmless mayhem” was not schemed overnight.

For the past few months, Nissenbaum and his friends have been spreading word of the event on Facebook like wildfire. It began with reaching out to a few interested friends who in turn convinced their friends to join as well. So far, the Facebook group has 3,347 confirmed guests with 3,992 claiming they might attend as of press time.

Setting up a way to count the more than 5,000 people expected to be packed in Daley Plaza is the biggest challenge, Nissenbaum said. He plans to have volunteers and friends dressed in orange vests distribute wrist bands as counters.

Guinness World Record officials require appropriate evidence and documentation after the timely filing of record-attempt request forms. Usually sign-in sheets and witnesses are required as well, said Jamie Panas, U.S. marketing assistant for the international record-keeping authority.

“With more than 1,000 [U.S.] record-breaking claims coming in per week, it gets very competitive,” she said.

Nissenbaum plans on raising money to fly out and accommodate an official Guinness World Record adjudicator to observe the event and have multiple video documentarians and photographers who have volunteered their services present, he said.

The self-proclaimed “Snow Capital of the World,” Michigan Tech University, also had big plans for their record attempts when they broke the snowball fight record more than two years ago, said Travis Pierce, the director of housing and residence life at the technological college in Houghton, Mich.

In fact, on Feb. 10, 2006, Michigan Tech students broke three world records during their annual Winter Carnival Festival, rolling the world’s largest snowball at 6.48 meters in circumference, having 3,745 people participate in a snowball fight and then having 3,784 people hit the floor to create simultaneous snow angels.

“It really brought our community together and became a very interesting town event,” Pierce said, describing the local school districts that bussed in students and the Houghton Fire Department, who hosed down the area where the giant snowball was assembled.

But it was also very well documented, he said.

A small plane took aerial photos of the thousands of students, teachers, faculty and community members as they conducted the record-breaking attempts in the university’s football field. While all the participants received numbered runners bibs, sign-in sheets documented each of them for both of the two-minute long mass participation records.

Preparation is also key, Pierce said, suggesting coordination with as many community members as possible will help give publicity to the record attempt in the Windy City.

A concern Nissenbaum said he has for his attempt is in obtaining permission from Chicago’s permit office with a fear of getting fined or even arrested. He said the Mayor’s office wasn’t too thrilled with the idea being held at Daley Plaza.

The request had been made but was “strongly discouraged” because it’s not “civic or cultural,” officials from the Mayor’s Office of Special Events confirmed.

Nissenbaum also said he can only hope participants don’t provoke police action.

“If I get a fine, I get a fine,” Nissenbaum said. “As long as nobody does anything stupid like put a rock in the middle of a snowball … or throw one at a cop, we should be fine.”

As for the possibility of snow shortage, he said, “We’ll have cars packed with backup snow in parking lots surrounding Daley Plaza.”