Can Anonymous really take down Facebook on Saturday? Will it even try? Here's a rundown of what the hacktivist collective says it has planned for Guy Fawkes Day.

Will Anonymous celebrate Guy Fawkes Day with a bang or a whimper? Will the global hacktivist collective attempt to bring down Facebook and Fox News on Saturdaythe deadline for those and other audacious "operations" some Anonymous factions have warned the world to expect on Nov. 5?

"Remember, remember the Fifth of November," goes the popular verse that tells the tale of Guy Fawkes and the failed Gunpowder Plot. Fawkes, who attempted to blow up England's House of Lords in 1605 and was hanged for it a year later, has become a sort of patron saint to Anonymous members, who often wear Guy Fawkes masks at public protests like Occupy Wall Street. Though Guy Fawkes Day has historically been celebrated in England for the unraveling of that plot, Alan Moore's graphic novel V for Vendetta and a later film of the same name helped make Fawkes an anarchist anti-hero in popular culture.

Anonymous being what it is, not all of the hacking operations supposedly being planned for Nov. 5 should be taken seriously. It may be that there's an Anonymous operation or two in the works for Saturday that hasn't been announced, and that seemingly impossible tasks like Operation Facebook are just distractions.

We'll know soon enough, but for now, let's examine the plans for Guy Fawkes Day mayhem that some Anons have publicized with an eye towards gauging how likely each of these digital gunpowder plots are to happen.

OPERATION FACEBOOK

Several months ago, Anonymous vowed to "destroy" Facebook on Nov. 5, stirring up and speculation about the audacity of that plan. The only problem with the story was that several reliable mouthpieces for the collective quickly announced that there wasn't a lot of there there with regards to Operation Facebook, something they've reiterated as Nov. 5 grows closer.

A few days after word started spreading about the plan to take on Facebook, the Anons who had initiated the operation , calling it an "awareness campaign" intended to call attention to the social network's perceived flaws like abuse of user privacy rather than an attempt to take it offline.

Chances of success: Slim. As an awareness campaign, the odds are pretty good that those behind Operation Facebook may get a few people to quit the site, but probably not enough to make much of a dent in the social network's massive user base. If the operation is in fact an attempt to hack the site or take it down, the chances of success are even slimmer.

OPERATION FOX HUNT

Another proposed Guy Fawkes Day operation, , threatens to either take Foxnews.com offline or actually take control of the Web site, if some of the more boastful Anons are to be believed. The reason Anonymous is targeting Fox News is that the cable news network has been consistently critical of Occupy Wall Street and associated protests. Anonymous has attached itself strongly to the global Occupy movement and doesn't take attacks on it very kindly.

Chances of success: Decent. Operation Fox Hunt seems much more likely to happen than Operation Facebook. Taking Foxnews.com down surely has a lot of support within Anonymous' ranks and would no doubt please many of the collective's Occupy allies. Anonymous has a long track record of taking down Web sites with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacksand many believe the group now has more sophisticated tools in its arsenal for such operations.

OPERATION CASH BACK

Like Operation Fox Hunt, this proposed operation is closely connected to the Occupy movement. But Operation Cash Back isn't a hack or a DDoS attack, it's simply a campaign by some members of Anonymous to encourage people to transfer their money from big banks to local credit unions on Nov. 5.

Chances of success: Tough to tell. It remains to be seen if Anonymous is able to rally regular people to go out and do something like this. The group is getting better at such core social protest activities as communications and turning out members for protests, but Operation Cash Back is another sort of animal entirely. Projects of this scope are usually attempted by organizations with the assets, on-the-ground personnel, and track record of a MoveOn.org. And picking a Saturday to urge people to conduct banking business, however noble the intent, strikes us as getting off on the wrong foot.