‘Doomsday Castle’ Patriarch Brent Sr. Discusses Prepping [Interview]
The Doomsday Castle finale episode airs tonight on the National Geographic network. Before the cameras stopped rolling for the final taping of the Doomsday Preppers spin-off, Brent Sr. spent some time chatting with The Inquisitr about his experiences on the hit reality show.
The prepper dad feels strongly about the importance of knowing how his brood of 10 adult children will respond when faced with marauding invaders, an off the grid existence, and a host of other possible scenarios spawned by nationwide civil unrest.The Doomsday Castle patriarch is a former Army officer who has undergone extensive tactical and preparedness training. Brent Sr. is concerned about the safety of his family should a natural or man-made disaster significantly alter life as we know it in America. Brent Sr. and some of his offspring were featured in NatGeo’s Doomsday Preppers series before being offered a show of their own.
IQ: What prompted you to begin building the castle?
Brent Sr.: In the beginning, I had no intention to build a castle, I had only bunker in mind. In 1999, the Y2K scenario made me become concerned that if the threat was real, it [Y2K] would affect the power grid. I built a 37-foot by 52-foot by 12-foot bunker. I had a storage tank sand blasted into a mountain, and blast doors installed. Since no event occurred, I sat back for a while. A couple of years later, I decided I needed to do something, I considered building a chalet. After thinking the idea through, I decided that I absolutely did not want a wood structure, I wanted something which could not burn. I opted for stone or rock, which couldn’t catch fire, and a roof built out of a non-flammable like concrete – so a castle just came about as the most defendable structure possible. We expanded the existing bunker, which encompasses about two-thirds of the floor beneath the castle. From 2002 to around 2012, as long as I had money, I added more stone to castle. About four or five times block masons came, there was so much work involved with completing all the necessary block works, including filling it with concrete and steel.
IQ: Why did you choose the Carolinas as the site of your castle and not your home state of Florida?
Brent Sr.: I actually lived in a city in the Carolinas for about 25 years. We have a lake house near the castle. I have a month or two of supplies stocked in a bunker-style area at the lake house. The family can retreat to the lake house and survive with typical creature comforts and relocate to the castle if a full-blown civil unrest scenario warrants. A complete breakdown of society will not happen immediately. It will hit the cities first, and then spread into the suburbs, and then ultimately into the country. The family will spend time at the castle once it is done, doing training, and other things. We still have about three years of work to do until it is completely finished.
IQ: How did your children initially respond to the project?
Brent Sr.: I knew what their reaction was going to be. What we did as part of preppers, laid the groundwork for the Doomsday Castle experience. I deeded everything into family trust, and set up a life insurance policy to finish and sustain the property for 100 years. I gave each of the kids five weeks a year, they can trade, swap and use their private time here however they like. So, if I die I have two trustees, one in each set of kids, and my brother, who will follow the laid out plans and finish the castle. I have some more real estate they can sell if they need the extra money for the project. I have a will for personal things and cash I want to give to each child. I get a kick out of people when they make comments about the castle building they see on TV, like ‘he is so dumb’ or ‘he doesn’t have this’ when they watch, they will see all and hear about everything involved and related to the building of the castle.
IQ: The family behaves as most any typical family would when crowded together for an extended period of time and forced to work in unison on a major project. The early episodes of the Doomsday Castle depicts the trials and tribulations for both the kids and you as a father. Did love and a shared desire to complete the off grid home prevail by the end of the season?
Brent Sr.: Yes and no. You see the kids change and the overall, I guess, closeness and wanting to do things for me — to be proud, and that really shows in the series. Even until the very end, the last show, we had a terrible break out there. The next episode will really show the breakup of the family real life. They actually almost made me have a nervous breakdown. I tried to stop them from filming, but the deal is, they [NatGeo] can film whatever they want. We are not the Kardashians, we are totally unscripted, but man we would have topped them easily a few times, when things got heated a few times. Two more family members will join in episodes six and seven. Two haven’t talked for two years, and one still refused to talk. We did get things to open up a little, but they’re still not close — some bad blood I guess, that seems to happen.
IQ: Have you experienced any problems utilizing solar power in a hilly region?
Brent Sr.: It is very, very, sensitive to the position of the sun. I do not have a natural tracking system, which would be nice. You set something like this up and think you are getting all this sun, but without shifting it manually minus a tracking system, it becomes useless. Our solar pump is direct, so it has to have voltage for pump to run. If I had a battery bank there we wouldn’t have that type of stoppage problem. We are in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so yeah, I didn’t realize how sensitive positioning would be and the need for a battery bank. Since I have been unable to sustain full power over long periods of time, I am going to bolster the off grid power system with a windmill. We have a windmill but I am going to set up a much larger one and upgrade the system. We seem to have continuous strong winds here in the mountains, so utilizing wind along with solar is a good idea. If I was in Florida, it would be a different story.
IQ: What advice would you give to families who want to teach preparedness skills to younger children?
Brent Sr.: The biggest thing to consider is most people have no real plan to sit down and hit upon the obvious things you can do to be prepared for daily issues, like a house break-in. Has your family really ever handled a fire, known what to do if approached when walking down the road, jumping in your car? All of which have a high percentage of actually happening. Unless Revelation comes true literally, most people don’t have to worry about storming a castle, there probably is something that’s going to happen, I’m just not sure from where. The point of the series is to show how easy it is to be overrun and have people take what you have. A little practice and taking some family time to plan will make a huge difference. Make it kind of fun, go out and get paint ball guns and things like that and do some activities with the family.
My kids evolved from no military training, folks will see and take the castle story to their own home, their castle, and see how important spend time with kids. Go out in the woods, go camping, and do scenarios so no one freezes during an emergency. Coming up we will do some Israel training and it is really cool. The training shows you how to instantly react to something, you absolutely cannot freeze and expect to survive. If someone breaks into your house and people freeze, that’s how you die. The instant you are tied up – you’re dead, you can’t afford to let them get a hold of you. Tell every family to learn sign language, the basics, so you can talk without talking. When it comes to firearms training, an educated child is so much better off than one who isn’t. A child trained to respect a weapon and to know how to be around one safely will not pick one up and think it is a toy while at a friend’s house, that is when tragedy happens.
IQ: The series is designed to both entertain and educate. With the time constraints often associated with doing a TV show, a lot of the training and project building tasks footage is likely lost on the cutting room floor. What advice could you offer to other preppers who want to embark on a similar project, especially those with younger children?
Brent Sr.: If you take nothing home from the show but the entertainment part, you will watch my family as they progress naturally, because I put them through the scenarios to teach them what they need to know to survive. I see the need for everyone to devise a similar plan which is tailored to suit the own lives. Everyone thinks they know what they will do in an emergency situation, but they don’t. Some minor hand-to-hand combat, planning escape routes, learning how to read maps, and questions and answer sessions with the family will help prepare everyone in case of disaster. I tried to do things in a fun way, that is what made my kids want to do it – once I changed the plans from a bunker to castle. Families could perhaps build a treehouse as a part of get together, or an outpost, or listening post of some type, make that a family project.
[Images Via: National Geographic]
