INTERVIEW: One man prepares for the worst with his ‘Doomsday Castle’

Brent Sr. doesn’t like giving his last name. He also doesn’t want people to know the location of his castle.

Brent is star of the new Nat Geo series, Doomsday Castle, which looks at his quest to build a fortress that will withstand any number of apocalyptic scenarios.

“I think if you’ll notice even on Doomsday Preppers, the number one thing that people are preparing for is either economic breakdown or something that could end our system,” Brent said recently during a phone interview. “They’re feeling that the U.S. is not as strong as it used to be, or it’s kind of coming apart at the seams. … We just go, hey, we’re the strongest nation in the world. Everybody’s got it under control, and now they’re seeing these little fragments breaking apart. Now with that they’re also seeing our vulnerability.”

Denying that he’s alarmist or paranoid, Brent said he has a life completely separate from his castle project. Instead of focusing all of his time on prepping, he adds improvements in increments. Plus, Brent lives and works in Florida, while his new doomsday fortress is located in the mountains of the Carolinas.

“My life is in Florida, but my preparation is a lifestyle that I live by,” he said. “I mean I’m not paranoid. I have a job I got to go to. I have other things I have to do.”

His prepping is built around a concept called the “signs of the times.”

“They’re not conspiracy theories,” he added. “They’re just scenarios of things that could happen.”

One particular scenario that he’s aware of involves the potential for solar flares and the disruption of the electrical grid. He cited an event that allegedly took place in 1859 that if it “would have happened today it would have fried literally everything we have in terms of electronics.”

Brent said similar events take place all the time and narrowly miss the earth, so he began to think of the possible repercussions. For the record, he said the world will never end. However, life as we know it may end, and that’s what he and his family are trying to anticipate. “We will have to readjust, and we don’t know how many people it’s going to affect or how many people might die from any one of those effects,” he said.

The solar flare scenario, Brent said, could stop all electrical equipment and everything containing a computer chip, including cars and airplanes.

“Anything that was made after 1975 will stop in its tracks,” he said. “Well, then it’s the chaos that follows, and we were so close to home when we saw Katrina, of the magnitude and the area that it covered, and what human beings turn into when they have no food and their baby is crying … and they’re sitting there and they don’t know what to do. And if it’s not bad enough you lose the electric system, but what happens on top of that if your car doesn’t start that morning or you have no phone service and cannot communicate? Can you imagine the chaos? Can you even just imagine what would happen within five days? It would be a … blood bath.”

The idea for the castle actually has its foundations in the Y2K scare of 1999. To prepare for a possible computer problem, Brent began building a bunker.

“It’s a God-given obligation and responsibility for us to protect our children no matter what age they are if we have the knowledge and wisdom beyond their years,” he said. ” If I knew that someone might break into my house, and I did nothing to protect my family, woe is me. … I had the knowledge. I said, you know, this could be real. So I didn’t build a castle; I built a bunker. I built an underground bunker of immense proportions because I didn’t know.”

The bunker was not simply made to withstand the breakdown of the electrical grid. Brent made the structure earthquake-proof, solar-flare-proof and fire-proof. The dimensions were enormous: 32 feet by 57 feet by 12 feet high with 12-inch reinforced steel in concrete walls. The roof was a foot of concrete, meant to cover two bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, bathrooms and complete water supply system.

The bunker was ready for Y2K. And then something surprising occurred.

“Nothing happened, and I got laughed at a little bit,” Brent said. “I sat back for a few minutes … actually, I sat back a few years, about four years as a matter of fact and really didn’t do anything. I says, wow. You know what, I got this place, and it’s a beautiful location. I’m going to go ahead and move forward and build something. So I was thinking about building a house on top of it, and I realized anything I make out of wood or anything, it was too susceptible to fire. They’d never get a fire engine up there. And whatever my investment was, I’d end up with just another bunker and everything else would be gone. So I started thinking what structure can I build.”

This is when the idea of a castle came into his mind. With the Nat Geo cameras rolling, Brent and his family built a structure that could withstand a 50-caliber bullet, which Brent said is probably the highest caliber, non-military bullet available. The castle’s roof is basically flat but on a slight slope to collect rain water. It’s is also built on top of the old bunker, which has subsequently been expanded to include five bedrooms.

“I was my own general contractor, so I didn’t hire anybody to do much of the work. I did a lot of the design myself. I had to go out to get certifications because I’m not a certified engineer per say in construction. … What would appear to be tremendously expensive, I guess I’m still under a million dollars including the 50 acres of land and everything.”

The structure still needs windows, doors and some inside work — totaling roughly $250,000 in additional expenses, Brent said. The goal is to finish the doomsday castle in three years.

His prepping doesn’t end there. To get from his home state of Florida to his fortress in the Carolinas, Brent has two trucks decked out with top-of-the-line gear, including wenches, a transfer tank with a pump, conversion kit to switch from gasoline to propane, hoses, water pumps, spark plugs and a small purification system. If the trucks fail, and he needs to continue from Florida to the castle on foot, he has bags filled with items necessary to walk 40 miles a day.

Brent Sr. is undoubtedly prepared.

“I believe God has given me and every parent an obligation, a responsibility to take care of their family way past after they leave the house,” he said. “As long as I have the wisdom, the knowledge more than they have, and I have the passion to make sure that I can do everything I can, I will be held responsible if I have that knowledge and don’t use it.”

On his epitaph, Brent would like a simple phrase: “Here was a guy who tried to do the right thing, and he tried to help people.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

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