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DAWN-MARIE: This time on Doomsday Castle...
BRENT SR: I want to set something up
so that people don't even get close to this castle.
And whatever is in its path, it'll kill 'em.
BRENT II: I've never been hunting in my life.
Holy [bleep]. Ah!
ASHLEY: I'm trying to show you
the smarter way of doing everything.
LINDSEY: I'm sorry, I believe you're a bartender.
BRENT SR: This could be the greatest thing we've ever done,
but it could be a disastrous explosion in all directions.
DAWN-MARIE: Carl!
BRENT SR: I am a prepper.
I believe the end-times are near,
and few will survive the chaos.
I've called on my children to help me finish my life's work--
a massive fortress to protect us.
I will do whatever it takes
to ready my family for the coming dark ages
and complete our doomsday castle.
Rise and shine, time to get up.
New day, new project.
LINDSEY: OK, OK, OK, OK, OK, we're up!
ASHLEY: Stop breaking our room.
[banging on door]
BRENT SR: Wake up. ASHLEY: Is this a boot camp?
BRENT SR: Okay, come on out, let's go, come on,
you've had plenty of time to get ready.
We're not in the city anymore.
We don't get up at 10 and 12 o'clock
or 1 in the afternoon, okay?
You all committed to this.
We've been up here for a while,
and we are far from being prepared for the end-times.
Some of my kids don't understand
how close we are to complete chaos.
We need to double down on our efforts
to ensure we're ready for anything that comes our way.
From widespread famine
to desperate starving mobs storming the castle,
if we can't rise to the challenge, we die.
We're going to have boiling MREs this morning.
Brand new, less than 6 months old.
BRENT II: I don't think that makes it much better.
It's still crap in a bag.
BRENT SR: I want you to be in the mind-set of having no food.
MICHAEL: MREs are meals ready to eat.
It's what the Army uses, it's what the Navy uses.
I mean, when it comes to survival,
you either have it in you or you don't.
I deal with it 'cause I have nothing else to eat.
When I'm hungry, I'm going to eat.
BRENT SR: We're not building a model airplane.
This is not rocket science.
MICHAEL: We're figuring it out, Dad.
BRENT SR: There's a chemical reaction
that's going to happen in a pouch.
[makes noise]
[laughs]
BRENT II: If I would have eaten that MRE,
I would've puked on the spot.
I want to eat some real food and some good meat.
ASHLEY: That's so gross.
BRENT SR: We have enough food to last for a year.
What happens after the year is up?
You laugh about these MREs,
so any ideas that you come up with that we can do now
is going to ensure our future.
Being out here, I'm looking for ingenuity.
I guess my children don't realize,
I'm not going to feed them anything but MREs
until they come up with a food supply that they can provide.
What would you do if you were the only person left?
How would you survive?
MICHAEL: Now, I want to see something out of you here.
My dad asked me and Brent to go find food.
These woods are full of small and big game,
so me and Brent are going to go hunting.
But first I got to bring Brent up to speed.
[grunts]
BRENT II: You might have do that.
MICHAEL: No, no, no, you got to learn how to do it.
If you're gonna shoot it, you got to learn how to load it.
I grew up prepping. Brent hasn't.
My dad started around Y2K, and, you know, by that time,
Brent was 29 and I was 7.
Brent needs to learn a little bit.
He needs to learn how to hold a weapon.
He needs to learn how to take something out if need be,
if we ever need him to.
Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. There you go, perfect.
BRENT II: I've never been hunting in my life.
I'm not an outdoorsman, I'm not a woodsman,
I'm not handy.
But you put me in front of an animal,
and I'll tell ya, I'll kill it.
And I'll bring it back
and I'll throw it right in front of my dad
and show him this is what we are eating tonight.
Let's take out this creepy zombie.
A little short.
MICHAEL: Most hunters use guns.
But when you're prepping, it's dangerous to depend
on anything that's mass-produced, like bullets.
A crossbow would be a great weapon to hunt with
because one bolt can be reused for years.
It's highly accurate and extremely quiet,
which means we can hunt around these woods
without giving away the position of the castle.
BRENT II: Boom!
MICHAEL: When it comes to hunting, I can't fail.
If we were ever in that real scenario,
that real situation, there is no coming back,
or your family starves.
Right through the eye, dude.
Blew the bleep out of that zombie.
BRENT II: Yeah.
BRENT SR: Today I'm taking Dawn-Marie
to survey the roads around the castle.
We're higher than 1,000 feet above the main road,
so we do have that protection.
But if this were the end days,
there are crazy people out there,
they will stop at nothing to get to us.
Our road is one way in and one way out.
That is the lifeline of this castle,
but it's also our Achilles' heel.
Intruders on foot aren't going to be an issue.
They're going to have to climb steep cliffs.
Intruders in vehicles, now that can be an issue.
So while my kids are trying to figure out
how to keep food coming into the castle,
I'm thinking about how to keep the hungry marauders out.
If they see a gate,
that means there's something behind that gate.
DAWN-MARIE: We have to find a way to protect our family
before somebody finds a way to protect their family
by killing us.
BRENT SR: Desperate people do desperate things.
DAWN-MARIE: Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?
BRENT SR: And they will do anything to get to us.
DAWN-MARIE: Me and my dad are driving along these roads,
and he starts going faster and faster and faster.
Dad, I'm being serious.
Dad, Dad, Dad! Stop! Stop!
BRENT SR: That's what I mean.
That took 17 seconds to get from the lower gate to here.
We can't allow that.
DAWN-MARIE: Just like my dad.
He needs to drive through a gate to prove something.
BRENT SR: If you think back to the old days,
there were no guns and cannons, it was hand-to-hand combat.
It didn't take people long to realize
it was better to fight people from a distance.
So they invented the catapult,
and it would hurl anything from stones and rocks
to burning embers
and even diseased human carcasses with the plague.
I want to set something up
so that people don't even get close to this castle.
We're going to keep them at bay.
This arm is going to be 12 feet long.
We're going to have to have a counterweight,
and I figured it's going to need to be about 400 pounds.
There are different kinds of catapults
that get their energy to launch projectiles in different ways.
We're going to build a trebuchet,
which is a kind of catapult that uses a counterweight
to harness its energy.
And then when we release it,
it's going to just throw that thing,
and we're hoping we can go the length of a football field.
DAWN-MARIE: I'm really happy that my dad chose me
to build this catapult with him.
This is gonna be our first line of defense against intruders.
Something that protects our children, our grandchildren,
and even our great-grandchildren.
I just hope we can pull it off.
BRENT SR: Just imagine somebody coming in a car
and they see this massive 5-pound rock
or something coming.
I mean, it's not like a bullet.
This'll be like a tank.
LINDSEY: After having MREs for breakfast this morning,
Ashley and I started talking
about what would be the best food source
that would provide food year-round.
So we're off to get chickens
because they lay eggs just about every day.
One simple egg is extremely valuable.
They're a great source of protein,
and they're actually pretty easy to preserve.
ASHLEY: I heard you sell chickens.
RONNIE: Yes, ma'am. We sell some from time to time.
ASHLEY: My mind was thinking,
how can I get some normal breakfast?
Once they're laid, can I immediately go grab them
and make scrambled eggs?
RONNIE: They're good to go.
As soon as they...
You can get 'em and gather 'em up just any time.
They usually last for about a month.
LINDSEY: When Ronnie took me and Ashley
into the gated area of all the chickens,
I asked him at first if he could show me
how to get a chicken,
but he was like, "Nope, just go get it."
RONNIE: Just kind of walk them up one corner,
and then you're just gonna have to try to grab the leg.
[screams]
ASHLEY: These guys are fast, dude.
RONNIE: There you go.
LINDSEY: Yeah!
Woo, first chicken!
RONNIE: Little head in.
LINDSEY: Oh, that's not so bad.
Ha! Got it.
ASHLEY: It's like a chicken stampede going on.
I mean, it was so many of them.
I didn't realize how fast they were.
Don't catch him, don't catch him,
don't catch him, don't catch him.
LINDSEY: Get it! Ashley!
You keep letting it slip through your fingers!
She just kept missing the chicken
by like a couple of inches.
[breathing heavily]
She was getting a little upset and a little annoyed
that I was catching the chickens before she was.
ASHLEY: I'm done, I'm done with these chickens, man.
I can't breathe.
LINDSEY: You feel successful?
I'm like the chicken whisperer.
BRENT II: Alright. Perfect.
Alright, I'm ready to go to war!
MICHAEL: Initially the plan was to go out
and find something small like a squirrel,
but we're gonna step up our game and hunt for a boar.
These woods are overrun with them.
We're going to try to lure them with homemade bait
made from chicken feed, grape juice and beer.
It's going to send off this kind of aroma
that these boar are just gonna be so attracted to.
BRENT II: That's what that sour smell is.
MICHAEL: Yeah.
BRENT II: Have you ever hunted boar before?
MICHAEL: I've never caught a boar, I've gotten pretty close.
Boars are a little bit more dangerous than pigs.
I mean, they're fast, they're violent.
We got to take it out quick.
BRENT II: That's kind of scary
that there's these big *** animals like that
are roaming around these mountains.
There's no way in hell we're gonna kill
a big, black, hairy, nasty boar with a crossbow and a knife.
BRENT SR: When we came through that gate
and busted it to smithereens,
it only took 17 seconds to get up to the front of our castle.
I need something to block this road.
This is an ideal tree.
We're gonna have to notch this on one side,
we're gonna put an explosive right in the notch.
Before we can even start to build the catapult
we must form a blockade
where we will stop the enemy dead in their tracks
in one particular spot where I have them confined.
Now we got to set the explosive on this tree.
We're going to put it in here.
Just enough to hold it in place.
And when this thing goes off,
it's going to split this tree and create a kill zone
where it's going to stop anybody that comes through here.
The plan is to rig a few trees
in this particular part of the driveway
with a remote-controlled firing device.
So when we see the invaders
we can cut off their path immediately
and destroy them with the catapult.
If we can't stop them coming up the driveway, we're dead.
Go get in the car.
DAWN-MARIE: I'm thinking, we're done building this kill zone,
and that we're just gonna be headed up to the castle
to build this catapult.
[explosion]
I hear this huge explosion, a tree crashing in front of me.
Dad! Dad! Dad!
BRENT SR: That was the perfect test.
When I detonated the device, the tree came crashing down
and stopped Dawn-Marie dead in her tracks.
DAWN-MARIE: I swear you do this every single time!
I was terrified.
Forget the end-times.
Right now I'm just trying to survive my dad's demonstrations.
BRENT SR: Now that we figured out
how to stop intruders in our kill zone,
we can actually start building the catapult.
Alright, just tap it part of the way.
DAWN-MARIE: My dad is such a hoarder.
We were able to find a chassis for the base of our catapult,
all the wood in the world that you would need,
2x4s, 4x6s, 8x9s.
I don't even know, but he had it all.
BRENT SR: We are trying to build a precision weapon.
If we get this side dimension a quarter of an inch off here,
100 yards down, it's going to be 5 feet off or 10 feet off.
To throw a projectile of 5 to 10 pounds,
our counterweight is going to have to weigh
at least a quarter of a ton.
This frame has to withstand the tremendous force
of all that weight swinging back and forth.
DAWN-MARIE: So we are going to reinforce all of this?
BRENT SR: We're going to start reinforcing
when we find where the weak points are.
DAWN-MARIE: Then we'll make it work.
We have to make it work.
LINDSEY: Let's find something.
We're back with the chickens,
and now we need to find somewhere for them to live.
Most people would go out and buy a ready-made coop
from a farm supply store.
But we came to this castle to learn to live in a world
where there are no stores, no conveniences.
We've got to make this on our own.
ASHLEY: You know how they like to walk up things?
They can walk up into here.
LINDSEY: But what hens like to do
is they like to walk up into their section so...
ASHLEY: Oh, they can be up in here.
LINDSEY: I don't think this way is good.
Your way doesn't make sense.
There's a lot of personal issues between me and Ashley
that caused us to drift away a bit.
I remember being younger,
and I followed her around like a puppy dog.
I wanted to be just like her. I mean, she was my older sister.
She was the first one to move out of the house.
She was about 16.
She kind of deserted the rest of the family.
I was left to figure everything else out on my own.
In her eyes I think that there's nothing more that irritates her
than having her younger sister ask her to do anything.
ASHLEY: Let's pretend in a real-life scenario,
doomsday, we would die,
but when I tell you what I think,
you immediately shut it down.
LINDSEY: OK, so what's your idea of getting the egg?
ASHLEY: My plan was very simple actually.
I see pantyhose, I see an egg, and I see an opening.
That equals an egg collector.
See how gentle that is?
LINDSEY: Ashley, you're holding it up like that.
ASHLEY: Come on, please use your imagination here.
LINDSEY: I am using my imagination,
but you're not holding it right.
ASHLEY: The point is is that it will work.
BRENT II: You cocked and ready?
MICHAEL: Me and Brent are going hunting.
My dad's challenged us to find other sources of food
for the castle.
So the plan is to bring home a wild boar.
It's almost like things have been running through here.
You see the mud right here?
BRENT II: Yeah.
MICHAEL: It's from a boar.
It's when they get all hot, they roll around in the mud
and they just brush up against these trees.
This is a boar trail for sure, dude.
So we're thinking they head up here.
BRENT II: Screw with running around the woods, OK.
We need a trap.
I see a trail right here.
If this is a trail where animals go, then we need to dig a pit,
cover it up with some foliage, put some sort of alarm on it.
Uh, we can come down here and finish him off.
Michael wants us to traipse all over this mountain
with a crossbow looking for a boar.
I'm not getting into hand-to-hand combat
with a crazy pig.
Now, I watch all these Vietnam movies,
the VC puts all these punji pits
all over the place to catch humans.
The way to catch a boar is to dig a big pit.
Now that's smart hunting.
MICHAEL: Brent's a city boy, it doesn't surprise me
that he'd rather dig a hole and hide.
He's too scared to hunt.
I decided to let him start digging that hole.
I'm going to make us some spears.
BRENT II: There is so much rock and freaking...
MICHAEL: No one said it was going to be easy.
BRENT SR: Perfect.
Put it right there. Go ahead and put it through.
Bring it through.
The catapult has a lot of moving parts.
We're concerned about stability.
The first time we really see anything
is when we put the axle in to hold the throwing arm.
Ah, that's pretty good. Nothing's broken.
DAWN-MARIE: I think it will be strong,
because it's not completely secure yet
and it's able to hold me, and I feel pretty safe up here.
BRENT SR: Now that we know the axle is secure,
we're ready to attach the throwing arm.
Let's kind of get it in the general position.
This western cedar won't rot, and it's very light.
And we want this as light as possible
because if it were heavy it would be very slow in moving.
This western cedar will have
a 500-pound counterweight bolted to it.
If it's not strong enough, it will snap in mid-launch,
and possibly kill us instead of the intruders.
Put it down. Put it down.
Alright, now, now come up here.
Just push across.
Just a minute here. Hold on. Right there a minute.
No, no!
DAWN-MARIE: Stop, stop, stop! OK.
BRENT SR: You weren't supposed to let the pipe...
DAWN-MARIE: I...
BRENT SR: I understand. Alright, we got to...
DAWN-MARIE: Maybe we should do this first.
Building this catapult, somebody could really, really get hurt.
BRENT SR: Just a minute.
DAWN-MARIE: It would be one thing
if I had step-by-step instructions...
Just don't want that to fall on you.
BRENT SR: It's not going to fall.
DAWN-MARIE: ...but all of this is coming out of my dad's head,
and at this point I'm not even sure if it's going to work.
DAWN-MARIE: Me and my dad are building a catapult
in case somebody were to storm our driveway
trying to get whatever they can get their hands on.
Most people have hoses in their front yard, we have a catapult.
So while my dad is securing the throwing arm,
I'm going to try to see if I can find a basket
to fill with projectiles such as rocks,
Molotov cocktails, and fireballs.
No one's coming up our driveway.
BRENT SR: We got two possibilities now.
We can put something in the upper part,
we can put something in the lower part.
The basket that Dawn-Marie found really wasn't a basket,
it was a magazine rack.
Just think, as it's coming up,
we might want that thing to release.
Can you see that?
Our catapult has been designed to function
in two separate ways.
One with a basket that can send a number of projectiles
when people are getting relatively close.
The second function is to add a sling for long-range defenses.
It's going to hurl a heavy projectile
straight into the kill zone,
and it's gonna do unbelievable damage.
DAWN-MARIE: This is possibility number one,
unless I find something better.
BRENT SR: It's crazy enough to work.
MICHAEL: Right now my focus is finding different ways
of getting food for my family in the end of times.
My plan was to track and kill a wild boar,
but Brent's getting obsessed with this trap
where he's just going to dig a pit
and sit around and wait for it.
Since we're spending all day on it,
I have to bring this idea to reality
so we at least have a fighting chance
of bringing home some meat.
It's got to look good.
It just can't be too tough of wood
'cause he's got to fall through it.
BRENT II: We're talking, we're going for big game.
I want a 400-pound elephant in this thing.
MICHAEL: We'll just cover it all up
with branches and leaves, whatever.
Starting to look like a real trap!
BRENT II: I had my pit.
I really feel like my pit's going to work.
Golly, this stuff reeks.
We're going to stink up the whole woods.
Wild boar can pick up a scent from like 5 miles away.
My thinking is that if you put enough bait on top,
they will come.
[bell ringing]
I've fallen in Michael and Brent's pit,
and I can't get out!
Please come finish me off!
LINDSEY: Let's start from the front,
work our way to the back.
ASHLEY: I want, I want some extra in the front
because of weather, if it snows, if it rains...
LINDSEY: Walk and talk.
ASHLEY: ...to keep them warm.
Lindsey and I got chickens
as a renewable food source for the castle.
And we're supposed to be building
a chicken coop together.
I'm getting so frustrated with Lindsey right now
because she's not listening to anything I have to say.
I've made a perfect solution for this egg collector.
Here it goes.
LINDSEY: Alright. I'm waiting.
I mean, it didn't go all the way to the end,
but it doesn't matter, it worked.
Your idea worked.
ASHLEY: I was really proud of the pantyhose idea.
It worked really well, and Lindsey didn't want to give me
a single ounce of credit for it.
LINDSEY: Alright, I'll let 'em loose.
Hold, hold. Close that.
ASHLEY: Alright.
LINDSEY: Oh, my gosh. This looks amazing.
I want to see them at their fullest on the outside.
ASHLEY: It's, it's wonderful.
LINDSEY: I mean, if we would just
work like this together more often,
then we could accomplish a lot more.
I'm just saying sometimes you can get a little feisty.
ASHLEY: Lindsey was just pointing her finger at me.
Like, you were fighting in the beginning.
You were being lazy.
At that point, I had just had enough.
I'm not gonna act like I'm happy in this moment.
You're putting me down as you're thanking me.
LINDSEY: I am the only one
who has really been getting down and dirty,
and I feel like I have been
a million percent effort into this.
ASHLEY: My hands are dirty!
LINDSEY: Cleaning the toilet in the bunker, and you're like,
"Ew. Why are you cleaning that toilet? That's disgusting."
ASHLEY: Yeah, and you're going to judge me for that?
LINDSEY: I feel like I'm the older one.
I feel like I'm the older sister.
So you keep saying you're the older sister, but that's by age.
That is it.
I don't look up to you as an older sister
for exactly things like this.
ASHLEY: I was like trying to show you
the smarter way of doing everything.
LINDSEY: I'm sorry, I believe you're a bartender.
ASHLEY: I was bartending
at a very high scale, high scale, high scale place.
It's not a club.
LINDSEY: You put people down.
You act like you're better than other people.
ASHLEY: It was like 25,000-square-feet facility
for concerts.
LINDSEY: You say, "Uh-uh, I'm too good for Wal-Mart."
ASHLEY: "Yeah, you bartended at a hole in the wall."
That's how you--see, you always, everything you do,
you don't give me credit.
LINDSEY: I never once said that. I never once said that!
ASHLEY: Alright.
LINDSEY: I can't even deal with this right now.
ASHLEY: Go.
Hypocrite. Thanks. Exactly.
LINDSEY: God, she's such a [bleep] ***.
ASHLEY: I had finally hit that wall with Lindsey.
I didn't feel like she wanted this to work.
Forget the chicken coop, she didn't want,
Lindsey didn't want me and her to work.
LINDSEY: She's lazy. That's her problem. She's lazy.
I'm the only one who got in there
and got on my hands and knees.
You want to look at her compared to me?
She [bleep] thinks she's [bleep] perfect.
BRENT II: It looks like it's MREs again.
[chuckles]
It's been 6 hours, and we didn't catch a boar--yet.
This city boy from the beach
really wants to prove I can catch food,
I can catch the biggest game in my pit.
BRENT SR: Y'all came to me
and said you couldn't stand eating MREs.
I gave you a challenge. All of you.
I said come up with another food source.
It's excuse after excuse after excuse.
In the end of times there are no excuses.
Brent and Michael told me that they wanted to go hunting.
I see them coming home empty-handed.
Lindsey and Ashley, the bickering, the arguing.
This was very disappointing.
So the challenge really didn't work out very well
for you guys.
MICHAEL: I'm just thinking to myself,
if this was the end-times
and we're wasting this much time,
we wouldn't survive very long.
ASHLEY: Place your bets.
DAWN-MARIE: Whoever loses,
whoever loses has to eat a chicken egg.
LINDSEY: Yesterday Ashley and I tried to build a chicken coop.
We wound up at each other's throats.
We have got to bury the hatchet.
In this family, we don't exactly settle things
with a hugs and kisses.
MICHAEL: If you lose, you must eat one of the eggs
from the chicken coop.
You must eat it, and I will watch you eat it,
because I will crack it in your mouth,
and close your mouth until you swallow.
LINDSEY: Let's go, fine.
Egg it up!
BRENT II: On your right we have Lindsey,
who likes to clean, likes to tell everyone what to do
and manage her way into oblivion.
On our left, the prima donna like nobody's mama!
Put your hands together.
1, 2, 3!
Wow.
Keep those elbows down.
MICHAEL: Push it down.
An egg for you!
[bleep]
BRENT II: Uh-oh, we might have a sore loser.
ASHLEY: See those guns? Kiss it!
Kiss it.
LINDSEY: Ashley beat me fair and square.
But at least our throw-down did release some tension.
And it got us back to where we need to be.
The only reason I'm doing this is because a real woman...
BRENT II: Honors her bets?
ASHLEY: Yes.
MICHAEL: Drumroll, please.
BRENT II: Drink, drink, drink!
Go, go, go, go!
MICHAEL: Swallow it, swallow it!
Swallow it!
Open your mouth! Nope, you're not leaving.
[cheering]
ASHLEY: It felt great to see her eat a raw egg.
There was no denying who won this war.
DAWN-MARIE: Good job!
ASHLEY: She is the chicken queen!
MICHAEL: You ready?
BRENT II: Yeah.
Dad keeps forcing us to eat all these MREs
until we put food on the table.
Well, Michael and I, we went out and dug a Rambo-style pit,
and we're gonna catch this big *** boar.
MICHAEL: Well, I don't see any boar so far.
My gosh.
Is he in there? Nope.
I thought maybe we might have a chance,
but so far I haven't seen any activity by our trap.
In the end of days,
I need to know that these traps are gonna work.
It's gonna be a life or death situation.
We got to put these out there
and I need to know that they're gonna succeed.
BRENT II: Bro, what are you doing with a gun?
MICHAEL: Hey, listen, I don't think this hole
is even deep enough.
BRENT II: It's plenty deep enough, it's plenty deep enough.
MICHAEL: One reason I didn't tell you is because
I don't want you freaking out about the gun.
I can handle it, I've done this before, I've been hunting.
The gun is purely just a second-degree safety measure.
I mean, my dad has put so much pressure on us,
he's expecting me to get the job done.
Relax, this could take a while.
BRENT SR: Ready, 1, 2, 3!
Ready, we're gonna wheel it, 1, 2, 3.
Good.
Dawn-Marie and I have been working on the catapult.
This has the potential of being a very lethal weapon
in a situation when we have no ammo
and the only thing we have are shovels and picks.
We're just about ready to attach our counterweight,
which is going to be the trickiest part of the build,
for one big reason--
in order to launch a simple 5 to 10-pound projectile,
our counterweight needs to be around 500 pounds.
Everything I've ever seen was a boulder being strapped on
to the end of a catapult.
So I thought what can we use that has parts
that can be bolted on, bolted off,
and we came up with a car engine.
So we're going to lift that 400-and-something-pound engine
into place so we can bal--
put it on here and I hope that you and I are gonna do it,
just the two of us.
Come around.
DAWN-MARIE: Dad, stop, stop, stop. God!
BRENT SR: I thought you were ready.
DAWN-MARIE: I'm ready when I say ready.
BRENT SR: Are you ready? DAWN-MARIE: Ready!
BRENT SR: The only way I can think of
to lift this 500-pound counterweight
is to use a winch.
This winch will lift at least 2,000 pounds.
DAWN-MARIE: I wonder how they actually were able
to get it up back in the day.
BRENT SR: They probably had a whole bunch of men.
DAWN-MARIE: We got one man, one woman.
BRENT SR: And a lot of brains.
DAWN-MARIE: The weight of that thing
is one of the scariest thoughts--
what if those bolts don't hold it in there?
What if that wood isn't strong enough
and it splinters and this motor comes crashing down
on mine or my dad's head?
Whoa. Ahh, stop, stop, stop, stop. Stop!
You're in between, you're on my hand.
Like what do you mean?
BRENT SR: Dawn-Marie and I had a few hiccups along the way,
but once we attached that counterweight
to the throwing arm,
we knew we had an awesome powerful invention.
At least one that could throw a projectile
to the bottom of the driveway with deadly force.
Let's just see if it starts moving, rocking out of the way.
DAWN-MARIE: Ashley, Lindsey and Michael are gonna be like
there's no way that we actually got that motor up there.
I can't wait to actually see how far
can a 5 to 10-pound object be thrown out of something
that has a counterweight of 500 pounds.
BRENT SR: Big high five, pound it.
DAWN-MARIE: I can't believe we did this.
LINDSEY: Even though I was skeptical
of Ashley's pantyhose egg collector thing,
it actually gave us an easy way to get the eggs.
But we need to make sure they last longer
than their normal shelf life of one month.
Basically what we're accomplishing
is we're just gonna pour this mineral oil in here.
If we preserve these eggs in mineral oil,
they'll last for almost a year.
ASHLEY: Boiled eggs on Monday.
LINDSEY: Scrambled eggs on Tuesday.
ASHLEY: Poached eggs on Wednesday.
LINDSEY: Every way you can make an egg.
BRENT II: Alright, where are all these animals at?
I figured if I circled a while...
MICHAEL: Maybe we're just in the worst location.
Could be.
We've been sitting around this trap for like 4 hours,
and the biggest thing I've seen is like a squirrel.
Like I'm losing my mind.
And then...
[bell ringing]
We hear that bell, and we just sprint.
BRENT II: That way!
[boar snorting]
Holy! Whoa-ho!
There was a massive boar in our pit!
And then he jumped out!
[yelling]
Whoa, [bleep], you nailed it!
MICHAEL: Killed a [bleep] boar.
Oh, [bleep].
That thing is like a tank.
I mean, I'm glad I brought that gun
because one bolt from a crossbow wasn't going to take it down.
MICHAEL: That thing is massive, he's huge.
BRENT II: He's dead now.
I was tribal, I was caveman!
It was an out-of-body experience.
[grunting]
Michael sticks his fingers inside of the boar's brains
and rubs boar brains all over my face.
[yells]
Yeah!
Ha-ha, yeah!
We'll show Dad, won't we?
MICHAEL: Yeah. Perfect.
BRENT II: You missed a spot.
Once that hot boar blood was all over my face,
I felt, alright, I have arrived.
[groaning]
Damn this [bleep] heavy!
MICHAEL: Something finally worked.
And it was the one thing
that I didn't think was going to work at all.
I was so proud of him and myself
for actually taking this thing out
and being able to come back with something
even bigger than we expected.
MICHAEL: Dad!
Dad!
BRENT II: Dad! Something got shot!
MICHAEL: Dad!
BRENT II: Dad! Something got shot! Get over here!
DAWN-MARIE: Did you catch something?
Oh, my...
BRENT II: Welcome to dinner.
MICHAEL: AKA dead as hell.
BRENT II: Alright, who wants some gut on your face?
DAWN-MARIE: Stop! Don't you dare!
BRENT SR: Alright, you know how to string it up?
BRENT II: We got it strung up.
BRENT SR: No, no.
You're gonna have to get it between two trees.
DAWN-MARIE: Oh, and spread its legs.
BRENT II: OK, I'm still not feeling the thankfulness.
MICHAEL: I'm not feeling the appreciation
of killing this boar.
DAWN-MARIE: Well, I...
BRENT II: It's 200 pounds of meat!
That size of that boar really showed everybody, you know what?
Maybe I'm not the pansy *** they think I am.
BRENT SR: Alright.
1, 2, 3, lift!
Alright.
MICHAEL: Once dad strung up the boar,
we get right to butchering the meat.
BRENT SR: You're gonna have to cut here,
on both sides here, because what we don't want
is we got to cut out his *** and all his reproductive glands.
BRENT II: Oh, you know what, I thought I'd be
a lot more grossed out than I was.
You won't do this every day at the beach.
BRENT SR: You go right down to the chest bone right there.
BRENT II: We cut just a layer of skin and fur right off
so that we didn't cut into the guts,
we didn't cut into the meat like Dad said.
BRENT SR: And as soon as we can see enough where everything is,
we're gonna cut it right up through here.
BRENT II: This meat, we got a fire. Boar time!
MICHAEL: Yup!
Brent, Dad and I butchered about 25 pounds of meat.
That means we're going to eat really good tonight.
The rest we can preserve by salting, drying or smoking.
BRENT II: You think you can just throw this on? Alright.
MICHAEL: And we'll just rotate it.
BRENT II: It's like going in a supermarket deli.
We've got ribs, we've got ham, we've got shoulder!
It's not wrapped nicely, but I can tell you what,
it is fresh!
Look at that!
BRENT SR: You want to go straight on out.
Dawn-Marie and I are just about ready to test the catapult.
But with something this dangerous and unpredictable
you can't be too careful.
We're gonna add some additional side support.
We've put a basket on the top,
the basket will make it travel a shorter distance.
And we've also put a sling for long distance.
This thing's gonna take us out a football field or more.
And whatever is in its path, if it could hit it...
DAWN-MARIE: It will.
BRENT SR: It'll kill them.
DAWN-MARIE: I built this catapult with my dad.
Me and my dad did this together.
We didn't have anybody's help, and it's finally done.
I'm really excited to see if it can actually fire something.
MICHAEL: Wow, look at what we got here.
BRENT II: Wow! That's amazing, Dad, Dawn-Marie.
BRENT SR: Alright, number one defense and offense weapon
against a mass attack.
BRENT II: So that's a V8 engine?
BRENT SR: An old V8 engine out of an old car.
This is our first trial run.
We tried to make sure we over-braced everything
for our first test.
This is truly an experimental device.
I think of it like when somebody designed the first one.
This is our first test, too.
It sounds great in principle,
but I don't know what's going to happen for sure.
This could be the greatest thing we've ever done,
but it could be a very disastrous explosion
of wood in all directions.
What we're going to do first is try to get an idea
of what the projection is going to be.
I don't know if it's going straight up,
I don't know if it's going straight down.
So we're gonna use flour.
Brent, Michael and I will pull this catapult down
to get the engine inverted in the up position.
This is our firing pin.
Bring me that bar over there.
This is our means of being safe, and we'll only pull that out
when we are almost clear of everything...
and we're gonna pull that pin.
DAWN-MARIE: Dad, do I get to pull the thing?
BRENT SR: Since you and I designed it,
you get to pull the firing pin for the first time.
Alright.
Alright, pull down, you're coming down, coming down.
MICHAEL: We got it, we got it.
BRENT SR: Keep her coming.
DAWN-MARIE: Oh, wow!
BRENT SR: Keep her coming.
DAWN-MARIE: After the anticipation
and all the excitement of building this catapult,
I started thinking to myself,
[bleep], could the engine fall off?
Or could the wood splinter?
Or could that sling whiplash and hit somebody
and take a head off?
BRENT SR: It'll get easier now.
LINDSEY: Alright, Ash, wait for me.
BRENT SR: Put the-- not yet, not yet!
LINDSEY: OK, OK.
DAWN-MARIE: Put it behind this.
BRENT II: Alright, put the bar in there.
MICHAEL: Alright, Ash.
BRENT II: Now have the rope all together.
DAWN-MARIE: Yes!
BRENT SR: We loaded up for the first time...
Dawn-Marie, get the firing pin, let's everybody move back.
DAWN-MARIE: I'll wait till they go back there.
BRENT SR: Here I am, I'm feeling like Tarzan,
beating on my chest.
Dawn-Marie's over there, man, with a big smile
that says we are going to show them
this defensive/offensive massive piece of machinery we designed.
ALL: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
DAWN-MARIE: That didn't go far.
BRENT SR: No, It's not releasing correctly.
DAWN-MARIE: Man, I was so sure this was going to work.
I was thinking it was going to go a lot further than it did.
Really it's supposed to be going
anywhere between 50 to 300 yards,
and it's going more like 5 feet.
BRENT SR: I knew that it was a matter of adjustments.
We had the weight, we could see the arm swinging,
it had enough power to propel it.
It's just that it wasn't going where it was supposed to go.
You got it?
Alright, come on.
Alright, put that safety bar in.
ASHLEY: Ow. LINDSEY: Sorry.
BRENT SR: Alright, let's see what damage happened here.
This thing just ripped apart.
The projectile was not releasing.
It was being held in.
It couldn't come out, so it just went straight down.
There's the problem--
when it gets up, it's cupping it,
and it's just keeping it in there, whatever's in there.
And everybody then decided to add their ideas
on how to fix the basket.
Brent was coming up with all these suggestions.
BRENT II: We put a nail out of the end,
and all we do is get it right here,
and we set the watermelon right there.
BRENT SR: We have to have something
that works all the time with no matter what we're using.
DAWN-MARIE: And then Ashley came up with an idea
of trying to tie a rope on it.
ASHLEY: We're going to tie it from one side to the other.
When it comes up, it's gonna fly out.
I really think that this way will work,
and I really honestly believe that it would.
It made sense to me.
ALL: 3, 2, 1.
DAWN-MARIE: Yes, yes!
[laughs]
MICHAEL: It went backwards!
ASHLEY: The watermelon actually came back and went backwards,
so it was a little embarrassing moment for myself.
MICHAEL: Help me out.
I'm pulling down with my foot.
LINDSEY: And it just kept failing and failing and failing.
DAWN-MARIE: Pull!
[laughter]
Alright, now it's Michael's idea.
BRENT SR: Alright! Test number 4!
MICHAEL: My idea was to bend the basket back just a little bit
so the flower could fly out,
but more importantly, I mean, I kind of decided
that this catapult needs a name.
ALL: 3, 2, 1, Carl!
MICHAEL: Go, Carl!
LINDSEY: Wow.
ASHLEY: This time it went backwards.
BRENT SR: When Dawn-Marie saw
there was a failure going on here,
she's trying to figure it out over there,
she's hearing everybody else give me suggestions.
DAWN-MARIE: Why don't we get this twig, put it up underneath.
Get your rope, tie it on to here,
and so as soon as we release the catapult, it pulls it,
just as something is flying out of the catapult.
And it's able to fly out, whatever we put in there.
We have plenty of twigs.
BRENT SR: Alright, let's rig it up, let's try it!
DAWN-MARIE: After more than a few failed attempts,
I started getting a little frustrated
and I was just getting to the point
where I just wanted to be able to fire something.
ALL: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, launch!
[cheering]
LINDSEY: Nice!
DAWN-MARIE: Dad, good job! Good job.
BRENT SR: What in the world just happened
after all those failures?
So Dawn-Marie's solution proved to be the thing
that was the saving grace of my earlier humiliation.
At that point I decided to get the sling out
and really see what this catapult could do.
MICHAEL: You can't, you're almost there.
Come on, pull, Linds.
BRENT II: Pull!
BRENT SR: The sling is a small cloth basket
that's actually going to hold our projectile.
MICHAEL: I hope this works.
BRENT SR: It has to come smooth off like a sled
as it comes around.
If it catches on anything, it's going to tear everything apart.
Yeah, it has to be there, it has to be nice and tight.
We decided to put the bowling ball in the sling
because it would be just like a cannonball.
DAWN-MARIE: Alright, Dad, the final test!
ALL: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!
BRENT II: Woo!
[cheering]
DAWN-MARIE: Oh, my God!
That went almost all the way down the mountain.
I was jumping for joy.
And that definitely gave me a sense of pride
that me and my dad, we built this together.
Good job, Dad!
I told you we could do it!
That was perfect!
MICHAEL: You are king of the castle.
LINDSEY: Dad, good job!
BRENT SR: The catapult is like any other weapon--
it has to be calibrated.
We'll have settings marked on the arm
so we know exactly how far to pull it back.
We'll know exactly how to hit the kill zone
over and over and over.
Alright. Time for dinner.
BRENT II: Isn't that awesome? That's awesome.
LINDSEY: The hotter, the better.
How did that taste?
DAWN-MARIE: Better than an MRE.
BRENT II: Dad, we've brought home the bacon.
MICHAEL: When you take that first bite,
please just take a moment and savor it.
BRENT II: Drumroll, please.
[drumroll sound]
BRENT SR: You're not going to believe how tender this is.
We've got our first start on food,
and the next thing is making sure we have an unlimited supply
and no dependency on anyone but ourselves.
And each day the castle is gonna get stronger and stronger,
and it's gonna be impenetrable by the time we're all done.
As a family we're two vital steps closer
to being ready for the end-times.
We have food coming in,
and we have a way to keep the invaders out.
But that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
We don't have a reliable water supply,
we don't have any combat training,
we don't even have a roof over our head.
I hope these kids are enjoying tonight,
because tomorrow it's right back to work.
BRENT II: Here we go.
[gunshot]
[cheering]