Running a TEOTWAWKI Training Weekend, by Skynome

First, a little bit of background. In August of 2009 a co-worker gave my husband the novel “Patriots“, he started to read it and told me that I would enjoy it, my response? “Pssh! It looks like more conspiracy theorist paranoia, no thank you” Then in November of 2009 my husband received “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It” from a friend. I was bored, felt like reading, and saw it sitting on our coffee table so I started reading. A few hours later I put the finished book down and then immediately picked up “Patriots” which I finished the next day. Everything my husband had been saying to me for months finally made sense and I realized what I had done to our family by waiting so long to finally open my eyes. I knew then that we had to see exactly how prepared we were for a disaster and following advice from “How to Survive the End of the World as We Know it”, we decided to run a TEOTWAWKI training weekend. We had a core group of people that we trusted and that we thought had a prepping sort of mindset, based upon previous conversations. So we approached them about forming a retreat group and seeing if they would be on board for the TEOTWAWKI weekend, everyone agreed so we set a date and rules for ourselves. The rules we laid out were:

1. Everyone needed to be at the retreat by midnight on the day of the “disaster”
2. Because this was supposed to be unexpected no one could make any preparations beyond their usual preps
3. Power would go out at a pre-determined time, no excuses (which left me with a wet load of clothes and partially washed dishes)

In total we had 7 adults and 3 children under the age of two, two of which were still being breastfed along with solid food. We first figured out the basics of what we needed in order to survive the weekend. Food, water, a toilet, heat. On top of making sure we had all of the basics covered we decided to perform training evolutions. Because of the various duties we had to take care of (fire, food, and babies) only 2 to 3 people could be training at any one time. To make sure that everyone fully understood what was being taught everyone had to teach what they had learned to the next person being trained. Your training evolutions may be different but the things we trained on were
1. Building and maintaining a proper fire for heat and cooking
2. Remaining unseen and unheard in the woods
3. Identifying and cooking edible plants in the immediate vicinity
4. Creating a composting toilet with a 5 gallon bucket
5. Proper butchering and cleaning of a domestic farm animal

We chose those five things to be the focus of our training because they were all skills needed to make sure we survived the weekend. Once everyone learned the basics of fire building outside, each person was individually responsible for keeping the fire going in our fireplace and then cooking over that fire. In order to gather water we had to take a short hike through the woods outside our retreat property to get to a lake so each person had to practice lugging a 5 gallon bucket of water through the woods while remaining unseen and unheard, and keep in contact with their partner (we never let anyone leave the property alone). All the edible plants that we identified were then gathered and cooked for various meals throughout the weekend so that we all could learn proper foraging techniques. Because of the number of people in our retreat group, and the small size of the house, and the fact that it only had one bathroom we needed another toilet, though we knew we wouldn’t overload the septic tank during one weekend, we were trying to live as if this were a post-TEOTWAWKI world and therefore we made a quick and easy composting toilet using ash from our fire and sawdust that we made with a saw and scrap wood. Our final training evolution was killing and butchering a rooster. This way everyone could become accustomed to dealing with turning live animals into a meal since not everyone in our retreat group raises their own livestock.

Our Basic Schedule
0800-1200 wake up, moms take care of babies immediate needs, a few people gather kindling, tinder, and bring in the mornings supply of wood, a few people collect water from a nearby lake (for washing and flushing), and the others tend to the fire and make breakfast. Once breakfast is finished dishes are washed, lunch is decided upon and training begins
1200-1700 more water, kindling, tinder, and wood are gathered. Lunch is made, eaten, and dishes washed. We make a decision on what to eat for dinner followed by more training.
1700-2200 more kindling, tinder, and wood are gathered. Dinner is prepared and eaten, dishes are washed and breakfast duties for the following day are discussed. All candles, oil lamps, oil, lighters, and matches that could be needed through the night are brought out (and put safely away from the babies reach). Fire watch is assigned (to make sure the fire doesn’t go out in the night). Babies are put to bed and adults have time to sit back, talk about the things learned that day, tell stories, and have some bible study time. Then it’s bed time, where we all instantly pass out from total exhaustion.

We tried to stick to a diet of food stores, foraged food, and the rooster we butchered. One thing we were all very glad we had was canned bacon, having just a little bit of bacon with our meals made them feel more normal. For breakfast we tried wheat berries because it’s something I saw in “Patriots“ , we found that cracking the wheat helped the babies digest it better, and we also needed to add fruit or honey to make it more palatable. A staple at every meal was flat bread, made by mixing flour with warm water and a fat (ghee, olive oil, and peanut oil are the ones we used). To keep everyone from getting bored with flat bread three times a day we mixed up the type of flour used. For breakfast we liked a mixture of white flour with finely ground oats, and for lunch and dinner we would grind our own rice flour or whole wheat flour to mix in with white flour. For lunch we would make a vegetable stew, and then keep the leftovers warm to have as a side dish for dinner. Because of the time of year the only food available for forage was lawn plantain, which we cooked up the same way you would collard greens, which made us realize how nice a larger variety of fresh vegetable would be. We’re now following advice from past survivalblog articles to plant fall and winter crops, and also have a small indoor garden for year round fresh vegetables.

The first lesson we learned was that even though we weren’t prepared enough we were better off than we would have been if I’d continued living life with my rose colored glasses. Besides, I think every prepper assumes they aren’t prepared enough. We also realized how important adding watch standing into our training would be. Because the majority of our retreat group is either active duty or former military we all know how to stand watch, and also know how mind numbingly boring a job it is so we all assumed that when SHTF we’ll step into our duties as watch standers pretty easily and therefore we decided not to post any watches during this weekend. What we didn’t know, is that the one retreat group member who wasn’t going to be able to make it because of work, managed to get time off and showed up late on night #2. No one knew he was there until he started banging on the front door, scaring all of us. We realized then that training properly during these weekends for security would be of great benefit and will definitely incorporate that into our next TEOTWAWKI weekend. Another thing we learned was how difficult it can be to take care of babies needs in a post-TEOTWAWKI world. They eat on different schedule than we do (especially while nursing) and their food needs are slightly different. Though all three children could eat solids to a certain extent the type of solids they could eat didn’t always mesh well with what we were able to make. Because of this my husband and I are now stocking up on baby multi-grain cereals and jarred baby food up to stage 3. This way we have readily available, nutritious food even for a toddler. We also realized how small our retreat house truly was, there wasn’t much room for the three babies to run around the house in, especially with the fire going constantly. It was actually after the TEOTWAWKI weekend that we realized we needed a larger retreat, both a larger property and a larger house. Any longer than a single weekend spent in that house with our entire retreat group would have caused all of our stress levels to be significantly higher. Overall it was a very informative weekend for all of us in learning new skills, discovering what more we need to learn, where else we need to stock up, and how well we can all work together in this type of situation. We’ve actually decided to continue doing these TEOTWAWKI weekends at least once every other month, incorporating new training situations into each weekend while practicing skills we learned at past weekends. Even if you don’t have a retreat group yet this is a great thing to do with your spouse and children, it really is a great eye-opener as to where you actually stand in your preparations. It’s also a good way to see whether or not someone you may want to add to your retreat group is actually a good fit.