A woman says her dad moved his 20 children into the Montana wilderness to prepare for doomsday, then started running evacuation drills

A woman who grew up off-grid in the Montana wilderness has described how her father had her and her 19 siblings running drills to prepare for the end of the world. Kelsey Vanderm opened up about her childhood during an appearance on the Dan Becker Podcast.

As first highlighted by UNILAD, Vanderm’s parents moved the family far away from civilization, giving up electricity, running water, and any connection to the outside world. They started out living in a teepee-style tent in the mountains while her father hand-built a wooden cabin that would become their permanent home.

Vanderm was the first child born inside that cabin. Her father’s decision to go off-grid came after he began researching biblical prophecies and became convinced the world was going to end. He went on to have 20 children with several different women, all living together in the woods.

Even the llamas had a role in the family’s doomsday drills

All of the children learned practical jobs on the land, such as milking goats, chopping wood, and gathering food from their gardens. The goal was to live completely independently, so the family would not be impacted if food supplies were destroyed or society collapsed.

The family did not take part in many activities often associated with prepping, such as building bunkers or stockpiling food. Instead, the children ran practice drills for the end of the world. “We’d have to pack our go bags and our survival kits and pack our llamas and like just practice if the world was ending,” Vanderm explained.

The pressure intensified when Vanderm decided she wanted to step away from that lifestyle and attend high school. “When I went to school, he would always just sit me down and say, ‘Okay, you got to sit by a window. Make sure you’re watching. If you see like army men SWAT team coming around like you got to get head for the hills,’” she recalled.

Vanderm said the constant warnings left her living in fear. “So I just feel like there was so much fear already cuz he’s like for sure we’re going to get taken over and so all the time I always thought like the world’s ending tomorrow, the world’s ending,” she said. “I grew up my entire life always believing the next day is going to be your last.”

Attack of the Fanboy was unable to independently verify her father’s side of the story, as this account comes solely from Vanderm’s podcast appearance.