BOWL CAMP provides basic training for new agent inductees into the Darwintern's entry-level Janitorial Pool.

 

Location

 

It is thought by some that the Darwintern operates up to a dozen such secret training Bowl Camps world-wide, but others hold there is only one primary camp the location of which is periodically moved to ensure security. Such Darwintern-watchers believe that the presence of a camp can sometimes be detected by a nexus of reports of mysterious disappearances or other unusual phenomena.

 

Thus, it is generally thought that a Darwintern training camp was, if only for a period in the 1970's, located within the so-called Bermuda Triangle having been moved there from Area 51. Many currently suspect that the "Mount Arafat Anomaly" of Northern Turkey, which some Creationists believe holds the remains of Noah's Ark, is in fact an underground bunker currently housing the Darwintern's "Bowl Camp."

 

Security

 

Given the high attrition rate of recruits, considerable security problems potentially arise from flunked trainee agents "going public." And it is true that much of what has leaked into the public domain about the Darwintern has been from precisely this source. However, the Darwintern nonetheless retains security by two principal methods:

 

1. constantly bombarding new recruits with such ingenious and omnipresent misinformation that they can no longer distinguish fact from fiction; the ultimate truths of the organisation are only revealed later, when unquestioning loyalty has been demonstrated.
2. ensuring that the entire Bowl Camp training experience is so profoundly and personally humiliating that no one in their right mind would ever own up to having experienced it. 

 

Basic Training Skills

 

Nonetheless, a few facts of the training regimen have been exposed by drop-outs, generally via anonymous postings on the internet. From such imperfect sources, it seems probable that among the practical skills Darwintern Recruits acquire at Bowl Camp include:

 

• sniper-grade urinal marksmanship (ladies not exempted)
• extreme-altitude plumbing
• complete cladistic analysis of all known porcelain-dwelling micro-bacterial pathogens

 

Advanced Training: Sanitation Survival Course

 

Of particular brutality is the notorious "Sanitation Survival Course", whereby solitary trainees are parachuted into some desolate and inhospitable region. Known venues which have previously been used for this exercise include the Kalahari desert, the island of Borneo, and Akron, Ohio.

 

Equipped with nothing more than a 2-day supply of MREs, a roll of dental floss, an IKEA allen key, and an autographed photograph of Sir Neville Chamberlain, the inductee has three weeks in which to complete a complex set of grueling tasks, such as:

 

• distilling a serviceable household bleach from the juice of a cactus
• removing limestone stalagmites using a torque wrench improvised out of seaweed, and without marring the living rock of Carlsbad Cavern
• rendering an entire face of a sea-cliff possessed of a gull colony entirely guano-free (probably the only possible use for the Chamberlain photograph)
• assembling, while blindfolded, the entire works of a toilet cistern in less than two minutes--on a live-ammo firing range
• re-grouting a 25-square meter mosaic-tiled floor, which has been extensively land-mined, using only the end of a chewed twig and a paste made from toxic caterpillars, yew berries, and llama fat

 

From such circumstantial evidence, it seems likely that the notorious phrase, "survival of the fittest," which is so often wrongly attributed to Karl Darwin, in fact arose much later to describe the condition of the small number of inductees who actually made it through to graduate from Bowl Camp.