Auto open 4 terminal sessions and SSH them to a given host

Unfortunately, I think each VPN client will be picky about this in its own way. Since the network is dropping from underneath the SSH connection, you will have three scenarios that could cause it to "hang", or just drop (that I can think of).

1. Data is flowing back and forth, and the connection is gone.
2. You get a new IP address when reconnecting.
3. Timeout/Alive conditions trigger before you reconnect.

2 Suggestions...

1. Use screen (you said you don't want to do this, I know, but it really is the most robust solution. There are scripts out there that can greatly enhance/automate the reconnection process).
2. Compare your SSH configurations. Usually stored in /etc/ssh_config or similiar.

BTW -- I don't think you should need to close windows, just do "~ ." (tilde dot). Tilde is used to control the ssh session. See the manpage for more details.

This is a little bit hacky, but you can achieve this in AppleScript. If there is a predetermined number of tabs you want, and preset commands you wish to run, this isn't difficult.

tell application "Terminal"
    -- Activate it.
    activate

    set targetWindow to 0

    -- Get a window that's not busy.
    -- If there are no open windows, open one.
    if count of windows is greater than 0 then
        repeat with currentWindow in windows
            if currentWindow is not busy then
                set targetWindow to currentWindow
            end if
        end repeat
    else
        do script ""
        set targetWindow to window 1
    end if

    -- Do command 1.
    set firstCommand to "cd ~/Desktop; clear"
    do script firstCommand in targetWindow

    -- Open a new tab.
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal" to keystroke "t" using command down

    if count of windows is greater than 0 then
        repeat with currentWindow in windows
            if currentWindow is not busy then
                set targetWindow to currentWindow
            end if
        end repeat
    else
        do script ""
        set targetWindow to window 1
    end if

    -- Do command 2.
    set secondCommand to "cd /Applications; clear"
    do script secondCommand in targetWindow

    -- And so on...
end tell

Of course, replace firstCommand with whichever command you actually want to run, and so on. For whatever reason, Terminal doesn't really have an accessible way to create new tabs through AppleScript, so the long, hacky looking line in the middle just tells Terminal to type ⌘T to open that new tab, and then new commands will execute in it.

You can run this AppleScript as is, or use it in Automator to create a new service, which you can then execute from anywhere using a keyboard shortcut if you'd like.

Extras - If you want to fire some script/command in the newly opened terminal session, you can refer this