Alaska Authors<\/a>, an occasional series about authors and other literary figures with ties to the 49th state.<\/p>\nWhen Bill Fulton pitched a book about surviving major crises to his agent, he was told the publishing industry is already awash in tomes aimed at people building backyard bunkers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019ll be that successful,\u201d the agent said. \u201cBecause there\u2019s a ton of survival books out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fulton had his answer prepared. \u201cYes, but we\u2019re not crazy.\u201d <\/p>\n
That\u2019s the attitude Fulton, along with longtime Alaska political observer and reporter Jeanne Devon, brought to \u201cSurvive and Thrive.\u201d It\u2019s a book for everyday people about successfully weathering unexpected events ranging from natural disasters to food supply disruptions to political upheavals and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe approached it from that standpoint,\u201d Fulton explained. \u201cIt\u2019s written for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fulton and Devon are longtime friends who collaborated on a previous book, \u201cThe Blood of Patriots,\u201d which followed Fulton\u2019s trajectory from Montana farm boy to the Army, and then becoming owner of Drop Zone, a military surplus store in Anchorage. It was while there that he became an FBI informant and key witness in the federal trial of Schaeffer Cox, a sovereign citizen and militia leader from Fairbanks who was convicted in 2012 on firearms and conspiracy charges.<\/p>\n
Cox fits the stereotype of what are commonly known as preppers, those who load up on guns, dried food and survival gear, ready to stand alone in a doomsday situation. Devon, however, said this is the wrong way for anyone hoping to protect themselves and their loved ones if the worst occurs. <\/p>\n
In actual practice, she said, the biggest factor in surviving a serious crisis involves fostering strong community ties so that everyone can pool their abilities for mutual benefit. This requires having \u201cpeople who can rely on you and your special skills. People that you can rely on for their special skills. Creating a community network rather than being a lone wolf who says, \u2018Anybody comes for my whatever, I\u2019m going to shoot them.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, \u201cSurvive and Thrive\u201d is about collective survival, not personal hoarding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk a lot in the book about self-sufficiency,\u201d said Fulton, who now operates a sustainable organic farm in Vermont. \u201cNot just your self-sufficiency. We\u2019re talking about self-sufficient communities. We\u2019re talking about communities that have organic food systems, organic energy generation. And all of those things are good for the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Devon, currently residing in Germany, was living in Delta Junction when Fulton asked her to help write the book. Well experienced at gardening, fishing, food preserving, and other self-sufficiency skills, she was better prepared for the task than she initially realized. \u201cYou live in Alaska for 30 years, you know more survival stuff than you think you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
In aiming for general readers, Devon said, \u201cthe biggest challenge was to figure where we need to come to people from.\u201d Rather than detailing what sort of arsenal is needed to survive, she and Fulton sought to get people started on befriending their neighbors and learning about gardening, foraging, power generation, water systems and more. From there they hope readers will seek out more in-depth sources. \u201cWe went for broad rather than deep. We went from an entry-level point.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Fulton, a big part of what he hopes to accomplish is getting people back to basics, recovering simple life skills that have been widely forgotten since World War II owing to the increasing conveniences of modern life. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe went from the Great Depression, where everybody had to learn how to do everything, to an age when people are unprepared to help themselves,\u201d he said. \u201cSo another part of the book is getting people interested in building these skill sets so that we don\u2019t lose them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back in the aughts, when Fulton owned Drop Zone, he found himself catering to the sort of survivalists he considers sketchy and more interested in amassing weapons than cooperating with others. It was there that he first encountered Cox, who at the time was making headlines in Fairbanks with his militia activities and gun rights advocacy.<\/p>\n
Fulton said he initially contacted the FBI about a customer he thought might be violating federal laws. That\u2019s when he was asked to gather information on Cox, already flagged by the agency due to increasing evidence that his activities had crossed over into illegality. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy country asked me to do something. So I did it,\u201d Fulton said about his decision to cooperate with the authorities. \u201cI raised my hand when I was 17 years old and told my country that I would do anything they asked me to do against all enemies foreign and domestic.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Cox\u2019s 2011 arrest, his widely publicized trial took place in Anchorage the following year. At the time, Devon, an East Coast transplant, was running a popular left-leaning blog called The Mudflats. Fascinated by the story, she was in the courtroom daily, posting detailed summaries. Her efforts turned Mudflats into a full-fledged news source with arguably the most comprehensive information to be found on the proceedings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt fascinated me because it was an examination of the First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment. It was a microcosm of all kinds of interesting legal questions that I was curious about,\u201d she said, adding: \u201cThere was a cast of characters that you could not make up if you tried.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
After the conviction of Cox and his accomplices, Fulton, by then in the witness protection program, decided to write a book about his life and involvement as the star witness against the defendants. Devon, meanwhile, also saw a book in the story. After a couple of post-trial interviews, they decided to collaborate.<\/p>\n
Fulton provided the details while Devon added context by placing the events in the broader historical and cultural landscape of Alaska. Along the way, she and Fulton developed a strong friendship built on mutual trust.<\/p>\n
This, and a shared sense of dark humor, are what fueled \u201cSurvive and Thrive.\u201d Motivated by concerns about the impacts of climate change, tenuous supply chains revealed during the pandemic, increasing global political and economic instability and other potential calamities, they wanted to leave readers well-informed rather than scared. <\/p>\n
Fulton, with his military background, knew that in a crisis situation, \u201cyour biggest tool is the one between your ears. You have to stay calm. You have to think rationally. You have to be confident in the decisions that you\u2019re making.\u201d<\/p>\n
Devon added that this requires remaining positive. \u201cYou have to be hopeful. You have to treat this as an exercise in empowerment against odds.\u201d <\/p>\n
To that end, \u201cSurvive and Thrive\u201d teaches readers basic survival skills while, Devon said, making it \u201cinteresting enough, funny enough and amusing enough that people will actually want to read it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Fulton pointed out, \u201cMost of the survival books out there, they\u2019re very doom and gloom. They\u2019re very fear-based. I don\u2019t want to be leading people down a path to paranoia and fear. What I want them to do is feel accomplishment and feel happy and feel that they have this down and have confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n
To this Devon added, \u201cI feel like each person that reads the book is like the little pebble in the pond. And the ripples go out. That\u2019s my dream for it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authors Bill Fulton and Jeanne Devon (Photos provided by Bill Fulton and Jeanne Devon) This is part of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":52730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[39366,1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-52729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-alaska-authors","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/JTC5JLKTT5EETPPWEGWZL7DPLU.jpg\")
Authors Bill Fulton and Jeanne Devon (Photos provided by Bill Fulton and Jeanne Devon) <\/p>\n