'The World of Ready' teaches kids value of preparedness

Four children are among the seven Texans dead after the country’s worst tornado since 2015 struck last Saturday, a day most of us spent enjoying whatever plans we'd made for the long weekend. The sudden tragedy highlights something that Prepper Broadcasting Network head James Walton wants his audience to understand. Disaster can strike at any time, and while we can't always anticipate it, we can be prepared.

It's a message for all ages, which is one reason Walton chose an unconventional way to communicate it: a children's book called "The World of Ready."

Walton, who lives in Central Virginia with his wife, two boys, and three dogs, spoke to Align about what inspired the book, what people get wrong about "preppers," and why it's so important to get to know your neighbors.

ALIGN: Tell us a little about your background. What inspired you to write this book?

James Walton: Becoming a father made me focus much more on preparedness. Hurricane Irene battered Richmond in 2011, and I watched at the windows of my dining room, holding my helpless newborn son, who was now my responsibility, as the wind howled for two days straight. Then, the power went out. At that moment, I felt like a failure as a husband and father. I was woefully unprepared for challenges that lay ahead. That day changed everything. Suddenly, I was obsessed by the concept of preparedness.

After a long deep-dive into the real world of readiness, I found myself behind a microphone, doing a podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. It was thrilling. I would come to own the Prepper Broadcasting Network, which has since become a 15-host podcast network producing daily shows. The network’s intro used to include the phrase, “creating a true culture of preparedness, starting at a very young age, and filtering all the way up.” That was the inspiration for creating a children’s book about preparedness.

ALIGN: Why do you think emergency preparedness matters, especially today?

JW: The average American is less capable today than ever before. Decades of comfort and convenience have seriously weakened our nation. It’s killed our skillsets and made us ineffective. Many men my age would be utterly useless to society 100 years ago. They’d probably lock them up in the back of a ward somewhere. I call it the 100-year amnesia. We have forgotten so much of what it means to be human in a mere 100 years.

A culture that normalizes living paycheck-to-paycheck with a weeks’ worth of food, poor physical fitness, zero knowledge of weaponry, and no backup plan, produces a people lacking confidence. The workforce and an education system easily bullies people into hating their country, which is just a few steps further than hating oneself. The threats we face don’t care that we are unprepared, unfit, and totally lacking confidence. In fact, this works to their advantage. We are facing what looks like war with Russia, potential war with China, a growing number of domestic warlike attacks, a looming economic collapse, and the unregulated unleashing of artificial intelligence on our entire way of life — to say nothing of natural disasters. If we still want America to exist in the next 100 years, we must relearn what was lost.

ALIGN: There seems to be a running joke in the mainstream media that preppers have a screw loose. Some may point to Y2K or similar instances of unrealized disaster to discredit preppers. What do you think of that?

JW: I think people have been conditioned to believe that for every American citizen, there is a government agent or service that will swoop in and sustain their way of life in a major disaster. FEMA to the rescue. FEMA can do great things, but they can’t do everything. They don’t want to live with the truth that in a major disaster, most people are just on their own.

Most Americans also don’t understand how much it takes to sustain a person, let alone a family. We are a calorie-cutting society, but preppers understand that a family of four needs 8,000 calories per day to stay fed. That’s 240,000 calories to sustain your family for a month!

I think this is overwhelming information for the average person. Their to-do lists are already too long. They are overstimulated, underpaid, and struggling. The last thing they want to think about is that they also must prepare for an apocalypse. Ridicule is a coping mechanism.

ALIGN: Why did you choose children's literature as your medium?

JW: There are several issues preppers struggle with when getting started. One of the biggest is getting the family on board and keeping them involved. A children’s book series can help build a family culture. As a parent, there is nothing better than finding a book series that captivates your child in this digital age. My wife and I buy an entire series when our kids get excited about a book. We talk to them about it. We read with them, buy plushy characters, hang posters ... the whole nine yards. These are their core memories — why not make them useful?

ALIGN: If there's one thing you think our audience can do today — mental or practical — to enhance their preparedness, what would it be?

JW: Engage with the people in your neighborhood. The loneliness epidemic and the hollow world of digital stimulation has created a real hunger for human interaction, even as it has made it totally easy to do life without looking anyone in the eye. Should a disaster strike, the people who live around you will be the ones you are surviving with. They will be the ones by your side, moving debris and tarping up roofs. Start a community garden, create a neighborhood text line or email group, and start talking about things like neighborhood watch. Life with people is so important. We need each other more than we realize.