John Ringo, for those of you who are not fans of military science fiction, is best described as a guilty pleasure. His books are written with some craft and edited fairly well, and by the standards of modern popular literature are PG: there is one exception and it formed a the trope:

Yes, you will be horrified by a lot of this, because Mike Harmon’s adventures are by turns awesomely horrific and horrifically awesome; I freely confess that I cannot stop reading these books, because *I have to see what Ringo does next.* I do, however, have a finely-tuned defense mechanism: whenever something trips my circuit breaker, causing me to cringe away from the page, I utter aloud a cry that resets my noggin. You will probably need it yourself, so I provide it here, as a public service: “OH JOHN RINGO NO.”

GHOST is Ringo’s own admitted Lord King Badfic, his id run wild. By his own account, he was trying to write several books he was actually contracted for, but GHOST kept nudging at him, and finally he just wrote the damn thing to *make it go away* so he could get back to fulfilling his contracts. Ringo locked the spewings of his id away on his hard drive, until he mentioned in passing on an online forum that yeah, he’d written another book, but it was *awful* and would never see the light of day. Naturally, folks were curious, and when Ringo posted a sample, nobody was more surprised than him to find that the response was, more often than not, “Hey, man, I’d buy this.”

John wrote to the reviewer, agreed with him, and suggested that a T-shirt was made, funds to a charity for servicemen. He has a good heart, for a pagan (and trust, me, that he is). However, I would not recommend the Palidin of Shadows series as something to read in the lunch room.

Nor the book that I am getting to. In 2008 (pre Obama) he wrote a book called “The last centurion”. You could, perhaps read this is most tea rooms, but it would be unsafe in the senior common room.

I’m not going to spoil the plot for you, although just reading the book jacket text will spoil things somewhat, but this book was clearly influenced by both the government Katrina response, and the media coverage of the same. It lays out a number of things going wrong, very wrong, and the Democratic responses to them are plausible. It says “You think what happened at Katrina was bad? Here’s how bad it could really get.”

And that, my friends, is why it’s important. Because for many of us, comparing McCain and Obama, there’s a tendency to go “How bad could it get? We survived eight years of Clinton I and came out OK.” This book points out, in great detail and entertaining fashion, just exactly how bad it could get.

So too, Ringo. His protagonist is a disgruntled soldier named Bandit Six – trying to stay alive (and keep his troops alive) while navigating the twin disasters of a realized bird flu plague and an oncoming ice age (yes, a not so subtle dig at global warming). Add to that the political bureaucracy of the army itself and a left-leaning government and you have yourself a hearty helping of conservative stew.

Amazing how long it took me to get to the actual story, eh?

So if you’re at all adversarial (and I am), like a smartass who’s actually pretty smart, and are down for an “Into Thin Air” kind of survival story in which you wonder how the hell is the smartass gonna survive yet another impossible situation? – well, then you’ll probably enjoy this book. If however you’re decided on your politics, thank you very much, and don’t want a sneak peak into conservative literary porn, move on – this isn’t the droid you’re looking for.

Note that comment about a beginning Ice age. Because Ringo write science fiction. He does his homework. Heck, his most recent series involves Zombies and he has written an essay on how he thinks a Zombie plague could start (and he blames script kiddies). And he made up one fact — that organic food is bad for you. He looked at the climate science and thought… what if there is a Maunder minimum (because this has happened before) at the very time we are worrying about global warming? [Not the first person to do this: Jerry Pournelle wrote “Fallen Angels” about 20 years previously.

But he then found what he was saying was coming true, and started to get really worried… and this has continued. To the point where children are freezing to death, not in Eastern Europe, but in Minnesota.

A 6-year-old girl died Thursday morning after being exposed to frigid elements in Bemidji. Police in Bemidji were called at about 6:23 a.m. to a weather-related medical call on the 900 block of Carter Circle Northeast. Both the victim’s mother and a neighbor reported the incident.

When emergency responders arrived at the Washington Ave. Apartments, the child was inside the front entrance of the apartment building, with signs of being exposed to the elements. The little girl had been found lying outside — fully dressed with gloves, a coat and a hat — but it wasn’t enough to survive the cold. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The child was taken to the Sanford Medical Center of Bemidji and later to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s office in St. Paul.

Temperatures at the time the girl was found were 20 below, with a wind chill of 40 below.

The girl lived with her mother and a 3-year-old sibling at the Washington Ave. Apartments, where doors into the town homes lock automatically. The girl’s mother did not stay there Wednesday night, police say. It is not known why the girl was outside.

I have a daughter who is used to minus 40 winters: and with apologies to the Canadians, that is too darn cold. But I know the rules. You have to keep the interior of your house at 16 celsius or you will lose your kids. You count them in and out. (Which applies to club runs in winter as well). You do not leave the kids alone: an adult is with them.

Because exposure can kill: it kills where I live and most winters we only get snow two or three times during the winter. So, if the mother was out, who was looking after the child? Because in that climate, an adult could die if locked out: a child will die.

You see, without families and a structure that protects children a society is entering endgame. Things like this should lead to some hard questions being asked about the direction we are going. This is happening in the blogs. But the mainstream? In the UK and NZ, yes: there is a move to improve the standards of our homes (we don’t have air conditioning and my house is one of the warmer ones: it is insulated and I do switch a heat pump on. From about now until November).

But instead there are a series of simple reports of deaths.

A 96-year-old Berwyn woman and a 73-year-old Far South Side man died from cold-related causes on Tuesday, the Cook County medical examiner’s office determined today.

Dorothy G. Kuseck, of the 1800 block of South Wesley was declared dead at 2:50 p.m. Tuesday at her home, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Following an autopsy today, the medical examiner’s office determined she died from hypothermia due to cold exposure, with heart disease a contributing factor. Kuseck is at least the 19th person to die from cold-related causes this season in Cook County.

Berwyn police were called to the woman’s home just after 2 p.m. Tuesday to make a well-being check, and when an officer arrived, the woman was found lying outside, in the threshold of a detached garage, said Berwyn Police Chief Jim Ritz, in an email. Police believe the woman was returning from the grocery store at least a full day before she was found, when she ended up on the ground.

Earlier Tuesday, Allen Summerset, 73, of the first block of 109th Place, was declared dead at 6:17 a.m. at Roseland Hospital. Summerset died from complications of hypothermia due to cold exposure, with diabetes and heart disease contributing factors.

Folks, cold is lethal. Heat you can deal with. Bring back global warming: burn some of that nice shale oil, for lives are at stake.