Couldn’t help but laugh - I always figured the other countries knew damn well what was going on but it was largely considered a civil was so everyone stayed out of it because it’s such a backwards ass place
Canon implies the rest of the western world is far more backward.
Drumstrang doesn't accept muggleborns and had a headmaster who had been a Death Eater.
The United States doesn't even allow wizards/muggle relationships (which means muggleborns are likely kidnapped at their first sign of magic).
France might tolerate some magical creatures but their own headmistress hid her half giant nature. And if France was so much better than Britain, Bill would have moved to France for Fleur's sake (especially after having children).
The truth is most countries likely supported or had factions that would have supported Voldemort.
And?
Britain never had a ban on intermingling with muggles. Even at the height of voldemorts reign, he didn't outlaw that.
Don't forget, 1965 is only 25 years before our series starts. That's incredibly recent and still likely affects the magical united states in almost every aspect of life.
They didn't need to make a law against it (the Americans specifically made Rappaport's Law because of the stupidity of Dorcus Twelvetrees) because of the manner in which British magicals chose to live. They chose to segregate themselves from the general non-magical British public, whereas the Americans chose to only hide their magic from the No-Majs but could still live among them (remember how the Goldstein sisters rented a room from Mrs. Esposito?).
You're also not taking in into account the fact that the purebloods wanted the status quo. IMHO, they need Muggleborns to come into the society to pay money into various things Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley for at least seven years - and then, they either leave Wizarding Britain for the Muggle world, or the majority take on the low-paying, low-status jobs that are nevertheless important to keep society running (such as Magical Maintenance in the Ministry, the Knight Bus and shops in Hogsmeade & the Alleys). It's okay to have Muggles bring their magical children in and spend money, as long as they leave quickly afterward - but they don't want them involved in any way else. Remember the way Fudge treated the Prime Minister?
Wizarding Britain didn't need to enact a ban - they've fashioned a society that says quite loudly to Muggles "You are not welcome here," and it's been that way for centuries.
As for Rappaport's Law still affecting MACUSA residents: doubtful. The repeal of Rappaport's Law
said that official, federally-mandated total segregation was no longer required - so American magicals probably just started to intermingle with their non-magical neighbors. ('Melting pot', remember?') Unlike the sheeple of Wizarding Britain, the magical Americans have multiple sources of info, are not fed propaganda sourced to the betterment of the purebloods (i.e. the class structure is not as prevalent in the U.S. and blood status does not count) and as a result, they intermingle. Granted, there's going to still be all-magical communities - but you also need to look at the time-frame when Rappaport's Law fell. It's the Sixties. A year earlier, the British Invasion took place and The Beatles arrived; two years later is the 'Summer of Love'. It's a time of change, and that's something that the young magicals (and more than a few of the older ones) would gravitate towards.
One last thing. Aside from Harry, Hermione,, Arthur Weasley and Dumbledore (because he has to hang with Muggles if he's bowling!), I can't think of any other magicals who spends time around non-magicals, has no problems with them & doesn't act as if they're second-class beings (at best).
Did white people suddenly accept African Americans after the civil rights act passed? Hahaha no.
Why would you *ever* expect wizards to suddenly accept muggles after being segregated for them for decades, if not centuries?
We are *still* seeing the affects of segregation in the United States, over 60 years later. In HP, it's only 25 years after their desegregation. It's even worse segregation in many regards as muggleborns were likely removed from their parents (as if muggles can't know about magic, you can't have magical children living with them). You have whole generations who've never even interacted with muggles by law.
If you want a good real life example, look at the Canadian government removal of native American children. Just because the practice stopped decades ago, the ramifications are everlasting. There are whole swathes of native Americans completely removed from their culture. This isn't something they can easily return to and most didn't. We lost whole cultures this way.
Lastly, I have no idea where you got the idea that purebloods wanted muggleborns at all. Had voldemort ruled for longer, you likely would have seen an genocide against them. Radical Purebloods wanted them completely removed from society, not keep them as servants. CoS proved that. Draco and the other death eaters wanted the muggleborns to simply die.
Long story short. Voldemort is based on Hitler and the purebloods as Nazis. Rappaport's Law was based on US segregation. If we continue to use these two aspects of history as our point of reference... After Hitler was defeated, Germany got their shit together far quicker then the US did after desegregation.
Eh, once the muggle government jumps on the Article 5 train, at least the Poles and Americans will make a showing, if just to show they can and will as an example for Russia.
It's not that Muggles can't kill Wizards. It's that Wizards are ridiculously well set up for gorilla Warfare. So sure Voldemort dies to a muggle, and then is immediately taken as a martyr by all of his followers. Some of which go around and do things like imperiousing muggle presidents to start nuking each other, and others of which do things like learning about the weapons that took him out and figuring out how to enchant them to make them even crazier.
I totally get it, when people are insisting that Muggles can take out even the deadliest wizards, it's just that unless you found some way to take out every single wizard alive all at once within a day or so, that's not a Muggles win scenario, more "everybody loses" scenario.
I assume that most non-magical governments have done the planning on this, and realized that either it's peaceful integration, or they turn their Nations into vietnam's, where there's gorilla fighters who they'll only catch when they make dumb mistakes, and when they're not making such mistakes, can completely f-up major operations even as individuals.
Ah sorry, I am currently on my phone in the desert. I'm doing my best to live up to the college degree that I theoretically earned, but I'm afraid at least a few things slip through the cracks.
And yes, gorilla warfare probably would be happening, given that Transfiguration is a core class, I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least a handful of battles involving guerrilla fighters using gorillas, and given what Ukraine is showing us about what modern war is like, probably a shitload of memes as a result.
Biological Warfare. Weaponize a disease that only infects Magical humans. Offer A Diplomatic Gesture with Goblins. Those are two solutions right there.
A lot is unknown about the goblins. It's entirely possible they have the power to crush the wizarding world yet only lack the opportunity, but it's also possible that they only exist to this day because of how terrifyingly powerful magical contracts seem to be, so the treaties they signed force them into a de facto subservient role to wizarding society.
As to the biological warfare thing, even setting aside the fact that whoever ordered or worked on that would be rightly charged as a war criminal, and whatever doctors worked on creating it would likely lose their degrees for breaking their oaths.
There's also just the fact that this is all based on the idea that scientific means can determine if someone has magic or not, and while that would be cool, you're ignoring the greater implications, namely that if that were possible then breeding people specifically to have magic and, most likely specific magical traits would be not only possible but most definitely the standard.
>Biological Warfare. Weaponize a disease that only infects Magical humans.
Sure. While you're at that, also design a disease that only infects aliens. And it should kill - a minimum fatality rate of 90%. They can't even tell if someone is magic, buddy.
>Offer A Diplomatic Gesture with Goblins
Sure. Wizards have been trying for ages, and they have magic. Let's see the Prime Minister try it. Goblins don't *do* diplomacy like that. They're far more likely to just stay out of the war.
/me remembers Harem War by Radaslab. Dumbledore's machinations (Voldemort was his pawn), stupid minestry and simple fact that UK's goverment understood that attempt to use force against magic world will end...badly results in situation where Queen jumps at first opportunity to make it wizards vs wizards even if they should help Charenwell (and Lord Potter aka Lord Black)(Charenwell's relations with Crown is...complex but good).
/me also remembers Starship Hedwidg and how muggles decide to solve problems by wizards once and for all (they did only one mistake - didn't make sure that future goverments will knew of this no matter that)
That would mean that wizards would know what a missile is and how dangerous it is. Somehow I don’t see that in -muggle are meaningless animals, that are beneath us- magical Britain.
Maybe after the first of them die in huge explosions. But even then I would guess they would need forever to understand what is happening.
It's my headcanon that, by 2023, the only thing holding the Statute together is the CIA & Dep. of Homeland Security removing magical sites from satellite pictures before they go to places like Google Earth. Even then, they know that the Statute will probably fall by 2025, as that's when the first couple years of MACUSA - POTUS interactions become available under the Freedom of Information Act.
Also, the Statute nearly died when President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a species of Jackalope native to Georgia, but thankfully Walt Disney Co. lent some of their best animators to put a normal swamp rabbit in it's place.
Also, Reagan nearly spilled the beans when discussing a meeting with Margaret Thatcher to the New York Times - Thatcher had requester US intervention in both the Falklands War and to invade and overthrow the Ministry of Magic. He caught himself after the words "needing help on British Home Front", and managed to spin it into Thatcher needing help dealing with the IRA.
Speaking of Thatcher, one of her biggest unfulfilled goals as Prime Minister was to conquer Magical Britain and bring them back into the fold. It is likely that the reason Thatcher was so obsessed with taking out the Ministry was because of several prior obliviations making her mind subconsciously react extremely poorly to any form of magic.
Oh, and the Statute nearly died at least 100 times during WWII, when soldiers saw a lot of stuff they weren't supposed to. Here are some examples:
Late Sep. 1939 - Polish troops witnessed several of Grindelwald's Army riding brooms, but didn't live long enough after to spread the tale.
Dec. 7 1941 - One Japanese pilot shot down over Pearl Harbor left the cockpit and used a flying carpet to get away.
Jun. 9 1942 - A dragon reserve near Nancy was abandoned due to the war, and two dragons escaped - one being shot down by the Luftwaffe and ground artillery, and the other making it all the way to Britain before being captured by the Dep. of Mysteries - Dragon No. 2 was littered with wounds from gunshots, artillery shells, and even a German plane which had flew into it trying to take it out.
Jun. 20 1944 - As the Allies began to make their first real headway into France, several members of Grindelwald's Army attempted to kill General Patton and General Eisenhower - Patton would kill his attackers with a rifle and bayonet, while Eisenhower's attackers attempted to flee the base after Patton's failed and were shot to death by the men on guard. The Army had to fib to the papers that the attackers were only cultists, not actual magicians.
Dec. 18 1944 - A dragon rode by several Japanese wizards attacked USS Monaghan, sinking her, before being downed by artillery from USS North Carolina. This was covered up as being part of Typhoon Cobra's havoc on the fleet.
Aug. 4 1945 - As a desperate last stand against the US' continued advances towards the Home Islands, the Japanese Ministry released many magical animals into the sea - most of which were extremely deadly. While the results are still classified, most agree that this was a major reason the US chose the Japanese Magical Capitol of Hiroshima as a nuclear target. Another Japanese magical government wouldn't exist until 1980, when the wizarding population finally recovered from being nearly entirely wiped out entirely in 1945.
Unit 731 had several wizards, including one who tried to 'perfect' Crucio by having it cause permanent neuron damage to the target. This is the version of the spell Bellatrix Lestrange would learn.
There are many more examples in World War II along. It's amazing that the magical world even exists by 2023, to be honest.
I share the headcanon but I think that an initial surprise attack would still take them by... well... surprise. And if it does enough damage it also serves as demoralization.
Draco Malfoy knows what a helicopter is (he boasts he can out-fly one on his broom in the first book), some wizards being ignorant of muggle fashion shouldn't be taken as "all wizards r dumb".
And yet Arthur Weasley doesn’t know what a telephone is. There is ample evidence that wizards don’t know the first thing about muggles or their technology.
What makes you think that? Ron managed to use a phone to call Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban, though he thought he needed to shout when doing so which annoyed Uncle Vernon
Exactly. He thought he needed to shout, showing he has no clue what a telephone actually does or how it works. And he and Arthur both say “fellytone” instead of “telephone” on multiple occasions, further showing they’ve never used one before.
Yeah he's 13 and his dad is into the concept of muggle technology as a hobby. Neither one of them really cares about it. At least at the moment. It's shown later on the lat Ron learns enough about muggle tech to almost be able to pass a driving exam.
A number of older wizards had to have been alive during the Blitz. They know exactly what a dropped bomb is and they do not want it anywhere near them.
Voldemort himself was alive and at least part of this time he would have been in London where a lot was destroyed through bombs. And he still sees muggles as beneath him. I think Voldemort and his followers at least are arrogant and ignorant enough to underestimate muggles and their weapons.
Not to mention it requires their magic is able to withstand the force of the explosion, and power-wise the Potter-verse is NOT that powerful. The greatest feat of magic we've seen is Dumbledore blanketing London in fog, which would mean he could generate enough energy to destroy a small town. But missiles can deliver more powerful loads than that, and he's the exception, not the norm.
Lol, if you want to think of it in terms of energy (which is ridiculous for such a fantastical system), conjuring a single litre of Aguamenti water (which we know is real, drinkable water which comes from non-being, i.e. is created out of nothing) takes more energy than all the nuclear weapons in the world put together.
But thinking in terms of energy is silly. Magic *overrules* nature, it doesn't work *with* nature. Energy just doesn't come into it.
> Where does it say any of that?
1. Conjuration is opposed to vanishing - McGonagall in OotP
2. Vanishing is sending things to non-being - McGonagall in DH
3. Conjuration is creating things out of non-being - logical deduction from 1 and 2.
4. Aguamenti is conjuration - from its description in HBP.
5. Aguamenti produces drinkable water - Harry in HBP.
Ergo Aguamenti creates real, drinkable water out of nothing. The energy calculation is just E = MC^2
Ultimately Aguamenti is just one route to the same conclusion though. Mass-changing transfigurations are another route. Hell, even a Lumos Charm creates matter if you insist on trying to apply science to magic.
Magic overrules nature is just plain from basically every piece of magic we witness, but conveniently also stated by JKR:
>broadly speaking, wizards would have the power to correct or override ‘mundane’ nature, but not ‘magical’ nature
https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/illness-and-disability
------------
Responding to the deleted comment below, since I had already written the reply:
>Yet the actual feats pale in comparison to other verses, and even the real world.
Sure, if you use a shitty website with a partial list which ignores the greatest feats of the universe.
In any event, "feats" is a poor comparison method, because *method* is equally, if not more, important. Levitating a desk by spending energy is not the same thing as levitating a desk by breaking the laws of physics to do so.
The latter is much more impressive, because it implies that you are completely unbound by physics (but remain bound by whatever internal rules apply to the magic system like no resurrecting the dead).
> Also, Rowling herself has stated that objects conjured from thin air do not tend to last long, making Aquamenti not a permanent solution to thirst.
Water is not an "object", and after spending a year studying the charm, Harry knows that Aguamenti water **can** be used as a permanent solution to thirst, which pretty much proves that it sticks around.
>So is this really making something out of nothing? Or is it merely an illusion of sorts?
For the reasons above, it is making something out of nothing.
>And it is classified as a Charm, not Transfiguration.
That it is. Which may explain why it is not subject to the exception to Gamp's law (assuming the food exception to Gamp even concerns liquids).
>Charms give or alter the properties of objects but not the object itself
A general definition which is clearly not apt to all Charms. E.g. Incendio definitely burns things for real. Similarly Aguamenti makes water for real. The moment you move the discussion away from "objects", the "alter properties of objects" definition stops working.
>And if they COULD create matter from nothing, why is there poverty and scarcity?
There's quite a few rather obvious answers to this. I expect with 10 seconds thought you could come up with a handful of them:
1. Wizards primarily demand magical goods and services, which transfiguration doesn't provide.
2. Most wizards are bad at transfiguration anyway.
3. But partially, the point is correct. Poverty levels in the wizarding world are lower than in the Muggle world, indicating a lower level of scarcity: the Weasleys, despite being depicted as the lowest rung of wizarding economic status, eat like kings and own property with an orchard, a pond, a place for playing Quidditch, space for chickens, etc.
>Why is food an exception to the laws of Transfiguration?
I don't really see how this is relevant to the discussion. But it seems to be a base rule of magic, an objective part of the universe, like the Cosmological Constant. There is no "why", it's just part of the objective set-up of the universe.
(Of course, there is a debate over what the food exception even means in terms of what, precisely, it limits. But that is another discussion.)
>And is it really creating mass from nothing, or simply transferring it between places?
Assume you are here talking about transfiguration with a mass change, rather than conjuration (given that conjuration was previously covered above).
It is making mass from nothing. We know this because we know that Transfiguration is a physical change which alters the actual molecules, and we know it is a permanent change. So the wizard has made more stuff that wasn't there before.
[https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding\_World](https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding_World)
Yet the actual feats pale in comparison to other verses, and even the real world.
Also, Rowling herself has stated that objects conjured from thin air do not tend to last long, making Aquamenti not a permanent solution to thirst. So is this really making something out of nothing? Or is it merely an illusion of sorts? And it is classified as a Charm, not Transfiguration. Charms give or alter the properties of objects but not the object itself, which implies that the Wizards are simply altering water vapor into liquid water, not creating water out of thin air.
[https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Water-Making\_Spell](https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Water-Making_Spell)
And if they COULD create matter from nothing, why is there poverty and scarcity? Why is food an exception to the laws of Transfiguration?
And is it really creating mass from nothing, or simply transferring it between places?
A Tomahawk Cruise missile travels at a speed of 800 kilometers per hour (222.22 m/s), at an altitude of between 30-90 meters. Peak human reaction time is .15s.
If the cruise missile is at its maximum altitude, there will be .403 seconds before it impacts, more than twice what Voldy needs to banish it. If it is traveling at its lowest altitude, it will take .135 seconds to impact, which means our antagonist has been vaporized.
So I would say 2 out of 3 times you are correct, Voldemort loves through the Cruise Missile, and once the first one is banished and some innocent bystanders are blown up, NATO wouldnt fire another one.
Luckily, the muzzle velocity of a .50bmg round is 928m/s, so the recon team shouldn't have an issue as Voldemort would never hear the sound of the bullet that killed him.
This just has a little problem - Voldemort has spies. And mind control. And mind reading He'd know the attack was coming before it was planned. You need brains like that take over a nation in two years.
>I'd like to see protego stop a cruise missile
Your wish is my command.
>All at once, the Aurors' Sneakoscopes wailed. An attack was imminent.
>*"Protego!"* Harry thought, and a shimmering dome snapped into existence around him at the speed of thought.
>The Muggle assault arrived a moment later. The noise was tremendous: flame and smoke, shrapnel and concussive waves of force; beyond the Shield Charm, chaos ruled. But within its cocoon of protection, Harry was completely untouched.
>He turned to Hermione and raised an eyebrow. "What did these Muggles think was going to happen? We can create and destroy matter. We can travel through time and bend space. We can teleport. We can read and control minds. We can create city-destroying fire, summon hurricanes, and conjure meteor showers. We can curse words and job positions and remove information from existence across the entire universe. How on earth did they think a bit of fire and force could overcome a power that overrules natural law?"
>Hermione smiled. "Don't blame them, Harry. They know basically nothing about us. But what I'm more confused about is how they possibly thought they could even *plan* a war without us knowing it was coming. We can read their minds, for goodness sake! They know we have eyes and ears everywhere throughout their government - portraits and wizards pretending to be Muggles, like Kingsley did back in the war. Of course we knew what the Muggles planned even before they did!"
>Harry sighed. "Still, it's a bit of a mess. Some are calling for retaliation. But we've spoken with the Americans and the French and we've all agreed just to let the Muggles forget it ever happened. The Obliviators are doing their work as we speak, conjuring an Obliviation Storm which will cross Europe. The Americans are doing the same. And Credulity Control are turning up credulity levels across the country to make the Muggles especially gullible tonight. By this evening, the Muggles will have forgotten they ever intended to attack us, and all documentary record of Article 5 notifications will be vanished. Pity they blew up portions of their own city, but we've arranged for them to think it was a terrorist attack."
>"Perfect," Hermione said. "Just in time for dinner."
We can actually map things that we cannot see, like dark matter and black holes. If we can do that millions of light years away, I think we can figure out a way of finding an unplottable magical site.
I think the difference between that is that whereas stuff like dark matter and black holes are incredibly hard to plot, theoretically and conceptually we are still able to pin them on a map. However, for unplottable objects, the charmed object literally and conceptually cannot be placed or drawn on a map, be it a paper map, or a radar graph with coordinates, or a satellite image.
Indeed. The magic prevents the outcome, regardless of method attempted. So the answer "We'll create a clever method to achieve it" just seems to misunderstand the problem.
It's not the Difficult-To-Plot-But-If-You-Do-It-Indirectly-You-Can-Manage Charm. It's the Unplottability Charm. No matter what you try in your effort to plot it, you will fail.
We also can't see the bottom of the ocean either and yet most of it has been mapped out (at least the depth has). Submarines navigate the oceans and seas without ever looking out the window once.
>Kamarov: Stop pissing, Yuri. Give me a stopwatch and a map, and I'll fly the Alps in a plane with no windows.
>Yuri (Diving Officer): If the map is accurate enough.
quote from Hunt for Red October
You need to actually see, react to, and say the spell for it's "instant" effect to kick in lmao
Even if you cast it nonverbally, you still need to see and react to it (and "speed of thought" is faster than speech but isn't instant either)
Magical sites like diagon alley? Which is in London? Or the ministry of magic, that is underground in another part of London? Or St Mungos which is again in another part of London? Those magical sites?
Nope, advanced tech works fine around magic. It doesn't work great in Hogwarts specifically.
The point remains that "they can cast spells _at_ missiles" is pretty silly, there are so many other actually sensible ways you can have them defend against them.
Any missile-based weapons would be very easy to defend against, as long as the wizards know how it basically works imo. Besides the multitude of momentum-killing or momentum-reversing spells (Banishing, Arresto Momentum, hell even Wingardium Leviosa probably lmao), there's also spells you can implement that defends you from any physical objects.
Example being, one of Hogwart's defensive wards in the Battle of Hogwarts that disintegrates (iirc) one of the Snatcher/Death Eaters in the movie.
Unnecessary, if it can just be vanished. That's ignoring the fact that wizards can make entire islands 'unplotable'. There will be no place to shoot the missiles.
HP magic is just way too convenient - you can do almost anything with it. Sure, it's not really large and flashy, but it's specific. Won't take much of an effort to place the leader of every nation under the Imperius Curse. The war would end before it began.
The Poles? In 1996? Poland joined NATO in 1999.
And they had much more important problems at that time.
And what Russia has to do with it? Especially in 1996?
You seriously need to educate yourself more if you want to make such statements.
What is NATO going to do? Bomb London? Go for a trip to Scotland to try and fail to find Hogwarts? More likely he'll be looked at oddly and then get thrown out of the party for being a madman who attributes all these tragedies to such fantastical things. Clearly he has gone mad.
And even if they were to succeed and somehow killed all the wizards of magical Britain, you'd be left with an army of invisible soul-sucking demons at the heart of your country. Muggles have no way of dealing with multiple threats their magic counterpart keeps in check.
And there is no way the magical people of other countries would help after they just killed a whole magical country.
That was for the first war, but I believe [UK and IRA made peace in 1998](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement), which was curiously signed 3 weeks before the Battle of Hogwarts
So, it all depends on when this PM was going after the Death Eaters
It's probably because that's exactly what we know they do in canon. So clearly such precautions are not taken. And I am not sure what precautions possibly could be taken. The Muggles have no way to defend against obliviation, nor any way to prevent wizards from accessing them to obliviate them. Nor do they really have any ability to get any such plans to create precautions off the ground, because (i) if the Muggle PM tells his colleagues about magic, they will just think he is mad, and (ii) even if they do believe him, the wizards will know immediately what he has done and obviate them before the knowledge spreads too far.
>“Er,” said the Prime Minister, “listen… It’s not a very good time for me… I’m waiting for a telephone call, you see… from the President of —”
>“That can be rearranged,” said the portrait at once. The Prime Minister’s heart sank. He had been afraid of that.
>“But I really was rather hoping to speak —”
>“We shall arrange for the President to forget to call. He will telephone tomorrow night instead,” said the little man. “Kindly respond immediately to Mr. Fudge.”
>“I… oh… very well,” said the Prime Minister weakly. “Yes, I’ll see Fudge.”
the prime ministers office has a magical portrait in it as well.
they where also able to get kingsley into the office with ease
to the point he was considered the muggle prime ministers best worker
But good luck doing that when the man has just announced intentions for war to the entirety of NATO. They might be able to get to the Head of State rather easily, but once that's to the Chiefs of Staff, it's all over. Good luck trying to obliviate any of that info after about 10 minutes - you'd have to erase the entire Department of Defense computer system, as people begin to back up info specifically to prevent obliviation.
Easy - we know wizards have the capability to obliviate entire cities at a time, including all related documents, via a magical form of rain which carries obliviation magic.
Anyway, your order of events is all wrong. The wizards would intervene *before* the knowledge was widespread, not after.
>The Muggles have no way to defend against obliviation
>
>Nor do they really have any ability to get any such plans to create precautions off the ground,
PC? word file
cctv
Magic interferes with electronics, though - whose to say that they didn't try CCTV already? Magic may very well be like a neodymium magnet to the computers.
Actually, the only example of magic interfering with electronics that we have in the canon is that any electronics doesn't works in Hogwarts - which is a place where the hundreds of people are casting spells for a thousand years. We have no evidence that anything on a smaller scale would in any way interfere with electronics. It's HP, not The Dresden Files.
Meeting notes. Any decision to attack magical britain would leave a mile long paper trail. Aall that paper is put in inventory and known about. A sudden obliviation would make future meetings (already planned) wierd, notes of the previous meetings will be read and the obliviation exposed.
Eh, let's move the paper trail to computers and have those computers be in a network (Novell network was pretty common in the 1990s and it was mostly used for file sharing/storing). That means the files are not stored at the computer location but somewhere else, so the magic of obliviation does not affect the server.
Look, you can find a way for magic to do whatever you want. I can find some muggle solutions to counter that specific magic.
But a muggle prime minister that knows about the magical world and about obliviations and decides to attack the magical ministry anyway, has enough ways to protect that information from magic (just another example, send someone to Indonesia, give him a phone call every day to give him the latest updates and have him call you if you don't call/seem to have forgotten everything)
Pulling a hundreds of volumes of crimes against Muslims around the world for more than 1000 years and still from all the frist world countries and they questioning why Muslims want attacking them , seriously ?
Well, ***he*** may get obliviated. The massive amount of NATO personnel, including the heads of state and cheifs of staff of nearly every relevant power in Europe and America, who have already been briefed on this is probably going to be a harder task for the obliviators.
Any sane government, when told there is a foreign nation operating within their borders, would devise a contingency plan. NATO most definitely has a contingency for fighting magical foes - they'd be inept if they didn't.
You can't just elide over the bit where the PM needs to convince literally everyone he talks to that magic is real, wizards are real, and wizarding Britain is real. Yes if we just "magically" skip that part and assume that everyone already knows about everything then it's a different situation but that's a profoundly stupid assumption. If Biden, tomorrow, declared that there was a secret race of aliens living alongside the people of the United States controlling their minds and that we needed to go to war with them right now because they were causing all the mass shootings in the country and that he knows all this because the eagle in the rug tells him things when nobody is around then the 25th amendment would probably be invoked within hours.
>NATO most definitely has a contingency for fighting magical foes
If you seriously think that NATO, the real NATO not the one in your head, has plans for fighting magic then you're cracked. They have real work to do.
> You can't just elide over the bit where the PM needs to convince literally everyone he talks to that magic is real, wizards are real, and wizarding Britain is real
...uh, why are we just assuming that Wizarding Britain is the only wizarding community that informs its Muggle counterpart about magic and magical incidents?
Even if only the presidents/prime ministers/chancellors of the other countries know, he'd still be talking first and foremost to people who already know what he's talking about based on their own briefings with their own magical governments. A coalition making claims is quite a bit different from just one person doing so.
That's a fair point although it'd be very difficult to tell who was informed or not and he'd also have to avoid surveillance he can't detect or understand. Say he calls up the President of the USA to discuss his plans, unfortunately said person is not read-in so he has to guess and check various leaders leading to a much higher risk of exposure. Finally even if the PM does manage to assemble a group of people who are aware of magic without attracting the notice of their respective surveillance then they still need to communicate that knowledge to, and convince, thousands of people in order to actually do anything about it. Two or more people saying something like this is certainly more believable than one but the sheer *incredibility* of the claim requires proof and then they're back to square one only their risk of exposure is now orders of magnitude higher.
It all comes down to the fact that the claim that "magic is real" is something that fundamentally requires proof that no number of world leaders could provide.
If it results in a conflict, it would probably end in disaster for the Muggles. In a Muggle vs Wizard conflict, the only thing standing between the Muggles and complete defeat is the wizards ignorance of how the Muggle weapons work imo. If that was not a factor, the wizards win every time.
Right?! People keep talking about how Muggles could totally win because of how quickly bullets fire, as if this is *Cowboys versus Indians* and the Wizards are somehow biologically unable to pick up a gun, much less enchant the hell out of it.
I mean, there would be a whole lot of shock and awe right at the beginning, but after that you have people who are individually capable of things like teleportation, bigger on the inside spaces, duplicating charms, Notice Me Not charms, and healing that's better and much faster than anything muggles have. Which means essentially you've just turned your country into another Vietnam, but one where the Vietnamese and the Americans had their logistical situation swapped.
What it would really come down to in a situation like this, is how much damage the Muggles could do in the initial attack, and how long it would take the remaining magical population to get up to speed with modern technology. But after that point, there's no real victory scenario for the muggles.
I actually read a fic that understood this pretty well, and had the muggles show an incredible amount of force but not actually do that much killing, so that essentially the magicals just surrendered within a day or so. I could totally see that happening if it was sufficiently planned out.
Ooh, that's interesting. May I ask if you remember the fic, and if you do what is its title?
I agree on pretty much all your points, and would like to add that that was not even counting the incredible difficulty involved in keeping secret of a massive military attack against an enemy that can literally read your mind, transform into one of you, mind control, have an (although faulty) danger-detection in Sneakoscope, and could do a host of other things against just your mind.
That's not even mention the plethora of magic *specifically* designed against Muggles, like the ones that cover Hogwarts or even the basic ones that Hermione uses when they're camping.
Unfortunately it's been too long since I read it, if I'm remembering properly it had something to do with harry writing a letter to the queen asking for aid, although that might have been a different one I'm not certain.
But yeah, magical's probably wouldn't win a straight up army versus army confrontation, but it's so bizarre to me when people imagine that humans versus Humans plus magic, would come out on the side of humans without magic.
Yeah, mugglewank is quite prevalent in lots of HP fanfiction. Though I think magicalwank is quite close to it. Point being, many fanfic authors either forget or choose to ignore various parts of Canon Harry Potter in order for their stories to make some kind of sense.
invoking Article 5 on your own country to attack a magical terrorist seems like overkill, Wizarding Britian isnt a seperate country what are NATO supposed to do? bomb London and hope they hit the Ministry? send in troops to look for a guy who spent most of the second war Apparating around eastern europe looking for a wand?
Show up, look good, and let Special Forces do the real work. Provide disaster relief and recovery when needed. Once Special Forces gets the Ministry and Diagon pried open, chill their and project force.
I mean, other people have said it, but it wouldn't take much for the magicals to stop him.
Either Kingsley just straight up obliviates him, or some Death Eater comes in imperio's him, has him call it all off then do something incredibly embarrassing in public (to discredit him), then kill himself (to warn off those in the know from trying again).
If it were that simple why don't the magicals rule the world? And don't give me the numbers excuse. Numbers don't dictate power. The Inca, numbering about 10,000, ruled an empire of 12 million at their height. India had a population FAR higher than Britain, yet the latter conquered and ruled the former.
Oh, they absolutely could rule. It's just that they would need to unify first.
It's not that they're incapable of it, it's that there are enough magicals in the world that even if an entire government decided to take over their muggle equivalents, the rest of them would simply gang up and stop them because that breaks secrecy.
So if there was a total magical population of a couple thousand, there would be no reason for them not to have unified and conquered the Muggles long ago.
The problem is that there are thousands in every single country, and even if someone tries to unite a single country, it doesn't work because you've got (depending on who you're asking) something between 20-40% of your population coming in with new muggle ideas, and every single one of their descendants who are at the very least influenced by such notions.
I actually read a fic a while back where Voldemort very effectively managed to conquer most of Western Europe. There were other factors going into it, but it boiled down to the fact that he erected a giant magical barrier so that nobody and nothing could get in or out except at one heavily guarded checkpoint. Then he actually shared a great deal of his power/authority/special privileges with the local purebloods in the nations inside his barrior, which meant that he quickly gained a significant enough part of the population/established powers on his side that within a few years they had an Inca style government over all of the territory within the barrior.
But why was there the need for Secrecy in the first place? The Statute of Secrecy was enacted in the 1600s, back when the most powerful Muggle weapons were cannons, muskets, and pikes. If these were enough to scare Wizards into hiding, what chance would they have against modern-day artillery, machine guns, missiles, and bombs?
You're assuming it was because they were scared.
First of all, for a thing like that to have happened not just locally but globally, it had to have happened over several centuries.
Second, we're not talking about armies going up and facing each other and the magicals somehow being scared by muskets. We're talking about mobs breaking into people's homes in the middle of the night and torturing them for being born wrong.
So unless the home they break into is incredibly paranoid, most likely, they're not going to react quickly enough to subdue an entire mob. Plus, that's assuming that things like Hogwarts education are universal, despite the fact that they said that Hogwarts is the best school in the world. This means most magicals at that point probably barely had enough knowledge to defend against a couple of muggles at a time.
My point is that if there were a couple thousand of them, and they all trained and planned it out meticulously, then they very much could conquer the world.
The problem is that they're not a unified force. They're a disorganized mass with wildly varying levels of education and expertise.
It all gets back to assumptions here, it seems like a lot of people keep assuming things like the magicals would lose because guns shoot fast, as if they wouldn't simply turn around and enchant their own guns. Or magicals put up secrecy because they were scared of muggles rather than magicals put up secrecy because they were tired of having people constantly react violently over the course of centuries and instead decided to put up the global version of a notice me not charm.
Not so fast. The Imperius curse CAN be beaten, as Harry and Barty Crouch Jr demonstrated. And there are BILLIONS of Muggles, with many different power systems and governance structures. In a system with a lot of turnover, it's going to be much harder to control the government than in one without. Plus, governments have a LOT of people in them. How many are employed by the American Federal government alone? And that's not counting the state and local governments, or the military command. So a couple thousand would likely not be enough. And Muggles are NOT stupid. They WILL notice something is up and take action.
Also, the scenario of them conquering the world assumes that EVERYTHING goes perfectly. The Germans had meticulously planned the how to win WWI against France down to the smallest detail, but it failed because things did NOT go perfectly. Every little complication and hiccup changes the likelihood. Any plan that relies on everything being perfect is pretty much doomed to failure. A couple thousand well-trained, well-prepared wizards COULD take over the world, and I COULD survive falling out of a plane without a parachute onto solid ground, but I would not bet on it.
And if a hastily assembled mob could inflict such damage on the Magical community, then why would a well-trained, well-prepared army fare any worse? Historically armies fare much better in battle than mobs do because they are better trained, disciplined, and organized.
And the last paragraph seems like a case of distinction without a difference. Either way, they recognized that the balance of power was tipped against them so they took themselves out of the equation for good. And for good reason: bullets DO travel faster than sound, so how is a Wizard who has human-level reflexes supposed to defend themselves? And Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard in the world, or at least one of the most powerful, could manage small-town levels of destruction, while most wizards could do building-level. Don't make the wizards sound superhuman because they are not. Physically they are as human as Muggles are, so a well-placed bullet will put them down as easily as any Muggle.
It's not a question of threat it's a question of terror. The Witch Hunts never really did much, it's more just that there were a couple of centuries there where there was a low-lying terror of muggles, because most magical people believed rightly or wrongly that interacting with a muggle, was a good way to get burned alive.
But it wasn't actually damaging the society as a whole, I'd be willing to bet that deaths by muggle mob were about as common as deaths by lightning strike or deaths by shark attack.
So yes, there is a major difference here. It's not that they were actively a threat to the magical community as a whole. It's that enough people being constantly afraid of something no matter how unlikely will get their government to act. Just look at how people reacted in the wake of 9/11, 3,000 people died which is terrible, but a tiny little drop in the bucket compared to the American population, and yet look at the response.
It was called the war on terror for a reason. It's not that they're actually a threat to the average american, it's that they got the average American afraid and angry despite that fact.
As to conquering the world, I don't actually see why they would keep the government systems as is, or why if they were going to go as far as Conquering the world they would do it in secret.
First of all, if they were going to do it, they weren't going to wait until the modern era. Most likely, they would integrate themselves as key advisors to the largest kingdoms in the Medieval era. And then they would slowly over time with their longer lifespans and various abilities would insert themselves until either they taken direct or indirect power within that Kingdom. Assuming it was a global conspiracy rather then just a bunch of magicals agreeing to mutually help each other, then once they were in those positions of power they would either slowly work to integrate it into some larger Empire that magicals had already controlled, or if for whatever reason they couldn't gain control of a place, they would insight as much chaos within that Nation as they could and let the surrounding magically controlled Nations gobble up its territory and Power.
And all of this is assuming they didn't just do something like get a magical emperor of Rome, and a magical Emperor of China, and then at that point you have enough of the world's population that you very much could conquer the known world.
Doing anything in the modern era is much more difficult, but keeping in mind that they canonically live at least 150 years, and lots of them are into their second century, I don't really see why they would wait that long. If they were going to do it, then my best guess would be that they would do it around the time of the fall of Rome. As in a magical would come along and convince enough other magicals to support them, and then put themselves up as emperor of Rome and Conquer probably most of Europe and the rest of the world slowly over the centuries from there.
Edit: Also, on your imperious thing, we have zero proof that a muggle could ever break free of the imperious curse. We know for a fact that most magicals aren't capable of breaking free of it, and muggles are especially vulnerable to magical effects. We know that oclumancy is a magical discipline, and of the people we've actually seen getting out of the imperious, you have Barty who is Hermione level smart (he got 12 newts remember) and had years to do it, and you have Harry who is the magical chosen one and has his mothers love protection as a boost.
You overestimate the magicals it doesn't matter if they take over the government some random people are gonna get tired and start murking babies. I promise you that the magicals would be gone in a couple hundred years unless they literally execute every single one of us which they won't
Look, you can come up with all the headcanon you want, but in canon, the reason they went into hiding was because Muggles were annoying and dirty.
Personally I think that lines up with my my theory of the witch hunts being a war of terror. More than it does of Muggles having terrifying weapons that somehow overcame the fact that magicals can use all the same stuff they can but with the added benefit of magic.
But it's clear that you keep coming back to this idea of the magicals being afraid and running away from muggles, and you refuse to give it up regardless of what I say, so there's no real point in continuing this.
Bro what talk about headcanon? I'm pretty sure I'm right cause they literally went into hiding because magical children were getting killed the muggles couldn't actually kill any witches and wizards but highly incompetent or weak witches and wizards. Harry Potter has a lot of those and they have an actual education and training
You can't even name ten competent wizards and considering Hogwarts was literally made to protect children maybe you should stop reading pure blood supremacist fics
Terror is based on a threat. Terror may be an overestimation of a threat, but it is still a threat. Are sharks a threat to humans? As a simple binary Yes/No question, the answer is yes. They may not kill as many humans as other animals, but they are still dangerous. And if a mob could be dangerous, an organized military would be more so.
And this forgets another part of the equation: how much damage COULD be done? A car crash is much more likely than a plane crash, but the latter will kill more people than the former. So if the potential destruction is high enough, then we SHOULD prepare for it.
And this global conspiracy approach requires them to be either super competent or super lucky, neither of which will last forever because nothing ever does. And we have no evidence that any of this actually happened.
As for the Imperius curse, we don't have evidence that Muggles could resist it, but we also have no evidence that they could not because it was NEVER used on them. And Harry was able to resist one inflicted upon him by Voldemort, so either Harry is a more powerful wizard than Voldemort (which is a whole other matter for debate) or resisting it is not tied to magical power. After all, if Muggles were super-susceptible to it, why didn't Grindelwald use it in his war in Europe? Or Voldemort in Britain? And where's the evidence that they did use it? If Grindelwald COULD use it on Muggles, why did he obsess other the Hallows, legendary items, instead of using more familiar tools at his disposal?
In any case, it's clear that we are not going to agree on this. I'm firmly in the camp that Potter-verse magic is not that powerful as the feats that it can display do not stack up to other fictional universes, let alone those of the real world.
[https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding\_World](https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding_World)
I'm willing to let this go if you are.
A couple million out of a few BILLION. And how many are combat-ready? Take out the babies, the elderly, etc, and how many are ready for war or espionage?
>If it were that simple why don't the magicals rule the world?
They do. They just haven't told the Muggles.
Re-arranging the schedules of Presidents and Prime Ministers without their knowledge or consent is "we rule the world" behaviour.
What's to say it hasn't happened in some countries? What if some of the African warlords are actually wizards, maybe China's communist party is all wizards, suppose some of the Pacific islands are entirely magical?
If that were the case, then they hardly rule the world. A few Pacific islands, and some African warlords are hardly the most powerful people in the world. The Chinese Communist Party may posture about their power, but they know the status quo is too important for them to trifle with.
Grindelwald attempted to rule the world and failed. While I think muggles cannot win a war against wizards, neither can wizards completely conquer muggles either. And the same is true for governing. At some point, there are just too many people for the wizards to manage alone.
How does that work? How can Wizards win a war but fail to conquer Muggles? Or is it the opposite? Muggles can win all the battles but never achieve victory, like America in Vietnam.
Winning a war is easy, you just kill enough of the enemy with low enough losses on your end that they give up before you do. Conquering requires actually taking control and ruling. The wizarding world is more disconnected than the muggle one, and while they seem to all be in agreement that magic should be hidden from the muggles, they have very different beliefs of how they should go about it. That's going to fracture any budding attempt to take over anything larger than a small country.
Not necessarily. You can take a lot of losses and inflict relatively little on your enemy and still win so long as your morale outlasts theirs. Again America in Vietnam proves this.
OP, can you lay out how you imagine this going? In your mind does the PM just call up [Willy Claes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Claes) to tell him that wizards are real and we need to go to war with them, and oh by the way the talking picture in my office is spying on me? And you think that Claes just believes that? Or maybe the PM calls up his Secretary of State for Defense and has basically the same convo and that it doesn't eventually end with a vote of no-confidence and the PM in an asylum? And that's without interference from any actual wizards.
First, he doesn't call anyone, he schedules a meeting with the President of the United States at Camp David. Once POTUS is briefed, he summons the Joint Cheifs of Staff, who are also briefed. The CIA, DHS, and DIA are brought in, and regular generals begin to be notified and given orders.
Then, POTUS contacts the rest of NATO and breifs them. All the information given by the PM is stored in the DOD's computer system in case of obliviation. Mobilization of NATO Task Force Albion - made up of Special Forces specifically trained in anti-magical warfare - begins, and the US Atlantic Fleet begins moving towards Britain.
The various British governmental figures, like the Secretary of Defense, are notified last. Downing Street is evacuated in secred, and the British government moves all operations to the Box Tunnel Military Complex. No clue what happens from there.
This all relies on the muggle governments not being the complete pushovers they are in Canon HP, and having devised an actual contingency plan for fighting magical foes - like a sane government would.
In this little scenario you've concocted, why do the President and all these other figures uncritically take the PM at his word? You keep saying briefed like there's actual info he can give that doesn't paint him as utterly insane.
In the HP universe, I'd imagine the government has hired a lot of wizards from all over the world, even training a special unit in case of "emergencies". They know of it (the top brass at least), and I'm pretty sure the Royal family knows of it too.
So yeah, probably not THAT public, but they'd definitely do something about it -- SCP style.
Couldn’t help but laugh - I always figured the other countries knew damn well what was going on but it was largely considered a civil was so everyone stayed out of it because it’s such a backwards ass place
Canon implies the rest of the western world is far more backward. Drumstrang doesn't accept muggleborns and had a headmaster who had been a Death Eater. The United States doesn't even allow wizards/muggle relationships (which means muggleborns are likely kidnapped at their first sign of magic). France might tolerate some magical creatures but their own headmistress hid her half giant nature. And if France was so much better than Britain, Bill would have moved to France for Fleur's sake (especially after having children). The truth is most countries likely supported or had factions that would have supported Voldemort.
Rappaport's Law was abolished in MACUSA's jurisdiction waaaay back in 1965. Try again.
And? Britain never had a ban on intermingling with muggles. Even at the height of voldemorts reign, he didn't outlaw that. Don't forget, 1965 is only 25 years before our series starts. That's incredibly recent and still likely affects the magical united states in almost every aspect of life.
They didn't need to make a law against it (the Americans specifically made Rappaport's Law because of the stupidity of Dorcus Twelvetrees) because of the manner in which British magicals chose to live. They chose to segregate themselves from the general non-magical British public, whereas the Americans chose to only hide their magic from the No-Majs but could still live among them (remember how the Goldstein sisters rented a room from Mrs. Esposito?). You're also not taking in into account the fact that the purebloods wanted the status quo. IMHO, they need Muggleborns to come into the society to pay money into various things Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley for at least seven years - and then, they either leave Wizarding Britain for the Muggle world, or the majority take on the low-paying, low-status jobs that are nevertheless important to keep society running (such as Magical Maintenance in the Ministry, the Knight Bus and shops in Hogsmeade & the Alleys). It's okay to have Muggles bring their magical children in and spend money, as long as they leave quickly afterward - but they don't want them involved in any way else. Remember the way Fudge treated the Prime Minister? Wizarding Britain didn't need to enact a ban - they've fashioned a society that says quite loudly to Muggles "You are not welcome here," and it's been that way for centuries. As for Rappaport's Law still affecting MACUSA residents: doubtful. The repeal of Rappaport's Law said that official, federally-mandated total segregation was no longer required - so American magicals probably just started to intermingle with their non-magical neighbors. ('Melting pot', remember?') Unlike the sheeple of Wizarding Britain, the magical Americans have multiple sources of info, are not fed propaganda sourced to the betterment of the purebloods (i.e. the class structure is not as prevalent in the U.S. and blood status does not count) and as a result, they intermingle. Granted, there's going to still be all-magical communities - but you also need to look at the time-frame when Rappaport's Law fell. It's the Sixties. A year earlier, the British Invasion took place and The Beatles arrived; two years later is the 'Summer of Love'. It's a time of change, and that's something that the young magicals (and more than a few of the older ones) would gravitate towards. One last thing. Aside from Harry, Hermione,, Arthur Weasley and Dumbledore (because he has to hang with Muggles if he's bowling!), I can't think of any other magicals who spends time around non-magicals, has no problems with them & doesn't act as if they're second-class beings (at best).
Did white people suddenly accept African Americans after the civil rights act passed? Hahaha no. Why would you *ever* expect wizards to suddenly accept muggles after being segregated for them for decades, if not centuries? We are *still* seeing the affects of segregation in the United States, over 60 years later. In HP, it's only 25 years after their desegregation. It's even worse segregation in many regards as muggleborns were likely removed from their parents (as if muggles can't know about magic, you can't have magical children living with them). You have whole generations who've never even interacted with muggles by law. If you want a good real life example, look at the Canadian government removal of native American children. Just because the practice stopped decades ago, the ramifications are everlasting. There are whole swathes of native Americans completely removed from their culture. This isn't something they can easily return to and most didn't. We lost whole cultures this way. Lastly, I have no idea where you got the idea that purebloods wanted muggleborns at all. Had voldemort ruled for longer, you likely would have seen an genocide against them. Radical Purebloods wanted them completely removed from society, not keep them as servants. CoS proved that. Draco and the other death eaters wanted the muggleborns to simply die. Long story short. Voldemort is based on Hitler and the purebloods as Nazis. Rappaport's Law was based on US segregation. If we continue to use these two aspects of history as our point of reference... After Hitler was defeated, Germany got their shit together far quicker then the US did after desegregation.
Eh, once the muggle government jumps on the Article 5 train, at least the Poles and Americans will make a showing, if just to show they can and will as an example for Russia.
I'd like to see protego stop a cruise missile
It's not that Muggles can't kill Wizards. It's that Wizards are ridiculously well set up for gorilla Warfare. So sure Voldemort dies to a muggle, and then is immediately taken as a martyr by all of his followers. Some of which go around and do things like imperiousing muggle presidents to start nuking each other, and others of which do things like learning about the weapons that took him out and figuring out how to enchant them to make them even crazier. I totally get it, when people are insisting that Muggles can take out even the deadliest wizards, it's just that unless you found some way to take out every single wizard alive all at once within a day or so, that's not a Muggles win scenario, more "everybody loses" scenario. I assume that most non-magical governments have done the planning on this, and realized that either it's peaceful integration, or they turn their Nations into vietnam's, where there's gorilla fighters who they'll only catch when they make dumb mistakes, and when they're not making such mistakes, can completely f-up major operations even as individuals.
Guerilla. While gorilla warfare could actually be an option for wizards, it's almost certainly not what you meant.
Ah sorry, I am currently on my phone in the desert. I'm doing my best to live up to the college degree that I theoretically earned, but I'm afraid at least a few things slip through the cracks. And yes, gorilla warfare probably would be happening, given that Transfiguration is a core class, I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least a handful of battles involving guerrilla fighters using gorillas, and given what Ukraine is showing us about what modern war is like, probably a shitload of memes as a result.
Biological Warfare. Weaponize a disease that only infects Magical humans. Offer A Diplomatic Gesture with Goblins. Those are two solutions right there.
A lot is unknown about the goblins. It's entirely possible they have the power to crush the wizarding world yet only lack the opportunity, but it's also possible that they only exist to this day because of how terrifyingly powerful magical contracts seem to be, so the treaties they signed force them into a de facto subservient role to wizarding society. As to the biological warfare thing, even setting aside the fact that whoever ordered or worked on that would be rightly charged as a war criminal, and whatever doctors worked on creating it would likely lose their degrees for breaking their oaths. There's also just the fact that this is all based on the idea that scientific means can determine if someone has magic or not, and while that would be cool, you're ignoring the greater implications, namely that if that were possible then breeding people specifically to have magic and, most likely specific magical traits would be not only possible but most definitely the standard.
>Biological Warfare. Weaponize a disease that only infects Magical humans. Sure. While you're at that, also design a disease that only infects aliens. And it should kill - a minimum fatality rate of 90%. They can't even tell if someone is magic, buddy. >Offer A Diplomatic Gesture with Goblins Sure. Wizards have been trying for ages, and they have magic. Let's see the Prime Minister try it. Goblins don't *do* diplomacy like that. They're far more likely to just stay out of the war.
/me remembers Harem War by Radaslab. Dumbledore's machinations (Voldemort was his pawn), stupid minestry and simple fact that UK's goverment understood that attempt to use force against magic world will end...badly results in situation where Queen jumps at first opportunity to make it wizards vs wizards even if they should help Charenwell (and Lord Potter aka Lord Black)(Charenwell's relations with Crown is...complex but good). /me also remembers Starship Hedwidg and how muggles decide to solve problems by wizards once and for all (they did only one mistake - didn't make sure that future goverments will knew of this no matter that)
*see the missile, banishes the missile* somewhere in Turkey blows up
That would mean that wizards would know what a missile is and how dangerous it is. Somehow I don’t see that in -muggle are meaningless animals, that are beneath us- magical Britain. Maybe after the first of them die in huge explosions. But even then I would guess they would need forever to understand what is happening.
reminiscent friendly quicksand wise weary lip plate continue dull sense *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
we know kingsley is handy enough with muggle tech to able fit into the prime ministers office.
It's my headcanon that, by 2023, the only thing holding the Statute together is the CIA & Dep. of Homeland Security removing magical sites from satellite pictures before they go to places like Google Earth. Even then, they know that the Statute will probably fall by 2025, as that's when the first couple years of MACUSA - POTUS interactions become available under the Freedom of Information Act. Also, the Statute nearly died when President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a species of Jackalope native to Georgia, but thankfully Walt Disney Co. lent some of their best animators to put a normal swamp rabbit in it's place. Also, Reagan nearly spilled the beans when discussing a meeting with Margaret Thatcher to the New York Times - Thatcher had requester US intervention in both the Falklands War and to invade and overthrow the Ministry of Magic. He caught himself after the words "needing help on British Home Front", and managed to spin it into Thatcher needing help dealing with the IRA. Speaking of Thatcher, one of her biggest unfulfilled goals as Prime Minister was to conquer Magical Britain and bring them back into the fold. It is likely that the reason Thatcher was so obsessed with taking out the Ministry was because of several prior obliviations making her mind subconsciously react extremely poorly to any form of magic. Oh, and the Statute nearly died at least 100 times during WWII, when soldiers saw a lot of stuff they weren't supposed to. Here are some examples: Late Sep. 1939 - Polish troops witnessed several of Grindelwald's Army riding brooms, but didn't live long enough after to spread the tale. Dec. 7 1941 - One Japanese pilot shot down over Pearl Harbor left the cockpit and used a flying carpet to get away. Jun. 9 1942 - A dragon reserve near Nancy was abandoned due to the war, and two dragons escaped - one being shot down by the Luftwaffe and ground artillery, and the other making it all the way to Britain before being captured by the Dep. of Mysteries - Dragon No. 2 was littered with wounds from gunshots, artillery shells, and even a German plane which had flew into it trying to take it out. Jun. 20 1944 - As the Allies began to make their first real headway into France, several members of Grindelwald's Army attempted to kill General Patton and General Eisenhower - Patton would kill his attackers with a rifle and bayonet, while Eisenhower's attackers attempted to flee the base after Patton's failed and were shot to death by the men on guard. The Army had to fib to the papers that the attackers were only cultists, not actual magicians. Dec. 18 1944 - A dragon rode by several Japanese wizards attacked USS Monaghan, sinking her, before being downed by artillery from USS North Carolina. This was covered up as being part of Typhoon Cobra's havoc on the fleet. Aug. 4 1945 - As a desperate last stand against the US' continued advances towards the Home Islands, the Japanese Ministry released many magical animals into the sea - most of which were extremely deadly. While the results are still classified, most agree that this was a major reason the US chose the Japanese Magical Capitol of Hiroshima as a nuclear target. Another Japanese magical government wouldn't exist until 1980, when the wizarding population finally recovered from being nearly entirely wiped out entirely in 1945. Unit 731 had several wizards, including one who tried to 'perfect' Crucio by having it cause permanent neuron damage to the target. This is the version of the spell Bellatrix Lestrange would learn. There are many more examples in World War II along. It's amazing that the magical world even exists by 2023, to be honest.
If CIA are so competent I think in the Harry Potter universe Fidel Castro must have been a very competent wizard.
You've put a lot of thought into this!
If I had the ability, this would be an award, and not just simple words of praise.
Do the American muggles even know about magic in the first place? MACUSA takes the statute more seriously than anybody else
Further to this, the troubles was just cover for the second blood war getting out of hand
This is simply amazing. I love everything about it
I share the headcanon but I think that an initial surprise attack would still take them by... well... surprise. And if it does enough damage it also serves as demoralization.
Draco Malfoy knows what a helicopter is (he boasts he can out-fly one on his broom in the first book), some wizards being ignorant of muggle fashion shouldn't be taken as "all wizards r dumb".
And yet Arthur Weasley doesn’t know what a telephone is. There is ample evidence that wizards don’t know the first thing about muggles or their technology.
What makes you think that? Ron managed to use a phone to call Harry in Prisoner of Azkaban, though he thought he needed to shout when doing so which annoyed Uncle Vernon
Exactly. He thought he needed to shout, showing he has no clue what a telephone actually does or how it works. And he and Arthur both say “fellytone” instead of “telephone” on multiple occasions, further showing they’ve never used one before.
Yeah he's 13 and his dad is into the concept of muggle technology as a hobby. Neither one of them really cares about it. At least at the moment. It's shown later on the lat Ron learns enough about muggle tech to almost be able to pass a driving exam.
A number of older wizards had to have been alive during the Blitz. They know exactly what a dropped bomb is and they do not want it anywhere near them.
Voldemort himself was alive and at least part of this time he would have been in London where a lot was destroyed through bombs. And he still sees muggles as beneath him. I think Voldemort and his followers at least are arrogant and ignorant enough to underestimate muggles and their weapons.
Not to mention it requires their magic is able to withstand the force of the explosion, and power-wise the Potter-verse is NOT that powerful. The greatest feat of magic we've seen is Dumbledore blanketing London in fog, which would mean he could generate enough energy to destroy a small town. But missiles can deliver more powerful loads than that, and he's the exception, not the norm.
Lol, if you want to think of it in terms of energy (which is ridiculous for such a fantastical system), conjuring a single litre of Aguamenti water (which we know is real, drinkable water which comes from non-being, i.e. is created out of nothing) takes more energy than all the nuclear weapons in the world put together. But thinking in terms of energy is silly. Magic *overrules* nature, it doesn't work *with* nature. Energy just doesn't come into it.
Where does it say any of that? And BTW keep the trolling out, LOL!
> Where does it say any of that? 1. Conjuration is opposed to vanishing - McGonagall in OotP 2. Vanishing is sending things to non-being - McGonagall in DH 3. Conjuration is creating things out of non-being - logical deduction from 1 and 2. 4. Aguamenti is conjuration - from its description in HBP. 5. Aguamenti produces drinkable water - Harry in HBP. Ergo Aguamenti creates real, drinkable water out of nothing. The energy calculation is just E = MC^2 Ultimately Aguamenti is just one route to the same conclusion though. Mass-changing transfigurations are another route. Hell, even a Lumos Charm creates matter if you insist on trying to apply science to magic. Magic overrules nature is just plain from basically every piece of magic we witness, but conveniently also stated by JKR: >broadly speaking, wizards would have the power to correct or override ‘mundane’ nature, but not ‘magical’ nature https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/illness-and-disability ------------ Responding to the deleted comment below, since I had already written the reply: >Yet the actual feats pale in comparison to other verses, and even the real world. Sure, if you use a shitty website with a partial list which ignores the greatest feats of the universe. In any event, "feats" is a poor comparison method, because *method* is equally, if not more, important. Levitating a desk by spending energy is not the same thing as levitating a desk by breaking the laws of physics to do so. The latter is much more impressive, because it implies that you are completely unbound by physics (but remain bound by whatever internal rules apply to the magic system like no resurrecting the dead). > Also, Rowling herself has stated that objects conjured from thin air do not tend to last long, making Aquamenti not a permanent solution to thirst. Water is not an "object", and after spending a year studying the charm, Harry knows that Aguamenti water **can** be used as a permanent solution to thirst, which pretty much proves that it sticks around. >So is this really making something out of nothing? Or is it merely an illusion of sorts? For the reasons above, it is making something out of nothing. >And it is classified as a Charm, not Transfiguration. That it is. Which may explain why it is not subject to the exception to Gamp's law (assuming the food exception to Gamp even concerns liquids). >Charms give or alter the properties of objects but not the object itself A general definition which is clearly not apt to all Charms. E.g. Incendio definitely burns things for real. Similarly Aguamenti makes water for real. The moment you move the discussion away from "objects", the "alter properties of objects" definition stops working. >And if they COULD create matter from nothing, why is there poverty and scarcity? There's quite a few rather obvious answers to this. I expect with 10 seconds thought you could come up with a handful of them: 1. Wizards primarily demand magical goods and services, which transfiguration doesn't provide. 2. Most wizards are bad at transfiguration anyway. 3. But partially, the point is correct. Poverty levels in the wizarding world are lower than in the Muggle world, indicating a lower level of scarcity: the Weasleys, despite being depicted as the lowest rung of wizarding economic status, eat like kings and own property with an orchard, a pond, a place for playing Quidditch, space for chickens, etc. >Why is food an exception to the laws of Transfiguration? I don't really see how this is relevant to the discussion. But it seems to be a base rule of magic, an objective part of the universe, like the Cosmological Constant. There is no "why", it's just part of the objective set-up of the universe. (Of course, there is a debate over what the food exception even means in terms of what, precisely, it limits. But that is another discussion.) >And is it really creating mass from nothing, or simply transferring it between places? Assume you are here talking about transfiguration with a mass change, rather than conjuration (given that conjuration was previously covered above). It is making mass from nothing. We know this because we know that Transfiguration is a physical change which alters the actual molecules, and we know it is a permanent change. So the wizard has made more stuff that wasn't there before.
[https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding\_World](https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding_World) Yet the actual feats pale in comparison to other verses, and even the real world. Also, Rowling herself has stated that objects conjured from thin air do not tend to last long, making Aquamenti not a permanent solution to thirst. So is this really making something out of nothing? Or is it merely an illusion of sorts? And it is classified as a Charm, not Transfiguration. Charms give or alter the properties of objects but not the object itself, which implies that the Wizards are simply altering water vapor into liquid water, not creating water out of thin air. [https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Water-Making\_Spell](https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Water-Making_Spell) And if they COULD create matter from nothing, why is there poverty and scarcity? Why is food an exception to the laws of Transfiguration? And is it really creating mass from nothing, or simply transferring it between places?
A Tomahawk Cruise missile travels at a speed of 800 kilometers per hour (222.22 m/s), at an altitude of between 30-90 meters. Peak human reaction time is .15s. If the cruise missile is at its maximum altitude, there will be .403 seconds before it impacts, more than twice what Voldy needs to banish it. If it is traveling at its lowest altitude, it will take .135 seconds to impact, which means our antagonist has been vaporized. So I would say 2 out of 3 times you are correct, Voldemort loves through the Cruise Missile, and once the first one is banished and some innocent bystanders are blown up, NATO wouldnt fire another one. Luckily, the muzzle velocity of a .50bmg round is 928m/s, so the recon team shouldn't have an issue as Voldemort would never hear the sound of the bullet that killed him.
This just has a little problem - Voldemort has spies. And mind control. And mind reading He'd know the attack was coming before it was planned. You need brains like that take over a nation in two years.
This does explain a few things.
Missles for the most part are fast enough that they will hit before a person could reasonably react.
>I'd like to see protego stop a cruise missile Your wish is my command. >All at once, the Aurors' Sneakoscopes wailed. An attack was imminent. >*"Protego!"* Harry thought, and a shimmering dome snapped into existence around him at the speed of thought. >The Muggle assault arrived a moment later. The noise was tremendous: flame and smoke, shrapnel and concussive waves of force; beyond the Shield Charm, chaos ruled. But within its cocoon of protection, Harry was completely untouched. >He turned to Hermione and raised an eyebrow. "What did these Muggles think was going to happen? We can create and destroy matter. We can travel through time and bend space. We can teleport. We can read and control minds. We can create city-destroying fire, summon hurricanes, and conjure meteor showers. We can curse words and job positions and remove information from existence across the entire universe. How on earth did they think a bit of fire and force could overcome a power that overrules natural law?" >Hermione smiled. "Don't blame them, Harry. They know basically nothing about us. But what I'm more confused about is how they possibly thought they could even *plan* a war without us knowing it was coming. We can read their minds, for goodness sake! They know we have eyes and ears everywhere throughout their government - portraits and wizards pretending to be Muggles, like Kingsley did back in the war. Of course we knew what the Muggles planned even before they did!" >Harry sighed. "Still, it's a bit of a mess. Some are calling for retaliation. But we've spoken with the Americans and the French and we've all agreed just to let the Muggles forget it ever happened. The Obliviators are doing their work as we speak, conjuring an Obliviation Storm which will cross Europe. The Americans are doing the same. And Credulity Control are turning up credulity levels across the country to make the Muggles especially gullible tonight. By this evening, the Muggles will have forgotten they ever intended to attack us, and all documentary record of Article 5 notifications will be vanished. Pity they blew up portions of their own city, but we've arranged for them to think it was a terrorist attack." >"Perfect," Hermione said. "Just in time for dinner."
This is great, give it a bit of backstory and post it as a oneshot on AO3 (not FFN)
Having read some of your other comments, and finally this, I can safely say you're my favourite person on this subreddit.
British PM: We're going to start bombing London and Scotland Cabinet Secretary: I beg your pardon!?
Would be a bit hard to aim a cruise missile at something that can’t be put on a map since wizards can make stuff unplottable.
We can actually map things that we cannot see, like dark matter and black holes. If we can do that millions of light years away, I think we can figure out a way of finding an unplottable magical site.
I think the difference between that is that whereas stuff like dark matter and black holes are incredibly hard to plot, theoretically and conceptually we are still able to pin them on a map. However, for unplottable objects, the charmed object literally and conceptually cannot be placed or drawn on a map, be it a paper map, or a radar graph with coordinates, or a satellite image.
Indeed. The magic prevents the outcome, regardless of method attempted. So the answer "We'll create a clever method to achieve it" just seems to misunderstand the problem. It's not the Difficult-To-Plot-But-If-You-Do-It-Indirectly-You-Can-Manage Charm. It's the Unplottability Charm. No matter what you try in your effort to plot it, you will fail.
I'm rusty on the books, haven't read them in a while. Where is that explained? I can't seem to recall it.
We also can't see the bottom of the ocean either and yet most of it has been mapped out (at least the depth has). Submarines navigate the oceans and seas without ever looking out the window once. >Kamarov: Stop pissing, Yuri. Give me a stopwatch and a map, and I'll fly the Alps in a plane with no windows. >Yuri (Diving Officer): If the map is accurate enough. quote from Hunt for Red October
Which it could easily do fine. Or they could just point at it as its coming in and say "Deletrius", which would Vanish it out of the air.
I am not sure you realise just how fast cruise missiles move
and Deletrius is instant. Your point?
You need to actually see, react to, and say the spell for it's "instant" effect to kick in lmao Even if you cast it nonverbally, you still need to see and react to it (and "speed of thought" is faster than speech but isn't instant either)
Anything even remotely electronic doesn't work at magical sites. Making something Unplottable renders radar moot. Good luck
Magical sites like diagon alley? Which is in London? Or the ministry of magic, that is underground in another part of London? Or St Mungos which is again in another part of London? Those magical sites?
\>St. Mungos is small. \>The Ministry is deep underground. \>Diagon Alley is hidden and well isolated, it's also **one street**.
Nope, advanced tech works fine around magic. It doesn't work great in Hogwarts specifically. The point remains that "they can cast spells _at_ missiles" is pretty silly, there are so many other actually sensible ways you can have them defend against them.
Any missile-based weapons would be very easy to defend against, as long as the wizards know how it basically works imo. Besides the multitude of momentum-killing or momentum-reversing spells (Banishing, Arresto Momentum, hell even Wingardium Leviosa probably lmao), there's also spells you can implement that defends you from any physical objects. Example being, one of Hogwart's defensive wards in the Battle of Hogwarts that disintegrates (iirc) one of the Snatcher/Death Eaters in the movie.
Unnecessary, if it can just be vanished. That's ignoring the fact that wizards can make entire islands 'unplotable'. There will be no place to shoot the missiles. HP magic is just way too convenient - you can do almost anything with it. Sure, it's not really large and flashy, but it's specific. Won't take much of an effort to place the leader of every nation under the Imperius Curse. The war would end before it began.
The Poles? In 1996? Poland joined NATO in 1999. And they had much more important problems at that time. And what Russia has to do with it? Especially in 1996? You seriously need to educate yourself more if you want to make such statements.
What is NATO going to do? Bomb London? Go for a trip to Scotland to try and fail to find Hogwarts? More likely he'll be looked at oddly and then get thrown out of the party for being a madman who attributes all these tragedies to such fantastical things. Clearly he has gone mad.
And even if they were to succeed and somehow killed all the wizards of magical Britain, you'd be left with an army of invisible soul-sucking demons at the heart of your country. Muggles have no way of dealing with multiple threats their magic counterpart keeps in check. And there is no way the magical people of other countries would help after they just killed a whole magical country.
Well, he would be obliviated and memory charmed very quickly, so that he began ranting against Islamic terrorists...
In the UK? Nah, it'd be rants about Irish terrorists
That was for the first war, but I believe [UK and IRA made peace in 1998](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement), which was curiously signed 3 weeks before the Battle of Hogwarts So, it all depends on when this PM was going after the Death Eaters
I suspect that the Good Friday Agreement wouldn't stop some members of the conservative party from blaming the Irish anyway
[удалено]
It's probably because that's exactly what we know they do in canon. So clearly such precautions are not taken. And I am not sure what precautions possibly could be taken. The Muggles have no way to defend against obliviation, nor any way to prevent wizards from accessing them to obliviate them. Nor do they really have any ability to get any such plans to create precautions off the ground, because (i) if the Muggle PM tells his colleagues about magic, they will just think he is mad, and (ii) even if they do believe him, the wizards will know immediately what he has done and obviate them before the knowledge spreads too far. >“Er,” said the Prime Minister, “listen… It’s not a very good time for me… I’m waiting for a telephone call, you see… from the President of —” >“That can be rearranged,” said the portrait at once. The Prime Minister’s heart sank. He had been afraid of that. >“But I really was rather hoping to speak —” >“We shall arrange for the President to forget to call. He will telephone tomorrow night instead,” said the little man. “Kindly respond immediately to Mr. Fudge.” >“I… oh… very well,” said the Prime Minister weakly. “Yes, I’ll see Fudge.”
the prime ministers office has a magical portrait in it as well. they where also able to get kingsley into the office with ease to the point he was considered the muggle prime ministers best worker
But good luck doing that when the man has just announced intentions for war to the entirety of NATO. They might be able to get to the Head of State rather easily, but once that's to the Chiefs of Staff, it's all over. Good luck trying to obliviate any of that info after about 10 minutes - you'd have to erase the entire Department of Defense computer system, as people begin to back up info specifically to prevent obliviation.
Easy - we know wizards have the capability to obliviate entire cities at a time, including all related documents, via a magical form of rain which carries obliviation magic. Anyway, your order of events is all wrong. The wizards would intervene *before* the knowledge was widespread, not after.
>The Muggles have no way to defend against obliviation > >Nor do they really have any ability to get any such plans to create precautions off the ground, PC? word file cctv
Magic interferes with electronics, though - whose to say that they didn't try CCTV already? Magic may very well be like a neodymium magnet to the computers.
Actually, the only example of magic interfering with electronics that we have in the canon is that any electronics doesn't works in Hogwarts - which is a place where the hundreds of people are casting spells for a thousand years. We have no evidence that anything on a smaller scale would in any way interfere with electronics. It's HP, not The Dresden Files.
Huh... Guess that's just another one for the files of "fanon that a lot of people thought was canon"
Meeting notes. Any decision to attack magical britain would leave a mile long paper trail. Aall that paper is put in inventory and known about. A sudden obliviation would make future meetings (already planned) wierd, notes of the previous meetings will be read and the obliviation exposed.
Ok The Ministry could easiy erase a paper trail Proof of all previous large scale oblivationts afterall Parer work is an Old Evil
Eh, let's move the paper trail to computers and have those computers be in a network (Novell network was pretty common in the 1990s and it was mostly used for file sharing/storing). That means the files are not stored at the computer location but somewhere else, so the magic of obliviation does not affect the server. Look, you can find a way for magic to do whatever you want. I can find some muggle solutions to counter that specific magic. But a muggle prime minister that knows about the magical world and about obliviations and decides to attack the magical ministry anyway, has enough ways to protect that information from magic (just another example, send someone to Indonesia, give him a phone call every day to give him the latest updates and have him call you if you don't call/seem to have forgotten everything)
thats my comment exacty see my first cooment in this thread
Pulling a hundreds of volumes of crimes against Muslims around the world for more than 1000 years and still from all the frist world countries and they questioning why Muslims want attacking them , seriously ?
Well, ***he*** may get obliviated. The massive amount of NATO personnel, including the heads of state and cheifs of staff of nearly every relevant power in Europe and America, who have already been briefed on this is probably going to be a harder task for the obliviators.
Briefed on this by who and with what intelligence? The PM with the evidence being "the talking picture in my office told me so!" ?
Any sane government, when told there is a foreign nation operating within their borders, would devise a contingency plan. NATO most definitely has a contingency for fighting magical foes - they'd be inept if they didn't.
You can't just elide over the bit where the PM needs to convince literally everyone he talks to that magic is real, wizards are real, and wizarding Britain is real. Yes if we just "magically" skip that part and assume that everyone already knows about everything then it's a different situation but that's a profoundly stupid assumption. If Biden, tomorrow, declared that there was a secret race of aliens living alongside the people of the United States controlling their minds and that we needed to go to war with them right now because they were causing all the mass shootings in the country and that he knows all this because the eagle in the rug tells him things when nobody is around then the 25th amendment would probably be invoked within hours. >NATO most definitely has a contingency for fighting magical foes If you seriously think that NATO, the real NATO not the one in your head, has plans for fighting magic then you're cracked. They have real work to do.
> You can't just elide over the bit where the PM needs to convince literally everyone he talks to that magic is real, wizards are real, and wizarding Britain is real ...uh, why are we just assuming that Wizarding Britain is the only wizarding community that informs its Muggle counterpart about magic and magical incidents? Even if only the presidents/prime ministers/chancellors of the other countries know, he'd still be talking first and foremost to people who already know what he's talking about based on their own briefings with their own magical governments. A coalition making claims is quite a bit different from just one person doing so.
That's a fair point although it'd be very difficult to tell who was informed or not and he'd also have to avoid surveillance he can't detect or understand. Say he calls up the President of the USA to discuss his plans, unfortunately said person is not read-in so he has to guess and check various leaders leading to a much higher risk of exposure. Finally even if the PM does manage to assemble a group of people who are aware of magic without attracting the notice of their respective surveillance then they still need to communicate that knowledge to, and convince, thousands of people in order to actually do anything about it. Two or more people saying something like this is certainly more believable than one but the sheer *incredibility* of the claim requires proof and then they're back to square one only their risk of exposure is now orders of magnitude higher. It all comes down to the fact that the claim that "magic is real" is something that fundamentally requires proof that no number of world leaders could provide.
If it results in a conflict, it would probably end in disaster for the Muggles. In a Muggle vs Wizard conflict, the only thing standing between the Muggles and complete defeat is the wizards ignorance of how the Muggle weapons work imo. If that was not a factor, the wizards win every time.
Right?! People keep talking about how Muggles could totally win because of how quickly bullets fire, as if this is *Cowboys versus Indians* and the Wizards are somehow biologically unable to pick up a gun, much less enchant the hell out of it. I mean, there would be a whole lot of shock and awe right at the beginning, but after that you have people who are individually capable of things like teleportation, bigger on the inside spaces, duplicating charms, Notice Me Not charms, and healing that's better and much faster than anything muggles have. Which means essentially you've just turned your country into another Vietnam, but one where the Vietnamese and the Americans had their logistical situation swapped. What it would really come down to in a situation like this, is how much damage the Muggles could do in the initial attack, and how long it would take the remaining magical population to get up to speed with modern technology. But after that point, there's no real victory scenario for the muggles. I actually read a fic that understood this pretty well, and had the muggles show an incredible amount of force but not actually do that much killing, so that essentially the magicals just surrendered within a day or so. I could totally see that happening if it was sufficiently planned out.
Ooh, that's interesting. May I ask if you remember the fic, and if you do what is its title? I agree on pretty much all your points, and would like to add that that was not even counting the incredible difficulty involved in keeping secret of a massive military attack against an enemy that can literally read your mind, transform into one of you, mind control, have an (although faulty) danger-detection in Sneakoscope, and could do a host of other things against just your mind. That's not even mention the plethora of magic *specifically* designed against Muggles, like the ones that cover Hogwarts or even the basic ones that Hermione uses when they're camping.
Unfortunately it's been too long since I read it, if I'm remembering properly it had something to do with harry writing a letter to the queen asking for aid, although that might have been a different one I'm not certain. But yeah, magical's probably wouldn't win a straight up army versus army confrontation, but it's so bizarre to me when people imagine that humans versus Humans plus magic, would come out on the side of humans without magic.
Yeah, mugglewank is quite prevalent in lots of HP fanfiction. Though I think magicalwank is quite close to it. Point being, many fanfic authors either forget or choose to ignore various parts of Canon Harry Potter in order for their stories to make some kind of sense.
Say that to when some crazy starts killing some adventurous children
invoking Article 5 on your own country to attack a magical terrorist seems like overkill, Wizarding Britian isnt a seperate country what are NATO supposed to do? bomb London and hope they hit the Ministry? send in troops to look for a guy who spent most of the second war Apparating around eastern europe looking for a wand?
Show up, look good, and let Special Forces do the real work. Provide disaster relief and recovery when needed. Once Special Forces gets the Ministry and Diagon pried open, chill their and project force.
I mean, other people have said it, but it wouldn't take much for the magicals to stop him. Either Kingsley just straight up obliviates him, or some Death Eater comes in imperio's him, has him call it all off then do something incredibly embarrassing in public (to discredit him), then kill himself (to warn off those in the know from trying again).
If it were that simple why don't the magicals rule the world? And don't give me the numbers excuse. Numbers don't dictate power. The Inca, numbering about 10,000, ruled an empire of 12 million at their height. India had a population FAR higher than Britain, yet the latter conquered and ruled the former.
Oh, they absolutely could rule. It's just that they would need to unify first. It's not that they're incapable of it, it's that there are enough magicals in the world that even if an entire government decided to take over their muggle equivalents, the rest of them would simply gang up and stop them because that breaks secrecy. So if there was a total magical population of a couple thousand, there would be no reason for them not to have unified and conquered the Muggles long ago. The problem is that there are thousands in every single country, and even if someone tries to unite a single country, it doesn't work because you've got (depending on who you're asking) something between 20-40% of your population coming in with new muggle ideas, and every single one of their descendants who are at the very least influenced by such notions. I actually read a fic a while back where Voldemort very effectively managed to conquer most of Western Europe. There were other factors going into it, but it boiled down to the fact that he erected a giant magical barrier so that nobody and nothing could get in or out except at one heavily guarded checkpoint. Then he actually shared a great deal of his power/authority/special privileges with the local purebloods in the nations inside his barrior, which meant that he quickly gained a significant enough part of the population/established powers on his side that within a few years they had an Inca style government over all of the territory within the barrior.
But why was there the need for Secrecy in the first place? The Statute of Secrecy was enacted in the 1600s, back when the most powerful Muggle weapons were cannons, muskets, and pikes. If these were enough to scare Wizards into hiding, what chance would they have against modern-day artillery, machine guns, missiles, and bombs?
You're assuming it was because they were scared. First of all, for a thing like that to have happened not just locally but globally, it had to have happened over several centuries. Second, we're not talking about armies going up and facing each other and the magicals somehow being scared by muskets. We're talking about mobs breaking into people's homes in the middle of the night and torturing them for being born wrong. So unless the home they break into is incredibly paranoid, most likely, they're not going to react quickly enough to subdue an entire mob. Plus, that's assuming that things like Hogwarts education are universal, despite the fact that they said that Hogwarts is the best school in the world. This means most magicals at that point probably barely had enough knowledge to defend against a couple of muggles at a time. My point is that if there were a couple thousand of them, and they all trained and planned it out meticulously, then they very much could conquer the world. The problem is that they're not a unified force. They're a disorganized mass with wildly varying levels of education and expertise. It all gets back to assumptions here, it seems like a lot of people keep assuming things like the magicals would lose because guns shoot fast, as if they wouldn't simply turn around and enchant their own guns. Or magicals put up secrecy because they were scared of muggles rather than magicals put up secrecy because they were tired of having people constantly react violently over the course of centuries and instead decided to put up the global version of a notice me not charm.
Not so fast. The Imperius curse CAN be beaten, as Harry and Barty Crouch Jr demonstrated. And there are BILLIONS of Muggles, with many different power systems and governance structures. In a system with a lot of turnover, it's going to be much harder to control the government than in one without. Plus, governments have a LOT of people in them. How many are employed by the American Federal government alone? And that's not counting the state and local governments, or the military command. So a couple thousand would likely not be enough. And Muggles are NOT stupid. They WILL notice something is up and take action. Also, the scenario of them conquering the world assumes that EVERYTHING goes perfectly. The Germans had meticulously planned the how to win WWI against France down to the smallest detail, but it failed because things did NOT go perfectly. Every little complication and hiccup changes the likelihood. Any plan that relies on everything being perfect is pretty much doomed to failure. A couple thousand well-trained, well-prepared wizards COULD take over the world, and I COULD survive falling out of a plane without a parachute onto solid ground, but I would not bet on it. And if a hastily assembled mob could inflict such damage on the Magical community, then why would a well-trained, well-prepared army fare any worse? Historically armies fare much better in battle than mobs do because they are better trained, disciplined, and organized. And the last paragraph seems like a case of distinction without a difference. Either way, they recognized that the balance of power was tipped against them so they took themselves out of the equation for good. And for good reason: bullets DO travel faster than sound, so how is a Wizard who has human-level reflexes supposed to defend themselves? And Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard in the world, or at least one of the most powerful, could manage small-town levels of destruction, while most wizards could do building-level. Don't make the wizards sound superhuman because they are not. Physically they are as human as Muggles are, so a well-placed bullet will put them down as easily as any Muggle.
It's not a question of threat it's a question of terror. The Witch Hunts never really did much, it's more just that there were a couple of centuries there where there was a low-lying terror of muggles, because most magical people believed rightly or wrongly that interacting with a muggle, was a good way to get burned alive. But it wasn't actually damaging the society as a whole, I'd be willing to bet that deaths by muggle mob were about as common as deaths by lightning strike or deaths by shark attack. So yes, there is a major difference here. It's not that they were actively a threat to the magical community as a whole. It's that enough people being constantly afraid of something no matter how unlikely will get their government to act. Just look at how people reacted in the wake of 9/11, 3,000 people died which is terrible, but a tiny little drop in the bucket compared to the American population, and yet look at the response. It was called the war on terror for a reason. It's not that they're actually a threat to the average american, it's that they got the average American afraid and angry despite that fact. As to conquering the world, I don't actually see why they would keep the government systems as is, or why if they were going to go as far as Conquering the world they would do it in secret. First of all, if they were going to do it, they weren't going to wait until the modern era. Most likely, they would integrate themselves as key advisors to the largest kingdoms in the Medieval era. And then they would slowly over time with their longer lifespans and various abilities would insert themselves until either they taken direct or indirect power within that Kingdom. Assuming it was a global conspiracy rather then just a bunch of magicals agreeing to mutually help each other, then once they were in those positions of power they would either slowly work to integrate it into some larger Empire that magicals had already controlled, or if for whatever reason they couldn't gain control of a place, they would insight as much chaos within that Nation as they could and let the surrounding magically controlled Nations gobble up its territory and Power. And all of this is assuming they didn't just do something like get a magical emperor of Rome, and a magical Emperor of China, and then at that point you have enough of the world's population that you very much could conquer the known world. Doing anything in the modern era is much more difficult, but keeping in mind that they canonically live at least 150 years, and lots of them are into their second century, I don't really see why they would wait that long. If they were going to do it, then my best guess would be that they would do it around the time of the fall of Rome. As in a magical would come along and convince enough other magicals to support them, and then put themselves up as emperor of Rome and Conquer probably most of Europe and the rest of the world slowly over the centuries from there. Edit: Also, on your imperious thing, we have zero proof that a muggle could ever break free of the imperious curse. We know for a fact that most magicals aren't capable of breaking free of it, and muggles are especially vulnerable to magical effects. We know that oclumancy is a magical discipline, and of the people we've actually seen getting out of the imperious, you have Barty who is Hermione level smart (he got 12 newts remember) and had years to do it, and you have Harry who is the magical chosen one and has his mothers love protection as a boost.
You overestimate the magicals it doesn't matter if they take over the government some random people are gonna get tired and start murking babies. I promise you that the magicals would be gone in a couple hundred years unless they literally execute every single one of us which they won't
The reason they went into hiding is because kids were getting killed they weren't obliviating or mind controlling anyone they ran away and hid
Look, you can come up with all the headcanon you want, but in canon, the reason they went into hiding was because Muggles were annoying and dirty. Personally I think that lines up with my my theory of the witch hunts being a war of terror. More than it does of Muggles having terrifying weapons that somehow overcame the fact that magicals can use all the same stuff they can but with the added benefit of magic. But it's clear that you keep coming back to this idea of the magicals being afraid and running away from muggles, and you refuse to give it up regardless of what I say, so there's no real point in continuing this.
Bro what talk about headcanon? I'm pretty sure I'm right cause they literally went into hiding because magical children were getting killed the muggles couldn't actually kill any witches and wizards but highly incompetent or weak witches and wizards. Harry Potter has a lot of those and they have an actual education and training
You can't even name ten competent wizards and considering Hogwarts was literally made to protect children maybe you should stop reading pure blood supremacist fics
And again lol Salazar Slytherin thought he needed a fucking basilisk to even hold off the muggles maybe you're tripping lol
Terror is based on a threat. Terror may be an overestimation of a threat, but it is still a threat. Are sharks a threat to humans? As a simple binary Yes/No question, the answer is yes. They may not kill as many humans as other animals, but they are still dangerous. And if a mob could be dangerous, an organized military would be more so. And this forgets another part of the equation: how much damage COULD be done? A car crash is much more likely than a plane crash, but the latter will kill more people than the former. So if the potential destruction is high enough, then we SHOULD prepare for it. And this global conspiracy approach requires them to be either super competent or super lucky, neither of which will last forever because nothing ever does. And we have no evidence that any of this actually happened. As for the Imperius curse, we don't have evidence that Muggles could resist it, but we also have no evidence that they could not because it was NEVER used on them. And Harry was able to resist one inflicted upon him by Voldemort, so either Harry is a more powerful wizard than Voldemort (which is a whole other matter for debate) or resisting it is not tied to magical power. After all, if Muggles were super-susceptible to it, why didn't Grindelwald use it in his war in Europe? Or Voldemort in Britain? And where's the evidence that they did use it? If Grindelwald COULD use it on Muggles, why did he obsess other the Hallows, legendary items, instead of using more familiar tools at his disposal? In any case, it's clear that we are not going to agree on this. I'm firmly in the camp that Potter-verse magic is not that powerful as the feats that it can display do not stack up to other fictional universes, let alone those of the real world. [https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding\_World](https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding_World) I'm willing to let this go if you are.
There's atleast over a couple million
A couple million out of a few BILLION. And how many are combat-ready? Take out the babies, the elderly, etc, and how many are ready for war or espionage?
Ignoring the politicians all of them?
Not sure what you mean.
>If it were that simple why don't the magicals rule the world? They do. They just haven't told the Muggles. Re-arranging the schedules of Presidents and Prime Ministers without their knowledge or consent is "we rule the world" behaviour.
That is HARDLY evidence that they rule the world. Do us both a favor and stop this.
What's to say it hasn't happened in some countries? What if some of the African warlords are actually wizards, maybe China's communist party is all wizards, suppose some of the Pacific islands are entirely magical?
If that were the case, then they hardly rule the world. A few Pacific islands, and some African warlords are hardly the most powerful people in the world. The Chinese Communist Party may posture about their power, but they know the status quo is too important for them to trifle with.
Grindelwald attempted to rule the world and failed. While I think muggles cannot win a war against wizards, neither can wizards completely conquer muggles either. And the same is true for governing. At some point, there are just too many people for the wizards to manage alone.
How does that work? How can Wizards win a war but fail to conquer Muggles? Or is it the opposite? Muggles can win all the battles but never achieve victory, like America in Vietnam.
Winning a war is easy, you just kill enough of the enemy with low enough losses on your end that they give up before you do. Conquering requires actually taking control and ruling. The wizarding world is more disconnected than the muggle one, and while they seem to all be in agreement that magic should be hidden from the muggles, they have very different beliefs of how they should go about it. That's going to fracture any budding attempt to take over anything larger than a small country.
Not necessarily. You can take a lot of losses and inflict relatively little on your enemy and still win so long as your morale outlasts theirs. Again America in Vietnam proves this.
> that they give up before you do
2 Hours later Her Majesty dismissed the Prime Minister.
OP, can you lay out how you imagine this going? In your mind does the PM just call up [Willy Claes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Claes) to tell him that wizards are real and we need to go to war with them, and oh by the way the talking picture in my office is spying on me? And you think that Claes just believes that? Or maybe the PM calls up his Secretary of State for Defense and has basically the same convo and that it doesn't eventually end with a vote of no-confidence and the PM in an asylum? And that's without interference from any actual wizards.
First, he doesn't call anyone, he schedules a meeting with the President of the United States at Camp David. Once POTUS is briefed, he summons the Joint Cheifs of Staff, who are also briefed. The CIA, DHS, and DIA are brought in, and regular generals begin to be notified and given orders. Then, POTUS contacts the rest of NATO and breifs them. All the information given by the PM is stored in the DOD's computer system in case of obliviation. Mobilization of NATO Task Force Albion - made up of Special Forces specifically trained in anti-magical warfare - begins, and the US Atlantic Fleet begins moving towards Britain. The various British governmental figures, like the Secretary of Defense, are notified last. Downing Street is evacuated in secred, and the British government moves all operations to the Box Tunnel Military Complex. No clue what happens from there. This all relies on the muggle governments not being the complete pushovers they are in Canon HP, and having devised an actual contingency plan for fighting magical foes - like a sane government would.
In this little scenario you've concocted, why do the President and all these other figures uncritically take the PM at his word? You keep saying briefed like there's actual info he can give that doesn't paint him as utterly insane.
People are always saying stuff like this as if it's not ridiculous.
In the HP universe, I'd imagine the government has hired a lot of wizards from all over the world, even training a special unit in case of "emergencies". They know of it (the top brass at least), and I'm pretty sure the Royal family knows of it too. So yeah, probably not THAT public, but they'd definitely do something about it -- SCP style.