There seems to be a consensus that if there were war between wizards and muggles, the wizards would lose.
This isn’t obvious to me, but I might be assuming more intelligence (both information and skill at using it) on the wizard side than they’ve got.
However, if we assume that wizards are reasonably competent (insert bitter laughter from anyone who’s read the original books), what could they do?
My impression is that wizards don’t need human civilization. It seems to me that their ability to pass unseen and destroy memories would be enough to destroy a lot of infrastructure. Would it be that hard for wizards to rule what was left?
What’s the use of human weapons if you need magic just to enter wizard population centers?
Anyone who remembers the books better than I do, go ahead and tell me if there’s some way for humans to resist.
One reasonably powerful wizard defector to the Muggle side could enlist other wizards via subterfuge or magical control, and such wizards could create magical items to aid the Muggles. If the Muggles were sure that they could trust such a defector, they could hand em a nuke and have em wipe Hogsmeade off the map in spite of all its anti-Muggle protections.
There are plenty of Muggle-borns, half-bloods, wizards married to Muggles, and wizards merely fond of Muggles a la Arthur Weasley, that in an all-out war, there would be considerable numbers of potential defectors.
By contrast, a Muggle defector to the wizarding side would be harder to come by per capita, and also less useful, as Muggles don’t have special abilities that let them be particularly useful to wizards.
Muggles don’t have special abilities that let them be particularly useful to wizards.
Um, I rather thought the whole point of MoR was to falsify this claim. Unless you’re claiming rationality is not “special” because anyone can in principle have it.
Rationality isn’t particularly common among Muggles. Like, at all. I was thinking more about the physical tools, anyway—there’s nothing stopping a wizard from using Muggle tech as long as they don’t have lots of magic going on nearby (or I would have expected some Muggle-born child to complain offhand about how they can never make the TV work over summer holidays and their parents are annoyed about all the brownouts). Whereas Muggles cannot use wizarding tools one bit—or even see wizarding locations.
A muggle society that doesn’t know about wizards is vulnerable to sneaky tactics involving mind control and memory alteration. But in an open battle cannon!wizards don’t stand a chance against a competent military force—they have superior mobility and medical care, but in every other respect magic is hopelessly inferior to technology.
Of course, a war isn’t a battle. To predict how the war would go we have to explain why the muggles don’t already know about wizards, which requires a drastic re-write of large sections of cannon. Any adequate justification is going to require giving the wizards god-like abilities of information control, which could easily give them the ability to win a wizard-muggle war as well.
I can’t see any reason for wizards to engage in open battle against muggles.
A muggle society that does know about wizards would still be vulnerable to mind control and memory alteration—the wizards themselves are vulnerable to such tactics. Covert defection is so easy for wizards it’s almost surprising they’ve got as much large-scale organization as they do.
I believe that muggles do know about wizards (though perhaps no very accurately), they just don’t talk about it any public sort of way. However, this is deduction, not canon.
One thing to check in canon would be the scene where the Wizarding minister pops in to the British PM and gives him a status report. I can’t remember whether it is implied that PMs are routinely obliviated after their terms are up.
From the flashback scene near the beginning of Book 6 Chapter 1, where the Muggle PM first meets Cornelius Fudge:
“But then,” bleated the Prime Minister, “why hasn’t a former Prime Minister warned me — ?”
At this, Fudge had actually laughed.
“My dear Prime Minister, are you ever going to tell anybody?”
So it’s implied that no Obliviation is needed. On the other hand, I wouldn’t it past Eliezer to decide that this is not credible in a story for adults. And after all, Fudge never really answered the question.
Muggles could just destroy the planet rather than conquering the wizards. Note the “heap of ash” comment in Quirrell’s speech, which echoes what he said in chp. 20 about nukes.
People have used scorched earth attacks against their enemies, but that’s if the enemies have defined territory. Does it seem reasonable that governments would engage in a nuclear spasm which would mostly destroy human territory? This is a real question.
I can imagine a nuclear spasm happening, but I was around during the cold war, and read relevant science fiction.
I realize there were some close calls[1], but is the world still as delicately balanced? Could wizards make sure the nukes stayed in their silos? My guess is that wizards have the power, but possibly not the organizational ability.
[1] Fanfiction about the unlikely absence of WWIII being the result of wizard activity?
There seems to be a consensus that if there were war between wizards and muggles, the wizards would lose.
This isn’t obvious to me, but I might be assuming more intelligence (both information and skill at using it) on the wizard side than they’ve got.
However, if we assume that wizards are reasonably competent (insert bitter laughter from anyone who’s read the original books), what could they do?
My impression is that wizards don’t need human civilization. It seems to me that their ability to pass unseen and destroy memories would be enough to destroy a lot of infrastructure. Would it be that hard for wizards to rule what was left?
What’s the use of human weapons if you need magic just to enter wizard population centers?
Anyone who remembers the books better than I do, go ahead and tell me if there’s some way for humans to resist.
One reasonably powerful wizard defector to the Muggle side could enlist other wizards via subterfuge or magical control, and such wizards could create magical items to aid the Muggles. If the Muggles were sure that they could trust such a defector, they could hand em a nuke and have em wipe Hogsmeade off the map in spite of all its anti-Muggle protections.
There are plenty of Muggle-borns, half-bloods, wizards married to Muggles, and wizards merely fond of Muggles a la Arthur Weasley, that in an all-out war, there would be considerable numbers of potential defectors.
By contrast, a Muggle defector to the wizarding side would be harder to come by per capita, and also less useful, as Muggles don’t have special abilities that let them be particularly useful to wizards.
Um, I rather thought the whole point of MoR was to falsify this claim. Unless you’re claiming rationality is not “special” because anyone can in principle have it.
Rationality isn’t particularly common among Muggles. Like, at all. I was thinking more about the physical tools, anyway—there’s nothing stopping a wizard from using Muggle tech as long as they don’t have lots of magic going on nearby (or I would have expected some Muggle-born child to complain offhand about how they can never make the TV work over summer holidays and their parents are annoyed about all the brownouts). Whereas Muggles cannot use wizarding tools one bit—or even see wizarding locations.
On the other hand, wizards don’t have the mental flexibility to see how muggles can be useful to them.
Good point about wizards defecting to the muggle side. You’d need a pure blood conspiracy to have a chance of pulling off a war.
A muggle society that doesn’t know about wizards is vulnerable to sneaky tactics involving mind control and memory alteration. But in an open battle cannon!wizards don’t stand a chance against a competent military force—they have superior mobility and medical care, but in every other respect magic is hopelessly inferior to technology.
Of course, a war isn’t a battle. To predict how the war would go we have to explain why the muggles don’t already know about wizards, which requires a drastic re-write of large sections of cannon. Any adequate justification is going to require giving the wizards god-like abilities of information control, which could easily give them the ability to win a wizard-muggle war as well.
I can’t see any reason for wizards to engage in open battle against muggles.
A muggle society that does know about wizards would still be vulnerable to mind control and memory alteration—the wizards themselves are vulnerable to such tactics. Covert defection is so easy for wizards it’s almost surprising they’ve got as much large-scale organization as they do.
I believe that muggles do know about wizards (though perhaps no very accurately), they just don’t talk about it any public sort of way. However, this is deduction, not canon.
One thing to check in canon would be the scene where the Wizarding minister pops in to the British PM and gives him a status report. I can’t remember whether it is implied that PMs are routinely obliviated after their terms are up.
From the flashback scene near the beginning of Book 6 Chapter 1, where the Muggle PM first meets Cornelius Fudge:
So it’s implied that no Obliviation is needed. On the other hand, I wouldn’t it past Eliezer to decide that this is not credible in a story for adults. And after all, Fudge never really answered the question.
Thanks for the lookup. Yes, that implies that a limited number of muggles thought to be ‘safe’ are permitted to know about the wizarding world.
Muggles could just destroy the planet rather than conquering the wizards. Note the “heap of ash” comment in Quirrell’s speech, which echoes what he said in chp. 20 about nukes.
People have used scorched earth attacks against their enemies, but that’s if the enemies have defined territory. Does it seem reasonable that governments would engage in a nuclear spasm which would mostly destroy human territory? This is a real question.
I can imagine a nuclear spasm happening, but I was around during the cold war, and read relevant science fiction.
I realize there were some close calls[1], but is the world still as delicately balanced? Could wizards make sure the nukes stayed in their silos? My guess is that wizards have the power, but possibly not the organizational ability.
[1] Fanfiction about the unlikely absence of WWIII being the result of wizard activity?