Should we tell the Muggles?

[PotluckBrigand]

The After Hours guys on Cracked.com did a funny video about why the Harry Potter universe is terrifying and they touched on the blatant irresponsibility of a community that has a world-threatening evil power fighting against them while keeping the whole things a complete secret from the other 99% of the world's population.

It does seem like a pretty lousy thing to do. I have a hard time believing that with everything we have at our disposal, we would be no help against a guy that (let's face it) without one or two specific heroes fighting on the good side, the entire wizard community was helpless to stop. Could Voldemort stop an army of modern day soldiers? Maybe. Could he stop them AND all of the witches and wizards? I dunno... maybe. But their insular nature meant that we never get to find out, even though that would be a sweet book. Hell I'd join the military if I knew I was going to get to fight dragons and giants and crazy soul-sucking reaper motherfuckers. THERE'S a cause I can get behind.

I love how everyone assumes that being a wizard makes you some all powerful totally different tier being from non wizards. They're still human, you could shoot them just like the rest of them.

While you are right, that did make me think: Does anyone int he Harry Potter books ever die from something mundane? I've read them all a couple times and I can't think of any instance where someone just like, falls and breaks their neck or something. It seems like a no-brainer that they would be ABLE to die from normal every day stuff but it never happens. Morfin Gaunt threatens Bob Ogden with a knife, and the man seems genuinely concerned by it, but it's unclear if it's because he thinks he's in danger or because the whole scene is off-putting.

 

[Rowan93]

I really don't like this idea. You don't even have to tilt your head that much for it to look like genocide, and I can certainly see it being resisted as such.

It's not really genocide because there are no deaths involved and the circumstances are completely different. When Hitler killed all those Jews, it was for cultural reasons, the Jews who died were realistically no different than any German. Wizards are clearly superior, they have all the properties of a regular human with endless additional benefits, longer lifespans being one of the bigger benefits, it's fairly expected in the wizard world to reach the age of 100 and above, Dumbledore's confirmed age was 115 when he died, and there were older people yet. Bathilda Bagshot was an old lady when Dumbledore was a kid...

Damn those wizards, they won't let us be inferior and generally die at half their lifespans.

Plus it's actually the wizards who are repressed. The muggles drove them into hiding.

The differences in circumstance don't change a thing about the act itself. It might not involve mass killings, but you're still talking about the organised destruction of a chunk of the gene pool.

Well, if it's a choice between half the lifespan and none of the lifespan because of the wizards trying to drive us out of the gene pool, then yeah, damn those wizards. Also, there's no way the longer life expectancies are just a genetic thing that's glued to the genes for magic - they have better medicine, and they keep it to themselves, and there's no reason only magic-users should have access to magical medicine.

You're suggesting they start manipulating the world, controlling it from behind the scenes, in order to shape our civilization to their will. Also, they're perfectly capable of controlling the world from behind the scenes and shaping civilization to their will. So, they're not repressed.
Since witch burnings are made out to be harmless to actual witches and wizards because of the magic they can do, I'm not sure we can really say they were driven into hiding. I suspect they secluded themselves because they just didn't want to associate with their inferiors - and they still don't! The only reason they're not already doing something like this is because they don't care about the muggles enough for "the muggle question" to come up.

 

[smurf_you]

I wouldn't do it personally, I mean (and my huge nerdism is going to be showing here, also potential spoilers for people who never read the 7th book) look what happened to Ariana, Dumbledore's little sister, when some muggle boys caught her levitating something in her own back yard, and then beat her up cause she was a freak. This left her traumatized to the point of rendering her magical abilities unstable and uncontrollable. This prompted her father to attack the boys and be imprisoned in Azkaban, while her mother moved the family to Godric's Hollow and kept Ariana hidden away from the general population. I would hate for something like that to happen if everyone knew about what was going on. I mean kids would be getting beat up out of jealousy because they have magic, or people who just fear them. Not a good thing. =/

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Considering last time it happened...
Well, you probably know about the witch-hunts...
So no.

 

[Gennadios]

No. If they knew, I wouldn't be able to rule from the shadows, would I?

 

[Something Amyss]

I'd reveal everything to the world and let the scientific community master magic.

Mundane tech and magic don't work very well together in the Harry Potter world. They aren't mutually exclusive like some series' universes, but I doubt science would master magic.

Though understanding that the Mundane Plane operates in accordance to a series of principles that keep it consistent when observed, I'd try and develop a Mundane Enhancement Field, angles or not. [/reference nobody will get but I had to use anyway]

 

[ElPatron]

I'd reveal everything to the world and let the scientific community master magic.

Because nothing wrong could come from that, right?

Plus, as far as I know in the HP world you are born a wizzard. I don't think science could change that in the HP lore.

Considering last time it happened...
Well, you probably know about the witch-hunts...
So no.

In the HP universe witches actually let themselves get caught because the fire tickles.

 

[TheUsername0131]

I was reading over one of the Harry Potter books yesterday and thought about how much of a nightmare it must be for the ministry of magic to keep the magical community secret from the non-magic one. If you were a witch or wizard, would you want non-magical people to know about your abilites and the world you inhabit? Personally I wouldn't. For example, if I had children and it was public knowledge that they had supernatural powers, it could make life hard for them growing up if muggle children were afraid of them or thought they were freaks. Also, if you told everyone about creatures like dementors or dragons and the abilites they have, they could think you were just fear mongering. In addition, people would probably be constantly annoying you to use your power to help them with their problems. What are your thoughts? Would you tell them everything or not?

The funny part is that the wizard world apparently has only a minor understanding of technology. The higher you go, the more they've looked into it, but you won't see any of them get into such sciences as genetic research, computer sciences, the space program... Oh, I'm sure you could apparate into space, but would you have time to create your own personal atmosphere on the moon? Bet not.

Anyway, I think we should tell 'em. It'll make an international incident, but the proper combination of magic and technology would make society grow ten times more powerful than before.

"Apparition becomes increasingly difficult with the distance to be travelled. Inter-continental Apparition should only be attempted by the most highly skilled of wizards."

The distance between the earth and the moon varies from 356400 km to 406700 km.
If inter-continental Apparation is cautioned against, then travel to the moon by that method is arbitrarily ill-advised.



Do the wizards know anything about how their magic actually works?

Sure they have recorded and passed on the gestures (arm-waving,) phrases/incantations (arcane babbling,) rituals, lore, esoteric texts , etc. But do they know what makes the sparks work?



In Harry Potter, about the practice of Occlumency and Legilimens.
"It was a sad commentary on how little human beings understood each other, how little any wizard comprehended the depths lying beneath the mind's surface, that you could fool the best human telepaths by pretending to be someone else."
-Eliezer Yudkowsky



"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Clarke

"Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology." -Niven's Law

"Sufficiently advanced technology my ass" - Dresden

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

How about this;
1. Teleport to a nuke.
2. Teleport to 3 feet over Voldemorts head.
3. Nuke the ************.
4. Teleport away.
5. The war is won.

6. There is a hole in the ground that was once London.

Would kill him, but if you could teleport right above him, you may as well just shoot him.

OT: Would revealing to the Muggles be a bad idea... not sure.

It very well could end very badly... for the wizards. If a war was to happen, our MUCH greater numbers and our much more powerful technology would curb stomp just about anything they could throw at us. The only things that would be able to really do a lot of mass damage to us (fireflye, baskalisks, etc) are just as likely to kill the wizard's using them as they are going to kill us, not to mention illegal for any to make or use. A building that has been charmed to make Muggle's want to leave? Shouldn't effect Predator Drones. A bullet is far more effective and deadlier then any spell any wizard could throw at me.

Even if we do not have war, the wizard's could be screwed in other ways. Racism going both ways already exists in the books, just imagine that happening on a global scale. The magical economy is going to be ruined as soon as somebody notices that bronze, silver, and gold don't neatly exchange in a 29:1 and 17:1 ratio. I don't even want to think what would happen to the goblin's, vampire's, and every other sentient creature.

 

[CleverCover]

Hell no, you see how long it takes for people to accept anything that's even remotely different from them without going through a period of "KILL IT WITH FIRE"? Hell, we had that period. It's called witch-hunts.

Nah, that's staying a secret between me and immediate family/friends I trust with my life.

They can just keep on trying with the science.

 

[Signa]

A bigger question - why did no one just shoot Voldemort? Let him come back 7 times, he's always going to be waving a stick around and shouting, takes longer to do that than it does to pull a trigger.

First of all, they are in England where guns are quite uncommon. Second of all, shut up!

But seriously, there's a ton of plot holes in the HP series that any common muggle can see through. Rowling did do one thing right though, she wrote the wizards to be completely inept about the world around them. Both Harry and Hermione were far smarter than Ron because they were both muggle-raised. It's made pretty clear that if it doesn't have to do with magic, wizards get really stupid. I remember a dude in the 4th book that was wearing woman's clothing, and refused to take it off purely on the grounds that it was official muggle clothing which he was told to wear in public. A wizard is completely incapable of noticing those little details, and so the idea of using a gun would never occur to them.

OT: if I was in a wizard family, I wouldn't mind telling my closest friends if I thought they weren't going to freak out. And if they turn into douchebags about it, I'd just wipe their memory.

 

[ccggenius12]

I've thought about this before, and honestly the best solution is to eradicate the muggles by peaceful means. Think about it, if a witch/wizard couple breed, their offspring is a witch/wizard, if a witch or wizard breeds with a muggle, their offspring is also going to be a witch or wizard. Magical genes are a highly dominant trait, and if the magical community would make an effort to start breeding with the muggles, the world would be a much better place.

Just take over the sperm banks and secretly replace them with wizard spunk, seek out new couples who could do with another child and get the woman pregnant, and help out the couples where the man is infertile. Over time enough families will have a witch or wizard that the barrier between both worlds will be highly distorted and they can tear the walls down. At this point they could be incredibly aggressive and sterilize muggle males, but it would probably be better to release propaganda promoting the benefits of having magical children through wizarding sperm banks.

Would work too, I mean, how many parents would want to bring a child into this world knowing that it would effectively be of an inferior class, they would want to use the sperm banks and produce a child that is superior to the regular folk.

Watch Gattaca. I think it gives a reasonable example of what would happen if you publicly introduced "strictly better" people, and ways to reproduce to generate said people.
I wouldn't tell Muggles anything about the wizarding world, but I'd sure as hell try to educate the inverse. Call me crazy, but I think a phone would be far more convenient than an owl. And obviously floo powder isn't a viable alternative, because if it were, they wouldn't be using owls to deliver things.

 

[the clockmaker]

Look at it this way, Voldemort wants to rule the wizards, and either enslave or massacre the muggles. The wizards decide that this a problem for the people who were born special to solve, not the smartest, or the strongest, or the most moral, just the people with special blood.

These people then set themselves up as the grand arbiters or a signifigant portion of the defence of man kind (seriously, this is pretty much nuke level danger here) and then neglect to tell us about it.

Even better, when said evil wizard dude manages to pull a coup and establish himself as pretty much the political head of the whole corrupt system, the so called good guys still don't bother to tell us that their magical world has been coopted by a guy known to his friends as the dark lord. That is on par with the polish government hiding the existence of Hitler from the jews because... all I can reasonably come up with is that they might have to use their magic in service to the rest of the human race.

Even then, while thousands of people work in shitty jobs for society, garbage men, social workers, soldiers, these 'special' people hide themselves from the world to avoid having to do their part. I mean the only differance between hogwarts and rapture is that you had to earn your way into rapture.

Of course if they spent two seconds looking at the society that they had gotten judged as unworthy of their presence, they would realise that we could solve a whole lot of their problems pretty much instantly. The average 5.56 mm round travels at 380m/s, lets see 'ol snake love respond to that.

But the thing that makes me angry is that they have the nerve to accuse humans of wanting to burn them all at the stake based on what happened hundreds of years ago. I mean not only is that really racist, assuming that all people born a certain way are violent idiots waiting for a chance to kill the poor ubermensch, it shows that the wizards have paid no real attention to what has happened in the world since before the begining of last century. Look at the scoreboard in the books, number of wizards in power who want to fuck up humanity versus the number of humans in power who want to do the same to wizards.

I would say that humanity should declare war on the wizards out of self defence, but I'm not sure that they haven't already declared war on us.

 

[TheUsername0131]

If it was revealed, the religious would? NERD RAGE! On a scale unseen for since antiquity, and planning for the fashionable revival of witch-hunts and blind persecution.

Witches and Wizards, let me personally reacquainted you with the unmagical creature known as ?The Peasant.?

?The Peasant: stupid, small-minded, xenophobic, savage (but cowardly), superstitious, gullible, and primitive.?

There is nothing else quite like magic that infuriates and drives peasants into a paranoia fuel rage.

The scientists, engineers, physicists, biologists and other professions in academics will be forever thankful for all the new enigmas you?ve provided. (And giving them a valid excuse to invent more techno babble.)

How does the broomstick fly?
Not on the principles of aerodynamics (for sure.)
It?s simply levitates, can accelerate, decelerate and maintain its momentum.
Does it give off any peculiar readings?
Does it operate by a negative stress?energy tensor (anti-gravity?)

How does the spell "Incendio" work with no visible fuel source for the rapid oxidization to produce combustion?

I'd reveal everything to the world and let the scientific community master magic.

Mundane tech and magic don't work very well together in the Harry Potter world. They aren't mutually exclusive like some series' universes, but I doubt science would master magic.

Though understanding that the Mundane Plane operates in accordance to a series of principles that keep it consistent when observed, I'd try and develop a Mundane Enhancement Field, angles or not. [/reference nobody will get but I had to use anyway]

The magic can be demonstrated, observed and tested.
Why the doubt that science could not master magic?

There are principles at work behind what a wizard does, even if they are not apparent they are at least consistent and observable therefore can be subjected to study by eager investigation, too the err of the wizard demonstrating the same spell for the 2,372th time so that variation can be accounted for.

Sophisticated neuroimaging methods can be used to observe the effects of memory charms directly.

And maybe they might discover what defines a witch/wizard from the mere mortal? well besides their blatant use of magic, I mean how they biochemically differ from Muggles. There both are outwardly humans. What makes them so special? and can we acquire it?

There are Wizards and Witches that regard Muggles as simply not human, sub-human even. Then again these magical folk also have mindsets that persisted from the middle ages. (Bet they couldn?t travel to the moon with their magics? and limited knowledge of the cosmos.)

Just because science would be dealing with principles that are beyond academics current understanding, this is in no way indicative that it is beyond comprehension and discovery. Remember when magnets where called magical?


How does ?Incendio? match up against propane-powered fire magics!
Do Muggles do it better?
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Fireball_6491.jpg




The education system of Magical Britain is dubious, Harry only learned about less then a dozen spells.

 

[Pearwood]

First of all, they are in England where guns are quite uncommon.

Looks like someone's never been to Manchester!

 

[hermes]

A bigger question - why did no one just shoot Voldemort? Let him come back 7 times, he's always going to be waving a stick around and shouting, takes longer to do that than it does to pull a trigger.

I got the implication that the Horcruxes aren't single-use, voldemort comes back as long as they still exist. That said, death still seems to be a major inconvenience for him when it happens, so a half-decent sniper would be the trollingest troll, and I expect by maybe the fifth time around Voldemort would be going absolutely crazy.

So, you are suggesting we camp several snipers aiming at Voldemort's spawn point and kill him every time he respawn? Brilliant...

OT: I wouldn't reveal it. As much as muggles seems to have the right approach to much of the wizards war problems (shotgun to the face), I believe there would be a lot of paranoia with the realization that some people can look like anybody else, be invisible, teleport, change the space/time continuum at will, and there are flying nazguls around the world willing to eat your soul...

 

[SS2Dante]

A bigger question - why did no one just shoot Voldemort? Let him come back 7 times, he's always going to be waving a stick around and shouting, takes longer to do that than it does to pull a trigger.

I got the implication that the Horcruxes aren't single-use, voldemort comes back as long as they still exist. That said, death still seems to be a major inconvenience for him when it happens, so a half-decent sniper would be the trollingest troll, and I expect by maybe the fifth time around Voldemort would be going absolutely crazy.

QFT.

Also, the magic wands don't seem that extraordinary - unless additional magic or something is used to protect them, they are just a twig. And when broken they don't work. Solution, just blast Voldy with an explosion. A satchel charge in closed space should do it. He'll die and return but his precious want taht was twaked for himself will be little more than smouldering ash. Alternatively, just blast his damn hand off. He doesn't seem capable of any extra tricks if he doesn't have a wand. There, war is over in like several minutes. Rambo can do it.

Can anybody remind me if Voldy needs that ritual cast every time he needs to come back? If so, it's really, really a disadvantage, otherwise if he just reforms lich-style or regenerates his body, it's still bad but still bullets would help.

My friend who read it said that electronics and "modern stuff" break with wizards, in which case, Harry Dresdon his ass with a six-shooter (or high powered sniper rifle).

No, they don't. Not in the Harry Potter universe. It just seems that the majority of the wizard society is really disinterested in technology. But there isn't anything stopping them from having a TV or a radio, they just don't need to because they have magic. In TDF wizards are walking techbanes, but in HP there is nothing at all stopping them from picking up a pistol or driving a car.

One would wander why the hell the wizards don't even carry knives. I mean those who fight, not all the wizards ever. It just seems a logical thing to have if you want to hurt/disable your foe. If you get close there is literally nothing else you can do aside from punching them. And nobody seems to know any martial arts. If a knife is too "deadly", then a baton or something. Literally anything that is not "a wand" will be of more use when you're close an personal. And gettinc close an personal is a valid tactic, seing how the whole wizardry thing boils down to "stand afar and throw stuff at one another". Punch them in the mouth, however and see them try to mumble that incantation with a few broken teeth and a dislocated jaw.

Yes they do. In the HP universe electronic equipment breaks near areas of high magical activity. (See Goblet of Fire). A gun would presumably work any time, and individual wizards can use electronics, but put more than a few of them together and it seems to act like an EMP.

 

[Signa]

First of all, they are in England where guns are quite uncommon.

Looks like someone's never been to Manchester!

Nope, but aren't they still illegal over there? That's besides the point though, any good wizard could just conjure or summon one.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

This has the potential to be a VERY bad idea. Agent K put it best, actually. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkCwFkOZoOY]

I suspect the mass panic will cause wizardkind to fall back into the shadows for a bit, at least until they calm down and realize what assgaskets they were at the potential for great things they were losing out on by being wankers about the magic folk. They'll then feel more comfortable around wizards and accept them...if for no other reason than to use them and their abilities for their benefit.

CAPTCHA: supplies taboong

I don't know who supplies the bong, but I suspect he won't be anymore.

 

[Sandytimeman]

I was under the impression not everyone could even see magic. How many people would believe what you can't see or use?