I’m a little bit surprised Rowling didn’t throw in something about some human technology not working in the wizarding world, like electronics and firearms. Surely this came up while the books were being written.
She all but stated that humanity is advancing beyond the wizarding world. There’s really no explanation beyond “wizards are actually very stupid and stagnating within their intellectually, and very literally, incestuous society.”
Mr Weasley is seen as a weird oddball for engaging in studying muggle technology. The wizarding world sees it all as a bunch of pointless nonsense that muggles have to go through just because they don’t have magic. Clever in its own way, but utterly futile.
Why spend hundreds of people’s effort, lots of money and enormous amounts of time to design, make and use a vehicle to go somewhere when you can hop in a fireplace and think about where you want to go, or simply apparate there?
Why carry a complicated muggle weapon around and spend time and effort learning how to use it well, when you can kill someone with two words you’ve known since you were a child?
Voldemort isn’t just protected by being a powerful wizard, he’s also protected by the bully’s standard protections of surrounding themselves with sycophants who unquestioningly support them (by ruthlessly turning against people who question their authority or judgment), having no moral hesitancy whatsoever and avoiding like the plague fair fights wherever there’s a chance they’d not win.
So because of Voldemort’s followers who will turn up in an instant and his horcruxes, you have to be prepared to sacrifice your life to have a chance of opposing him openly, which is of course what Lily Potter did.
Strange that JKR, who clearly didn’t like bullies, would choose to bully trans people and use her money and influence against them. Admittedly she clearly had a bit of a problem with blonde people before she wrote book 1, so not exactly completely free from prejudice.
If I could offer an additional perspective, one of the most fundamentally interesting aspects in the study of Paleolithic peoples to me is its occupants’ intense desire to choose the best tools. The best tools for fighting, the best tools for crafting, the best tools for presenting, the best tools for fucking, etc…
You’ll often find items from far and wide in their caches. Stones and gems and shells and bones, and yes I encourage you to make the joke, from a hundred miles away, all brought painstakingly back despite local resources being nearly comparable. It’s a fundamentally human characteristic to aggregate useful peculiarities, and neglecting them is new.
The wizards are losing touch with their humanity, if we take this story written by a troubled schoolteacher literally.
Pretty sure wizards are familiar with old technology like trains and cars. But like another comment said, muggles are advancing while wizards stagnate in their old ways and traditions and shit since they keep themselves so separated.
Combustion is very old technology. Putting it inside a different machine (e.g. a gun or a car engine) doesn’t change the chemistry. If you want to get right down to it, we’re just talking about oxidation - which means that in any sort of world where rapid oxidation doesn’t work (i.e. explosives), your lungs also don’t work because you need that oxygen bonding with the iron in your hemoglobin or you die.
If you can light a fire, you can make an explosion. If you can make an explosion, you can use it to launch a projectile.
There’s no world in which fire exists but guns are impossible. Even if you don’t have the metalworking sophistication for a modern gun, you could still make a Chinese-style gunpowder rocket.
Or just straight up bombs. The beauty is that an IED can catch even a master wizard off guard. No need for metalworking, and since they use cars, well… surely there is some character with Irish roots, right?
Gunpowder is just fire propagating at the speed of sound through solid (powder). As long as sound exists, the magical world can’t contain the angry dust.
What, pray tell, do you think is in gunpowder? It’s not magic dust that goes bang. It’s a pre-mixed, pre-compressed mixture of fuel and oxidiser. When used in a gun, whether it’s a muzzle-loader or a cartridge, the confined combustion of the mixture generates thermal energy and expanding gases that impart kinetic energy on a moving component (the piston or a projectile). The only difference is that the combustion event in an ICE is subsonic (deflagration) while the combustion in a gun is supersonic (detonation).
I should’ve done my homework before going all “well akshullay 🤓” on them (sorry!).
The only similarities between the two is that they both are chemical reactions that produce a rapid release of energy. But past that, they are much different in how they get to that point.
Yes, there are differences. That’s why one is called deflagration and the other is called detonation. Good job, you can read. But the chemical and thermodynamic processes are identical, and that’s what you seem to misunderstand.
Nope, there’s a fundamental difference between a fuel/air mixture burning and something like gunpowder, which is a self oxidising propellant. Most explosives are in the latter category.
And really we’re just talking about oxidation. If oxidation works (which it must, because the characters are breathing) then chemically-propelled projectiles must also work.
I hate JKR too, but she literally did. Wizard clothes are enchanted with protego charms which turn away any mundane attacks, and wizards really have no reason to fear muggles. During the witch trials some would allow themselves to be burned at the stake because they liked how the flames tickle. It’s very much a ‘magic must defeat magic’ setting.
its either directly in the books refering guns specifically
or… it might have been an official out of the books source.
i used to be interested in this shit over a decade ago when the last books weren’t yet finished: there was a fancy flash based official site where lore snippets and bullshit from jk got published
I’m a little bit surprised Rowling didn’t throw in something about some human technology not working in the wizarding world, like electronics and firearms. Surely this came up while the books were being written.
She all but stated that humanity is advancing beyond the wizarding world. There’s really no explanation beyond “wizards are actually very stupid and stagnating within their intellectually, and very literally, incestuous society.”
Mr Weasley is seen as a weird oddball for engaging in studying muggle technology. The wizarding world sees it all as a bunch of pointless nonsense that muggles have to go through just because they don’t have magic. Clever in its own way, but utterly futile.
Why spend hundreds of people’s effort, lots of money and enormous amounts of time to design, make and use a vehicle to go somewhere when you can hop in a fireplace and think about where you want to go, or simply apparate there?
Why carry a complicated muggle weapon around and spend time and effort learning how to use it well, when you can kill someone with two words you’ve known since you were a child?
Voldemort isn’t just protected by being a powerful wizard, he’s also protected by the bully’s standard protections of surrounding themselves with sycophants who unquestioningly support them (by ruthlessly turning against people who question their authority or judgment), having no moral hesitancy whatsoever and avoiding like the plague fair fights wherever there’s a chance they’d not win.
So because of Voldemort’s followers who will turn up in an instant and his horcruxes, you have to be prepared to sacrifice your life to have a chance of opposing him openly, which is of course what Lily Potter did.
Strange that JKR, who clearly didn’t like bullies, would choose to bully trans people and use her money and influence against them. Admittedly she clearly had a bit of a problem with blonde people before she wrote book 1, so not exactly completely free from prejudice.
If I could offer an additional perspective, one of the most fundamentally interesting aspects in the study of Paleolithic peoples to me is its occupants’ intense desire to choose the best tools. The best tools for fighting, the best tools for crafting, the best tools for presenting, the best tools for fucking, etc…
You’ll often find items from far and wide in their caches. Stones and gems and shells and bones, and yes I encourage you to make the joke, from a hundred miles away, all brought painstakingly back despite local resources being nearly comparable. It’s a fundamentally human characteristic to aggregate useful peculiarities, and neglecting them is new.
The wizards are losing touch with their humanity, if we take this story written by a troubled schoolteacher literally.
Don’t they drive a car? and ride a train? so combustion works… kind of has to work
For all we know the hogwarts express runs on magic and so does the car, after all it flies.
It makes steam.
Magic steam.
So it’s electric?
Sub-etha steam-o-matic.
Aesthetic is more important than practicality.
Pretty sure wizards are familiar with old technology like trains and cars. But like another comment said, muggles are advancing while wizards stagnate in their old ways and traditions and shit since they keep themselves so separated.
Combustion is very old technology. Putting it inside a different machine (e.g. a gun or a car engine) doesn’t change the chemistry. If you want to get right down to it, we’re just talking about oxidation - which means that in any sort of world where rapid oxidation doesn’t work (i.e. explosives), your lungs also don’t work because you need that oxygen bonding with the iron in your hemoglobin or you die.
If you can light a fire, you can make an explosion. If you can make an explosion, you can use it to launch a projectile.
There’s no world in which fire exists but guns are impossible. Even if you don’t have the metalworking sophistication for a modern gun, you could still make a Chinese-style gunpowder rocket.
Or just straight up bombs. The beauty is that an IED can catch even a master wizard off guard. No need for metalworking, and since they use cars, well… surely there is some character with Irish roots, right?
Son of an Irish muggle, even
This is a world with flying broomsticks and cars, teleportation, and even time travel.
Of course you can get away with saying gunpowder just doesn’t explode here.
Gunpowder is just fire propagating at the speed of sound through solid (powder). As long as sound exists, the magical world can’t contain the angry dust.
Combustion, sure, but not an explosion. Or the car is a special magic car or whatever.
I hate to do this to you, but that’s kind how explosions work (i.e. combustion).Edit: I should’ve done my homework.
More specifically, that’s how cars with a combustion engine work: lots of tiny explosions.
No, they’re a combustion event. An actual explosion (detonation, pre ignition) is really bad news for an engine.
Firearms use a self oxidising propellant, so it would be quite easy to say that just doesn’t work.
What, pray tell, do you think is in gunpowder? It’s not magic dust that goes bang. It’s a pre-mixed, pre-compressed mixture of fuel and oxidiser. When used in a gun, whether it’s a muzzle-loader or a cartridge, the confined combustion of the mixture generates thermal energy and expanding gases that impart kinetic energy on a moving component (the piston or a projectile). The only difference is that the combustion event in an ICE is subsonic (deflagration) while the combustion in a gun is supersonic (detonation).
@Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works is correct.
I should’ve done my homework before going all “well akshullay 🤓” on them (sorry!).
The only similarities between the two is that they both are chemical reactions that produce a rapid release of energy. But past that, they are much different in how they get to that point.
So what you’re saying is there’s a fundamental difference between the two?
Yes, there are differences. That’s why one is called deflagration and the other is called detonation. Good job, you can read. But the chemical and thermodynamic processes are identical, and that’s what you seem to misunderstand.
Don’t be coy, you absolutely love doing this.
Nope, there’s a fundamental difference between a fuel/air mixture burning and something like gunpowder, which is a self oxidising propellant. Most explosives are in the latter category.
Explosions are combustion.
And really we’re just talking about oxidation. If oxidation works (which it must, because the characters are breathing) then chemically-propelled projectiles must also work.
Look, we’re talking about a world where people fly around on broomsticks like we ride bicycles.
Of course you can just declare that firearms don’t work.
I mean… not if your fantasy world has any internal consistency… and if it doesn’t then it might as well be Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Iirc it is mentioned electricity is finicky. But given that fire works, it stands to reason all chemical reactions work. Ergo firearms.
I hate JKR too, but she literally did. Wizard clothes are enchanted with protego charms which turn away any mundane attacks, and wizards really have no reason to fear muggles. During the witch trials some would allow themselves to be burned at the stake because they liked how the flames tickle. It’s very much a ‘magic must defeat magic’ setting.
No one thought to make magic bullets to counter protego charms?
Isn’t that just the killing curse with extra steps? Magic is a lot harder to evade.
but she did just what you described
I remember reading it
I don’t remember which book but I also have this clear memory of a quick passage saying all the magic around them was messing up with electronics.
Also I’m pretty sure in the Deathly Hallows they use the internet to follow Death Eaters sighting while they are in hiding
(Been a while… and I’m not bothered enough to go check 🤣)
its either directly in the books refering guns specifically or… it might have been an official out of the books source.
i used to be interested in this shit over a decade ago when the last books weren’t yet finished: there was a fancy flash based official site where lore snippets and bullshit from jk got published
This is just Harry Dresden novels
Also Arcanum a CRPG by troika, there’s a newspaper you can find where someone tried to put a fire enchantment on a musket took out a city block.