Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97

palladias

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 — LessWrong

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Why would a gun be more lethal than current combat magic?

Well, first you have to ask whether wizard shields actually do prevent inert lumps of lead from hitting their caster. They seem well-optimised for stopping charms, but presumably that relies on the magic in the charms, opposed by the magic in the shields. No doubt a wizard can shield against firearms, but do they as a matter of routine?

Second, because Muggle Britain has thousands of scientists who would like nothing better than to crack the Secret Of Magic and, incidentally, mass-produce magic bullets each with the force of a low-level anti-shield charm. Which you can then fire from machine guns wielded by conscripts with two weeks' training.

8metastable13y

1) Same reason muskets trump trained knights and longbowmen. Even though heavy plate was actually effective against primitive firearms, and longbows worked more reliably and with excellent range, you could kit out a peasant with an arquebus for much less than the cost of mounting and armoring a knight, and a fraction of the training (you had to train for years to be able to fight effectively in mail or on horseback and drawing a longbow was an elite skill that required extreme muscle hypertrophy. It took a few hours to learn how to operate your firearm, and a few weeks to learn how to coordinate with other peasants.) Similarly, even if wizards were significantly more lethal and/or survivable than dudes with carbines, they'd be incredibly outnumbered. 2) In the Harry Potter World, combat magic is really weak. It's almost all short range and slow, often nonlethal, rarely provides area effects, and nobody really trains it. Automatic weapons have cyclic rates of hundreds or even thousands of rounds per minute, and trained operators can hit a target at half a mile or more. And that's just small arms. They wouldn't even need special anti-magic weapons, unless the wizards were extremely well organized.

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