Comment on Anon learns a new spell

• reseller_pledge609@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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 sice they keep themselves so separated.

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  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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 have cars, well… surely there is some character with Irish roots, right?

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      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Son of an Irish muggle, even

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    • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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      • icelimit@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Gunpowder is just fire propagating at the speed of sound through solid (powder). As long as sound exists, the magical world can’t exclude the angry dust.

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• zaphod@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  For all we know the hogwarts express runs on magic and so does the car, after all it flies.

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  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    For all we know the hogwarts express runs on magic

    It makes steam.

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    • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Magic steam.

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      • zaphod@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        So it’s electric?

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    • Mirshe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Aesthetic is more important than practicality.

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• Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Combustion, sure, but not an explosion. Or the car is a special magic car or whatever.

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  • dohpaz42@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Combustion, sure, but not an explosion.

    I hate to do this to you, but that’s kind how explosions work (i.e. combustion).

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    • ccryx@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      More specifically, that’s how cars with a combustion engine work: lots of tiny explosions.

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      • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        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.

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    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Don’t be coy, you absolutely love doing this.

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    • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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      • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        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.

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