Oneshot - The End by Taure - T

[Taure]

Title: The End
Author: Taure
Rating: T
Status: Finished one-shot
Suggested Category: Dark Arts
Words: 1,683
Published: December 28, 2006
Status: Oneshot
Summary: A little exploration of what would happen if wizards and Muggles could not coexist as peacefully as they have so far.
Links: FF.net or DLP.

A little one-shot I wrote as a practice in description and dialogue, inspired by the Wizards vs. Muggles thread.


Checked by Minion, Nov. 25, 2012

[Dark Lord Rostam]

Very well done. I had a feeling while I was reading you were showing that Wizards are truly better. One question: During the nuclear assault, how did all the Wizards avoid death? Just a little something I feel needs to be explained.

5/5.

[Taure]

There were probably a few wizards that got hit accidentally, but most wizards live in remote areas and in the countryside, away from where the nukes would have hit. Diagon Alley probably got destroyed though, and the Ministry of Magic would have been damaged, but as it was underground it survived and they repaired it quickly.

The little epilogue bit could really have been a whole story to itself with this one-shot as a prologue and more of a focus on the guerrilla warfare, but I tend to lose interest in writing long stories before I finish them, so stick to one-shots.

I will however issue this challenge to anyone who wants to take it up: write the story that the little epilogue of this one-shot tells in greater detail.

[Amadan]

I just wish it was longer.

[ip82]

This idea has been floating around for some time, mentioned here and there, but I've never seen a fic dealing solely with wizards starting a nuclear war. Kudos to Taure for that.

Unfortunately, execution of this idea itself was far from perfect.

The biggest problem was that you concentrated too much on unimportant things - atmosphere, entrance, gunfight, etc... and too little on the gist of the story - politics, military, war, etc...

Hand in hand with that comes realism. Not even the US president could authorize the launch of nuclear missiles without some GOOD backing (at least another member of the staff must give authorization as far as I know). I don't know what is procedure in GB, but I can only presume that it's MUCH more complicated; I bet they couldn't even begin the launch sequence without a green light from Washington.

And finally, there wouldn't be worldwide confusion if GB started the nuclear war. It takes at least half an hour to set up the systems, open the hatches and send the rockets off (all of which will be spotted through satellites, spies etc...), after which there's another hour or two where all the nuclear countries in the world would follow the missiles' trajectory on their screens, while preparing their own counterattack - against GB and obviously not against each other.

For this plan to work, Harry would need a LOT more logistics then one simple imperio; He'd not only need many imperiused people on various places around the globe to start the nuclear launches themselves, but also a whole different set of people who would create confusion and informational blackout, eventually leading to WWIII...

Thus, since the story generally failed to explore its primary subject, and instead dealt with needless filler surrounding it, it can't get more then
3/5

[Hesuse Christe]

Good, but lots of room for improvement. Perhaps it should be taken up as a chaptered story, with this chapter as a prologue.

[Taure]

In my defence:

A little one-shot I wrote as a practice in description and dialogue

So as far as atmosphere etc went, you thought it was OK?

But yeah, if it were reality it would be far harder for the nukes to be launched, but not as hard as you make it sound. The UK has at least one nuclear submarine armed with 80 Nuclear warheads on patrol in the arctic at all times, capable of launching within an hour.

If the Prime Minister were to declare a State of Emergency and declare marshal law etc, I think it wouldn't be too hard for him to order the strike, if he made it out that Britain was about to be under attack.

Also, It wouldn't have been hard for Harry to go and put all the other members of the cabinet under the imperious, as most of them live on the same road.

[Hesuse Christe]

The atmosphere was good as an excercise, but overbearing and melodramatic at times.

[Tinn Tam]

I've read it, I thought it was good, I have lots of remarks to make, but right now I have to get off the computer so I'll give you the short version and edit it later.

I thought the writing was a little clinical, but otherwise the atmosphere was good and the descriptions nicely detailed. Your sentence structure and use of punctuation struck me as odd; you use a lot of commas, not always advisedly, and sometimes your sentences aren't built at all. It often came out as rather messy.

I'll give examples tomorrow, right now I really have to go.

Rating: 3.5/5 for the style of writing. 4/5 for the original idea. 5/5 for the last sentence.

All in all: 4/5

[BloodLust]

Meh, I read it, and in my tired state i noticed a few teeny-tiny grammar issues, but over-all i like it. Short...but who am I to complain about the length of anyone elses fics :P, besides the only reason it's an issue is because I wanted to read more, lulz.

Other than that I thought it was a good read, i'd have liked to see it develop a bit more, but in terms of what you meant it as...:

A little one-shot I wrote as a practice in description and dialogue

...I thought it was pretty damn good.

4/5

[Big Z]

Like it but at times needs a more complex view on what really is going on and how it occurs. It needs expanding upon on the whys and hows this actually occurs rather than just saying it occured. Like IP pointed out, it takes much more work than just to imperio one leader and have it be done. The President can't just by himself authorize a nuclear launch, usually NORAD or the Command Staff would have a hand in the decisions.

I would love to see a cutscene of the actual response in other countries if this was pulled off and the response itself of the magical world. I'm sure that there are many halfbloods and Muggleborns out there upset with this decision, how would they feel and what is their reaction/impact on the eventual terrorism?

Expanding on this interesting idea would be great and for now, can't give higher than a 4/5 for pure curiousity of what can be added to make this fic great.

[Tinn Tam]

Too late for editing. New post.

Here are a few examples of an odd sentence structure:

Shrouded by the cover of darkness, no one could have seen a man creeping down an empty cobbled street, Victorian houses looming high overhead, their grey stone walls providing the perfect cover for any doer of ill-deeds.

Shrouded refers to the man, yet the subject of the main clause is no one. It's a breaking in the syntax. Actually you could have reversed the order of the 'optional' clauses:

As Victorian houses loomed high overhead, their grey stone walls providing the perfect cover for any doer of ill-deeds, no one could have seen a man creeping down an empty cobbled street, shrouded as he was by the cover of darkness.

The syntax is correct here, though the effect isn't quite the same... Better still (and this way, you avoid the accumulation of commas):

Victorian houses loomed high overhead, their grey stone walls providing the perfect cover for any doer of ill-deeds; [insert a conjunction here maybe?] no one could have seen a man creeping down an empty cobbled street, shrouded as he was by the cover of darkness.

Well actually, here you get the problem of binary rhythm but... one thing at a time.
_________

like the street he was walking on, the man was clothed in black, the only features visible were those of his face.

You may want to replace the second comma with a semi colon. It breaks the dull rhythm of the sentence and helps to separatate the clause with 'man' as a subject and the clause in which 'features' is the subject.
_________

No doubt anybody who did see him would not let their gaze linger; this man was dangerous.

Typical sentence in which a colon would have been as good as a semi colon. Better, even, since it's not as common. In the second part of the sentence you're developing what you've said in the first part; hence the use of the colon.
_________

This particular alley was quite short though, and the man emerged from the other side not five seconds later, emerging onto a wider, considerably more modern road.

Beware the redundancy.
_________

He took the stick and tapped the doorknob, the sound of wood on metal drifting down the empty street; then tapped himself on the head to no visible effect, before putting the stick away again and passing through the well-oiled door silently.

Opposite problem here: a semi colon sounds a little too final a separation between the two clauses, since you're not repeating the subject in the second part of the sentence (then he tapped himself etc.). If you repeat he, a semi colon is fine; otherwise, a comma might sound better.
_________

If Scrimgeour did not send this man, then he could be dangerous, thought the Minister, his hand drifting to the hidden draw under his desk, where he kept a loaded pistol.

That's a lot of commas! The rhythm is both jerky and quite monotonous, to be honest. Portions of sentence of equal (and quite short) length, all separated with commas... It makes the pace of the text dull. You might want to try to break that monotonous rhythm by injecting other (and stronger) punctuation marks, or even changing the sentence structure. As in:

If Scrimgeour did not send this man, then he could be dangerous, thought the Minister; and his hand drifted to the hidden draw under his desk--where he kept a loaded pistol.

Okay, I exaggerated a bit . But, well, you get the idea...
_________

It's very possible that I am the only one to be bothered by that kind of thing. But you said you wanted to practice your writing style so... here you go. A review only about the writing style. I hope it at least makes sense.

And I swear I intended it to be shorter.

[Mordac]

This isn't really a fanfic, it's more a polemic on the Wizard vs. Muggle issue.

[Taure]

Not really: there is very little plot in there; the wizard/Muggle conflict is reduced to a small epilogue at the end. This concentrates more on a small snapshot of an assassin's work.

[Mindless]

Excellent. You really don't need practice in description and dialouge. It had a very 'Monte Cristo' feel. 5/5

[mansk]

not to be a snarky asswhole but an atom bomb is nothing compared to what the us and soviets came up with during the cold war a hydrogen bomb would wreak the ministry no questions asked

[kjp]

Wizards can't make food magically, so wouldn't nuclear winter kill them all.

[KrzaQ]

They can charm radiation away, and if they can't, they will invent such a charm, it wouldn't be anything special. (something of eternal darkness sucked out all the light, what the problem would it be to change it to different type of radiation?)

Thanks to kjp I discovered this one-shot. Even though it's almost 3 years old it's awesome. 4.5/5

[blackghost]

Originally Posted by KrzaQ

They can charm radiation away, and if they can't, they will invent such a charm, it wouldn't be anything special. (something of eternal darkness sucked out all the light, what the problem would it be to change it to different type of radiation?)

Thanks to kjp I discovered this one-shot. Even though it's almost 3 years old it's awesome. 4.5/5

It would take the entire wizard population to due so as nuclear winter would involve dozens if not hundreds of nuclear events and that means hundreds if not millions of square miles. (Based on a 5-10 MT event and a average of 3-8 per city destroyed as standard)

Global nuclear winter is VERY hard to magic away. Local radiation? Probably easy but you still get the temp drop. They could grow food just not the same food.


Just saying :/

[KrzaQ]

Ever heard of warming charm? Or (magically expanded) greenhouses?

They don't have to fight global effects of the winter. They just need to do so in small areas just to grow enough food to survive. And considering they can enlarge their crops (just like Hagrid did with pumpkins, iirc) it shoudn't be a problem.