There is no point in making a thread out of this post so I have just wondered, why hasn't anyone made a connection between Scar from Lion King and Harry?

They both have black hair (mane), green eyes and a distinctive scar.

I would dig this crossover.

Scar's cynicism would play very well into the Lion King universe if he was Harry post DH.

 

Given what information we have about the magical world and the population of magical people, do you folks think wizards would survive if all muggles suddenly vanished?

 

Yes. There should be enough genetic diversity to keep population from collapse. Depending on how someody will fill what was not specified in canon impact may range from "it is now possible to disband Obliviators" to "total economic collapse, now magicals needs to figure out how to produce all necessary supplies".

The bigger impact will have the thing that disappeared Muggles.

Also, goblins/giants/aliens/whoewer may decide that it is a good moment to start war against wizards using confusion and sudden power vacuum.

Plus - who knows enough about nukes to take over this stuff?

 

I suspect there are branches of wizards who know about this stuff. Perhaps the Unspeakables? Maybe not enough to take over, but to neutralize them and/or nuclear power plants to prevent serious disasters.

 

Yeah, it would be obvious - unless somedody is extrapolating Fudge and decides that nearly everybody is unable to do anything sensible.

But maybe also some goblins/dwarves/whoevers are also aware and would happily use it to target somebody else.

I am not sure what exactly is necessary to really take over, for long time I wanted to research this (hello NSA filters) - I am curious what mechanism are used to ensure that nukes may be quickly used by those in authority and nobody else.

 

See Life After People, it shows what happens if all humans disappear. It shows what happens to nuclear bombs and nuclear power plants.

 

I loved this. Scar is a great villain, and his and Harry's personalities are the opposite. It would be hard to integrate ir, bur as a kinda lf crack fic? Or just a humour fic that doesn't take it self too seriously, it could be awesome.

 

Yes GB alone has a number of wizards high enough for it as you only need a few thousand to sustain a population for a species. Even a few hundred can work really.

In terms of how closely linked they are I personally think wizards only really deal with the rest of the world for muggleborns and to keep track of other magicals(with the contact with governments being for that reason). There is probably enough manpower and knowledge to deal with what muggles left and keep other magical races from doing shit.

 

Actually, I looked into it about an hour ago, asked some people and from what I've learned you need at least 5000 people to prevent inbreeding.

 

Yeah, and it should be enough magicals worldwide to cover this.

 

Indeed, even if the magical people were only a 1% of the entire population, that's still 6 million (it's obviously less, but still).

 

I am trying really hard not to write a huge post that still won't properly explain the subject so to simplify:

All that inbreeding means is that problems people carry but are not apparent are more likely to pop up so a species can survive inbreeding as long as none of the traits outright kill them and that no other disaster wipes the group out. For an intelligent species- with magic at that- a combined effort can deal with a lot that would kill other species.

This is further complicated by the fact that the number is not as important as what genetic material the people carry in the first place and that people actually keep track of who has what and crosses over with who.

As for final numbers in general there are several examples of species here today that were reduced to the mere dozens alive thousands or tens of thousands years ago. They have multiple problems due to that and might very well become extinct for something as trivial as handful individuals dying before procreating but they are still here.

 

Given what JKR said on Pottermore about magical people not experiencing Muggle illness, it seems likely to me that they don't have genetic disorders.

Though there are probably inheritable magical diseases. Vampirism, anyone?

 

It's not really possible though with the information we have been given. With the descriptions of families in canon, it very much appears that magic is a dominant gene/whatever in that there is a high likely hood of a child of a magical person being magical themselves.

We also know that being magical gives great advantages, the first magic itself, then both delayed aging and longer lived, and finally being more physically robust. Given the traits of evolution, magic should have spread incredibly quickly.

Then the final complication is that we know that magic has been around at least since the ancient Egyptians which is around four to six thousand years depending, and it goes back to ten thousand plus if you want the Australian aborigine's or South American natives to possess magic as well.

Even if you want to add in a widespread magical plague every couple centuries, the population of witches and wizards should shoot back up rather quickly given their inherent advantages.

 

I don't think vampires are wizards. My reason is that they are "Non-wizard par-humans" which seems to imply that they are not, in fact, wizards.
In fact, vampires appear to be a species. Their are part vampires, vampires have children who are vampires, and we never hear of people being afraid of becoming vampires.

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Wizards, unlike muggles, seem to not have that many children. There are outliers, but it seems like they usually have only one or two children.

 

Wizards have vision problems though and for Harry at least seem to behave as expected for a muggle.

But none of that fits with canon, we know wizards are a minority. We know magical races are not that common. If magic really was free to spread like that then even a few thousand years would be enough for the majority of species worldwide to be magical.

 

You are applying modern rearing of children, when I was comparing it from thousands of years ago. The magical/muggle cultural norms would have been quite similar considering they hadn't yet divided themselves.

Yes you're right, they would be. It's a world building error, in that what she tells us about magical people doesn't match her results that would come from that. Unless you want to go for the magic is limited route, and the pureblood belief that muggleborns are "stealing" magic. But even then, squibs appear to be rare so it doesn't really seem like a viable explanation.

 

You're right, they might have been similar. But as we can see, they weren't. So you're point makes no sense.
Wizards never needed to have lots of children, because they tended to survive. They instead focus more on each individual child. Like the wealthy vs the poor, only the wealthy are magic. The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to only have one child.

 

Why does everyone think that most wizards are only children? We really don't know that many characters well enough to say whether or not they have siblings. There are multiple instances of siblings in Wizarding Families (Bellatrix/Narcissa/Andromeda, Sirius/Regulus, Molly/Gideon/Fabian, the Carrows, Daphne/Astoria), the latter of which we only know because Rowling once mentioned Astoria mentioned Draco. While Arthur/Molly's seven was obviously more of an extreme, their kids were all described as having two-three children, a more reasonable number. Most of the characters we do know to be only children have good reason to be only children (James' parents were old and having pregnancy trouble as it is, Harry's parents died when he was one, Neville's parents went insane, even Dean's dad left when he was very young).

I know I made this rant before, but I thought it was relevant here. And I am sick and tired of people claiming they only have one child each when there is virtually no evidence of that. Odds are they had 2-3 kids; not a ton of kids, but certainly more than one.

 

It may be more complicated. Many people thing that it is possible to neatly classify things into "bad genetic change, good genetic change" but it is untrue.

See sickle cell anemia - a recessive genetic disease. But cariers (single abnormal copy) are more resistant to malaria. As result "Due to the adaptive advantage of the heterozygote, the disease is still prevalent, especially among people with recent ancestry in malaria-stricken areas, such as Africa, the Mediterranean, India and the Middle East.".

Or moth colour - there is classical example of peppered moth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution ). Something that would be classified by moths as genetic disease turned out once situation changed to be extremely useful.

This are really simple examples, but similar examples exist for other illnesses and almost certainly extend to more complicated situations.