Playing devil's advocate here: if wizards are that much more powerful, why aren't there more tiny Voldemorts poping up all over the place?

 

First of all, who said you had to be as powerful as Voldemort to kill a muggle? Pettigrew killed 13 with a single spell on a crowded street and you know the general DLP opinion of him...

Second, there is a magical police force... no matter how inept some people think it may be.

Third, wizards and muggles had been separated for centuries... why would a wizard even see the need to senselessly kill them? Voldemort is just an insane, very powerful wizard with a personal vendetta against muggles for his childhood treatment.

 

Nuclear bombs could be vanished. Hogwarts tudents are taught vanishing in eitehr 5th or 6th year transfiguration. That means that it is, over all, not a vastly difficult thing, especially for inanimate objects, like bombs. And if what ever wizards were around couldn't vanish the incoming object, banishing charms are your friend.

The Imperius curse, as far as I know, doesn't take a strong will to beat, it takes that, in conjunction with an understanding of what is happening, and a determination to beat it. Ergo, muggles wouldn't be able to beat it, simply because they wouldn't know what was happening to them. They wouldn't know they were under the control of someone else. And, is it really army types who control the nukes. Or is it politicians. I personally do not think of Bush or Blair as strong willed. Do you?

There is no canon proof that wizards are not as imaginative, or creative or resourceful as muggles. We have been introduced to very limited numbers of wizards and witches in the books. People who have magic, don't think of it as a failsafe. It is something that is part of their lives. They use it naturally, they don't have to think about it. Someone else mentioned the time it takes to think of a spell to use. An adult wizard who has been using magic for a decade or so, would instinctively know spells for all situations. From their school days they would know some defence charms instinctively. I can imagine that all pupils go around ready to cast shielding spells at the slightest provocation. Same with minor offensive spells.

Just think, what would be more distracting for a muggle than for someone to reverse his knees, or to turn his skin blue? An adult wizard, uses magic so naturally that they don't need time to think or consider, they just do.

One army against another? Wizards would win hands down. simply because they can affect the environment as well as themselves, and their opponent. If a wizard gets shot in the arm, he or his friend can heal it instantly. If a muggle gets hit in the arm by a cutting curse of some sort, what can they do except bleed to death, or be out of action wrapped in bandages. Over a series of running battles, even if wizards took more wounded each time proportionally than muggles did. More wounded would return to fight on the wizarding side each battle than would on the muggle side.

 

Eh, all right.

OT: You mentioned that wizards and muggles have been separated for centuries. And yes, that would count for part of the xenophobia towards muggleborns. But there's not really a mention in canon (or at least, not one that I can remember) of why the separation occurred in the first place. Rowling only stated that during the witch-burnings, true witches and wizards would use a flame-freezing charm to prevent them from being burned.

What are your thoughts? I can't remember if there's been a thread about this...

 

I think they probably separated when Christianity became the prevalent religion. Under most forms of Paganism, and other ancient religions, magic would be accepted as a gift from a greater power. The hesterical fear that would meet magic from medieval Christians would probably drive wizards into hiding. It's entirely possible that the real xenophobia, and even hatred, towards muggles, was started not by wizarding families, but by muggleborns. If they were ostracised from their families, then they could well have begun to hate muggles, and passed that onto their children.

 

That's probably when the full shift happened, but I think it might have started a bit earlier. Nero and a whole band fruitcake emperors had great fun in burning/torturing/etc christians. Wouldn't it the same for possible witches/wizards?

 

I think that in a fair fight, one muggle versus one wizard, the wizard would win. But! If the muggle were, say, a Navy SEAL, the wizard would get his ass handed to him. Probably quite literally. This is, of course, assuming that the average muggle would be smart enough to dodge an energy pulse heading right for him.

As for magic disrupting technology, we have equipment that's been hardened against EMP. Nukes are one of those technologies. And despite what you may have seen in the movies, there's really nothing to disrupt.

 

My personal opinion is that everyone has their advantages. I dont subscribe to the theory that magic is infinite or infalliable. You can only hold so much energy in the body before it starts to hinder, rather than help.

The same, Muggles can nuke an entire area, and spells or no, you can only survive without food for so long. Radioactive food and poisoned water isnt healthy, after all.

Voldemort? Dumbledor? Would pwn a muggle army. Ron? Ernic Macmillian? Would get pwned.

 

wizards would win in an all out war... you forget about the muggle repelling wards , cast them on the military bases , and well I don't think anyone would be able to fire any rocket or nuke , or get into a jet ;]

 

I think that if there is ever a war between the Muggles and Wizards in canon, then the wizards would win. Sure, we could go on and on about the lovely little destructive technology the Muggles have -Nukes, Sarin Gas, Biological Weapons, Fuel-Air bomb, laser guided Missiles, M1A1 Tank, F-22 Raptor - but the one fault with using any of them is you gotta know where you're enemy is.

If there are muggle repelling wards on most wizarding homes and locations, (and you have to assume there would be) then the muggles can't actually go on the offensive because they don't know where to fight. They'd be on the defensive immediately, to wizards who can turn themselves invisible, through cloaks or disilluisonment charms or through other means (Gotta wonder how Dumbledore did it in PS). Hell, even if they can't cast the AK, holding an antique sword or dagger and stabbing lone soldiers in the back in the middle of a barracks or base would be enough to scare the shit out of them and lower morale.

In terms of a full 1800-type war where the two sides march onto a field and try to kill each other, muggles would win because of sheer numbers of effectiveness of their technology. But in terms of a smaller force (Wizards) using guerilla tactics on a larger force (muggles), wizards would win without a doubt. They are the kings of guerillia warfare, able to disappear and appear anywhere instantanously, hide themselves from the eyes of their enemy and with a wide repoitire of odd skills.

 

I vote muggles, purely because of numbers and the elite military forces we have that are trained to get into places that are 'inaccessible'. Also, the Wizarding World in Britain is terrorised by 1 man and 20 followers. What does that say about magic?

EDIT: On the jamming note - the AK47 does not jam. Ever.

 

That it is extremely strong, as one man armed with it is able to hold a whole country in fear.

 

Against several thousand people? (The probable amount of magical people in Britain) Please. It says the wizarding world doesn't have the bottle for a proper war.

I believe the correct phrase for this time comes from the most hated book, HBP

That goes both ways, besides Voldemort acts more through fear and guerilla tactics, its hardly a matter of power if you wake up to a cruciatus curse.

 

No one. Seriously - as we know (from canon and fanon) wizards tend to hide from muggles - because they are afraid of them. Why, are, the o-so powerful wizards afraid of bunch of pathetic muggles? Why, haven't they killed the muggles or took over their leaders? The answer is fear. Wizards are afraid of muggles for some reason. We don't know what the reason is. Maybe the witch hunting in middle ages? Maybe the sher numbers on muggles side? We don't know. Also I am firmly believe in balance in nature. If there are magically powerful areas (eg. Hogwarts, Diagon Ally, etc.), there must be some anti-magical areas (eg. Las Vegas - a lot of electricity?)

 

Based on equal skill levels w/ wand/weapon, wizard, definitely.
Though our muggle technology and science is superior to that of the wizards, their magic can do just about anything, and is fairly instantaneous.
Magic > Muggle.
That's all there is to it.

 

I'm a bit on both sides for this, Muggles and Wizards have their own benefits.

A wizard can throw up a shield to stop bullets, yes, but you have to remember that not every wizard will even be able to throw up a shield strong enough to hold off more than one bullet, let alone be able to cast one fast enough or at all. Lockheart is a prime example off wizarding incompetence. Besides, a well placed sniper could very well completely disrupt the wizarding heiarchy(?) via a well placed bullet to the ministers head.

Then again, there IS the fact that Wizards have Muggle reppelling Notice-Me-Nots, Dissillusionment, Legilimency, Imperius, The Killing Curse, Cruciatus, etcetera. Masters of Transfiguration might turn a planks of wood into houses and drop them on enemy platoons, Charms Masters may Levitate muggle troops into the atmosphere and drop them, Potion Masters could mix a highly volatile contact explosive with five times the radius and damage of todays grenades, and so on.

Muggles have biological warfare, and while Wizards might have simple magical remedies, I doubt they do. My reasoning for this is because, well, do we ever see someone ever getting a common cold, canon or fanon? To add on BMM's statement of Wizards being superior to muggles biologically, they just might have much stronger immune systems as well. Though I may have just contradicted my biological warfare statement, I think an airborne chemical agent such as the one used in that subway in japan(I don't know the exact name off the top of my head) would do the job just fine. Besides if a muggleborn tried to warn them about it, they'd be completely ignored due to the fact that alot of wizards look down on muggleborns even more than muggles.

Then theres also the fact that muggles have nuclear weapons, which could be used to simply blow wizards off the face of the earth. Wizards have been shown to know next to nothing about muggles, and they would probably laugh in your face if you said muggles had a bomb that could annihiate all of London. While it's theoretically possible that it could short out in places where magic is practiced, I personally doubt it very much. The only actual place we've heard of any and every muggle electronic going catatonic is Hogwarts itself.

Taure, I highly doubt one spell would be enough to disrupt any muggle device. After all, The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts(name might be slightly off) is there or a reason. Somehow I doubt the go about doing nothing but unhexing doorknobs all day. Plus, Mr. Weasley had flight charms and an invisibility booster in his car, and if I remember correctly, it didn't short out, but drove off into the forest after Harry and Ron reached Hogwarts, but that might have been another spell added into the car.

In conslusion, I think muggles and Wizards are pretty evenly matched, and a war between them would either be a win with severely critical losses on either side, or life as we know it would pretty much end on the planet in the race to eradicate one another.

 

I'm going to have to agree with Vash here, almost every point in here is made with the assumption that magic is infallible, that it is essentially the hand of god in each spell a wizard casts.

Now i'm going to attempt to logically shoot down some of these ideas that are thrown out there.

Invisibility - It's said in canon that invisibility cloaks are EXTREMELY rare so the chance to have enough to equip a strike force that wont be killed just by chance attempting to infiltrate and disable the military bases is probably pretty damn low. (Cloaks while on brooms is shot down by Moody in chapter 3 of OOTP he says that the cloak would be blown off do to the wind while flying)

The invisibility spell that Dumbledore uses in PS... HELLO PEOPLE? it's said repeatedly that Dumbledore is the greatest wizard of their age that he can do things others can't even imagine, becoming invisible at will is most likely one of those things or we would have seen the order use it instead of disillusionment.

Disillusionment - Making yourself a human chameleon, yes certainly effective the military sure wishes it had the technology to make all it's soldiers like this, but not 100% effective, since we can still see chameleon when they blend just takes a second look. Also chameleon "ability" is not nearly as effective while moving.

Note that Infra-Red disables all of these advantages. Though the plus for the wizards not everyone has IR at their disposal.



Onto Mordecai's Vanish/Banish the nuclear bomb/warhead. I'll work on the vanishing act first. Am I the only on who thinks that vanishing is a precise thing if taken at face value (that it has the ability to make anything simply cease to exist)? I think vanishing would take a bit of concentration and exact knowledge of the location of the object to not vanish something that is needed. So imagine having to constantly track an object moving down towards the ground from several miles in the the air at speeds of several hundred miles per hour. I don't think that would be the easiest think especially when talking about the amount of mass that a bomb has.

The banishing i'm honestly having trouble trying to decipher. This spell is only ever used once according to the lexicon. Said to be the reverse of a summoning charm but i'm pretty sure since it moves an object away from you that this is a spell that can only be used within reasonable distance of the object and sight of said object. This is made difficult with a falling Nuclear Bomb especially since the detonate rather high in the air.

Imperious while yes can be effective we only know that it has to do with crushing the victims will with your own so in pure will power a magical person has no advantage over a muggle.

The instantaneous healing is in fact completely false, why else is harry in the hospital wing almost a month every year?

Ok so i've gone over some of the stuff that could come up in a full scale battle/war between the sides.


The original question was just 1 wizard vs 1 muggle though both masters of their craft, it's hard to say but probably 90% of the time the wizard would win assuming that there is no real physiological differences between the two (increased speed/reaction times.) While Dumbledore incapacitated an entire room of aurors in about 3 seconds. A master pistol marksman can put of a single aimed shot in probably 5/10ths of a second.

So hard choice but I think the master wizard would win in a fair straight forward 1 on 1.

 

In conclusion, in a 1 on 1 fight, a wizard would win. In a war, the muggles would give them a smack down like no other.

 

I've always thought that the impervious charm had a limit as to what it could it could repel. A bullet or rocket explosion has a whole lot more force than rain or a thrown dungbomb.

I think if the wizard and muggle fighting are masters (Dumbledore vs. NAVY SEAL), the wizard would win. But, I think the muggle might have an advantage if both he and the wizard were less-than-average fighters. How hard is it to pull an trigger?

 

No canon proof.