this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Don't they drive a car? and ride a train? so combustion works... kind of has to work
For all we know the hogwarts express runs on magic and so does the car, after all it flies.
It makes steam.
Magic steam.
So it's electric?
Sub-etha steam-o-matic.
Aesthetic is more important than practicality.
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 since they keep themselves so separated.
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.
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 use cars, well... surely there is some character with Irish roots, right?
Son of an Irish muggle, even
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.
Gunpowder is just fire propagating at the speed of sound through solid (powder). As long as sound exists, the magical world can't contain the angry dust.
Combustion, sure, but not an explosion. Or the car is a special magic car or whatever.
~~I hate to do this to you, but that’s kind how explosions work (i.e. combustion).~~
Edit: I should’ve done my homework.
More specifically, that's how cars with a combustion engine work: lots of tiny explosions.
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.
What, pray tell, do you think is in gunpowder? It's not magic dust that goes bang. It's a pre-mixed, pre-compressed mixture of fuel and oxidiser. When used in a gun, whether it's a muzzle-loader or a cartridge, the confined combustion of the mixture generates thermal energy and expanding gases that impart kinetic energy on a moving component (the piston or a projectile). The only difference is that the combustion event in an ICE is subsonic (deflagration) while the combustion in a gun is supersonic (detonation).
So what you're saying is there's a fundamental difference between the two?
Yes, there are differences. That's why one is called deflagration and the other is called detonation. Good job, you can read. But the chemical and thermodynamic processes are identical, and that's what you seem to misunderstand.
Dude, you're being a pedant in the comments of a Harry Potter shitpost.
And you're not?
@Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works is correct.
I should’ve done my homework before going all “well akshullay 🤓” on them (sorry!).
The only similarities between the two is that they both are chemical reactions that produce a rapid release of energy. But past that, they are much different in how they get to that point.
Don't be coy, you absolutely love doing this.
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.
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.
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.
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.