this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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Lord Of The Rings Memes
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Whenever I think about militia like this in magical worlds, I imagine the physics are drastically unique enough that things just don’t break down the same way our world does. I imagine a nuke just wouldn’t function as we expect it to here.
One isekai webnovel I read had the protagonist constantly terrified of having his mind read by someone with enough knowledge to piece together nuclear physics from what little he knew via pop culture. Figured it would completely upset the balance of power in a world that didn't even have gunpowder. He collected every mental defense item he could get and tried the best he could to avoid mind mages.
Then he got imprisoned and interrogated by a government official who was also the most powerful mind mage in the world.
They laughed at his concern. A high enough level fireball spell was already on that scale.
Fireballs don't usually contaminate the area ...
Tbf for an individual nuke, the contamination effect isn't quite as extreme as pop culture sometimes portrays it. There's a reason that, for example, Hiroshima was rebuilt and exists as a city today, rather than being left as a Chernobyl-esque radiological contamination zone where people avoid living to avoid exposure.
maybe for other worlds, but the kayfabe of Tolkien's works is that they are historical accounts from our own real world. canonically, thousands of years after the end of the Third Age, Eru Ilúvatar sent himself to Middle-earth in the form of a Man who was his son, and he was called Jesus Christ; at one time Tolkien said that was the beginning of the Seventh Age, which we are currently in
essentially that means that whatever happens in the real world, or at least wherever happened between events recounted in the Bible up to 1954, is canonical to LotR. so we have explicit confirmation that it would have been physically possible, given the proper technology, to drop a nuke on Sauron
but the things is that it still wouldn't have happened. because recognizing the danger of great power and seeking to use it to your own advantage to dominate your enemies, rather than acknowledge that it should not be used by anyone, is what the dang book is about. the whole point is "don't do that exact thing." anyone in Middle-earth who would use an atomic bomb either is Sauron, or serves Sauron, or would at best defeat Sauron in order to take his place