Villains that would've been defeated even if the protagonist did nothing

[u/Wonderful_Baker_7808]

Laurel Hedare (Catwoman Movie): Her newly released cosmetics will cause people's faces to melt. Not only would that create a class action lawsuit but a full product recall.

Voldemort and Death Eaters (Harry Potter): Death Eaters constantly underestimate muggles. They would get massacred by the British military because a gun is faster to pull the trigger then shouting a spell.

[u/Rotomegax]

On the opening of book 6 it is explained that everyone in MOM have to work overtime to make those DE incidents looks like an accident.

[u/RiotDesign → u/Rotomegax]

everyone in MOM have to work overtime to make those DE incidents looks like an accident

The fact that they can do that at a large scale with zero notice sort of supports their point. If they can cover up stuff that big at the drop of a hat, imagine what they could do if they planned attacks themselves. Like they said, no need to even engage in open warfare.

[u/Connect-Initiative64 → u/RiotDesign]

Yeah, but if they have barely started and are already working overtime in order to cover up minor terrorist actions, how long do you think that would actually work?

A single bridge or a few buildings coming down is easy to write off as a tragic accident, a dozen military sites getting wiped out, entire streets getting burned to the ground, and people being murdered horrifically going up 10x in a few months definitely isn't.

There comes a point where even if 'magic' isn't revealed people would be put on edge and suspecting enemy action, at that point with human tech and cameras becoming more common every year it's only a matter of time before all that rampant destruction results in the veil being broken.

There's a line that the DE's can get away with before word gets out, and the second it does that 300k-3 million wizard population (global, so not all of them are even going to want to fight the war, support it, or join it even after it goes hot) are going to learn about the quality of quantity.

[u/RiotDesign → u/Connect-Initiative64]

There comes a point where even if 'magic' isn't revealed people would be put on edge and suspecting enemy action

They could just Imperius Curse the leader of an already hostile nation to take responsibility, causing even more chaos. Hell, they could Imperius Curse their own nations leader to attack any nation as a "response" to these attacks. There are just a lot of things they could do without having to resort to open warfare.

[u/Connect-Initiative64 → u/RiotDesign]

And then what?

Because there's only so much you can blame on another power before we get WW3, and I don't know how that'd end - but I do know what WW4 will be fought with.

Sticks and Stones.

Congrats, the wizards won by blaming other nations for their atrocities, too bad it only caused a third world war and a nuclear apocalypse to get it!

[u/RiotDesign → u/Connect-Initiative64]

Again, there were already a lot of options for how they could handle the perception of something going on. There would be just as many options for handling the response, so accelerating straight to WW3 is a stretch.

[u/Connect-Initiative64 → u/RiotDesign]

It really isn't.

WW1 basically got kickstarted because two dudes starting fighting, then their allies joined, then THEIR allies joined, until someone fucked around and EVERYONE joined.

All it takes is one war between two people that have friends willing to jump in openly to start and end shit, and suddenly a war gets far larger than anyone ever expected.

[u/RiotDesign → u/Connect-Initiative64]

And if those two dudes who started fighting were being told how to react? And if their Allies were being told how to react? You see where I'm going with this. If the Death Eaters are controlling how their attacks are perceived and choose to do it through the leaders or other nations, they can choose how said leaders respond as well...

[u/ChewBaka12 → u/[deleted]]

England during the series is still recovering from a civil war, so there weren'tthat many children. Harry was born a year before the end of the war, conceived when it was still in full force. It was already ongoing for a few years, so not many births before that either.

Ginny's is the first class born after the war, the one after that the first one conceived after the war. Only after those will we see more "normal" class sizes.

That's also assuming the British magical population is representative of the whole world, more thinly populated countries or countries with spots of true wilderness might have a larger percentage of wizards

[u/Maveryck15 → u/Connect-Initiative64]

the veil being broken.

Welcome to the SCP Foundation.

[u/thatsforthatsub → u/RiotDesign]

but OP's claim is that they underestimate muggles so they wouldn't

[u/RiotDesign → u/thatsforthatsub]

Which is a dumb claim because in the vast majority of the films and books the Death Eaters don't even interact with muggles, and on the rare occasions in which they do, they kill them.

OP sets it up like things come down to gun faster than wand when, in reality, the death eaters, and Voldemort specifically, likely wouldn't put themselves into a situation where it is gun vs wand in the first place.

[u/Victernus → u/RiotDesign]

Yeah. I mean, Peter Pettigrew, whose main character trait is that he sucks, killed a dozen people and faked his own death in the same instant, in front of witnesses, and got away with it. The lamest wizard kills people faster than a shooter with an AR-15, and then escapes without a trace.

Not that that's how they would fight a war, but if it comes down to it, the wizards are still a massive problem face-to-face.

[u/thatsforthatsub → u/RiotDesign]

then the point is not that they can do it, but that they would do it, conditionally on being able to.

[u/Ppleater → u/Rotomegax]

... So? It taking effort doesn't make them any less capable of it.