The nature of Technomancy in Harry Potter

[Foxboy]

Just got thinking about why, in the Potterverse, technology from electromechanics on up goes cattywumpus around magic, and I got thinking about Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Remember, Thomas Edison was called the "Wizard of Menlo Park," and Nikola Tesla was not very far behind in jaw dropping wondrous devices.
IT might just be the sheer amount of basic magical forces at work in even the simplest mass-produced trinket. Because of the magical laws of Similarity and Contagion, any common electronic device is the same as any other from the same factory... rather, every gadget from the same batch is one big gestalt item. Thus, as magic tries to interact with transistor radio A, it also interacts with the seventy thousand other similar ones elsewhere in the world, overloading the one in closest proximity to magic. Then, of course, you add in the fact that each microchip is really several hundred identical switches...
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[jpub]

I had a rather different explanation:
Magic causes localized but powerful EMPs.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel

[Bob Schroeck]

If you assume magic is a "third force", it may well share an induction/propagation relationship with either or both magnetism and electricity, in much the same way that those two do -- so there may well be electromagical and magnetomagical waves generated by magical effects (much in the same way that calculators generate radio waves you can hear on an AM receiver), and these are what muck up electronics.
Or like Chris said, magic causes EMPs.


-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Dragonflight]

Also, don't forget the corollary to Clarke's Law:
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Or my favorite reformulation of that Law:
"Any sufficiently advanced *anything* is indistinguishable from utter bull."
^_^
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Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Sweno]

I have always thought of magic as an interference to tech, much like holding a magnet up to a tv will distort the picture (and if left there permanently do so). Having magic output small (even very, very, small) emp's is vast overkill. As it would kill all electronics in a noticeable area. And that just doesn't mesh with cannon.
And yes (to cut off the nits before they can be picked) if you scale down an emp enough it simply becomes interference. What makes it an emp is the (very) large amount of potential difference over a (very) short distance. Likewise if you squeeze other types of interference down to a short enough time span and jack the power up, it approaches the effect of an emp.-Terry
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"in comes a man in cameo with a american flag, because american flags float around in the wilderness." - Mike Keon
Please Remember: People are stupid... Programers are people.
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Necratoid]

Its not an emp effect. For it to be a EMP it must pulse/explode, its a continuos effect not a sudden event. Its much more of a radiation effect, like was mentioned above. The magic at Hogwarts is like living in the center of a nest of high voltage power line. There is so much energy flying around at random that is screws with the complicated voltage/amperage over tiny, tiny even microscopic distances.
The other thing is that it each electronic component is made of dozens of different substances. A single resistor is made of many layers.. even dozens of layers. There are dozens of them on a circuit board. Made of exotic highly refined substance that the Wizarding World probably hasn't heard of. This means that one of them with a change in voltage/amperage will screw the device up, a few even worse. one resistor amping the amperage and the circuit burns out.
Not image several randomly enchanted at different levels of power... small explosions and bursting into flame may ensue.
Doug has improved components by accidentally improving them. Doug understands what he is doing. The random saturation enchantment at Hogwarts and other magic heavy areas is like tossing a radio into a washing machine full of heavy water and pixie dust and hoping good things happen.
That or like the wild surge table of a 2nd edition D&D wild mage. You role a dice and hope for the good effects. Only your rolling 5 or 6 times each for over a hundred components. Or twice on the table for the whole thing. Eventually, something useful will happen statistically, but a lot of things will explode on the way... or turn into butterflies with wings of bacon or your watch may grow leaves or your talking alarm clock takes up singing and starts calling you 'Dave'.
Electronics don't explode there... they go bonkers. We can debate if this is on purpose or not. However considering that there are rather few electronics in the flying car and it worked fine (even in the relatively magic heavy area of the Burrow) until getting near Hogwarts. Thus we know its only over a certain saturation of magic that this effect occurs.
Personally, I have to wonder if over exposure to magic can cause muggleborn witches and wizards... an overly obliviated man becomes a squib, a pregnant woman that had a long night of being 'pranked' by purebloods has a baby wizard, or the kids offspring do. I mean the ones doing the pranks notice that their favorite targets starts making mudbloods... and they up the hating just so their oblivious cohorts don't notice that the only way they are special is in the short bus way. Same way all noble families started off as commoners.

[Black Aeronaut]

I've had odd plotbunnies about a kid, a prodigy in magic -and- technology, comes to Hogwarts and experiments with technomancy while there.-NeoRaven
"I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity." -Edgar Allen Poe
Sponsored by Black Aeronaut Technologies -
Aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer.-NeoRaven

"I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity." -Edgar Allen Poe

Sponsored by Black Aeronaut Technologies -

Aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer.

[Bob Schroeck]

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Doug has improved components by accidentally improving them. Doug understands what he is doing. The random saturation enchantment at Hogwarts and other magic heavy areas is like tossing a radio into a washing machine full of heavy water and pixie dust and hoping good things happen.

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Then again, Doug comes from a world where the tech-magic synergy is especially strong; modern magic is usually designed with FCC Class A or B certification, and Doug's powers seem to comply with that.
by the way, Necratoid, welcome to the forum!

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[jpub]

I don't know, it depends on how one interprets the nature of a continuous enchantment. It could, in fact, have a 'frequency', such that a magical item can be interpreted as a standing wave, where there is an EMP-like effect at the peaks of said wave.
So a place like Hogwarts would be pumping out EMPs constantly.
Thus, once could conceivably shield against it with sufficiently hardened electronics or Faraday cages.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel

[hmelton]

Since Magic disrupts electronics perhaps correctly designed electronic devices can disrupt magic.
At the very least magic's interferance with electronics gives us mundanes the ability to sense it's use or it's existance on objects or places.
I'd guess even a crudely constructed EMP pulse weapon could disrupt all magic for a given distance around it.
That might be why lightning is used so much as a weapon in magic it has a twofold effect of doing damage to a target and disrupting the targets magic for an instant.
howard melton
God bless

[Bob Schroeck]

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Since Magic disrupts electronics perhaps correctly designed electronic devices can disrupt magic.

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Symmetry being abundant in nature, that just might be possible.

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Kokuten]

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like tossing a radio into a washing machine full of heavy water and pixie dust and hoping good things happen.

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OW! tang | nose > keyboard.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[jpub]

See, that's bloody clever, hmelton. I was only trying to figure out a rational scientifically-justifiable reason for the anti-electronics magical effect, especially since in the HP work I'm considering I'm pushing that magic is the missing piece to a Grand Unified Theory.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel

[classicdrogn]

"What's that gap in the equation, Professor?"
"That's where the magic happens."
- CDThat which does not kill us... has made its last mistake.
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
" It's crazy to try to spell out all the mega-nooks and hyper-crannies of a Borg contrivance." - Doug Drexler
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Foxboy]

Okay, I think that I was coming from the Wizarding World direction on my theory...
But, if you use magic as part of Unified Theory, then Similarity and Contagion might actually be proven by the more outre quantum physics that postulate that all of reality is one quantum particle bouncing around in space-time and forming every piece of matter/energy....
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Necratoid]

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Then again, Doug comes from a world where the tech-magic synergy is especially strong; modern magic is usually designed with FCC Class A or B certification, and Doug's powers seem to comply with that.

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Which means that he mostly knows what he is doing. He can enchant entire circuit boards... I'm talk random components changing function in a system requiring rather complex and exacting tollerances. Part of the reason that Doug's world has that high synergy going for it is that people believe its going to work in the first place. In magic believing it will work is often the difference between it working or not. Doug's world has a large group of mages who didn't learn that magic-tech fail to mesh.
Once you have a single example of magic and tech mixing usefully, tech-magic start mixing more easily. Basically the idea gets in people's heads that the mixing will work. At Hogwarts they specifically tell the kids at an early age that magic-tech can't mesh. When reading HP listen to what the teachers are actually telling the kids in the classes.
They teach about witch burnings by calling them silly. In fact with a now simple charm flames tickle instead of burning. Somehow one witch decided getting burned at the stake over 20 times. Logically this is very random and she may have paid people to do it for the historical record, if it happened at all. In the 'Wheel of Time' books only 3 of 5 types of strings of magic got used the other two were totally off limits and always lethal... until someone who didn't learn that rule managed cure the dreaded 'stilling' by including earth strings. At that point it was the best idea EVER to include the previously forbidden strings. Many people don't test rules like these they just except them. Having others who learned these rules constantly reinforce them without proof helps keep such rules around. Which is part of what Hermione does with all her quoting of books like 'Hogwarts a History'.
First, the witch managed to get through 20 confession sessions without losing her wand... without being tortured... without someone seeing her not burning and being happy in the flames and getting speared with a pitch fork. This is without the weeks starving in a sweat box with a dozen other increasingly insane people like at Salem. At Salem many of them were hanged and not burned anyway.
If you think about it the ministry does have an entire preexisting department dealing with successfully enchanted muggle artifacts... if it wasn't possible to enchant the 'muggle artifacts' successfully why have an entire department to fight off such things? Granted officially its because the enchanted artifacts can be discovered by muggles and the freaks that like making muggle things attack people. So while these they concentrate on the hurtful stuff, beneficial stuff is made... like flying cars.
So we literally have cannon evidence with Mr. Weasly's job, pointing to the idea that enchanting electronics can work. So the questions are 'Why do they go crazy at Hogwarts?' and 'Is it on purpose?'
The reason behind all the cool shiny enchanted stuff at Hogwarts comes to mind. Why make kids learn overly complex ways of going anywhere in the building? Why make coming up with amusing hexes (which those pathetic muggles can't do anything about) a major pass time? Why spend all that time telling the kids how useless 97 or so percent to the worlds population is? Why make it so every race beyond the wizarding humans is considered a lesser being?
Answer indoctrination. They want kids to get involved in the magical world and stay there. One of the fastest ways to non-violently kill a society is to have the young leave it in droves. The MoM is often inept... imagine how long it would last if it was discovered that in America the wizarding community freely allowed access to the internet... a muggle invention full of more porn than has ever existed in history. In ever increasing amounts.
Wizards are kind of quirky at best... the purebloods would have how many fetishes? And if they couldn't find theirs... they could have a sight made. Granted it won't occur until after Harry is older than Hogwarts age, as the series takes place starting in the early 90s and the internet will kick in right after MoM is gutted and Voldie kicks it. Society is a wreck, the old guard is gone, time to experience new freedoms and reaffirm life.
Anyway, I doubt shielding tech is going to be a thought in the minds of the majority of wizards. I do wonder if using a portkey within the confines of a nest of high voltage lines would have similar effects to tossing a portable hole into a bag of holding.
Lightning was often the mark of the highest powers in western mythology, fire of effective vs. mortals but lower class monsters. Even the terrible horror known as Typhon was dropped when hit with enough lightning... lightning does do bad things to muscle control after all.
I consider myself welcomed... you can consider me long winded.

[hmelton]

/QUOTE/
See, that's bloody clever, hmelton. I was only trying to figure out a rational scientifically-justifiable reason for the anti-electronics magical effect, especially since in the HP work I'm considering I'm pushing that magic is the missing piece to a Grand Unified Theory.
/END QUOTE/
I've played with a fanfic idea that at it's core assumes magic alters the quantum threshold over an area and draws it's energy from the process of somehow observing and changing the characteristics of electromagnetic waves from it's balanced wavelike characteristic to a strongly particle characteristic.
The Blue glow often associated with magic is actually akin to cherinkove radiation and gives a hint at the strongly particle and probabilistic nature of reality around magic.
The specialized portions of a mage's brain have the effect of changing the quantum threshold and the EM wave nature associated with magnetic fields starts to break down into a purely particle based system where magnetic fields manefest as exotic particles instead of field effects.
Magic works for "mages" because thier brain has a specialized area able to draw energy or manipulate energy by "observeing" these exotic particles from ambient EM waves and collasping them into a change in reality.
Hence the ability to "call" something into existance.
Strong magnetic fields have a tendency to raise the quantum threshold having a tendency to keep intact thier EM wave nature and at close range interfer with the portion of the "mages" brain that "observes" and manipulates the wave nature of EM waves.
In my fanfic universe idea Cold Iron isn't what most researchers assume instead it's any magnetic material with a very strong magnetic field that keeps the magician from collapsing the ?balanced? wave nature of reality into a partilistic system which they can control.
Instead of a faraday cage you need a "Ferromagnetic cage" to encloses your equipment.
howard melton
God bless

[Valles]

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I've played with a fanfic idea that at it's core assumes magic alters the quantum threshold over an area and draws it's energy from the process of somehow observing and changing the characteristics of electromagnetic waves from it's balanced wavelike characteristic to a strongly particle characteristic.

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Given how truly wierd quantum shit can be, this is probably the best rationalization that we're going to find for 'magic.'
Of course, by my understanding of the nature of electromagnetics, it'd be equally possible that psionics are people who have suborgans in their brains that let them create energy and exert it on the causal universe by 'observing' the collapse of photons into waves. ^_^ Refer to any of Catherine Asaro's Skolian Saga novels for a better explanation of how this should actually work.
And, no, I don't think that these two theories neccessarily rule each other out - quite the opposite, actually. Hmm. *notes down for TK40 and Shining Spiral*
Ja, -n
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[hmelton]

/QUOTE/
Of course, by my understanding of the nature of electromagnetics, it'd be equally possible that psionics are people who have suborgans in their brains that let them create energy and exert it on the causal universe by 'observing' the collapse of photons into waves. ^_^ Refer to any of Catherine Asaro's Skolian Saga novels for a better explanation of how this should actually work.
/END QUOTE/
Catherine Asaro? Skolian?
never heard of this Saga or her guess I'm going to be doing some searching and hitting book stores in the next week or so.
howard melton
God bless

[Valles]

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never heard of this Saga or her guess I'm going to be doing some searching and hitting book stores in the next week or so.

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She turns them out fairly regularly, but the internal chronological order of the ones on my shelf runs:
Skyfall
The Last Hawk
Primary Inversion
The Radiant Seas
The Quantum Rose
Spherical Harmonic
The Moon's Shadow
Catch the Lightning
However, all of them, except for Skyfall, tend to overlap considerably in timeframe - TRS is a direct sequel to PI, and SH picks up roughly where TRS leaves off... But SH overlaps almost completely with TMS, TQR starts about halfway through TRS and finishes... I'm honestly not sure, but I think a bit after SH... while TLH jumps into deep left field before any of the others even start and only connects back into the main line around the end of SH/TMS (see why I'm confused? Lot of different books hitting a lot of different places at that point) and CtL starts in a completely different universe and seems to end by resolving... well, one of the primary driving elements of the arc plot.
For tone, well, you could very easily think of it as space opera written by and for romance novel fans - except that, the lady in question is, in her day job, apparently a Known Name in the real world's research physics establishment. So, if you're someone who thinks that The Authority is all that, or actually enjoys Gibson, you might not care overly for her stuff - OTOH, if, out of Sailor Moon, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and Planetes, you like at least one without actively despising any of the others, I'd definitely reccomend looking into it.
FWIW, BTW, the company selling the Japanese translations of her books compared them to an American answer to Crest of the Stars, which I'd say wasn't all that out of line.
Referenceable at her Wikipedia article and homepage. (the Japanese edition subpage is here.)
Ja, -n
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Wolff]

Necratoid wrote:

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Answer indoctrination. They want kids to get involved in the magical world and stay there.

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That was exactly my thought. You have a dying aristocracy, most of whom will do anything necessary to retain the power and privilege they've maintained, and been told by the preceeding generation is *their just due*, for hundreds of years. They're deathly afraid of change. After all, it's most likely that, as set in their 'old ways' most of these families are, that any quick or major changes to happen to the Wizarding world will leave them so far in the dust that the old pureblood families will never catch up. And even if they could catch up, most changes in the Wizarding world will be bastardizations or complete assimilation of things the muggles have had for fifty or more years. The purebloods, as hidebound and bigoted as so many of them are, won't even be able to keep up on an intellectual level. Most of the great families probably know this, if not consciously, then on a subconscious level.
That said, who's sure that technology *doesn't* work at Hogwarts? Never in the books do we see someone try, to the best of my knowledge (and given that I only read half of HBP before pitching that pizzacarp at the wall in frustration....) If it turns out that tech doesn't actually work, I'd expect a localized EM field like discussed above, and that shielded or hardened electronics would quickly get around that problem. In fact, if I ever get around to writing the HP/Heavy Gear fic that's kicking around in my head, these are exactly the ideas I'm gonna use. After all, if magic and tech are completely incompatible, then it sorta rules out giving Harry a .50DE and a sniper rail gun, now doesn't it? And where's the fun it that? Harry + heavy weapons = Snape all over. And over here, and over there, and gee, I always wanted the kitchen in Grimauld Place repainted in crimson.
-W, as you can tell, this one's been kicking around for a while."Ah, great. More androids." "We're not androids, we're the Knight Sabers!" "Huh. Frederick's of Hollywood has a line of power armor out. Who knew?"Falling out of aeroplanes and hiding out in holes

Waiting for the sunset to come, people going home

Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head

Now everybody dancing the dance of the dead

[Bob Schroeck]

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After all, if magic and tech are completely incompatible, then it sorta rules out giving Harry a .50DE and a sniper rail gun, now doesn't it? And where's the fun it that?

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But they aren't completely incompatible, as was pointed out with the very existence of Arthur Weasley's job. And as I recall, the Wizarding World has something radio-like that they call "wireless"; to me this sounds a lot more like a modified version of muggle radio than a purely magical alternative -- so there may even be some canon support for electronics working with magic.

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

[Star Ranger4]

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That said, who's sure that technology *doesn't* work at Hogwarts? Never in the books do we see someone try, to the best of my knowledge (and given that I only read half of HBP before pitching that pizzacarp at the wall in frustration....) If it turns out that tech doesn't actually work, I'd expect a localized EM field like discussed above, and that shielded or hardened electronics would quickly get around that problem.

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J.K. Rowling herself declared it, several times. For example, during Goblet, Harry wondered if she wasnt perhaps bugging students before it was realzied that she was, in fact, a bug animagus (Unregistered)
There have been other instances where she's refered to things like Harry's watch stopping as they get close to Hogwarts but working normally again after leaving.
Hermione, as her secondary role as THE voice of exposition, points out that muggle technology just doesnt work around Hogwarts. I think I shall take the position that it is, in fact, part of the specific enchantments around Hogwarts that causes said effect, rather than it being that magic, per sey, causes interfereance with electronic items.
And, Just to TOTALLY muddle the waters on you all...
I'd submit that if, in fact, it IS a case of magic and most ELECTRONIC (but not neccecarily MECHANICAL) devices not working well together, it could be that its because the little quantum particles ARE interfereing with each other making the whole lot confused as to if they should be behaving like electrons or Manatrons; this would make techomancy not neccecairly Impossible, but difficult enough that most people would not find it worth the effort to work around"I was an Otaku before those kids came along and changed the meaning of the word."
-- HM "Howling Mad" Wilson to more than one team-mate.
Hear that thunder rolling till it seems to split the sky?
That's every ship in Grayson's Navy taking up the cry-
NO QUARTER!!!
-- "No Quarter", by Echo's Children

[Foxboy]

another posit:
Child prodigy muggle "magician" (think Blackstone, Hoduni, Siegrfried and Roy, et al) somehow gets into Hogwarts as a student...
How many of his tricks will still work? It would also make for an interesting OC story, since the OC would be vastly underpowered.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Wolff]

Star Ranger4 wrote:

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Hermione, as her secondary role as THE voice of exposition, points out that muggle technology just doesnt work around Hogwarts. I think I shall take the position that it is, in fact, part of the specific enchantments around Hogwarts that causes said effect, rather than it being that magic, per sey, causes interfereance with electronic items.

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See again my idea about pureblood-controlled indoctrination proceedures. After all, if the stupid mudbloods can't use their technology against us, and we refuse to give them a class in Wizarding protocol and etiquette, then we automatically make them second-class citizens.
-W
apologies for spelling errors... I watched "Boyz in the Hood" and drank a bottle of wine tonight. Plus, both Opera and Firefox puke when you hit the "spell check" button on EZboards."Ah, great. More androids." "We're not androids, we're the Knight Sabers!" "Huh. Frederick's of Hollywood has a line of power armor out. Who knew?"Falling out of aeroplanes and hiding out in holes

Waiting for the sunset to come, people going home

Jump out from behind them and shoot them in the head

Now everybody dancing the dance of the dead