The one thing in battleground the bugged me: [BG Spoilers]

[Shift8]

I dont see how a coverup is even beneficial. From either the mortal authorities or from the supernatural. If the truth is going to get out eventually, and relatively quickly, then the best way to handle the situation from both sides is to get on top of the situation by telling the truth, or at least most of the truth. Covering things up just breeds bad relations when everyone see's the lie that even the super natural council said at the end is eventually going to get out.

I was hoping Harry would do this but he didnt quite go this far when he was telling winter what they should do in order to avoid mortals starting witch hunts and other things in the aftermath.

What the super natural forces that met in the council at the end should be doing is announcing themselves to the world. Lots of people in Chicago saw them helping in the fight. Instead of hiding or trying to cover it up, they should be taking this opportunity to come out of the woodwork on terms that are favorable to them. Right now all the people who saw them saw them fighting on their side against the Fomor.

[Arjan]

It is about gaining time. How useful that is depends on how that time is used.

[Griffyn612]

Except there are several problems with this. For one, the batteries in a walkie talkie are different from those in other devices. We dont know how different batteries are affected. Additionally, the motorcycle requires electronics to start. A battery and electrical wiring etc. There are also lots of devices that can record video without a battery. My laptop can be plugged in without the battery inserted. And on top of that, murphys radio proves that electronic devices were not totally wiped out. Her radio worked, and long enough between battery swaps to be tactically useful.

There is also the glaring issue of the attack choppers. Those things are full of electronics required for function, both in the weapons and for flying. They are basically flying computers. Those worked but I am supposed to believe that no one got footage of the attack? Rubbish.

The Formor literally discussed the arrival of the "mechanical weapons" of the NG arriving. They discussed it as a matter of concern, so clearly they were also not confident that if they were still fighting by the time the NG arrived that the magical energy present would somehow save them.

It's not just batteries. Guns jam. Motors break. It's just that electronic equipment seems to be more susceptible.  So even non-battery operated equipment is going to break. 

As for the choppers, they came in from outside the affected area.  That's why it took so long.  Anything close to Chicago was fried.  When on the boat, I think he commented that the waterfront was dark, and only the distant light from Aurora (42 miles west of chicago, an hour commute) were visible on the cloud cover.

(Admittedly it shouldn't have taken all night for the Guard to get there, but that's another argument)

The best bet is that those in the know in the government guessed what was happening, and had the Guard hold off until morning because anything sooner might be just wasting assets. 

The Librarians will secure and recordings from the Guard, and anything that goes public will disappear in short order.

The thing is, none of us are arguing that things won't be changed and the local public won't know. We're arguing that there won't be overwhelming evidence of what happened. Conspiracy theorists will spread the word, but the rest of the country and the world will fall in line with the official story.

[Shift8]

It's not just batteries. Guns jam. Motors break. It's just that electronic equipment seems to be more susceptible.  So even non-battery operated equipment is going to break. 

As for the choppers, they came in from outside the affected area.  That's why it took so long.  Anything close to Chicago was fried.  When on the boat, I think he commented that the waterfront was dark, and only the distant light from Aurora (42 miles west of chicago, an hour commute) were visible on the cloud cover.

(Admittedly it shouldn't have taken all night for the Guard to get there, but that's another argument)

The best bet is that those in the know in the government guessed what was happening, and had the Guard hold off until morning because anything sooner might be just wasting assets. 

The Librarians will secure and recordings from the Guard, and anything that goes public will disappear in short order.

The thing is, none of us are arguing that things won't be changed and the local public won't know. We're arguing that there won't be overwhelming evidence of what happened. Conspiracy theorists will spread the word, but the rest of the country and the world will fall in line with the official story.

-Right except they don't. Its been established over the course of the series that most things dont actually break. Murphy even has a conversation with Dresden about this. It never seems to cause any problems for her or any of the bad guys with various guns and other gear. Or really for anyone's phones 90% of the time.

-The choppers came from outside yes. But they had no issues flying over the battle and doing what they do. There was still tons of magical energy in that area at the time. And there are plenty of other issues there was as well. How did the choppers know who to engage and where? Specifically, how did they know who the bad guys were? If they knew who the enemies were by sight, this would require and extensive briefing, which would itself require extensive communications via electronic devices in order to show pictures of the enemy to the pilots. If they were being ground controlled either by someone on the ground or by drone that had been observing for a longer period of time in order to know who was who, then they had communications near the battlefield.

-The librarians might secure those tapes. But this is the United States not China. There is no infrastructure in place to control the internet like that. Even in China this would be next to impossible.

-Lastly the Guard took a long time to get there because it takes a long time to mobilize the Army, especially the guard. The battle started at night. It would have taken some time before it was established the threat justified using the Army. The closest base is 3 hours away (discounting NTC which is Navy basic training). Troops had to be called in. Since its the middle of the night, many would have gotten the phone call late or not at all. Then those troops have to be organized. All sorts of things have to be done. It would have taken hours at the least. I cant even begin to describe in just this paragraph all the things that have to go down to make troop movements like this happen, and thats before we starting mapping out what equipment is at what bases in Illinois and whether we want to include active duty troops etc. When I was in Afghanistan in 2011, it took at least over an hour for an Apache helicopter to arrive at my base to deal with some insurgents. And that was with the base being only 40min drive by car south of where I was at and everyone constantly being on the alert. It takes time for things to happen.

[TrueMonk]

As I read it the blast at the end of peace talks was the intentionally hex everything blast. So the people in the know who keeps stuff like a motorcycle and walkie talkies protected within magical circles still have functioning electronics, everyone else don't. Then when they take those electronics out of the circles they start breaking down fast because of all the magical energy in the air, but that is very far from the super hex in the beginning.

That attack helicopters arrive after Titania's water cleansing of the city and after dawn, so that is entirely different.

It does not seem odd to me that the army can send choppers to shoot stuff and make the pilots not talk aboit it afterwards and disappear the footage.

If it happened today and we knew about the losses, and then someone said that the magical frog people did it. I honestly think it would take quite some time before (of ever) the majority of people would take that seriously over chemical weapons of some sort and other advanced weaponry. But I think you are right about that someone needs to be blamed for it to be semi-believeable. Some middle eastern country maybe?

[Cymbaline]

Right but we know that stuff was still working. Assuming every single device was taken out, especially given the large numbers, doesnt fly. Murphys motorcycle was able to start, for one. I'd have to reread it but my intuition tells me there were many things working, implied or otherwise, that were taken for granted before the council tried to claim this as a reason it will be easy to hide this event.

Murphy was able to start her Harley because she kept it behind wards.

[Mira]

Murphy was able to start her Harley because she kept it behind wards.

Was it behind wards when everything went down?  Did the spell that shorted out everything just go away?  Since she had no magical power of her own, how did she keep the bike warded?  Why didn't she offer it to Harry when he had to "borrow" a bicycle to get to the castle?  How is it with knee, shoulder, and elbow still weak and injured could she right a motorcycle in the first place?

[The_Sibelis]

Sorry but this is just absurd.

yes it is absurd, I find the holocaust deniers absurd too, but they do exist... And nobody even tried to cover that up, we promote it as an important part of history. Military assets, both human and technology are routinely kept silent to the public. The masses no nothing of what happened but what they are exposed to. not saying it will work forever, but by and large for the purposes of the story it is going to have effect. And it's not like it's just the government trying to cover it up, all the supernatural apparently plan to do so as well.

[Shift8]

As I read it the blast at the end of peace talks was the intentionally hex everything blast. So the people in the know who keeps stuff like a motorcycle and walkie talkies protected within magical circles still have functioning electronics, everyone else don't. Then when they take those electronics out of the circles they start breaking down fast because of all the magical energy in the air, but that is very far from the super hex in the beginning.

That attack helicopters arrive after Titania's water cleansing of the city and after dawn, so that is entirely different.

It does not seem odd to me that the army can send choppers to shoot stuff and make the pilots not talk aboit it afterwards and disappear the footage.

If it happened today and we knew about the losses, and then someone said that the magical frog people did it. I honestly think it would take quite some time before (of ever) the majority of people would take that seriously over chemical weapons of some sort and other advanced weaponry. But I think you are right about that someone needs to be blamed for it to be semi-believeable. Some middle eastern country maybe?

-The Fomor didnt seem to think that it would have mattered if Titania did her thing or not. Nor do any of the other people in the books seem to think this would matter. The arrival of the cavalry, literally the cavalry, is foreshadowed the entire time. It is never once implied that mortal forces would have any difficulty whatsoever handling the Formor. Both sides were racing agaisnt time. For the defenders of the city, it was to last long enough for them to arrive. The Fomor  discussion we overhear makes it quite clear that they are very concerned with still being in the city by the time the Army arrives. If they thought they could be dealt with simply by flooding the area with magic, they were apparently clueless to this.

-I went over blaming this on terrorists or some middle eastern country. Not going to work. Not even remotely possible or believable.

[Telynn]

Was it behind wards when everything went down?  Did the spell that shorted out everything just go away?  Since she had no magical power of her own, how did she keep the bike warded?  Why didn't she offer it to Harry when he had to "borrow" a bicycle to get to the castle?  How is it with knee, shoulder, and elbow still weak and injured could she right a motorcycle in the first place?

I eyed the motorcycle. Then her. “How?”

“Like I don’t keep this old baby behind wards,” she said. “The Ordo Lebes did it for me years ago. And bikes are the only things that can get through the streets.”

As for your other questions, no clue.  Except I felt Murphy being to do just about anything after ripping her casts off was way unbelievable anyway so riding a motorcycle wasn't the biggest problem there.

[morriswalters]

We think about this more than Jim does.  The damage should boggle your mind.

Anything on final or taking off at a Chicago Airport would have fallen out of the sky.  Everybody with a pacemaker or defibrillator would have seen  them fail.  Anybody in a ICU would have died. There are three nuclear reactors near Chicago, including, wait for it, the Dresden Generating Station. Depending on the range of the effect it would have taken them out. The damage in Japan was caused by the loss of power.

Any railroad locomotives would be dead since they are diesel electric.  Every transformer in the city would have died and it might take years to replace them. All appliances, all blood storage.  Any insulin requiring refrigeration. And almost all streetlights. Every car, motorcycle and ambulance.  Every bank and financial institution. And every water pump in Chicago.  Plus thing's I'm forgetting.

When you hex technology this is what to expect. And Jim always says it destroys, not that it stops working until the hex is removed.

[TheCuriousFan]

We think about this more than Jim does.  The damage should boggle your mind.

Anything on final or taking off at a Chicago Airport would have fallen out of the sky.  Everybody with a pacemaker or defibrillator would have seen  them fail.  Anybody in a ICU would have died. There are three nuclear reactors near Chicago, including, wait for it, the Dresden Generating Station. Depending on the range of the effect it would have taken them out. The damage in Japan was caused by the loss of power.

Any railroad locomotives would be dead since they are diesel electric.  Every transformer in the city would have died and it might take years to replace them. All appliances, all blood storage.  Any insulin requiring refrigeration. And almost all streetlights. Every car, motorcycle and ambulance.  Every bank and financial institution. And every water pump in Chicago.  Plus thing's I'm forgetting.

When you hex technology this is what to expect. And Jim always says it destroys, not that it stops working until the hex is removed.

On that note Dead Beat should have been an absolute slaughterfest too since Cowl set up a sustained version of Ethniu's hex (on top of everything else).

[Shift8]

This is the entire problem with this particular plot device in the Dresden files. The bulk of examples of it and characters comments about it mostly tend to suggest that it is annoying but not truly debilitating problem to technology. In other words, over the course of the series things work more often than they don't, even in the direct presence of magic. To boot, this is directly commented on by some characters in the series both explicitly and implicitly.

Then you get cases like Murphy's motorcycle where Dresden's reaction is almost like a retcon, except that it only seems to apply where Jim wants it to. It would be one thing if Harry was concerned the bike might fail. Its another thing entirely for him to be flabbergasted that it works and for Murphy to have gone to the trouble of putting up wards.

Morris Walters made some good points about the damage that would have been done if we assume that the ability to cancel electronics is as devastating as some parts of the book imply or some here think are certainly the case. The point about dead beat is also good. If magic was really such a consistent detriment to technology than the entire series would have played out differently. The super-natural would not be in hiding from mortals, it would be the other way around.


Id also like the point out that in the first few books Harry talks alot about how he can't go in hospitals because of the risk to the delicate machines there. But when Micheal is hurt he spends quite a lot of time in a hospital. He has some concerns, but clearly the risks were low enough that he was ok risking all of the people in the hospital...not to mention Micheal.

[Yuillegan]

Indeed, the amount of times things in the Dresden Files should have caused more damage than they should have is a big question mark.

I very much agree that it seems absurd that the end of the book seems to be a return to mostly normal but more people are spooked. Ridiculous. I wrote in another thread how that little dust-up in NY in September 2001 changed everything. Security went to a whole new level. Wars were started that still haven't ended. Economies crashed and were made. And that was a few buildings and 3000 people.

60,000 people and 50 buildings (give or take)? No one would accept that. Not to mention when the National Guard showed up and saw all that damage and no enemies and reports of monsters...they must have seriously started scratching their heads.

So the question really becomes...how does something like the attack on Chicago get covered up? Have such events been done before?

The only plausible explanation for people "accepting" this as a mere terrorist incident (with no build-up or chatter, mind you - that's what the NSA etc spend much of their time listening out for) - would be that the US government in the Dresden Files DOES known about the supernatural and has the capabilities to cover such things up...at least to a point.

Anything less than a full-scale cover up with semi-magical resources will be completely implausible and break immersion. At least, that's my take.

[TheCuriousFan]

And they didn't even use any of the nerve gas bombshells for this big assault when just dropping a few of them in residential areas far from where the accords forces were clustering would be a great way to kick off festivities for the Fomor.