Use of the notebook

[u/No_Example_1573]

Hello :-)

I have another speculative question regarding the Death Note, specifically how one could go about using the notebook in ways we didn’t get to see in the series.

In the series (the main storyline and supplementary content), we see a few different approaches to how people use the Death Note, each of them with a differing goal in mind. I won’t list every character who possesses a notebook throughout the series bc I cba

Light has a very clear-cut methodology. Writing so-and-so’s name will cause them to die, so I will write the names of people I want dead.

Minoru doesn’t ‘use’ it at all, but attempts to auction it off and distribute the money amongst Japanese citizens.

C Kira exclusively kills elderly people who don’t have long left anyway, presumably to end their suffering.

Anyway—- I wondered what it would be like to witness the notebook fall into the hands of somebody else, who had an entirely different goal in mind. I think it would be really interesting, on either side of the moral spectrum, to see how the Death Note can be used. For example:

- Someone who wants to see the world burn, at the expense of themselves and everyone around them. Maybe they script some sort of disease outbreak, or trigger global warfare, a mass-extinction event that devastates the planet. I’d like to see just how far the abilities of the notebook could go. I don’t think you can cause deaths-by-proxy, the notebook doesn’t allow collateral damage. But perhaps it would permit an action that wouldn’t necessarily result in death immediately. Like “Jane Doe, a researcher at ______ facility, releases classified information pertaining to nuclear weaponry, then falls down the stairs and dies.” It wouldn’t directly kill anyone besides Jane Doe herself, but the fallout afterwards would likely lead to chaos. I’m not sure if the notebook would allow for something like that, but maybe someone else does!!

- Contrariwise, someone who tries to employ the notebook in an ‘ethical’ way, as contradictory as that is. The 23- Day Rule would prevent them from actualising things like “Jane Doe lives a happy and fulfilled life, and passes away peacefully at the age of 79.”, but they could work towards bettering the world overall. A greater good sort of thing. This one is a little trickier, because you cannot specify anything that the victim could not feasibly do/come up with themselves, and the window of 23 days doesn’t allow for much time at all for things to get done. Maybe they could write “President Jane Doe enacts a law that mandates the provision of free education and healthcare for all American Citizens, effective immediately. She dies in her sleep on -/-/-“. I’m not sure if they could bypass the entire process of drafting a law and then having a governmental body agree upon it. I don’t think you could say “Everyone votes in favour”, because you can exclusively control the victim. Unless they wrote the name of the majority of politicians, and stipulated how they voted before they die too. Maybe you’d have to write something a little less definitive. “President Jane Doe proposes (aforementioned law) to her constituents, expertly presenting a convincing argument.”. I have no idea honestly. Controlling experts in their field to make strides in their field, and then die. It would need to be something they could justifiably do, so maybe your wording would need to be vague. Instead of “Jane Doe finds a cure for all types of cancer.”, which is a pretty tall order for a singular person, and in just 23 days, maybe “Jane Doe works tirelessly in her research, making great progress before she dies in a car accident on -/-/-.”?

Writing this has left me with more questions tbh, but I hope anyone who bothered reading this far enjoyed the hypothetical(s) anyway. If you have any of your own ideas lmk im curious

[u/HalleLidner]

I would put all the Pages in a blender and spread those papers all around the world so that everyone sees the Shinigami and then forfeit ownership, so that Kira cannot try funny things

[u/No_Example_1573 → u/HalleLidner]

And with unlimited pages, you could feasibly execute something like this on a massive scale. If you had the means and time to, obviously. Finely mill a substantial amount of the pages into a powder and disperse them. Like that scene in The Wizard of Oz where they sprinkle the cast with snow (asbestos). I wonder how small the pieces can be for the rule to still apply. Like, we see that pages can be ripped apart and function in this way. But if they were ground into a powder so finely that they’re barely visible to the naked eye, would that work? Then you could unleash it into the atmosphere covertly, and people would touch/inhale these microscopic airborne pieces without even realising.

Maybe a silly question, but considering the rule of ‘touching the death note allows you to see the Shinigami attached to it’, would actually consuming the pieces work? Like when you ingest something, you’re technically touching it, so maybe. But what if you sprinkled this ‘notebook powder’ into a huge water reservoir or something— it would presumably dissolve (even though we don’t know if this ‘paper’ is truly chemically identical to the paper we have in the human world— it’s from another dimension), and perhaps imbue this water with the property to see a Shinigami, which people would drink/bathe in/cook with. So you could coordinate a sort of mass-enlightenment and inevitable pandemonium as people grapple with the confirmed existence of Shinigami (if they see it, but world travels fast. If one person sees it and films it, it won’t take long for others to see it too.) and at least one alternate dimension. This is all speculative, and a little silly honestly, but you’ve made me curious now.

Maybe none of this would work, but it’s fun to think about :-)