Engineer Breaks Down the Fire Nation Tech

Today's video dives into the sweet engineering at the center of avatar the last airbender's season 2 conflict! Here we’ll review the concepts of engineering that the Fire nation's drill applies, and how Team Avatar takes the big machine down.

Time stamps
Intro 0:00
Overview 1:12
Takedown 3:04
The Wall 7:13
Closing Thoughts 8:26

On Structures is a youtube channel with a structural engineers take on anime/media and the built environment artists made! Let’s look at how they’ve described it, and how we can make sense of it.

CONNECT!

DISCLAIMER
This is not engineering advice. Everything here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes.
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Music from WIT, Zack Golden & Cooking Soul

I don't own many of the visuals presented, if you would like to make a claim, please let me know.

[chaosjoey]

I think Ang might have cut the steak with earth bending? Not sure but the stances look more like power stances

[chaos]

Firebending is powered and fueled internally from Chi.
It could be argued to be the most spiritually related Bending next to Air, which makes sense when you consider Firebending can become impossible to use when you have a life altering philosphical & psychological change.

Also I'm pretty sure Aang used Earthbending rather then Airbending to carve the boulder, since he can do that and there wasn't too much "Air Effects" compared to his usual Airbending.

[hadesogg]

“The rule of cool” in this case was also Sozin’s comet, making Firebending incredibly more powerful, as Iroh says before the blast

[potatoprinz]

That idea about widening the wall actually sounds reasonable

[wfjhDUI]

3:38 That speed for a waterjet is for water that's "thrown" and then has to cut through the metal using only its momentum. Waterbending presumably continuously applies force to the water as it's cutting, so there's no minimum speed it needs to be traveling. It's much more comparable to a large industrial shaper machine, which does move at about the speed shown, rather than a water jet cutting machine.

[storminmormin]

Can you imagine if the drill just drilled in one wall and out the other side of the city, never leaving the inside of the wall?

[alolol]

7:10 sure they could have attacked the mechanical systems but keep in mind that those are most definitely being oversen by the crew woo that the machine doesn't brake itself. Sonce they had guards for non critical parts of the drills operation

[VitaminDatai]

I had no idea military drills were a real thing. Well, boring drills. Well, drills that bore through rock. You know what I mean. (was very happy to see this in my subscription feed! my boy is back!)

[IAmTheAce]

I just thought of this- instead of assaulting the drill directly, the earthbenders could've _counter-mined_ the drill- since it was supporting itself on the surface and not traveling underground, they wouldn't have to dig far; digging directly under and opposite its path would literally break it in half with a trench!

[jackgamer]

Personally, I would have tried to find the main driveshaft of the boring head and tried to disable the drill that way. If it can't drill anymore, it can't get into the city, even if it's technically not destroyed.

And even if they couldn't cut the main shaft, they could have slammed a massive rock against it untill it was damaged enough not to turn properly anymore.

Alternatively, they could have went for the power plant. The drill is seemingly powered by steam engines. In real life, a steam engine can be quite volatile. For example, they could have bent the water out of the engines, causing the boilers to heat up, then let the water flow back in to create a massive pressure spike, potentially resulting in an explosion

[JoeyBananass]

What I remember the source of fire bending comes from:
-Iroh says that fire bending come from the breath, and it is shown many times in animation and story elements (Do you know why they call me the dragon of the west?)
-Zuko had to channel his fire bending through the sun after joining team avatar because he used to channel it through hate
-During the eclipse all fire benders lose their fire bending
-Guru Patek says we have a fire chakra that is in the stomach and chi that flows through our chakras, this is based off of real religion so idk much about it
My belief is that fire benders draw oxygen through the breath, and fuel through hate, and mostly the sun

[DreadeDragon]

FINALLY
I remember a few years back clicking on a video titled ‘Analyzing: The Drill’, and turns out it was a literary analysis on the episode, which is also called ‘The Drill’. I’m glad I found what I was initially looking for!

[crowverra]

I like how I've never studied engineering yet understand these mechanism and ideas easily.

[wotshish]

6:45 at this point he is earth bending. As the avatar, he can use all four elements.

[mayaneko]

7:10 i wouldn't say, that it's solely due to it being a kids show, but rather the avatar group itself being kids in the first place. sure, adults could've come up with the idea of redundancy, but i wouldn't expect that from a group of kids, especially when we consider, that they all grew up far away from anything remotely as complex as such a big machine.

[skeepodoop]

To be fair, it would've been much more boring (pun intended) if team avatar just destroyed a few key pipes and caused a steam explosion inside the drill.
Also, I could be wrong, but fixing a few pipes might be easier than rebuilding an entire drill's structural support systems.

[propnotch]

Yeah you know I always wondered why they didn't lift up the rock in the middle underneath the drill so it couldn't move any more. Or if they just wanna drop stuff, those boulders were TINY. They could have created some pretty enormous pillars on either side and tipped them over, probably would have worked better. But who knows.

Earthbender soldiers seem like they rely way too heavily on the wall, and didn't ever feel the need to think about anything else, and I guess they're not great at in-the-moment innovation either.

[FurryCombatWombat]

Edit: Not technically true, but cool if it were

Regarding firebending. The way I see it is that firebenders are using the fire created in the mitochondria during ATP production (as this is, in fact, a combustion reaction). Hence, Iroh's line: "Power in firebending comes from the breath, not the muscles. The breath becomes energy in the body. The energy extends past your limbs and becomes: fire!"

[grantflippin]

Well, iroh is an extremely powerful fire bender, and sozin's comet multiplies a fire benders power

[randomhatguy]

I love the idea of the defenders just making the wall thicker as the drill goes through until they run out of fuel and are just like “well….. now we’re stuck”