The Wall is too damn big....

[Rosemary]

As mentioned previously I have no problem with the scale of the Wall.

Re-reading this thread, I can, in someways agree with Duff_Omathum. This is obviously something that just seemed too unrealistic, even in Fantasy, for Duff.

I have the same trouble when it comes to reading Historical Novels. I often wonder if other readers have noticed the glaringly obvious mistakes, made with the historical facts. If the errors are that bad I find it very difficult to continue reading, losing all interest in the book!

 

[Duff_Omathum]

Hey, it's GRRM's world, he can do what he wants. Perhaps a foot is less than twelve inches in his world. And when it comes down to it, who cares? This is one really long tall tale, after all. I'm not going to read about warg children and dragons and red-eyed sorceresses, and then throw down the book in disgust because there's this UNBELIEVABLY tall wall.

Wow, I have a problem with the scale and detail of element in an entire series and people assume I've thrown the book down in disgust.

Who cares? Well I do. Perhaps you may not agree with my opinion, I can respect that. Just bear in mind no-one likes to have their thoughts belittled either.

I like to think of critcism as a healthy thing, not something that should be discouraged.

 

[AryaUnderfoot]

Wow, I have a problem with the scale and detail of element in an entire series and people assume I've thrown the book down in disgust.

Who cares? Well I do. Perhaps you may not agree with my opinion, I can respect that. Just bear in mind no-one likes to have their thoughts belittled either.

I like to think of critcism as a healthy thing, not something that should be discouraged.

Duff, I wasn't trying to belittle your thoughts. My apologies. It was certainly not my intent to make you feel disrespected. I was just being a cynical b---- and I'm sorry.

Back to the topic at hand, I'm re-reading AGoT for the zillionth time, and I came across a little passage in one of Jon's POV chapters:

"The order of builder provided the masons and carpenters to repair keeps and towers, the miners to dig tunnels and crush stone for roads and footpaths, the woodsmen to clear away growth wherever the forest pressed too close to the Wall. Once, it was said, they had quarried immense blocks of ice from frozen lakes deep in the haunted forest, dragging them south on sledges so the Wall might be raised ever higher." (p. 446)

So it seems that it was their habit, until a couple of centuries ago, to continue building the Wall higher over time. With their greater manpower back then, and with the efforts continuing over a span of 9000 years, I can see how it got to be that tall.

 

[Duff_Omathum]

Apology accepted.

I think the scale could be rationalized (if not the arrows) but then it begs the question, what would bring a wall of millions of tons of solid ice down? Dragonfire?

Then given that it DOES come down...Can u imagine the earth tremors, tsunamis and flooding? My guess is that it would rival The Doom of Valarya in scale as World Event.

 

[Ender]

We come back to an early point of mines lost on anohter thread...
Seems everyone thinks the Wall will collapse but I think the Wall will resist everything.

Even Tyrion (again)

 

[Culhwch]

I think the scale could be rationalized (if not the arrows) but then it begs the question, what would bring a wall of millions of tons of solid ice down? Dragonfire?

Then given that it DOES come down...Can u imagine the earth tremors, tsunamis and flooding? My guess is that it would rival The Doom of Valarya in scale as World Event.

The former: why, the Horn of Winter, of course. If it exists.

The latter: okay, earth tremors I get, but how do you figure the flooding and tsunamis? Maybe if the ice melted (as you say, perhaps by dragonfire) there'd be localised flooding, but it's damn cold up there, so more likely there would only be mounds upon mounds of crushed ice, just waiting for the world's biggest scotch on the rocks.

Ender, I don't think the Wall is coming down anytime soon, either.

 

[Dolorous Edd]

I think the wall HAS to come down tbh. for two reasons mainly.

1) so much has been made of:


a) the night's watch not being what it once was

and

b) the repeated warning's by the old bear/aemon/qhorin etc. that the realm is divided when it needs to be strong to face the threat of the others.

That i can't see the night's watch holding them back alone, or the realm being healed in time for the united armies of westeros to march to their aid.


2) It'll make for a MUCH better story if the wall falls, then the north etc. with the night's watch and stannis etc. being forced southwards, with winter slowly closing it's grip on the southlands.

If the wall stands then all the fighting will be confined to the wall and the land beyond it, where noone now lives anyway, so the people of Westeros won't be under any threat whatsoever. So much for the hideously scary others of nan's stories coming to murder the warm-blooded living in their beds.

I think the Wall will hold for months, maybe even years. But it WILL fall.

 

[AryaUnderfoot]

I don't think that the Wall will fall.

Dragonfire, while certainly hot, is rumored to be one of the elemental things that will kill the Others. The Wall was constructed with many magic spells to help keep the Others out. I'm going to go ahead and assume here that when the Wall was first created, it was used in tandem with Dragonfire. It wouldn't make sense to build a structure that would be easily give way to its own main weapon of defense. I'm betting some of the spells contained in the Wall are meant to protect it from Dragonfire.

That being said, I do think that the Wall will be breached. Perhaps a hole will be made in it, or parts of it will crumble. I do not think the whole thing will come crashing down, though. I just think it wouldn't make sense for the Others to concentrate their efforts on ruining the entire structure when all they really need is passage through to the land below.

 

[Duff_Omathum]

I listed Tsunamis because apparently they are usually caused by huge amounts of land sliding into the sea, or even under the sea. So I suppose I was picturing a big hunk of IceWall sliding into the sea.

It DOES make more sense for only a small part of the wall to fall, but breaching a wall of ice at 50-100 feet thick would take something pretty incredible.

What if the horn wasn't actually a weapon but really for calling something. Something big enough to punch through? It all comes back to scale...

I mean, if it's 800 feet tall, something must have REALLY scared Bran the Builder and everyone enough to get working on it for thousands of years, because Others, while scary, are still human sized and can be killed easily if you have dragonglass.

 

[AryaUnderfoot]

I mean, if it's 800 feet tall, something must have REALLY scared Bran the Builder and everyone enough to get working on it for thousands of years, because Others, while scary, are still human sized and can be killed easily if you have dragonglass.

We still don't know just how many Others there are. It could simply be that Bran the Builder was terrified of their sheer numbers, coupled with their ability to raise the dead.

 

[Dolorous Edd]

What if the horn wasn't actually a weapon but really for calling something. Something big enough to punch through? It all comes back to scale...

I mean, if it's 800 feet tall, something must have REALLY scared Bran the Builder and everyone enough to get working on it for thousands of years, because Others, while scary, are still human sized and can be killed easily if you have dragonglass.

We know the others can turn men into wights, we know they can turn horses into wights....... Whose to say in the distant past they didn't kill themsleves a couple of dragons? suddenly the name "A Dance of Dragons" becomes far more ominous

 

[Boaz]

Now that's something I'd not thought of! Wow! Undead Dragons battling Dany's Dragons. That is more ominous, DE. You're full of cheer, as usual.

 

[AryaUnderfoot]

We know the others can turn men into wights, we know they can turn horses into wights....... Whose to say in the distant past they didn't kill themsleves a couple of dragons? suddenly the name "A Dance of Dragons" becomes far more ominous

That's a scary thought. Dragons don't exactly give you the warm fuzzies anyway, but undead dragons... hmmmm. I wonder if they would breathe fire or if they'd breath some kind of wight-making ice or something like that.

 

[cyborg_cinema]

How would you build it?

...with UFO assistance, of course.

 

[Dolorous Edd]

That's a scary thought. Dragons don't exactly give you the warm fuzzies anyway, but undead dragons... hmmmm. I wonder if they would breathe fire or if they'd breath some kind of wight-making ice or something like that.

Ice of course.

/me starts singing "A song of Ice and Fire...."

 

[Rosemary]

If they are fire breathing dragons, they could melt The Wall !

 

[Dolorous Edd]

Fire is anathema to the wights, and the other's are vulnerable to dragonglass (frozen fire), valyrian steel (dragon steel) etc. Don't think a wight dragon would breathe fire - it'd probably set itself alight!

 

[cyborg_cinema]

...Katrina would find a weakness in that wall.

 

[Rahl Windsong]

I was under the impression that ice formed a big part of the wall's construction...

Thats what I thought too, the wall was made and ice formed on it making it much larger then it was when built.

The part I don't get is how the Wildlings survive in that frozen wasteland, not to mention that the only neighbors they have are the Others on one side and the Night Watch on the other side both who would show no hospitality to the Wildlings. Anyway it makes for a great story.

On a side note I play the Massive Multiplayer Online Game known as World of Warcraft. In that game I have found so many references to the ASoIaF story I am wondering if they (Blizzard Entertainment) contacted George RR Martin for permission to use this material. I found Tyrion in the Alliance city of Stormwind he is a Gnome model but looks a bit odd for even a Gnome in that game. He also has some classic lines from the books if you speak to him. His name is spelled slightly different but the character, for anyone who has read ASoIaF, is there in plain sight.

There are also more references to this story in that game in one area I think known as Darkshire there is the Night Watch all dressed in black patroling the roads. Are they allowed to use these things? This game has MANY references to movies, books, ect almost everywhere you go and ASoIaF is only one of them. On an island I found Duncan Mcleod the Islander complete with the curved japanese sword, of course the name is spelled slightly different from the TV show and the movie.

I don't get how they can just use this material though...

Rahl

 

[Faceless Woman]

R: They shouldn't complain, its free publicity.
Isn't there already a breach in the Wall? The tunnels? I think there was a reason for mentioning it. I know no-one has found a way through, but they could.
As for Dragon Others, wow. Creepy thought. However, logically they would have joined the fight by now... unless they're trapped or something, maybe under the Wall? what if they are freed only when the Wall is breached? Maybe the Horn of Winter wakes them or something. Who has it now? I forget... Stannis? Jon? V-something, the wildling woman?