Line #48 Headscratchers/TheLegendOfKorraTechnologyAndMedicine


1	!Headscratchers pertaining to the technology and medicine found in WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra. Return to [[Headscratchers/TheLegendOfKorra the index]] for more.
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3	[[foldercontrol]]
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5	[[folder: The whole ultra fast progress]]
6	* Yeah, I know, just a show, I should relax, but still, it have been what, around 50-60 years and they managed to go from ancient history with touches of steam punk to the 1920's. It stretches the willing suspension of disbelief a little, even with benders being a big factor on making the changes go faster. And not only there were incredibly fast improvements in the tech, but the societal and cultural changes were mind blowing for such short amount of time.
7	** Which isn't that different from the real world. The potential was there. An era of peace brought the means to capitalize on it.
8	** We went from 185X to 192X in FarEast {{Wuxia}}land. Sounds about right.
9	** You're giving humans way less credit than we deserve, especially when you notice how much we've done in just 40 years. The reason the world hadn't changed sooner is a result of the strict divisions between nations. How slow would our development go if our own countries never interacted with each other?
10	** They had tanks, submarines, bombs, airships, trucks, a monorail, a GIANT FUCKING DRILL, elevators, and even jet skis in ATLA. The Fire Nation brought on a century-long war that kept most of the world in an industrial stasis, while they continued to innovate. The only area outside of the FN with technology like this, without the help of the Mechanist? Ba Sing Se. That is to say, the society that kept itself completely cut off from the rest of the earth kingdom, thanks to the influence of Long Feng, and presumably, the naivete or selfishness of the previous earth kings. The amount of evolution that the Avatar society went under makes perfect sense, after the war ended and Aang and Zuko presumably did not allow the machinery to be kept by only the elite of BSS and the militaries.
11	** Look at our history within the last 100 years. 1912, we were just beginning to grapple with motorcars, airplanes, and long-distance communications. [[HumansAreSpecial All it takes is the right spark, and the right people together to send civilization full steam ahead.]]
12	** Also they have a massive collection of people who can manipulate elements, it's shown that some lightning benders generate power, so tht is free energy. Which means they don't need to bring in as much resources just to keep the technology going. Normal firebenders can simply boil water, and water benders condense it providing vastly more energy. So effectively they can use all thier resources on production, rather then fuel.
13	** If anything, a case could be made that technology hasn't advanced quickly enough. Especially if you consider the "perpetual energy" provided by Fire Benders who can bend lightning.
14	** I figured that the technological development was meant to reflect the rapid technological leap East Asian countries went through during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Though this was largely because Asia was catching up to the West's rapid progress they'd ignored. Still, after [=WW2=] South Korea was basically rural and now it's an economic powerhouse. Before that, Japan basically went from feudal-era weaponry to Imperial Japan's [=WW2=] military in less than a century. China experienced double-digit economic growth for around 20 years. I still think it's a bit unrealistic how much of a tech and industry boom happened in-between Airbender and Korra, but it does have some basis in reality.
15	[[/folder]]
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17	[[folder: How common will the new MechaMooks that Hiroshi created be?]]
18	* He's said that they're made of Platinum. Platinum isn't exactly a common metal, it's more valuable than gold. Considering how much platinum comprises the blast door that traps the heroes and the amount that comprises the mecha mooks, that's gotta be a sizeable chunk of Hiroshi's fortune.
19	** More valuable ''today''. Think about this from their perspective. Platinum is probably dirt cheap in their world. They haven't advanced to the point where platinum's true value would be apparent. More pliable, impure metals would be in much higher demand, especially when metalbenders need it for equipment and such.
20	** There are two possibilities. Either platinum is more common in the Avatar universe, and thus less expensive, or earthbenders make mining far more productive than anything we can do in the real world. Meaning that the only reason the Equalists' anti-bender mechas are a plausible threat against metalbenders could be [[{{Irony}} because of labor only earthbenders can perform]].
21	** Even in RealLife platinum is more common than, say, gold. It's just needed in so many electrical appliances that it's price is higher. Since relatively few electronics still exist in the world, larger amounts would probably be just lying around, not yet seen as all that valuable by most people. In the 18th century plantinum was sometimes treated as little more than garbage, if you can believe that.
22	** Platinum is more expensive than gold because its much harder to get at despite its marginally greater presence in the crust.
23	** Even so, platinum used to be dirt cheap, to the point that counterfeiters used it to counterfeit gold coins (the counterfeit coins were gold plated, of course, since platinum looks nothing like gold).
24	** In terms of abundance in the Earth, Platinum is nearly 100 times rarer than gold. The real issue is that platinum is weaker than normal armor armor materials like steel.
25	** Weaker maybe, but as pointed out on the Fridge page it makes great armor against benders. It can't be bent by the metalbenders, has a high melting point to resist firebenders, and is resistant to corrosion by waterbenders. The weakness relative to steel will probably become apparent once the metalbenders wise up and start smashing the moving parts with rocks, though.
26	** Not really. Platinum is even softer than gold and almost as malleable, so any earthbender worth his salt could tear it to pieces by flinging boulders at it or topple them by bending the ground under them; platinum has a high melting point, but it is also an excellent heat and electrical conductor, so even though the mech would survive some serious firebending, the pilot would be cooked alive inside the cockpit; and rust is the least of your concerns when waterbending has been shown being capable of slicing through steel plating and slamming with enough force to shatter rock, and so has airbending for that matter. By being made out of platinum, the mechs are moderately resistant to the very rare metalbenders (they cannot metalbend the mechs, but nothing prevents them bending steel spikes into the mechs, for example, and they're still earthbenders at the end of the day) in exchange of being [[CripplingOverspecialization laughably vulnerable to regular benders everywhere]].
27	** Perhaps the armor was mostly platinum but thinly coated in a stronger metal? So long as most of the mecha's mass wasn't bendable they'd basically be metalbender-proof since they wouldn't have enough leverage against the mecha's weight.
28	** Are we sure the stuff is solid platinum? Maybe they just have a shell a few millimeters thick that blocks the bending. Still hugely expensive but certainly less absurd.
29	** Hiroshi Sato ''explicitly'' stated that the walls and mechas were all solid purified platinum, though that might just be him being a hyperbolic rich man.
30	** A shell wouldn't block bending. The metalbenders would be able to sense the presence of impure metals and manipulate them.
31	** Aside from the rarity issue, pure platinum is actually a rather malleable metal, and wouldn't make very effective armor - any earthbender throwing a good sized rock should be able to at least severely dent the mechas. This may be an honest mistake. Alternately, the wall might have been pure platinum, but the mechas may have been using an alloy of platinum with another metal that was also pure. At any rate, Lin's ability to pierce the platinum armor with her metal-bended spikes (presumable iron/steel) is not surprising.
32	** She actually just pierced the cockpit glass. However, from what I can see throughout the series, metalbending requires you to actually touch the metal or touch earth touching the metal(since you need to be able to find the impurities with echo-sense earthbending). A thin layer of solid purified platinum would be enough to stop that.
33	** No, it doesn't. There are plenty of examples of benders bending their element without the need to touch it. Including Toph metalbending.
34	** For the other elements, yes. But I don't think we've ever seen metalbending without touching it or touching earth touching it. Can you name a counter-example?
35	** Toph has been shown to metalbend without direct contact in Avatar: The Promise.
36	** The metalbender police hemming in non-benders at the supposed Equalist rally with loating wooden barricades with metal nails riveted through.
37	** Those rivets disappear half-way through the bending process, which could admittedly be an animation error, but the barricades also bent a lot further than a thick plank of wood should, so I just assumed those things were made out of painted rock.
38	** We see an example of metalbending without touching just moments before the Mechas turn up. Lin tries metalbending the door - it doesn't work cause of the platinum but she obviously expected it to, so it must be possible. Also in a later episode Lin metalbends her armour onto her without touching it.
39	** This could easily justified in that "rare materials" in the world of Avatar are probably just more plentiful than they would be in actual reality. In the Earth Kingdom we were shown caverns upon caverns that are filled to the brim with gemstones, not to mention that the Fire Kingdom had a rather overabundant access to iron due to 80% of the technology and structures being made out of it. Platinum is probably just commonplace.
40	** Maybe the platinum we know and the platinum in the Avatarverse are [[CallASmeerpARabbit two different things entirely?]]
41	* Why use platinum, and not some other elemental metal? The reason given for platinum's inability to be bent is that it's pure, lacking the residual bits of earth that normally allow an earthbender to manipulate it. But the same should be true for ANY pure metal, right? Like, for example, titanium is much harder than platinum, while also having resistance to water-based corrosion and a melting point that, while lower than platinum's, is still beyond anything a normal-level firebender could produce (over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit).
42	* This is all forgetting the simplest answer: they don't NEED to be made out of pure platinum,the equalists used platinum because they knew they would be dealing with metalbenders, mass production models would likely be made from steel,both cheaper and more durable, as outside of Zaufu and the special police metalbending is still rather rare, and if they thought they were going to encounter one could send there own benders rather then a mech
43	[[/folder]]
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45	[[folder: Vehicles]]
46	* This is a minor one, but how on earth do the metalbenders' airships operate? We have seen that they have two decks on the gondola. Alright, so what of it? Well, we've seen inside them and ''Neither deck has a bridge or helm.'' It's just two forward-facing viewing areas and a big empty loading bay in back. Moreover, there is no crew, apparently. The ship simply flies around unbidden. Perhaps [[AWizardDidIt a bender did it.]] It just bugs me.
47	** I assumed that we just didn't see the bridge and the helm and that they actually did have a separate crew who flew the airship while the metalbending police deployed. If we saw both decks (I cant recall the scene(s) right now), then the lack of a bridge or helm is probably just a mistake on the part of the story borders who just didn't account for who would be flying the airship when they animated the scenes. It's easier to assume that somebody made a, rather minor, mistake than they operate via some unknown mechanism over a long distance.
48	[[/folder]]
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50	[[folder: Mecha tanks with magnets]]
51	* I suppose the metalbenders armour is made from steel or iron or something, but how strong were those magnets to lift up people?
52	** Magnets capable of lifting ''cars'' are routinely used in industrial work in RealLife. There's nothing special about magnets that can lift human-sized objects. What I wonder though is why none of the metalbenders thought to mess up with the magnets' structure and break down their polarity.
53	** I just wonder why they didn't slip out of their armour. The first few benders may not have had enough time, but the chief definitely had.
54	** Magnets can be very powerful but they don't have that kind of range. Its just a dramatic conceit.
55	** Good point on the car thing, was underestimating the strength of magnets. But to take their armour or to mess with the magnets structure, they would need to move their arms to bend, which they can't do.
56	** More to the point, it's explicitly stated that these mechas are made of pure platinum, which the metalbenders can't bend. Of course, Platinum is malleable enough that they should be able to just... bend it. How they even made a self-supporting Mecha out of the stuff in the first place (or even got enough to make so many mechas) is what bothers me.
57	** Although Hiroshi Sato makes this claim, for a Mecha Tank to have ''magnets'' it can't be true. The magnets have to be made of some kind of ferromagnetic material, and platinum is ''not'' very magnetic. In other words, the magnets were made of a less pure metal then platinum, probably iron or steel. Meaning that if the magnets weren't active, the metalbenders should've been able to bend the Mecha Tanks ''by their magnet hands''. Too bad none of them ever thought of that (probably the real issue here).
58	[[/folder]]
59
60	[[folder: What's up with the massive leaps in medicine?]]
61	* So, just thirty years or so after the original series, the Avatar world seriously has fully effective plastic surgery? Where did that come from? I mean, I know there was a technology boom as the world came together, but even throughout the rest of Korra, the most advanced medicine we see is made of bandages and waterbending.
62	** You know, I was about to say that they had plastic surgery in the 20s (which they did) but then I remembered that Yakone would've gotten the surgery over 40 years prior, in the equivalent of the 1880s. So, yeah, I think they pulled that clean out of their ass, unless this is a case of RealityIsUnrealistic and they actually had plastic surgery in the late 1800s.
63	** Dude, they had plastic surgery in AncientEgypt. Do some research yourself instead of complaining for answers, this is the Internet for God's sake.
64	** Ancient India, they could reconstruct noses sliced off by swords. In Ancient Rome, they had ''sex change operations''. (Or at least they were talking/thinking about it enough that a particular Roman Emperor asked his physician to perform one)
65	** When it comes right down to it, the basic techniques of lots of surgeries date ''way'' back in real-life. The thing that prevented them being used extensively until recently is the lack of effective anesthetic and infection control, which prevented surgeons from being too ambitious in terms of having procedures last too long or require too much tissue manipulation. Surgeons could readily dream up things like full facial reconstructions, but they couldn't do it on a living person without inflicting horrendous agony followed by death from infection and blood loss. But in the Avatarverse, waterbending healing can probably take care of the anesthesia, infection, and wound healing concerns, meaning that ambitious surgeries probably could have been contemplated quite early on in its history. (In fact, in 1800's real-world, a severe scar like the one Zuko received had a high likelihood of fatality from infection after the fact. Zuko's survival suggests medical care has always been pretty advanced, relatively speaking, in the Avatar world.)
66	** The basic techniques go back much earlier than the 1800s and they didn't make a huge change. Tarrlok and pre-surgery Yakone look fairly similar and only more similar post-surgery. With water bending healers they can keep a person safe through elective surgery like that. So its an AssPull to an extent but not totally absurd. The amazing thing is that they seemed to anesthetize him.
67	** I agree. It's good to bear in mind that in the decades after the war, the Fire Nation shared their vastly superior technology with the world. Combined with waterbending medical science, it seems pretty feasible to me.
68	** The anachronistic thing that is setting off the question here is that the (1880-ish) surgeons are clearly dressed like modern-day doctors, in a room that looks almost ''exactly'' like an OR, complete with those power lights over the operating table. '''Nowhere''' in Korraworld do we see anything even remotely similar to that, so the scene came pretty much out of the blue.
69	** Perhaps not so anachronistic. In the flashbacks we see that Republic City already was technologically advanced at that point. Satomobiles hadn't been invented yet, but there were still skyscrapers and city hall and they presumably had power lights. As far as inventing electricity, didn't the Fire Nation airships and that giant drill from A:TLA already have lightbulbs and such?
70	** I don't think the issue at hand is lights existing, so much as a remarkably modern setting at all. I'm just spitballing here (and please correct me if I'm wrong) but that kind of OR didn't become until the 50s or so?
71	** I think it's because that scene looked EXTREMELY uncanny to a modern hospital that most people would mistake it for way too modern. You could easily take it out of context for a modern day event. But the above person is right, plastic surgery isn't that unheard of, given the advance of post-war technology plus Waterbending healing, it wouldn't be completely unheard of.
72	** At first glance the OR does look uncannily similar to a modern real-world OR, but if you look again you can see that while it is rather futuristic for a place running in the 1880s, it's not a modern OR; it's definitely early/mid 1900s. And I'll concur that medical knowledge and practice are pretty advanced in the Avatar world for their given time periods, even outside of waterbending healing.
73	[[/folder]]
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75	[[folder:Magic plastic surgery?]]
76	* I couldn't have been the only one who noticed. But Tarrlok looks just like his father post surgery.
77	** I think its okay to assume that Realism was abandoned for the sake of symbolism here. While Tarrlok look more like Yakone post-surgery, Noatak looks more like Yakone pre-surgery which is a neat contrast between the brothers.
78	** And it's not like Tarrlok ''doesn't'' look like Yakone even pre-surgery. People were pointing out the resemblance before the twist was ever revealed. He just happens to look slightly ''more'' like him post-surgery.
79	** Yep; see [[http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m50a7vyXCi1qlg334.jpg pre-surgery Yakone]] and [[http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m50a89w6tl1qlg334.jpg Adult Tarrlok]]
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82	[[folder: Pyrotechnics?]]
83	* Okay, in "The Sting", Bolin is starring in a movie where pyrotechnics are being used. I can understand why they were used from a story purpose (it gave Mako the idea of who was behind the attacks), but, from an in-universe perspective, why would they need pyrotechnics when there are firebenders out there?
84	** They also could have hired an actual waterbender to play Nuktuk, but didn't. Varrick wanted to use his cool technology and tricks, that's all.
85	** Its also probably cheaper and more reliable as a whole to use gadgets rather than having to hire benders.
86	** Plus, the pyrotechnics is a nice thing to have for when you can't hire a Firebender and it keeps the film industry open for non-benders. After the Equalists, that'd be a good PR move. On top of it, assuming Varrick is as dirty as implied and not going through red herrings, its a convenient excuse for detonators to be around.
87	** Don't forget that, sometimes, a machine just works better for the task at hand. After all, if your going for a loud, concussive explosion like the ones that pop as Bolin runs by, your not going to use a firebending, which, if your not combustion man, produces a more fireball-y and explosion-y effect. Even if you were going to use a big, fire-ball like inferno for the effect, its cheaper to higher one explosive expert and order 10 barrels of blasting jelly than the five trained firebenders necessary to maintain the firebending explosion for a shot. And the explosives allow the director to specify the exact timing of the explosion (right as bolin goes past), never make mistakes, and don't look like somebody backstage is shooting a fireball (think the waterbending effects but for the explosions). Honestly, remote detonated pyrotechnics just seems easier than bending generated explosions, at least when it comes to mover filming.
88	** Because the feeling. The writers wanted to show us a Steampunk society with benders, not a Dungeonpunk where benders=wizards. Also, pyrotechnics can be even more awesome than just a vanilla flame
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91	[[folder: Batteries?]]
92	* So, in Book 1 we get to see Mako working at a power plant, which implies that all of Republic City's grid electricity is generated by lightning benders (hell, possibly even waterbenders pushing water through turbines, but I digress). Makes sense. But then we see all of the technologies that have to be battery or generator powered - the Mecha Tanks (think about how much power it would take just to power those freaking crazy super magnets!), radios in the Satomobiles, etc. Since most of the Avatar world's technology developed through applications of bending, I have to wonder - how the hell did they develop batteries / generators that run independently of bending input?
93	** They just store the power generated by lightning bending into portable batteries for anything that can't be plugged into a grid. Alternatively they just developed chemical batteries for smaller machines that are independent.
94	** It would actually make sense for the Equalists to develop power sources that aren't dependent on Bending, and Asami's father was in perfect position to do that. Also, the Fire Nation was already established to have mastered steam power in Aang's time, so the jump to steam powered electricity is not all that big.
95	** Batteries also make sense in tandem with lightning benders. This way, any excess electricity harnessed from the lightning benders can be stored for future use.
96	** Mecha tanks, at least in Book 1, seem to at least run on some sort of internal combustion.
97	[[/folder]]
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99	[[folder:Varricks warship needs no crew?]]
100	* Towards the end of season 2, Varrick lends the protagonists his massive warship so that they can attack Unalaq on the South Pole. However, when the ship is shown, there appears to be no crew except for the seven protagonists, and it's explicitly mentioned only the seven of them are taking part in the attack. And when we see what the protagonists are doing on deck, most of them are concentrating on things that are completely unrelated to operating the ship, such as practicing their bending moves. So who the heck is running the ship? You'd assume a warship of that size would need more than seven crew members for maintenance alone.
101	[[/folder]]
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103	[[folder: Phones in the South Pole]]
104	* Do they or do they not have them?
105	** Seems like they don't, or at least not any phones connected to the rest of the world. It's the only explanation for how everyone missed that Korra wasn't either in Republic City or the South Pole for six whole months. That said, transoceanic cables are a pain in the ass to set up and keep in working condition, even in our world.
106	[[/folder]]
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108	[[folder: Earth Empire weaponry]]
109	* Kuvira's tanks obviously have turrets, but the "firing ports" look far too small for any kind of useful projectile to be shot through them. Certainly not anything that would qualify as "heavy artillery". Maybe they're more IFV than tank, and they're manned by metalbenders who bend small metallic darts/discs through the ports?
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111	* How exactly do the lightning guns on Kuvira's mecha suits work? Is it firing some kind of electrified charge/slug, or is it actually shooting bolts of lightning? The latter would suggest some kind of electrolaser, which seems too advanced even for the Earth Empire.
112	** The lightning gun might work based on lightningbending principles.
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114	* The Earth Empire mecha suits are affected by electromagnetic pulses; this would seem to suggest that they incorporate some form of integrated circuitry. However, all the other technology seen throughout the series indicate that the Avatar world is still in an era where vacuum tubes would be dominant. Just how smart and ahead-of-his-time ''is'' Varrick?
115	** In the scene in S4E10 where Baatar Jr. stops the spirit vine superweapon from exploding, he yanks what looks like a silicon chip board from the mechanism. Looks like the Earth Empire's been hoarding just as much technology as Zaofu.
116	[[/folder]]
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118	[[folder: Kuvira's Mecha]]
119	* So, Varrick (with Zhu-li's help) were studying vines for months, he made a discovery that could use spirit vines as a weapon, and Baatar Jr. ended the gun. And... you're telling me that in a few weeks, while visibly working on the spirit gun, he also developed a giant robot, built it, tested it, got a hundred tons of pure platinum to shield it, and taught Kuvira how to pilot it? Is that, or a mecha can be built in the span of a few days, WHILE MARCHING towards Republic city?
120	** Varrick and Zhu-li ''definitely'' didn't make the giant mech. They both assumed the spirit cannon was coming by rail. Kuvira must have had other scientists and engineers working on it. Presumably that sort of thing is much easier to build and operate when you have entire armies of metalbenders at your disposal.
121	** It's possible that Baatar Jr. designed the "Colossus" much earlier, and it was already well under construction by the time Varrick made his discovery. Even equipped with "only" a giant flamethrower and a lightning-gun, like the normal Mechasuits, that thing would've been dangerous enough. Of course once they figured-out how to use spirit-energy, they made a few modifications.
122	** With metalbending, metalurgic work as a whole is greatly improved upon; even non-bendable metals like platinum could be operated on by metalbenders using bendable materials. So, all it would have taken was dismantling the domes, send them to a R&D camp full of willing metalbenders with plenty of iron, steel or whatever other metals that are '''stronger''' than platinum, and beat/cut the domes until they were shaped like a robot.
123	** Also, considering Kuvira's army is fully equipped with mecha suits and tanks, it's clear she has access to massive industrial capability. It would be a simple matter to retool her factories from cranking out hundreds of mecha suits to concentrating on building one giant one.
124	** The platinum for the Colossus came from Zaofu's domes, and judging by the ridges on the Colossus' armor, they kept a few design elements in common with the domes, which probably sped up construction a bit. If the Colossus was designed to run entirely on spirit energy though, it's likely that the Earth Empire did the bulk of R&D after Varrick's groundbreaking work on spirit vines.
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126	* Common complaint when it comes to robots, but why the hell was it bipedal? It'd be a lot more stable, a lot easier to control, and presumably easier to build if it were on treads like the mecha tanks were. The smaller mecha suits were bipedal too, which is also a little silly, but it seems like not being able to lose your balance would be relatively high on your list of priorities when designing a 25-story colossus.
127	** Maybe Kuvira ordered her designers to make a bipedal system work? There's lots of people out in the world who would rather bend technology to work the way they want it to instead of adapting a little bit to make the most efficient use of that technology.
128
129	* When the airbenders are attacking the colossus with paint bombs, they're able to get quite close to the windows in it head, and Meelo actually squashes against one. Why then, instead of the paint attack that would at best only slow the mecha down, didn't they try to break the windows and attack Kuvira? There's absolutely no hint in the series that anyone has come up with armored glass strong enough to withstand a master bender. And if airbending is not enought to break the windows, why not have Korra fly there and firebend or earthbend (glass is made of sand, so earthbending should work on it) a hole to the glass? Sure, they would be vulnerable to the colossus swatting them with its hands, but they had the same problem with their ultimate plan, and they still carried it out. (Also, presumably Kuvira would've been more wary of swatting them while they're attached to the colossus' head, since she might've accidentally broken the windows herself while trying to hit the airbenders.) Of course it's still possible this tactic might've failed for one reason or another, but it's weird they didn't even think of trying to exploit such and obvious weak spot in the colossus.
130	** The windows were lined and separated with grates(which could’ve also been made from platinum), and the open panels weren’t big enough for someone to get through.
131
132	[[/folder]]
133
134	[[folder:No progress in the 10,000 years after Wan?]]
135	* In [[Recap/TheLegendOfKorraS2E7BeginningsPartOne "Beginnings Part 1"]], we see what human societies looked like ten thousand years ago, and they don't look all that different from the societies we see in ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender''. For example, Wan's home city doesn't look that different from Omashu. All that seems to have changed in the following 10,000 years is that the Fire Nation has developed some steampunk technology, and the Earth Kingdom has come up with a few creative ways to use earthbending, such as moving trains with it. So, basically, in 10,000 years the Avatar world went from pseudo-Medieval to pseudo-Medieval with some steampunk elements, but in the following 70 years it became fully modern with skyscapers, electricity, cars, movies, radio, etc. If we compare this to our world, 10,000 years ago people were still living in the Stone Age, and agriculture had barely began. Now, obviously the Hundred Year War was a major catalyst for technological and societal changes, but it still doesn't make sense that no big changes happened in the thousands of years that preceded it.
136	** Compared to the over 10,000 years from the beginning of civilization in real life to where we are now, this isn't as slow as you think it is. The people in Wan's time were basically TheRemnant who were left over after some apocalypse that had them living solely on the lion turtles, basically 4 small cities worth of humans. Taking centuries and even millennia to repolulate the planet to the levels we see in both series (especially taking major wars into consideration) isn't that far fetched.
137	** But the question wasn't about repopulating of the planet, rather than the level of technology, which doesn't change that much from Wan's era to the [=AtlA=] era. Compare that to the changes in technology in our world in the last 10,000 years, and the discrepancy is massive, especially if you consider that the Avatar world has an incredibly efficient power source (bending) that our world doesn't have. So why was there 10,000 years of stagnation followed by 70 years of fast changes?
138	** Four reasons: 1) [[MedievalStasis It's a fantasy world]], 2) It's heavily based on the FarEast, 3) A fully realized [[TheChosenOne Avatar]] can stop an army in its tracks and deliberately kept the four nations separate, and 4) The world of Avatar seems to have little in the way of large scale trade networks like the Silk Road or the Indian Ocean trade network. So basically, Katara was right: Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
139	** Four counter-arguments: 1) MedievalStasis doesn't explain it, when ''The Legend of Korra'' shows that the Avatar world ''can'' go through rapid societal and technological changes. 2) The FarEast has never been in a state of stasis, and the area certainly experienced massive changes in the 10,000 years that preceded the 1920s (the decade equivalent to the setting of [=TLoK=]). 3) It's never said the previously Avatars "deliberately kept the four nations separate"; why would they have done so? Roku tried to stop Sozen from forcibly colonizing a part of the Earth Kingdom, but it seems unlikely the Avatars would've been against peaceful trade and exhange of ideas between the nations, which would lead to technological and social progress. 4) There's little information on the history of the Avatar world preceding the 100 Year War, so how would we know there were no large scale trade networks? Since bending allows greater mobility for trade vessels, and the Avatar world appears to be significantly smaller than ours, so there's no reason to assume such trade routes didn't exist. Also, even the members of Katara and Sokka's remote tribe seem to have a decent basic knowledge on the other three nations and their habits, and merchants in Earth Kingdom recognize the coins Katara and Sokka give to them as Water Tribe money, so it looks like trade and exchange of knowledge between the nations was going on the whole time, and they weren't being kept completely separate.
140	** The Promise heavily alluded to the idea that the Avatar WAS keeping the world stagnated. They kept peace with the nation through a policy of isolationism. They didn't let them interact anymore than they were allowed to. This is why Roku objected heavily to the idea of Republic City in the first place. The Avatar didn't let the Nations mingle too much in order to avoid conflict. Why else do you think the 4 nations remained exactly the 4 nations? Republic City was a 5th nation that never existed before as far as we know. Roku, at the very least, did not like the idea of Aang changing the status quo. Roku protected the world, but he never tried to change it either.
141	[[/folder]]
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Context Headscratchers / TheLegendOfKorraTechnologyAndMedicine