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

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.

That idea about widening the wall actually sounds reasonable

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?

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.

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

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!)

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

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!"

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

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

I believe that when angg was breaking the Rock into a stake he wasn't really using airbending. His movements are too harsh and direct. He is also extremely grounded.

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

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.

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.

*There is no war in Ba Sing Sae.*

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

The easy way to stop the drill would be to just wreck the internal machinery, but that requires infiltration, but in the show, it's actually easier for the earthbenders to create tunnels in the drills' path that'd collapse under the its' weight. If done smartly, the collapsed tunnels would align with the spikes on the drills' sides and its' tank threads, which would stop the drill in it's tracks and avert the threat indefinetely (or until the eartbenders figured out how easy it is to divert nearby water and flood the thing).

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!

Most water-bending uses nearby water, but in the liberation of Ba Sing Se, we see Pakku creating a lot of it.

This is a great video. I hope it gets more attention

Fire nation could've just hire bunch of powerful earth benders from Omashu to break the wall instead of million fire nation money spending on the drill 😂

Man, that idea of just infinitely widening the wall while you chip away at them is so obviously brilliant yet I never thought of it before!

Traditionally, the Chinese city walls and the Great Wall of China which the walls of Ba Sing Se are based on would be made out of rammed earth on the inside and stone to cover it all to prevent erosion.

6:41 Air can do a surprising good job at cutting things if done right. Actually once accidentally cut myself using an air compressor and IDFK how!

While not "energy bending" within the world of the show, fire and lightning are simply products of a concentration of energy. Fire bending is in reality the ability to bend not a form of matter but to bend thermal and electrical energy, something that is present all around us. Its why fire bending become increasingly more difficult as the bender in question becomes colder, as pointed out in The Boiling Rock. Less thermal energy, less fire bending.

Very good and enjoyable video, I loved the piece of history trivia with talk about miliatry TBMs, which I had no idea even existed! I personally think that the perfect way to take down the drill (Without even needing to get inside the machine) in which the earthbending garrison could have helped too would've been if they drove up huge stakes of earth on the side of it to slow down, on top of how you mentioned - Targetting the mechanical systems (mainly the tracks and the stabilizers). The main structure of the drill looks unfathomably tanky and it could probably handle an immense pressure of stone, *but,* there's only so much stone it could have effectively moved through, so the machine could have been effectively stymied for long enough to have rendered it useless or given the main characters enough time t come up with a better way to completely immobilize it. The solution they used in the show itself is still really amazing though, shows how much the Avatar creative team really cared about the little details of their world and making it as realistic and internally consistent as it could have been. I love the combination of weakening redundant structures, overloading the dump system with pressure and delivering a final hit on the weakened machine. Easily one of my favourite Avatar episode and overall TV show episode in general, the concept is amazing, the machine is super cool and all the engineering details are a treat.

Easiest way to defeat the drill was to just make a ramp out of earth under each set of tracks along one side. They'll be forced to stop, or risk the thing rolling over. Or change the ground where it is to uneven for the drill to be able to move. Could also lower the ground under the rear half of the drill, and make the thing fall back into the hole. A large vehicle like that which can really only travel in a straight line would be easy to beat. The gang just went about it the hard way.

this video makes me enjoy the idea of the drill attack being way larger in scale, with the drill being unchanged, but there being a whole proper army attacking ba sing se at all sides or at major points of interest. this would keep more of their earth benders preoccupied, and there wouldnt be as many able to widen the wall to keep the drill from breaking through. Though I imagine they'd try, and it becomes this war of attrition as they stall for time while Team Avatar breaks the drill from the inside.

"Can air bending carve stone?" I think the effect depicted on screen is a little ambiguous, but Aang's movements are wide, heavy steps with strongly rooted feet, which I think is meant to convey Aang is Earthbending here, not airbender. 6:47

you are correct about the fire bending being made from nothing, I recon its because all you need to make fire is oxygen, fuel, and heat. I presume the heat is made from the person (at one point we see that to make fire in extream cold is a technique not everyone knows) and the fuel is..... something. The only times the fire lingers longer then a few seconds is when it catched something burnable so maybe it doesn't need fuel for the inicial burst of flame as part of the bending

To give some credit to the Earth Kingdom defending garrison: Prior to this drill (which was for all intents and purposes a fluke of engineering beyond its time), the expected siege tactics of the time would have involved rudimentary siege weapons such as cannons or catapults hurling kinetic projectiles against a ~20m thick stone wall and/or hoards of infantry using ladders to climb the >100m high walls. Both of these tactics can easily be thwarted before they actually become a problem to the wall by "Earth Bender drops big rock on them from atop the wall". There's always the possibility of enemy earth benders boring through the wall, but then it just becomes a battle of attrition of the attacking earth bender opening a hole vs the defending earth bender closing the hole. Typically cases like this would be defender's advantage because they would also have people atop the wall dropping rocks or shooting arrows at the attacking bender to waste their energy while the defending bender is left unharried.

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!

The easiest way to stop the drill would have been Earth Benders passing it in a tunnel below that they could conveniently create with earth bending. Then make a giant empty space below the non-drill part while just leaving a thin layer of earth at the top to avoid being noticed early. The empty space would have to be as wide as the drill and as deep as the non-drill part of the drill is long. Start making the empty space beginning from the rear end of the drill and continue until at least half of the drill's length is undermined by it. Then let the thin layer collapse. The drill will then fall into the hole due to its own weight with only the spinning part sticking out vertically into the air. Now close the hole around the drill with earth bending again and the drill will permanently be stuck there, unable to move. And the Earth Benders get a nice rotating landmark sticking out of the ground. If the Earth Benders can create a giant wall that easily then creating that hole for the drill to fall into that way should be easy for them.

If you look at it scientifically, fire bending most likely draws heat from the air around it to spark a flame, which would make sense considering the fire benders live on a volcanically active island, where it would be hotter than usual.

it's not just airbending that cut the stone wedge. notice the big stomp too, it's applied knowledge from the water cutting metal sequence he just finished but also combining earthbending with airbending by softening the point of impact to pretty much pre-cut the wedge before it's carved, i feel its supposed to be the battle ingenuity of "it would be cool if this works". i also think the driving force is compound-bending where its earthbending to push the stone wedge in deep and airbending to rocket from the high point he jumped up to.

I never thought much about this episode but... why didn't the Earthbenders just turned the drill on it's back? like, go underground (what are the fire benders going to do? they can't even detect you), form a line and lift the right side of the drill while pushing the left side down, and now the drill is upside down, all it's crew is upside down, all it's machinery is upside down etc... if they can open and close what is essentially a giant cliff-face they can ruely do that

I'm surprised the Earth Benders didn't directly attack the drill by stressing it's massive length by lowering or raising the ground under it. Do that rapidly enough at enough different points and it's own size and weight will do the damage for you

You're somewhat right about fire creation which is why they made it in the movie a source they needed...

While the other 3 controls atoms (solid liquid and gas), In our reality I think fire bend can just be the control of energy or speed in those atoms, think like a fridge but opposite thats why they need to breath, gathering the more energized atoms to create an environment suitable to spark fire, how zuko is able to melt ice under a frozen lake, hes not necessarily controlling the temperature but focusing the energy in a point.

I'm impressed they put this musch effort in how the drill works instead of making it simple like other cartoons would have done. like could have just left it at its fueled by fire or steam and left out all the mechanical and filtering processes. Really puts to show how some of these cartoons arent just intended to be watch by children.

It’s an obscure show but I’d love to see an episode on some of the structures from Legends of Chima, specifically the Eagle Spires, Lion Temple, Croc base… thing, Ice Hunter mountain, and the Phoenix tribe’s giant flying building! Barring the Lion Temple, everything seems completely over-the-top, and I’d like to know if there’s any way they could actually work (ie reinforcing the spires with rebar, or some interesting material or technique in the Phoenix bastion.

Air contains oxygen and hydrogen in the form of water vapor, so I think fire benders can create fire because the potential for it is all around them. This would be akin to more advanced techniques like lightning bending or lava bending, except it's so integral to fire bending because it has to be one of the first things they learn. Lightning bending in particular is a good example, because Iroh describes it as literally separating positive and negative "energy" in a way that sounds a lot like ionizing the air. This indicates that firebending CAN work on a chemical level and also cause chemical reactions that should require a significant input of energy. Separating hydrogen from oxygen only to recombine it is actually more energetically costly than removing a few valence electrons from gas particles. Basically, firebenders get a free advanced technique, because otherwise their bending would be as useless as it was in the Shamylan movie where they all had to carry around torches to have a weapon, and they could only bend tiny little ropes of fire.

THANK you for testing this like a kids show. It isn’t supposed to be perfect for an adult audience

Agree with your statement should have gone for the internals. It's got all sorts of water and steam lines that could have been frozen. Ang and Katara both seem to be able to do that pretty easily, and that would generate absolutely massive amounts of force to break the piping.

honestly i'd argue against just widening the wall noting the attacker is a drill, if anything it would provide the drill with additional cover, though the gaurding tanks, definitely could get pushed away by such a wall movement so for weaknening its defence, probably would be a good start still

8:25 weeeeeeeelll no, your exactly right about that. All elements except fire have to use extant elements in their environment. Fire benders can, but they can also just make their own fire.

This is the only episode vivid in my memory from when it came out

At about 8:13 you talk about how Fire bending is the only bending that is "Created". I've thought about this for some time-- We know that some benders can control the temperature of their element. Water benders can melt snow or freeze water. Some special earth benders can become lava benders. It makes one wonder if water benders are also capable of boiling water? Can air benders also control the temperature of the air around them? We also know that fire bending works without the possibility of oxygen, as we see Zuko in season 1 heating up ice that he's trapped under, as well as earlier in the season we see Iroh heating a pool of water to create a hot tub. We also know there are some benders (like Azula) that have hotter flames, based on color. The best solution I have is that fire bending is some form of energy manipulation, on an atomic scale? And that when not being used against other elements, such as water, it appears in the form of fire. We've also seen that fire benders can also control lava (Roku in his temple in season 1), and maybe that is a result of the actual heat/energy? I could apply this energy manipulation to the logic of lightning bending, but I'm not all that smart and don't want to make a total fool of myself. Something something energy and electrons. Anyways that's my thought.

the movie "the core" utilizes a similar drill to drill down to earths core in order to make it start rotating. it ceased to rotate for some reason and that wrecks havoc on the climate and stuff.

Fire bending utilizes energy itself. It's just using the 1st law of thermodynamics to achieve the bending. Being the grandchild of Lars Onsager, this is pretty cool!

Thinking about it the Earth Benders had such a Smooth Brain on top of that Wall. Instead of hurling Rocks at a Stucture made to bore through Rocks they could've put some united effort in to Lift a Platform under half of the Drill just pivoting it over so it's upside down. Since Earth Benders can just take down the Walls as we can see in the Show, Lifting a Plateau under half of the Drill doesn't seem too hard in comparison.

They should have tryed to attack it on sight first, lift it up with pillars from between the tracks and carve a deep ass trench around it once imobalised. It would be necessary to lift all pillars at once so the tracks cant contract with the ground and push it away.

From what I understand, the fire used by firebenders is ignited and fueled by the user’s own internal “chi.” How powerful that can make the fire (ie. how much fire and control over they have) and if that “fuel” ever runs out is never really explained.

where were YOU when the fire nation attacked? i was in Junior year. coming home after weight lifting and seeing a premiere that changed my life

I like your videos because of how you go wide rather than deep when explaining things. It keeps everything low level enough to not overwhelm those who aren't already knowledgeable while covering enough angles to have a little something for everyone. Also, as a complete aside, you remind me of two other youtubers. Pravus gaming sounds extremely similar to you in both voice and cadence. While the love of architecture reminds me of Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions. I'd recommend both of them in general, but for specifics related to you, I'd recommend Pravus for his Minecraft Tekkit series. It's what my mind immediately jumped to when I first heard your voice, since that's where the building, voice and cadence really matches up. For Blue, I'd recommend his videos on architecture (he really loves domes).

In the first season on the earthbeneder prision break episode we can see how earthbenders can compress material to make denser rock. I bet they would do that to build a defensive wall.

Welcome back, you have been thoroughly missed

Thanks for going into some great detail about how drills like this actually work, it was nice to finally get an understanding of why they can do the job that they do so well.

Love the video just as a nerd note he was using earthbending to cut the stone. You can tell from his movements. Hard stomps and and hard chops

my statics class was sabotaged by the hyper majority of construction manager degrees at my college. 5 of us wanted the engineering teacher but we needed 6. those guys never made it past the chapter 3 tests all semester. teacher literally told us to just read ahead on our own

"We get to chalk that up to rule of cool!" completely ignoring the sozin comet making him a lot stronger

Considering the scale, I imagine the mechanical parts are harder to get to and destroy. Not to mention the benefit of destroying parts where people aren't when there's just a handful of people going on board. Metal bending also wasn't discovered yet so a structural collapse would be virtually impossible to repair even if you could weld things with your hands, making the victory last longer.

I mean they probably could have used earth bending to just ultimately crush the drill with a large enough rock or get down on the ground level and fill the moving segments with stone so the drill halts its advance

Ever since i first saw this episode i was baffled. You understand you need to take out the weak points, and then you attack its shield. If you froze over the water containers, you would be done immediately.

I want to remind everyone that fire benders do not bend fire. They bend heat. Essentially, they bend kinetic energy at an atomic level. They can improve their bending abilities by controlling their inner spiritual energy, called Chi or Tao or Qi or life force or what have you. They use their emotions to focus on a specific goal or ideal, and their emotions control how their energy flows in their bodies. The best way to describe fire bending, and its cultivation, is a comparison to forging steel: the strongest steel is the ingots that have been folded, hammered, and quenched over and over again. Similarly, the strongest fire benders are those who have had their ideals tested, their emotions challenged, and their resolve broken before strengthened again. This can be done through many methods. Meditation can be used, where by trying to actively control and rein in your emotions to focus them clearly, you can create a sharp edge in your energy that is refine and powerful. Unbridled and immature emotions, thus unforced inner energy, leads to uncontrolled and weak firebending. A fire bender who has grown accustomed to focusing their emotions, forging their energy over time, they can greater bend molecular kinetic energy. This can lead to hotter flames, such as Azula’s blue fire (where Azula may seem rageful and immature, her negative emotions were quite focused on a singular ideal almost constantly). A true master can bend lightning, by causing molecules to move and rub against each other so fast that they generate enormous amounts of static electricity, usually within the user’s chest, arms, and hands so they can build it up inside and guide the direction it fires. Similarly, redirecting lightning is when the user controls the kinetic force of the molecules in their body to guide the lightning through them and out the other end (which is why moving your hand over your heart can be fatal). The most refined form of fire bending can be seen with combustion bending. You focus on a singular point on your body, typically a spot where your inner spiritual energy (whatever you decide to call it) gathers in a node of gate, and then control the kinetic energy of molecules in a straight line from it. You then allow the energy to build up on the target until a lot of heat is generated so quickly that and explosion is generated with air as a fuel/reactant. Recap/TL;DR: by focusing their emotions strictly, fire benders can strengthen their Chi to grow stronger as a fire bender. Fire benders don’t manipulate fire, but rather molecular kinetic energy, thus they can also bend lightning, spontaneously heat things up, and cause instant combustion.

Aang was using earth bending to sharpen the stone, you can tell by the way in which he moved it was a lot sturdier than when he moves for air bending. When he air bends hes more fluid in the movements..

I'd like them to create a descending ramp or a giant hole, immediately in front of the drill, that way if they do keep going forward they will either dig below the wall and not through it or just fall down and smash.

8:20 An easy mistake, firebending is a control of heat in the environment, this is why a fire nation prison has cooler units; If a prisoner is being a problem, attacking with firebending, the guards put them where there's no heat to make fire... And it's highly unpleasant, I'm sure.

Interesting note: fire is a process not a substance so it's more similar to being able to summon light or some other form of energy. Assuming they're not also summoning the chemicals that are buring? Idk it's weird.

I just finished watching this for the first time, and I'm still blown away that a Nickelodeon kids cartoon can be so well written with such mature themes

for slamming the stake he seem to use air-bending to gain momentum while at the impact he switched to earth-bending to hit harder. Also Firebending is basicly just using body heat to ignite the air. we can see it when Zuko infiltrate the northern water tribe, he use his hand to melt ice and Iroh warn him to stay warm. Basicly all the other bending move the element while since Fire can'T exist naturally they need to cause the reaction for it.

My theory is that fire bending is merely HEAT bending, as in they do not conjure fire, but heat up the air itself so much so as to turn it into a plasma

Earthbenders just widening the wall… I'm picturing a Bugs Bunny doors skit with Yosemite Sam.

As far as I can understand fire bending is more like the bending of heat/energy witch allow them to create fire just by igniting the air with no need of catalyst, not only a fire bender can warm themselves with fire bending but even create lightning by properly separating ions.

The fire thing is totally correct and is cited as one of the reasons why the fire nation was able to well attack

Avatar's bending becomes quite fuzzy where it mixes with real scientific precepts, but, in essence, fire bending and air bending are "Kissing Cousins", because FIRE bending is mislabeled, it's not fire bending at all, it's ENERGY BENDING, notably, heat, but not entirely, as they can also throw around electrons, as we see with Azula. Fire bending essentially forces localized mater to change STATES, instead of position, something that Water bending is ALSO capable of, but water bending can do BOTH OF THEM, and appears to be the only one that can do so. For example, fire bending doesn't create fire ex nehilo, but rather we always see it emerge from a singular specific point, which I posit is the place where it concentrates loose heat energy to transform the state of the air from gas, into PLASMA, the same energy state as the surface of the sun, which is also acknowledged as one of the greatest teachers of fire bending, much as the moons tides taught water bending. So, no, it's not creating fire from nothing, it's changing the air INTO fire, temporarily.

One idea that I thought they could use that would be less exciting was simply to be make a ramp that the drill could not climb, or create a trench underneath it.

Well Iroh was boosted by Sozin's comet that's why he could blast the wall with one strike.

Ngl, i dive the Baltimore harbor for work, and the key bridge being used as an example sent me.

Technically, fire is just air molecules that have been excited to a plasma, so it's closer to how katara can turn steam into ice than being created out of nowhere. I guess that makes firebenders just high-temperature air benders?

I hope the drill is in season 2 of the live action series.

I would love to see where they got all the material to make that behemoth. That drill might of had such a cost to it that the may of been won with its destruction alone.

My observation on the drill and why the Gaang didn't attack the internal systems is because of two things. One, there was a small army in there. Even the engineers should know how to fight and, while they're skilled, I don't think they're 50 to 3 in a cramped environment skilled at this point in time. Two, Aang's goal is to disable the drill, not destroy it. He is a pacifist, despite all evidence to the contrary. He doesn't want to directly kill anyone. So doing something like overloading the boilers and causing a steam explosion, while both cool and effective, would also cost a lot of lives and he would recognize this.

Use earth bending to bury or turn the drill around.

Well sure, many of the characters don't make the most strategic choices, but I think there's good reasons for that. Team avatar could have acted better, but they've never seen a machine like this before. They had very little time to come up with a plan and execute it. They are just kids and not trained engineers. Also, there's a lot more people around the more vulnerable parts, and they're trying to be stealthy. The earthbenders could have acted better, but they have to listen to the incompetent general. The general only holds his position because he can talk his way out of most problems. Ba Sing Se has seen so little war that people like him aren't really tested. Even still he has never seen a machine like this. He's confident in the wall, because it has always protected them enough to make enemies easy to deal with.

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.

First video 😁 Great thumbnail, great vid 👍

fire is the opposite of air because unlike airbending which move and flows like air, fire also manipulates air, but just like fire, the bending itself can be explosive and chaotic without a focus and fire just like air controls air but with more passion, where as air is about apathy

7:10, yeah, they were kids themselves. Fast forward to Republic City era, I'm sure Sokka and gang would have went after the mechanical systems. (never mind the skills the benders develop later) Thing was steam powered so Katara or Aang bending in the boiler room(s) would have doomed the machine too. Open all the valves, Katara halt's water flow in the steam engine while Aang fans the flames in the boilers. Whole thing would turn to slag.

Heck, during this episode, earthbenders do stop the drill, it just breaks into another segment and keeps moving, I just wonder why they didn't do that to the front of the drill instead.

We've seen E.B. create pillars an split the earth, so they could've just raised the drill really high, an left it there, or then drop into the hole from the earth used to make the pillars , then drop pillars onto them

To my understanding, firebending uses heat sources, primarily the sun, and then amplifies it to combustion. But other heat sources can be used, like Zuko maintaining his internal body heat to swim in the north pole. And for underground firebending my headcanon is benders utilizing geothermal energy. Combustion Man does this even further like a rule of cool magnofying glass. So firebending still follows conservation of energy like the rest of the bending techniques, but like airbending is just utilizing a functionally limitless and easily accessible element.

From a physics perspective, firebending could be igniting the Hydrogen + Oxygen in the air type of deal. So as long as theres air available, fire can be made.

You never said how you would have stopped the drill, aside from suggesting attacking the other workings. I was hoping for a breakdown! (And I'm a combat engineer also, so I of course have some ideas!)

fire bending requires both the heat from the sun (a giant ball of fire) and oxygen. that is it, they never explain why night time fire bending works, but that is how it is supposed to work. that is also why the eclipse has an effect on the fire benders.

You are correct Firebending is special like that The elements have a Ying Yang or rock/paper/scissors like relationship with each other where no one element is stronger than the other In practice.....iffy I wouldn't want to fight a waterbender in coastal or riverine settlements (the vast majority of settlements)

After seeing the Drill and Howl’s Moving Castle, now we need to do the vehicles and the Steam Castle from Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy. (Same guy who created Akira.)

ah, yes. "The rule of cool" is what helped Iroh take down the Wall. And I always thought it was Sozin's Comet...

Fire is created by oxidising certain things in the air so its likely the fire bending uses some amount of the air.