the body movements make it look like earth bending that blends air and earth bending forms to me. it's possible the dust is a partial animation error or a style decision that didn't work out
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.
Awesome, this is the kind of comment I was looking for. I was just rewatching the end of season 3 last night, where the spiritual side affects zuko! Bending is so interesting
@@nicholaslogan6840 It's not that they're bending fire *from* the sun to be fair, it's moreso that the sun is the spiritual embodiment of fire, if I recall correctly. The sun increases the power of firebending during the day, the same as how the moon empowers waterbending during the night. As such, firebenders is completely negated during a solar eclipse, with the same being true for a lunar eclipse. Or, in the case of the events at the Northern Water Tribe, when the moon spirit was killed by the general.
yeah, I think when it comes to chi, it's important to remember that the power the benders are using is also tied very strongly with celestial bodies. and none moreso than the firebenders. the sun being covered by the moon entirely robs them of their powers, while the inverse makes them incredibly more powerful. so I'd say rather than the power coming from the bender itself, it's coming from the sun.
My main criticism with just widening the wall was that the stone used for earth bending has to come from somewhere and presumably when someone raises rocks from the ground without leaving a hole they are just making a cavern underground to keep the surface level and if they did that with an amount of stone the size of the wall, it would probably cause a collapse.
Ultimately widening (thickening) the wall wouldn’t have stopped the attack, it would have prolonged the inevitable. The drill was more than well equipped to punch through whatever the Earth Kingdom could bring to bear. It was purpose built for punching through walls, the way to stop it isn’t more wall. But drills are notoriously finicky devices, and you could have knocked it off course or caused it to collapse under its own weight if you had a contingent of powerful and well trained earthbenders up to the task, as well as someone to protect them from the fire nation.
@@Adeathwishtolive It was made to punch through a certain length of wall, perhaps just widening would defeat it because a huge wall isn’t what it was designed for, but you’re probably right.
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.
That’s a great point, the addition of a force would mean the speed is somewhat irrelevant, though it would’ve been a real workout for the waterbenders!
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
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.
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!"
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.
attacking the structural elements is like stabbing some ones ribs, will it hurt if you do enough damage? yes. could you kill them ? if you do it right, should you have gone for the throat yes, would it have made a less interesting episode yes.
There was a pretty quick response when that first valve was broken, so if they went for more pipes that leaves a pretty good trail for guards to follow. Going for the structure kept them unnoticed for a good amount of time
@@bennuter Your comparison doesn't hold well, because living beings die (permanently), but machines are mostly just temporarily rendered inoperable, while remaining repairable. With a full crew of fire bender engineers which are probably assembly line specialists and the right schematics on hand, they could probably get the drill back up and running from most if not all sabotage attempts. They would not be able to recover from the whole drill chassis getting totalled, however, at least not out there in the field.
That's what I don't get about this video. If there were to be a giant drill attack, there would be a war of some sort. We all know that is not the case. So I don't know what this video is taking about.
@@AiluropodaPanda No but the drill isn't actually used for military purposes here, clearly it was meant to be used for construction & maintenance work, the earth kingdom hired overseas workers to gauge the skill differences and stimulate the economy.
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!
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 😂
I get the impression that the Fire Nation is quite proud of their firebending and they consider other elements inferior. As such, they prefer to build tools that use firebending to accomplish things raw fire could not. Think of their ships or the tanks.
Would be way too dangerous. No earthbender would agree to work for the Fire Nation and even if they did, there would always be the risk of them committing treason and sabotaging the mission, or simply use the opportunity to escape. The Fire Nation, mistrusting and fearing other benders, would never take that risk.
"The superior element..." -Admiral Zhao during his speech. Yea I don't think the nation whose whole reason for starting the war was to “Spread the good and technological might of the fire nation all over the world" would employ foreing benders. Especially not ones from a city they had taken over like probably a couple weeks to a month ago.
Air can do that, and you're really lucky to still be here. Air embolism is a thing. The air gets into a blood vessel, reaches something important and it's goodnight.
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.
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!
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
Thanks for the feedback! I try not too dive too deep into the engineering even though sometimes I’d really want to (my dragonball video is an example of that), but I recognize my audience aren’t usually engineers. And thanks for the channel recs, I’ll be sure to check them out
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Part way into watching the episode, me and my bros realized, they could've tricked the drill into falling down a slope halfway in the wall, and have it drill deep into the earth, burying it into uselessness.
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.
So just a thought. If the earth benders guarding the city can create and move a 20 meters thick wall of rock, what could stop them from making a chasm below the drill to make it fall/incapacitate it ?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.)
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.
I had to take statics as an Electrical Engineer and got a ptsd flashback at seeing that math again. Then the warning that it was not a meme sent me straight into a Fortunate Sun flash back.
for firebending rather then creation from nothing its more of a conceptual type of bending from what I can tell turning their Anger which as emotions go is quite fiery and manifesting it as a literal fire which is why even Zuko's rediscovered firebending technique still relied on emotions just a different source of emotion rather then anger and hatred so while the other 3 elements are more focused on bending sources in their surroundings or well Physical Bending, Firebending which while it can be used for Physical Bending is more focused on Emotional Bending with an emphasis on Actualizing their emotions as pure fiery energy Edit: and that might not be how it actually is lore-wise but that is how it seemed to me and frankly it makes as much sense as @chaos4654 said below about Chi
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.
@@GoranXII Since its energy control I wonder if you could use fire bending to force people’s neurons to fire or muscles to flex. Or crazier use the bodies ATP reserves to combust people
But, water benders can freeze things? And metal benders can bend metal which releases a huge amount of heat if you ever player with metal coat hangers. Not a huge deal compared to how much air molecules move all the time but air benders manipulate them too. Tldr: every part of the avatar world should run on perpetual motion machines powered by benders. Just imagine the free power from being able to bend water back to the top of a dam!😮
@@MarixchatUwU Possibly you could, though I imagine such bending would be not only crazy-hard to learn, but also reviled, the same way blood-bending is.
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.
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.
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)
good video but i feel the need to point out at 9:40 when you say "maybe they could widen the walls or something?" that wouldnt work, no bender can create matter. at best the earthbenders could extend the wall into the city, which, yknow, kinda counter intuitive lol.
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.
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.
I would have just taken some earth benders from the fire nation colonies (bonus points if they were already married to fire benders), had them start digging VERY QUIETLY far away underground with a small, hidden opening, make a tunnel big enough for an invading army, and once they reach the inside of the inner ring, expand the other hidden opening, bring a large army, have said earthbenders protect from any caveins, and attack.
Yeah I watched this part of Avatar and ask myself: "Why they don't take atleast 10 benders to drag earth outside using bending, and another 10 or 15 benders to recreate a chunk of that wall and push it on that exact part."
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
if i was responsible for the defence of the wall, id have the earth benders make a gradual slope where the drill will poke through so they would drill down not flat so they would either have to stop or risk being surrounded by tons of earth that would give my side a unchallenged advantage over the enemy
Because firebending becomes more difficult in the cold it seems that firebending may be more like raising the temperature of objects. So it isn’t created but rather is using the “chi” in someone’s body as an energy source to create a plasma. So is not “from nothing” since it still needs a material to impart the energy into.
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.
Yeah.. I never got why the defending Earthbenders tried throwing rocks at what is essentially a giant armored tank. And when it didn't work, they just kind of gave up. No "Hey maybe we could disrupt the EARTH the thing is moving over, or make a giant spike to throw at them instead of these round rocks." Nope, just threw some rocks, gave up, and went home.
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.
Agreed that some of the atoms are there but I don’t think the air is generally chemically composed for combustion. The fuel for a fire usually is a hydrocarbon of sorts, and there isnt much of either in the air, especially on their own.
probably a silly question but how about sinking the drill underground ? the whole city is full of powerful earth benders so they could just make a big hole under the miner and make sure they would not show up in the middle of the city but rather on the other side if they were still able to continue
Maybe they could have made the wall thicker, but do you remember the shot where the drill breaks through? There were houses there. You don't want to bury those people in wall.
the earth benders could also have made a moat whils reinforcing the wall with the moat earht doesn't need to be steep just deep form the enemys side since we want them to go down in an useless angle.
This was excellent. It was only on my recent rewatch of ATLA that I started to question the drill using a slurry. If that much water is getting dumped out the back, that thing must have massive water reserves. Your comment about using a simple corkscrew conveyor makes way more sense, but I agree that it makes for a more impressive coup d'etat and plot. Also, that Earthbender "garrison" is pathetic. They could have anybody dropping boulders from the top of the wall. Why the hell didn't they extend the wall? They could have certainly kept pace with the drill
