LoK has it as a thing that Firebenders could earn a living with, generating electricity... by shooting lightning at ...a battery?? conductor???
(which was known by exactly three benders at the end of Last Airbender, one of which gets his bending striped, the second being implied to have been institutionalized, and the third being someone who wouldn't spread that sort of technique to just any rogue firebender right after the close of a war when hostilities are still high)
@lizardlicks I kind of know that, but for some reason I didn't think it was impossible. But when you say it like that, this canon really seems silly.
I read somewhere that atla is dieselpunk. Although I saw stokers also. So maybe this is a transition period from steam to diesel for Fire Nation. It's harder for me to tell about Earth Kingdom, because the only advanced thing I've seen there is a rock train, whose counterpart in our history may be a horse-drawn railway. Otherwise, they have no hint of technology, it could be any era from the Middle Ages to pre-steam. On the other hand, the Mechanist had to get his ideas and tools from somewhere.
Although now I remember that there could have been a motorboat ship in the Full Moon bay. So it's the steam or diesel era in Ba Sing Se too.
And while we're speaking of it, we can consider Water Tribes as well.
At such low temperatures as at the poles, metal is not as convenient and accessible as usual. Firstly, in the cold, metal can freeze to your hands and it will hurt to peel it off. And secondly, if you try to forge or cast metal in the cold, it can become brittle, almost like glass. I remember teacher showed us a video in university where a cast anchor was dropped from a height of several meters in winter and it shattered almost like glass. If I remember correctly, the reason was casting the anchor in an unheated workshop at a low air temperature.
(Ā A phenomenon known asĀ cold brittlenessĀ or low-temperature embrittlement)
If you watch the series in NWT again, you may notice that they don't have a lot of wood or metal, mostly ice and bone. Even the supports of the grinding machines are made of tusks or ribs. I don't know how realistic or convenient this is, but it's an interesting idea.
So Water Tribes have metal products, but their own metallurgy will not be very competitive and bigger part of them can be imported.
P.S. Here I'm talking about temperatures below -20Ā°C (-13Ā°F), not near 0Ā°C. At this temperature, it is already possible to stick to metal.
Above the Arctic Circle, the average temperature in winter can be -40Ā°Š” in some towns, the max (min?) mark for one day is about -70Ā°Š” (-94Ā°F)
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