[listening to Rhuidean glass column chapters]
On previous reads I've always been so focused on The Aiel Revelation and the drilling of the Bore that I never really noticed how in the middle visions Rand is getting to first-hand live out the chaos of the Breaking that he, personally is responsible for. A lot of the climate descriptions hint at some kind of nuclear winter.
On my last reread I got really caught up in the mechanics of Lews Therin channeling hard enough to make Dragonmount - trying (and failing lol - physics nerds? 👀) to calculate how much energy he channeled down to literally pierce the Earth's crust and cause the formation of an active volcano that is "several miles high" and thought to be the highest mountain in the world, littered with the bones of those who tried to climb it...I feel like RJ is giving intentional Everest vibes here.
The Chicxulub meteor that caused the end-Cretaceous extinction and wiped out 76% of species on Earth is now thought to have "almost" penetrated the planet's crust, so the magnitude of LTT's death on a global scale, not just at the site of Dragonmount, must have been immense, probably accounted for a significant portion of the damage inflicted during the Breaking, and an impact/eruption of that scale would definitely produce nuclear winter-esqe conditions 😬
