re: #291 wheat-dogg, raker of forests, master of steam

The Great Wall of China did not work. Hadrian’s Wall was mostly for show. The Berlin Wall worked, but required considerable manpower and armaments to make it effective. Also, it’s gone now.

Medieval cities were walled to protect them from marauding armies. They were not quite so effective once cannons came into play.

Walls are good at holding up roofs, though.

The Berlin Wall was meant to keep a population in, not to keep people out. It required over 40,000 Soviet soldiers to man it, complete with barbed wire, mines, etc., and it still failed to stop East Germans from escaping to the West - often at terrible cost in loss of life.

40,000 soldiers across… wait for it… just under 100 miles.