that's not a tiny shack.

Also, brace yourself

 

Thanks for the screenshots. As is plainly obvious, this is not a tiny shack. The notion of this tower crushing that fence seems only logical to me.

 

OP is flat out wrong about a large building not being sufficient to tip the fence over. And since the walls are braced together for strength, when one goes down a huge portion of adjacent walls would come down too. Its pretty simple physics. And people have been commenting on the bracing being on the wrong side since the 1st ep at Alexandria.

 

Was that the tower of Babel?

 

Also remember the people that built this fence -- a naive bunch who didn't see too many humans or walkers this whole time since Northern VA was effectively evacuated (Deanna told Rick as much during his interview). Reg didn't design the wall to withstand attacks from human aggressors or large, sudden impacts. It's primary function was to keep out walkers, which it was doing a decent job of.

I'm surprised nobody noticed the condition of this tower though. The audience saw it swaying and leaning. Rick was more interested in screwing some puny 2x6's in.

 

I'm glad you brought all of that up. I have a degree in Engineering and I gotta say that I'm impressed with your analysis of why it's plausible for that wall to have been crushed by that building. The building was on the same side of the wall supports. Those wall supports are ridiculous. They are designed to withstand pressure and force from the inside out. Not the outside in. The building fell from the outside in. The building also had additional force from above due to gravity.

The wall itself is primarily a heavy gauge of sheet metal. Albeit strong material in most cases, it's not strong enough to withstand several tons of material falling on it from above while only having one side of supports. The surface area of the metal (the sides of the walls) are actually extremely weak when force is applied from above. The metal will bend and/or fold along the sides of the wall.

I personally have witnessed this happen to me on a much smaller scale (and without the zombies, lol). I live in front of a small forest of 60-120 foot tall Evergreen trees. Every year around this time, the wind kicks up and manages to snap giant branches off of these trees. The branches fall and 99 times out of 100, there's nothing to worry about. However one year, a very large branch about 30 feet long snapped off of a tree, it fell and it completely obliterated my chain-linked fence.

Chain-linked fence?!?!? hahahahaha! Those are nothing compared to the ASZ wall, right? Yes, it's not. But my chain-linked fence is rated to withstand hurricane force winds and it's foundation posts are meant to hold up against a pretty significant mudslide. Yet when a 250 pound (or heavier) tree branch fell on top of it from 80 feet above, my fence stood no chance against it. The branch fell on top of my fence from a perpendicular perspective, meaning that only the diameter of the branch was what made contact with my fence, not the entire length of the fence. Yet, that 8" of branch diameter crushed the point of impact and caused damage to 10 feet of my fence on each side of where the impact took place.

My point... 250 pounds of tree branch from above took down my wall. Several tons of lumber from a busted old building coming down on that wall could do the same.

 

If only Beth's ghost had warned Maggie about the herd sooner . Oh well, sucks we will lose Alexandria. And there is no way Jessie is dying, right?

 

LOL! nice one guys

 

see! told all ya

 

Some good analysis QuantumCurt and Jama, cheers.

 

Of course your chain link fence is hurricane rated, I would assume they all are. There is little surface area for the wind load and the posts are made of thin gauge metal. As far as the limb, the fence took the whole load of the limb, amount of surface area coming in contactthe fence only changes the stress not force. stress equals force divided by area. Actually the small amount of area coming in contact with the fence increases stress. You really can't compare your chain link fence to this wall.
As far as the braces go,why were they on the wrong side? The wall succeeded in doing what it suppose to do and then some. It wasnt knocked down when the truck hit it. The walkers didn't push thruogh it either. The wall was toppled by an unforseen event which it wasnt designed for.

 

I'm not really following your point. I acknowledge that my fence doesn't compare to the wall. My point is that the force of a large object falling above can overwhelm the structural integrity of the wall. The braces were designed to repel force from the inside out, not from the outside in. Said force from the building toppling onto the wall came from the outside toward the inside and gravity helped aid the force of impact. None of that matters anyway because....

^^^
That, lol

 

I don't know if I would have done it that way or not. Did the truck ever hit that building or just the wall? I can't remember (I always have to watch each episode at least twice). Because that would have made a lot of sense for why it fell.

But in all honesty, if I was a writer, I would have likely developed a Wile E. Coyote type character back in season 4. He appears to be normal at first, but by the time we get to present day, I would have his character devolve into a moron who's obsessed with birds. He would then rig a series of traps and explosive devices inside of said building as a means to catch and kill birds for food.

But you know good ol' Wile E.... Things just never seem to work out for that guy. KABOOM!!! As the building falls, he holds up a little sign that says "Rick made me do it" as he falls to his demise.

Several scenes later, Wile E. has turned into Wile Z. Coyote and he attacks Denise and eats her. Because she basically looks like a giant rotisserie chicken already, so it makes sense, am I right? Of course I am.

 

In a prior thread, someone posted a show from the comic. There are no braces on the walls on either side. I think the braces were added so the wall would meet real-life building codes.

And someone else posted a picture of the truck going through the building before hitting the wall. The building was severely compromised. Sidenote: there was a horizontal brace running from the wall to the building.

Even with braces on the inside, the wall would have come down. The cladding would have given way first, and then pulled the columns down laterally to the braces.

I think the way it was written was pretty good. The writers may not listen to military or medical persons for technical advice, but they got the collapse of the tower and the wall right.

 

I think it was pretty well done. It was tied together well with the rest of the events in the season. I think a zombie pileup or something like that would have just been too predictable. The fall of the tower was obviously foreshadowed throughout the earlier parts of the episode, and even in earlier episodes. I've noticed that big post-semi rip in the tower in the last couple episodes that have been set in Alexandria. The residents of the ASZ clearly haven't though, so it was a sudden surprise, and in my opinion it was a good plot twist. They all obviously knew that they had a big problem right outside the walls, but everyone was still at least relatively confident that the walls were going to continue to hold. They were "catching their breath" as was mentioned in the episode. Then all of a sudden that safety just came crashing down.

In a sense I think it was rather poetic. The Wolves breached their walls, and they were taken care of. The walkers hadn't been able to penetrate the wall, so they still had time to sit down and calmly form a plan. Ultimately, the wall is compromised by themselves and their own lack of foresight. I suppose they couldn't have predicted that a semi was going to crash through their building and into the wall, but Reg, as someone who made a career of paying attention to these things, should have seen the half-burnt church steeple as something of a hazard and taken appropriate precautionary measures. So I blame Reg.

 

The braces resist a force pushing from the outside in because it is a tension design. I know this because some the braces connections are shackle connections. Shackle connections only work in tension. Besides the braces dont carry much load when force is applied near the bottom. The braces are more for stabilization when the wall is subjected to wind load to reduce sway. If the wall was allowed to sway unrestrained, you would eventually have a wall failing from fatigue stress near the footers. It would be similar to bending a clothes hanger back and forth until it breaks.

 

Hey you're talking about me! :zombies_cool:

 

The walls design is simliar to a retaining wall design.