Hello, fellow WoT readers,

I felt nudged by Cannoli's post (very entertaining and sense-making, as usual) and his subsequent comments to add something to the silent board.

I will start with two quotes from The Guide:

"During the worst of it, these men, who could wield the One Power to a degree now unknown, caused even the weather to rebel, and the world saw storms of unimaginable fury." (emphasis on "to a degree now unknown"

Various fragmentary sources put the actual duration of the Breaking—that is, the major geological and climatic upheavals—at anywhere from 239 to 344 years.

I have always wondered how it could have gone on for so long, and simple logistics strongly support a much shorter time span.

First of all, the breaking was bad because it started in a time when male channelers were very well trained, had some access to angreal and worse, sa'angreal and ter'angreal, and were pretty strong in the Power (I am pretty sure centuries of channeling tradition had led to some channelers opting to only start a family with another channeler due to compatible lifespans, and a common major influence in both partners' lives, and thus the channeling genes were "concentrated" and "amplified" so to speak, resulting in stronger than average children).

So with that in mind the initial outburst that started about ten years after the Sealing - quote: "others put the real beginning as much as ten years later" was pretty devastating to civilization and infrastructure. Let us put the average remaining lifespan of an active male channeler with AoL training at ten years after first contact with the taint (and even that may be generous). Let us also assume that active recruiting and training of male sparkers and learners continued for ten years after the Sealing when it became crystal clear what the reason for the widespread insanity and following destruction was.

So that puts us at twenty (after sealing) very bad years of saidin - wrought destruction. But let's consider what those twenty years did to the infrastructure of society and the male channeling population. I keep emphasizing infrastructure, because that is what makes a male channeler dangerous - their advanced training. I think that an untrained wielder of saidin would be able to only cause a very small fraction of damage when compared to an established Aes Sedai - isolated earth tremors and some wildfires lacking scope. I think the taint madness only worked with what was already in the mind - it only twists but does not add anything new and certainly not knowledge of channeling.

So twenty after the Sealing almost every male Aes Sedai had died and no further recruiting and training was being done. That immediately brings down the male channeling population four or five-fold - because after this point only the ones with the spark would present any danger. The ones with potential to learn would certainly never get to use it. In addition, the ones causing destruction after those initial twenty years would all be untrained wilders - and three out of four of those would succumb to their inability to control saidin and be removed from the danger pool way before the taint effects kicked in. Those two factors alone reduce the danger pool sixteen to twenty times, and we have to also factor in the reduced damage potential of the untrained channelers and the general population decline.

From then on, let us give the remaining and scattered female Aes Sedai twenty to thirty years to dust themselves off, get on their feet, establish the relatively safe (geologically speaking) areas where to congregate and start organizing and protecting primitive villages. After that active seeking out and gentling of the remaining madmen could begin and with circles and some sort of supply lines, the females would have a pretty much guaranteed victory in every encounter (if two mad channelers were to encounter each other between zero and one would walk away, there is nothing to suggest that any of them banded together.)

All the above puts the total duration of the Breaking at sixty to seventy years tops and that may still be generous. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.