How fast can a 💀Nazgul fly.?

[Vorondil]

In The Two Towers, Gandalf says that: ''It is two-hundred leagues or more in straight flight from Barad-Dur to Orthanc, and even a Nazgul would take a few hours to fly between them.'' I measured on the map, and it's about 590 miles between Barad-Dur and Orthanc, so if it flew that distance in 3 hours, it would give it a speed of around 196 miles per hour. Is that right?

 

[Olorgando]

But a lot was still known about them in Tolkien's time when he wrote LOTR. So if you were able to gain and /or augment your knowledge of volcanoes, isn't it fair to assume that The Professor would do the same? That if he was going to write about them, maybe he should learn a little (or more than a little) about them.

Please note that I posted "I may have" ...
And that I posted "in the first half of the 20th century", when JRRT was writing LotR.
In what details volcanology has progressed in the over 70 years since he finished writing it, you'd have to ask the professionals.
One thing I'm fairly certain of is sensory equipment. Both that measuring how the ground is raised by a rising lava dome, as well as that measuring the composition of the gases escaping from fissures - a change in which may be a warning signal.

JRRT died 50 years ago, when I was 17. Volcanology has certainly taken strides since then.

 

[Deimos]

You kind of skipped over over where I cited my sources about the type of volcano Mount Doom was , and its varying degrees of slope.
But...OK, I'll let that go.
As far as the History of Volcanology , I think what was known at the time Tolkien wrote LOTR, was enough that he could have done some research about it.
He knew something of botany, or a at least of plants and what climates supported what plants.
He knew something of astronomy.
He knew something of geology in the way of land and rock formations.
I don't see why he would not know something of volcanology.

 

[Olorgando]

You kind of skipped over over where I cited my sources about the type of volcano Mount Doom was , and its varying degrees of slope.
But...OK, I'll let that go.
As far as the History of Volcanology , I think what was known at the time Tolkien wrote LOTR, was enough that he could have done some research about it.
He knew something of botany, or a at least of plants and what climates supported what plants.
He knew something of astronomy.
He knew something of geology in the way of land and rock formations.
I don't see why he would not know something of volcanology.

OK, I gave your link a look. It had the gentler gradient on the lower slopes, while my source seems to have emphasized the steepness higher up.
As to botany and geology, I think is was concentrated on what occurs in the UK, or perhaps even England.
Astronomy mainly varies with latitude. There may have been a mention of "strange stars" in connection to Aragorn's sojourn in Harad.
But as far as I know, there are no active volcanoes in the UK. In all of Europe, they seem to be limited to Italy.
And anyway, a volcano that, I exaggerate, had an "on / off switch" in Barad-dûr falls outside of the scope of the science of volcanology.

 

[Deimos]

OK, I gave your link a look. It had the gentler gradient on the lower slopes, while my source seems to have emphasized the steepness higher up.
As to botany and geology, I think is was concentrated on what occurs in the UK, or perhaps even England.
Astronomy mainly varies with latitude. There may have been a mention of "strange stars" in connection to Aragorn's sojourn in Harad.
But as far as I know, there are no active volcanoes in the UK. In all of Europe, they seem to be limited to Italy.
And anyway, a volcano that, I exaggerate, had an "on / off switch" in Barad-dûr falls outside of the scope of the science of volcanology.

Ok....so could you restate your...what?....your objection to my argument for the eagles taking an hour to get to Mt Doom?
If it's that I saw/see nothing in what you've said that presents a good counter argument.
As for the cloud that covered the sky reaching all the way to Rohan, I never once thought that it had it's undirected origin in the volcano.
I always thought it was Sauron's direct doing .
And as for the Mt Doom on /off switch located at B-D, again, what are you arguing?

Sauron was a Maia.... he could perform a lot of "supernatural" actions, like simply make a dark cloud to extend across the land or control a volcano.
I happen to think he chose not to control Mt Doom directly, but let it do its eruptions on its own internal schedule.
But because it was under Sauron's dominion, as it were, that it convulsed at the destruction of the Ring is no surprise.
Sorry for my being obtuse, if not downright, stupid about it, but I'm not seeing your point.

 

[Olorgando]

Re-reading my posts (and your replies to them), my main point is treating Mount Doom as a real-world volcano won't work. With a Mount St. Helens eruption, eagles at warp speed would not have saved Frodo & Sam. No real-world volcano could have spread that kind of a cloud without serious, perhaps disastrous ash and cinder "rain" along its path, decreasing with distance. The pyroclastic flow would have annihilated all of those camps Frodo and Sam saw barring their way to Mount Doom just after having escaped the Tower of Cirith Ungol - and would have made this route of access impassable, anyway. I have no argument whatsoever against your estimate of the eagles with Gandalf taking an hour to reach Frodo and Sam. But Mount Doom was a fantasy volcano, irrespective of JRRT's actual knowledge of volcnology at the time of his writing.

 

[Deimos]

Re-reading my posts (and your replies to them), my main point is treating Mount Doom as a real-world volcano won't work. With a Mount St. Helens eruption, eagles at warp speed would not have saved Frodo & Sam. No real-world volcano could have spread that kind of a cloud without serious, perhaps disastrous ash and cinder "rain" along its path, decreasing with distance. The pyroclastic flow would have annihilated all of those camps Frodo and Sam saw barring their way to Mount Doom just after having escaped the Tower of Cirith Ungol - and would have made this route of access impassable, anyway. I have no argument whatsoever against your estimate of the eagles with Gandalf taking an hour to reach Frodo and Sam. But Mount Doom was a fantasy volcano, irrespective of JRRT's actual knowledge of volcnology at the time of his writing.

Oh...Ok...no argument with that... of course it was a fantasy volcano.
Imladris was a fantasy house built on waterfall.
Tom Bombadil built a most elaborate house in the middle of nowhere.
Moria was a huge fantasy underground construction.
Orthanc was a 500 ft tower of nearly impervious carved stone.
The old Forest and Fangon are inhabited by sentient plants.
Athelas is a fantasy plant as is the White Tree, and the Mallorn.

I'm not being snarky.
All these ME things barely conform or only superficially resemble similar things in our world.
But I thought that was a given, that we all knew that. It's fantasy.
So OK..... I'm good with that.

And as you say, not much was known about volcanoes when Tolkien wrote LOTR.
But it wasn't the case that nothing was known.

Just because there are no volcanoes in England it doesn't follow that Tolkien would not know about them.
The man didn't live in a natural history bubble (or vacuum) .

You can bet he knew about:
1)Pompeii being destroyed by Mt Vesuvias in 79AD.
2)The Laki eruption in Iceland in 1783. The toxic fumes killed 23,000 in Britain
3) Krakatoa's thunderous eruption in 1883, so violent that it was heard in Australia.

There's good probability that he read Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth.
He had probably seen pictures (photographs) of Mt Fuji and Mt Aetna, two very famous volcanoes., and both are stratovolcanoes.
So even tho' he didn't know about pyroclastic flows or internal seismic vibrations, or the structural impossibility of the Sammath Naur, he very likely knew the shape of a stratovolcanoe , such that he used it as general model for Mount Doom.

Similarly he knew a lot about trees and plants (and he hated the creeping industrialization of the country-side), but maybe he didn't know precisely how root systems work or cellular photosynthesis.
And 21st Century botanist (volcanologist) comes along and says "my main point is treating a Mallorn (Mount Doom) as a real-world tree (volcano) won't work."
And my answer in both cases is: it depends on the writer's reason(s) for using them at all.
And to the extent that Tolkien wanted them in the story, he presented them pretty realistically.

 

[Ent]

We see Faith, Choice, Providence and the 4th pillar though I only tangentially mention it in the Work so far worked out from beginning to end, in virtually every character and scene Tolkien writes.

Just returning to this theme for an instant, as in reading over every reference to Gollum I bumped into this quip from Tolkien in Letter #246.

"Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. " Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (p. 326). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

So we see from Tolkien himself, Providence is one of his key pillars...seeing Frodo completely as an instrument of Providence in accomplishing the plan of Eru.

And if Frodo was an instrument of Providence, therefore Bilbo too, was an instrument of providence, and we could say Gollum himself was an instrument of Providence... though of a very different nature, but with the same end purpose.

This will all be explained in the book.

 

[Deimos]

Just returning to this theme for an instant, as in reading over every reference to Gollum I bumped into this quip from Tolkien in Letter #246.

"Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. " Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (p. 326). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

So we see from Tolkien himself, Providence is one of his key pillars...seeing Frodo completely as an instrument of Providence in accomplishing the plan of Eru.

And if Frodo was an instrument of Providence, therefore Bilbo too, was an instrument of providence, and we could say Gollum himself was an instrument of Providence... though of a very different nature, but with the same end purpose.

This will all be explained in the book.

Just as Melkor "was an instrument of Providence...though of a very different nature....".
Eru/God does not compel (violate free will) which, of course, Tolkien knew.
If one conforms his will to Eru's, fine and good.
If one pursues his own will in defiance of Eru, He will still turn one's defiant act to His own purpose to accomplish His own will/intent.