104 ms·

> 3. If staircases were genuinely engineered for military purposes, then we should always find that they turn clockwise. However [...] there are a substantial m

by ptx 5y ago

> 3. If staircases were genuinely engineered for military purposes, then we should always find that they turn clockwise. However [...] there are a substantial minority of newels which turn anti-clockwise (approximately 30% of all surviving examples). Couldn't this minority be explained by engineers either doing it wrong, being given bad requirements or being overruled by misguided management? I.e., the clockwise turn was indeed for military purposes and as much as 70% of projects were done correctly but in 30% of projects one or more project management issues led to the staircases being built wrong. > 4. The direction of a spiral staircase was an architectural decision, not a military one. Perhaps different stakeholders had different priorities and the military advantage was one of many considerations.

Spooky23 5y ago
Exactly. I found this article a poor rebuttal. As a lefty who is pretty clumsy on the right, there are many implicit design decisions that favor whatever right handed people do for the simple reason that most people are right handed. There was accommodations for lefty’s in some ancient battle formations, so while it may be a myth, it may be one with a kernel of truth as conventions for things like castle construction are probably ancient and lost to modern people.
bluGill 5y ago
I doubt all architects knew all the details. They would look into how to defend the attacks they expected, and the ones they had given to others. It is entirely possible that the trope is true, but only for a small minority of castles where they expected such fighting, and in the vast majority it is false because they didn't expect it. If it is true, you would expect other evidence that in the design that they expected the walls to be breached and thus have to fight in such a way, and also that it wasn't a hopeless idea to fight on. This does seem unlikely based on what I know of historical war, but I'll freely admit what I know is minimal. Any real historians care to comment?
jameshart 5y ago
Any programmer should be able to spot the syllogism here, yes. Just because something is a security best practice definitely does not guarantee that it will be followed universally by architects. Not all the castle builders were up to speed on CVE-1271-53 “left-handed spiral staircases enable swordsman overflow attacks”, and more importantly their clients didn’t know how to evaluate a competent castle architect either. Maybe they should have had some sort of certification scheme. But even then, once a pen tester gets in and tells you your staircases were built backwards, what are you going to do? They’re made of stone and built into structural walls in a tall building.
- jameshart 5y ago
  In fact, one of the top rated questions on SiegeOverflow in the 1400s was Should spiral staircases always turn to the right? (1879 points. Locked. Comments on this question have been disabled) I'm a journeyman castle engineer to a FAANG house, and my master stonemason insists that spiral staircases should always turn to the right. He says they're more secure. But our accessibility team say that a left turn is preferable for carrying heavy loads up the stairs. The designer wants the staircase to have open wooden treads every fifth step. Does that negate the security concerns? Who's right? Accepted answer (4471 votes) Why are you using a spiral staircase? A straight staircase is easier to maintain. (Closed by moderator. Not siege related.)
  - JackFr 5y ago
    I wish I could upvote this more
  - leoc 5y ago
    'Siege overflow' is one of the standard attacks on the security of a fortification system. It often employs ladders while the related 'underflow' attacks use mines. In time, rapidly advancing technology made it feasible to simply overwhelm legacy systems with brute force attacks using gunpowder.
  - rjsw 5y ago
    I suspect that FAANG armies have higher numbers of left-handed people, at my PPOE it was around 50%, this could change the argument for spiral staircase direction.
rtkwe 5y ago
Yeah 3 is pretty weak because it depends on knowledge flowing freely and quickly when you as a noble wouldn't want your fortress builder talking to potential or actual enemy fortress builders improving their defenses. It'd be a better example if they could show the same architect used both directions in different castles or the same castle.

by ptx 5y ago

Spooky23 5y ago

Exactly. I found this article a poor rebuttal. As a lefty who is pretty clumsy on the right, there are many implicit design decisions that favor whatever right handed people do for the simple reason that most people are right handed. There was accommodations for lefty’s in some ancient battle formations, so while it may be a myth, it may be one with a kernel of truth as conventions for things like castle construction are probably ancient and lost to modern people.

bluGill 5y ago

I doubt all architects knew all the details. They would look into how to defend the attacks they expected, and the ones they had given to others. It is entirely possible that the trope is true, but only for a small minority of castles where they expected such fighting, and in the vast majority it is false because they didn't expect it. If it is true, you would expect other evidence that in the design that they expected the walls to be breached and thus have to fight in such a way, and also that it wasn't a hopeless idea to fight on. This does seem unlikely based on what I know of historical war, but I'll freely admit what I know is minimal. Any real historians care to comment?

jameshart 5y ago

Any programmer should be able to spot the syllogism here, yes. Just because something is a security best practice definitely does not guarantee that it will be followed universally by architects. Not all the castle builders were up to speed on CVE-1271-53 “left-handed spiral staircases enable swordsman overflow attacks”, and more importantly their clients didn’t know how to evaluate a competent castle architect either. Maybe they should have had some sort of certification scheme. But even then, once a pen tester gets in and tells you your staircases were built backwards, what are you going to do? They’re made of stone and built into structural walls in a tall building.

jameshart 5y ago
In fact, one of the top rated questions on SiegeOverflow in the 1400s was Should spiral staircases always turn to the right? (1879 points. Locked. Comments on this question have been disabled) I'm a journeyman castle engineer to a FAANG house, and my master stonemason insists that spiral staircases should always turn to the right. He says they're more secure. But our accessibility team say that a left turn is preferable for carrying heavy loads up the stairs. The designer wants the staircase to have open wooden treads every fifth step. Does that negate the security concerns? Who's right? Accepted answer (4471 votes) Why are you using a spiral staircase? A straight staircase is easier to maintain. (Closed by moderator. Not siege related.)
- JackFr 5y ago
  I wish I could upvote this more
- leoc 5y ago
  'Siege overflow' is one of the standard attacks on the security of a fortification system. It often employs ladders while the related 'underflow' attacks use mines. In time, rapidly advancing technology made it feasible to simply overwhelm legacy systems with brute force attacks using gunpowder.
- rjsw 5y ago
  I suspect that FAANG armies have higher numbers of left-handed people, at my PPOE it was around 50%, this could change the argument for spiral staircase direction.

rtkwe 5y ago

Yeah 3 is pretty weak because it depends on knowledge flowing freely and quickly when you as a noble wouldn't want your fortress builder talking to potential or actual enemy fortress builders improving their defenses. It'd be a better example if they could show the same architect used both directions in different castles or the same castle.