Sobering facts

First a few sobering facts:

When it was planned, the Wall was 670 km long. By the end it was over several thousand kilometres.

To the casual observer it is somewhat puzzling to imagine it from this stretch of wall… Today what remains is about twenty kilometres of the thick concrete. - About eight metres high in most places, but higher in others…

At some points the wall was over a hundred metres deep. It was three times as high and twice as wide as the Berlin Wall. It was surrounded at a distance by nests of barbed wires, rolled like stacks of hay piled high around it.

High voltage circuits ran through the so-called “smart fences” that lined the perimeter of the barrier. Between the fence and the wall was a trench over two meters deep, studded with piercing metal spikes. Outside the smaller fence was a path of finely ground sand that was groomed to make footprints visible.