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Roshar has lower gravity than Earth, and the bridges are made of an exceptionally light but strong type of wood, quite possibly Soulcast. The Alethi archers open up an especially heavy volley on the Parshendi as the bridges are being lowered, suppressing them to allow the cavalry to cross the bridge before it can be pushed clear.

Atium does break the rules for allomantic metals; it's an external temporal metal even though one already exists and it's got at least 16 allomantically active alloys. So even if not working on aluminum is universal instead of specific to the physical and mental metals, it's possible Atium breaks that rule too. There's also precedent for it working on things steel doesn't, because there is no indication Inquisitor shadows were missing the spikes. If aluminum does block it, would it hide the shadows of things where it was going to be? If someone raised an aluminum gun, would their shadow lack the portion that would be hidden by the gun when they raise it?

I think Vin would have noticed Duraluminum being inert, since she kept vials containing it around. While she might have simply missed that because of the other metals in the vials, over the course of a year or two she'd probably have realized there weren't as many metal lines as there should be, especially once she started giving Elend a crash course in Allomancy. That, plus its allomantic effect is elemental aluminum's outright opposite Of course, the nobility apparently didn't realize aluminum was Allomantically inert, but bear in mind that aluminum was outrageously expensive with their technology level. The only possible reason for Mistborn to carry it around while doing things would be if they realized it was inert, they'd only encounter it with their steel/iron on during fights inside keeps while understandably a bit too preoccupied to notice a handful of missing metal lines from the fine diningware cabinet and even if one of them did notice it's quite possible they never did anything with it because it was way too expensive to expend making a knife worse than the nonmetallic ones they've already got. And an aluminum hat would probably take more aluminum than many noble houses even had. Even come Alloy Of Law it's apparently expensive enough that a wealthy noble family is willing to risk smuggling it under a false manifest listing in order to dodge taxes and Ranette's special bullets-what-kill-allomancers exist because she outright could not afford aluminum. As for whether it works on Atium, that is a very good question. Atium appears to be an external temporal metal, but it also breaks the standard rules and aluminum does not seem to effect the normal external temporals. Wayne encases aluminum-armed attackers in speed bubbles and they apparently deflect incoming fire from the Vanishers after they switch to aluminum, while Marasi got a slowing bubble around Miles, who might have still had his aluminum gun with him. So it might just be inert to the "lower"-mental and physical- metals. An obvious test would be to have a Leecher try to drain an Aluminum Gnat.

IIRC, the entire first part, the one with the death quotes, contained no Dalinar or Adolin chapters at all. I am entirely certain Kaladin's first bridge run happened before any of their chapters, because I know I hadn't reached details on gemhearts at that point, and gemhearts are mentioned in the very first chunk of Dalinar/Adolin chapters, that being the Chasmfiend hunt. Shallan's whole becoming Jasnah's ward drama happens before that point in the book.

I doubt copper wave interference could be kept secret. You'd get it somewhere fairly frequently whenever two people are burning copper at the same time, which is hardly a rare occurrence. Smokers and many Mistborn never seem to turn it off, and go to huge parties full of Allomancers all the time. Atium, however, is outrageously expensive, so Seers would only be discovered as a result of a concerted research effort, the people who found out would want to keep it a secret, and only 1/16 Mistings are Seers, and not all of them have necessarily Snapped.

The Alethi armies are capable of supporting themselves entirely off Soulcasters as long as they keep up a regular supply of Gemhearts. Merchants provide them with redundancy but are not strictly necessary. I don't consider working the bridgemen hard to be the main moral issue with using them. People do grueling work for long periods of time on a fairly regular basis. The soldiers themselves get pretty exhausted from force-marching to plateaus and then fighting for hours. Probably the physical labor of just moving the bridge deserves somewhat better pay, but it's not terribly different from performing construction work all day in midsummer. The part where they get sacrificed by the dozens every single battle is the part that Dalinar rightly takes issue with. It's true that carrying the bridge in armor would be pretty difficult, but it'd be possible to have unarmored bridgemen most of the way and then have a rotating assignment among the heavy infantry companies to do the final assault.

Do note that the importance of symmetry is partially imposed by Vorinism. The real names of the Heralds are not universally symmetrical, as the Stormfather's real name is not. Kalak and Ishi really do have symmetrical names, but it is not clear how many others do. Now, the big Roshar number is ten. There's ten kingdoms, ten heralds, ten orders of Knights Radiant, ten types of stormlight-bearing gemstones.

It'd probably have worked out if every bridge crew had been properly drilled in the side-carry method. However, only Bridge Four had any prior experience with the method at all, and the problem was compounded when parts of crews tried to switch and the rest of the bridgemen in those crews tried to keep going the normal way. I think the side-carry as a tactic is fundamentally sound assuming trained crews and careful timing to minimize the exposure of the soldiers to Parshendi fire. The assault on the Tower had neither, so it rapidly transformed into a complete disaster. Also, it would probably be more effective to use a tesudo formation of sorts, with the bridge overhead and a line of shields in front. Though that would probably need a lot more drill to get working.

The sense I got from all the scenes with Atium, plus its reputation as an unstoppable engine of doom to the point where even Mistborn who are on the wrong side of someone with more Atium are completely doomed, is that if there is any possible action available to an uncontested Atium burner that results in them surviving a situation they will know to take it. I wouldn't say that Atium can't be controlled, though. Vin opted to run through a room of Hazekillers without hurting any of them, and had no difficulty. It does seem to work via the conscious mind, because when Vin took Shan and Zane off-guard with unexpected future sight they froze up briefly. The limiting factor on Atium has always been indicated as duration. I expect a Seer could in fact make like Neo... for about thirty seconds. Likewise, I'm pretty sure that's why Seers started dropping in the battle of the Pits: They ran out of Atium and turned into entirely normal partially-trained soldiers.

The side-bridge incident was actually largely a disaster all around because most of the bridge crews fell apart and failed to reach the chasm. That completely ruined the initial heavy cavalry charge and got the crossing forces surrounded and obliterated. That being said, I suspect properly-drilled armored bridgemen and careful timing of the charge over the bridge would result in much lower casualty rates overall. It would be a bit pricy and time-consuming to train for, though. Also, I'm not entirely sure if the Alethi have the Roman-style tower shields that would be needed to make the bridge crew virtually invulnerable to arrow fire while carrying the bridge.

It's probably not Dawnchant, mostly because Dalinar's babbling during the visions is Dawnchant and Adolin does not notice any connection.

All evidence from the trilogy indicates Atium burners are essentially unkillable except by obtaining information from the future while they still have Atium. Not one single Seer or Atium-equipped Mistborn is in a situation that cannot be described as winning when fighting someone without Atium or Electrum throughout the trilogy aside from Zane, who died because Vin reacting to his actions produced a temporal paradox. The main limiting factor on Atium is that it is rare and burns outrageously quickly. 90% of the production of the Pits for a thousand years was consumed by 200 Atium burners in a few hours. It is literally divine power made manifest, and all indications are that it essentially does make users invincible while in use. Massed automatic weapons might be able to take down a Seer but probably not a Mistborn by producing a situation where every location they can reach will be filled with bullets, but they're not going to go down to a single AK-47.

I am dubious that bullets would be too fast for Atium-enhanced reflexes to deal with. While we've never seen anything as fast as a bullet interacting with an Atium burner (except possibly Bloody Tan, who is confirmed to not be a Seer but definitely has something up), we have seen Atium burners in extremely complex situations perform pretty elaborate maneuvers without any noticeable difficulty. For instance, the huge battle outside the Pits, where a a bunch of inexperienced Seers had no difficulty being swarmed by literally tens of thousands of Koloss until they ran out of Atium, or when Vin managed to dodge an entire roomful of guards in Kredik Shaw without breaking stride. While bullets are fast, dodging them would not be terribly complex. I fully expect Seers would do the same effortless sidesteps against bullets they do against everything else.

I think people might be underestimating Allomancy vs. Feruchemy. I will grant Hemalurgy probably beats out both, given the Marsh-Elend duel (Both were being directly fueled by their respective Shards, so resource depletion was not a big deal), but flying has more importance than it seems to be being given credit for. Basically, Feruchemy grants large physical enhancements, but being incredibly strong matters very little if the Mistborn is several hundred feet up. It's also got fragmented physical metals, no major durability or reflex enhancement, no temporal manipulation or precognition, and sharply limited endurance. Sazed managed a dramatic run to Kredik Shaw to rescue Vin, but he blew all of his reserves on that and didn't have enough recharged to keep up with Kelsier and Vin for more than a few hours around three months later. Vin managed to sprint for an entire day.

I'd always go for Allomancy. Partially, while Feruchemy has many things going for it, none of them are flying. At least not in any quick or controllable manner. Also, without Compouding, storing up enough steel, gold, and pewter to match a Thug for a sustained duration takes an incredibly long time. Also, Allomantic Atium. I can see the future. Your superpowers are invalid.

I also think it would at least make sense to have Zinc and Copper feruchemists go to specialized schools, although that might not be popular. In particular, there is very little point to having Copper feruchemists sit through efforts to help students memorize certain facts, because in their actual jobs they'll just pull relevant information from their copperminds. Ideally, they'd be handed a textbook and allowed to bring their copperminds to tests but no other notes or whatever, and then the tests would largely be application, e.g. instead of a test where they must demonstrate that they have memorized principles of yield strength, material properties, and torque, they would get one where they must design a bridge to specifications. Zinc probably only gives advantages under time pressure, so whether they'd have an advantage or not would depend on the test. The fairest method would be to give them plenty of advance warnings of tests and then require them to complete them under much tighter time pressure. Alternately, they could all land in advanced courses with much harder content and tests. What it really boils down to is political opinions on educational matters and fairness. Basically, it depends on whether the mental enhancements are considered an unfair advantage or divine providence or whatever. The specialized and advanced schools would be best for the students from the perspective of preparing them to be as good as possible in later occupations, but would likely be less than popular with the people they're going to outcompete with their education and feruchemical powers. I doubt Chromium alters the fixed future because the fixed timeline includes the use of Chromium. Basically it seems to be fixed in a single timeline unless someone learns about future events through temporal powers and acts in response. Having a single timeline would create a paradox in those cases, because if they react to what would happen without them seeing the future, they'll create something different, but if they see the results of them reacting instead, then they wouldn't react in that manner, but if they don't react in that manner then that future doesn't exist, but... and then fixed time gets a headache and turns into a shadow cloud.

Just because they can be enhanced doesn't mean that two different ones stack. It's possible the most powerful one simply displaces the others. Alternately, copperclouds might simply lower the pulses to a fixed threshold, with more powerful ones having a lower threshold and more powerful bronze being able to detect lower thresholds.

Given that it seems to be effective against attacks from behind, I've been assuming that the conscious mind simply interpreted it as sight.

They're open membership. They could easily contain one, though.

Do note that compounding consumes metal, thus limiting its utility with more exotic metals. But that won't be sufficent by itself.

How fast bullets travel is pretty much irrelevant, actually. Regardless of how fast the object travels, Atium users have precisely as much warning because they see a fixed distance into the future. Also, I'm pretty sure that bendalloy bubbles wouldn't alter the final shadow, but would make it really easy to split shadows because the Atium burner would need to start dodging a long time before the shot is fired from the perspective of the Slider.

Somewhere I theorized that the Mistress is a tineye in Vin's general ethnicity, but she's noted to be tall and the ending of Hero Of Ages precludes her being Vin anyway.

Lighteyes will not always have lighteyed children. When Kaladin is thinking about what would have happened if he married into a Lighteyed family, some of his children would be born lighteyed. It is entirely possible that all lighteyes are descended from someone who held a Shardblade, but that does not mean all people descended from Shardblade holders have light eyes. In fact, almost everyone would have a Shardblade holder in their ancestry at this point even considering the strong social barriers limiting it.

I don't like the wave explanation because there would almost certainly be destructive interference on a fairly regular basis. That would mean any Seeker could penetrate copperclouds some of the time, which would make it common knowledge that they were somewhat unreliable. Since it's pretty clear literally no one outside the Steel Orthodoxy knows they are not perfectly effective before Vin finds out, that is highly unlikely. Bear in mind that Smokers are at variable relative positions all the time and have no synchronization of their starting times.

I figured it was a corruption of Honor telling people that seeing the future was really, really hard and anyone other than a Shard who claimed to be doing it was lying. Though an alternate possibility is that Voidbinding and only Voidbinding allows Roshar natives to get a vaguely Atium-like effect and it's not available in Surgebinding. I doubt that Jasnah is completely wrong. Her logic seems pretty solid on the connection, and if Odium has been editing history then the fragments of ancient texts that Jasnah has been looking into are the most likely to have been overlooked. Plus, Ruin's live editing would be less effective on Roshar. On Scadrial, if a Keeper noticed something in the text clashed with their memory, they'd check their metalminds, which had also been edited, and conclude they'd been mistaken. On Roshar, people would not have metalminds and thus be more likely to realize something was up. I am also pretty confident that she's missing an awful lot, but expect she's right on the Parshmen being Voidbringers. What she's most likely missing is that Voidbringers come in more than one type. Also, as mentioned, the Parshendi seem too honorable to be creatures of Odium, so she's probably wrong on Parshendi being activated Voidbringers.