Game Of Thrones fiction explained with Science
1. Deal With The Seasons
One of the most striking features of the Seven Kingdoms is the wild variability of the seasons.
There is a Qartheen legend that there used to be two moons in the skies above Westeros and Essos, but it flew too close to the sun, cracked and spewed forth a load of dragons.
Aside from the dragon thing, the loss of a moon is going to do some pretty odd things to the orbit of a planet. A moon stabilizes the axial tilt (the thing that causes seasons) of a planet, so suddenly losing one would set it on a wobble, perhaps causing wildly unpredictable seasons as well as long periods of light and dark. This fits in with the unpredictability of the seasons much better than something like an eccentric orbit with would produce much more regular cycles. This is a series of complex chain reactions stemming from changes in the planet’s orbit that cause ice ages and warming periods. Although these take place over thousands of years on Earth, perhaps they’re much more rapid in Westeros.
2. Wildfire
Humanity has been using chemical weapons for many thousands of years, due to its creditibility for rendering the enemy horribly dead. The example that would be historically most similar to the terrifying wildfire of the Game of Thrones universe is a substance known as Greek Fire.
This was used all the way back in the 7th Century Byzantine Empire to great effect in naval battles. Although, Nobody left a handy recipe lying around for the archaeologists, but it’s generally thought to have been made from naphtha, quicklime and sulphur.
Like Wildfire, it can burn on water and cannot be extinguished by it, making it ideal for naval warfare. If you wanted to turn it the distinctive green hue of Wildfire, you could always try adding a bit of copper oxide.
3. Crushing A Skull With Your Hands
In a study published in the Journal of Neurosurgery, scientists put this to the test by soaking cadaver skulls (to mimic your warm and squishy living tissue), then exerted huge amounts of pressure on them to see when they cracked. They did this to test the efficacy of bicycle helmets. They found that the average skull would experience “catastrophic failure” at around 520 lbs (2300 N) of static force.
Mountain actor Thor Björnsson, weighs in at around 400 lbs, so he wouldn’t actually even be able to crush Oberyn’s skull if he stood on it, let alone try to exert that force through just his upper body.
4. Viserys’ Golden Crown.
Although there are no documented cases for “death by golden crown”. Because scientists are awesome, they decided to put this particularly execution method to the test using the organs of a cow. They believe that the historical records are accurate when they describe the internal organs of the victim “bursting” due to an explosive build up of steam. It’s perfectly possible that he simply died form the excruciating pain, going into cardiac arrest from the shock. Either way, that’s one hell of a power move on Drogo’s part.
5. Terraforming White Walkers
We do have some real-world examples of animals that are able to survive being frozen, but they usually do this by shutting down their metabolic processes. There are also some that can remain metabolically active at subzero temperatures by maintaining high salt levels in their tissues – because, as we all know, saltwater is liquid at lower temperatures.
So, unless they’re a particularly salty race, the White Walkers are magical, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a stab at some science too. Given that they probably wouldn’t do too well in the sunny climate of King’s Landing, Westeros is going to have to get distinctly icier in order for them to survive. Could it be that, rather than lying in wait for a winter to strike in order to move south, that the Walkers are actually the cause of Westeros’ winters in the first place.
Terraforming is a hypothetical (but still “real”) process of adapting a hostile environment to make it livable. In our universe, for example, many scientists think that we might one day be able to terraform Mars by warming its atmosphere and melting its ice caps, thus creating Earth 2.0.
6. Dragons
Anyone who has ever lit their fart (so every teenage boy for a start) will confirm that animals are more than capable of producing flammable gasses and expelling them at pace. Animals are also capable of producing electrical sparks, such as the many types of electrical fish. If, by some quirk of evolution, these two properties came together in a reptile then, boom, you’d have a dragon.
One drawback of your real-world dragon, however, is that it probably wouldn’t be able to fly unless they were either (A) much smaller or (B) filled with gas like a huge dragon-shaped lilo. Coincidentally, delicious flammable methane is not only highly flammable, but lighter than air, so the whole concept of dragons isn’t as outlandish as it seems.
7. Valyrian Steel
Valyrian Steel, the mysterious metal whose secret formula has been lost to the sands of time, is pretty much a direct reference to the real-world Damascus steel.
The steel was named after the Syrian capital of the same name, and was renowned for its remarkable strength and ability to retain an incredibly sharp edge. Although many claim to have rediscovered the production methods of Damascus steel over the years, the true methods are still considered to be lost and no one has yet been able to properly reproduce it.
Analysis of Damascus steel reveals a complex structure of nanotubes and nanowires, giving it its strength and flexibility. Some think that this is due to woody biomass contamination in the metal ingots that burnt away during the smelting process – maybe someone should tell blacksmiths of Qohor.
8. Giants Are Basically Cannons
For many species of animal, you will generally find the bigger, bulkier specimens in colder climates, so there’s no reason why this couldn’t apply to humanoid giants too.
A bigger body gives you a better volume-to-surface area ratio, making it easier to conserve heat in the frostier climes and store fat for the lean winter months. Once you have your big animals, a number of other evolutionary pressures come into play, meaning that they will continue to get bigger and bigger in an evolutionary arms race.
There’s another benefit to all this bulk for the giants, it turns out. The folks over at Nerdist have roughly calculated the speed at which a giant from north of the wall could fire one of their man-sized arrows, and found that it would be near-as-dammit supersonic. Upon hitting some unfortunate Crow, the javelin-like arrow would have imparted more than 35250 N of force directly to his chest.
That’s like being shot with a cannon, but if it was shooting spears.
9. Hodor’s different Head
Despite his extremely limited vocabulary, Hodor is apparently otherwise completely compos mentis – able to express emotion, respond to instructions and understand the world around him.
As well as being a gist to internet memes, Hodor also appears to be suffering from something called Expressive Aphasia. This is a condition caused by damage to the Broca’s area of the brain which is responsible for speech.
It is named Broca’s area after Paul Broca, the French neurologist who discovered the effects of damage to that particular area of the brain. In 1861, Broca met a patient with almost exactly the same symptoms as poor Hodor – a 51-year-old man named “Tan” because that was the only word he could say. After Tan’s death, Broca discovered damage to the inferior frontal gyrus responsible for the condition.
