How to kill a dragon Daenerys Targaryen
The chemistry of fire, biology of birth and death ice giant lizards.
When the heroine of the popular television series “Game of thrones” Daenerys Targaryen got three dragons, the balance of power between the rivals for the Iron throne began to change. Due to the longer fire-breathing creatures Daenerys turned into the most powerful participant in the political game. How to breathe fire, fly and breed dragons from the world of “Game of thrones”, who will be able to cope with them — the white walkers, trebuchet or their ice counterparts, who will win — the army of Westeros, or the strength of Daenerys? Indicator.Ru tried to find the answers to these questions. Attention! The text contains many spoilers. And dragons.
Nuclear winter is coming?
Once dragons helped house Targaryen to conquer the Seven Kingdoms and hold power over the territories of Westeros. But gradually they died out. All that remains of the legendary creatures is the fossilized eggs as a wedding gift received now the last representative of an ancient family, Daenerys Targaryen. At the end of the first season the heroine lays the three dragon eggs into the fire and enters the fire itself. When it burns, Daenerys is unharmed, and the eggs hatch into little dragons.
For six seasons, the dragons grew, and at the same time gradually helped his mother to conquer nearby cities. Slowly the creatures became so dangerous that Daenerys was forced to temporarily lock them in prison, so they don’t kill civilians slaver’s Bay. Finally, in the last episode of the sixth season of army Daenerys sinks to the ships and sailing towards Westeros to return genus Targaryen the Iron throne. Huge dragons flying behind ships.
What are the dragons of Daenerys? They are not afraid neither fire, nor the clouds of arrows. Thick scales protect all vulnerable parts of the body dragons.
George Martin, the author of the Saga “a Song of ice and fire”, based on which filmed the TV series called dragons analogous to nuclear weapons in the modern world.
“Dragons it is a deterrent that can be used by only one of Daenerys, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the universe Saga. But is that enough? I’m trying to answer this question. For example, the U.S. possesses a nuclear Arsenal, but that does not mean that the state can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is a more subtle thing,” said Martin in an interview with Vulture.
In an article published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the scientists go further and compare the unsuccessful attempt by the ancestor of Daenerys Aegon the Conqueror to subdue the Kingdom of Dorne to the war in Vietnam.
“Even with dragons Aegon Targaryen could not get the mandrel to give up. He conquered six kingdoms, but the rocky, arid, desert area of the mandrel with small cities and shelters, “prepared” the land for the war with the dragons. Similarly, during the Vietnam war, American soldiers encountered fierce resistance partisans who are not frightened stockpile of the United States. In a secret report in 1967, they agreed that nuclear weapons will have a decisive military advantage,” said the journal study author Timothy Westmyer.
No the fire does not burn, nor in water does not sink
So is it alive “nuclear weapons” key to the conquest of the Seven Kingdoms? Whether the army of Lannisters at least some advantage over dragons?
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According to Dr. Lorena Olivera of the University of North Georgia, one of these advantages opponents Daenerys — cold Northern weather.
Unlike real reptiles, dragons are able to generate heat, so they are less dependent on external sources of heat. But the creatures have heavier where sunlight is practically no.
“Dragons can be almost useless in the North, especially now, when finally came a cold winter and almost no sunlight. Thus, the dragons probably won’t be able to produce fire and die. It [would be] a huge victory for the northerners, they just have to battle on its territory”, — said Oliver.
History knows many examples when the cold climate was an ally of one party in a real war, killing and the elephants of Hannibal when crossing the Alps, and the soldier of Napoleon in Russia. But long before the appearance of mankind, cold has become a problem for the animal world.
“For heat-loving animals, the decrease of the ambient temperature, as a rule, ends fatally — says Dmitry Rachin, editor of news of paleontology PaleoNews. Paleontologists say that the epochs of mass extinctions are usually accompanied by cooling. And the hardest of life on our planet had in the days of “Earth-snow”, when cold almost all the oceans… So probably after a long stay in a cold climate, dragons are not such formidable opponents”.
The dragons in the series there’s really no insulating cover; the more they adapted to life in the South. According to Dmitry Racine, it is quite justifiable adaptation: active flapping flight indicates that the metabolism should be close to the bird.
If they were not promptly cooled, then inevitably such large animals would have overheated.
“It is possible, incidentally, that famous fire breathing dragons was originally just a side effect of the work of certain system of forced cooling of the body, and was a sort of heat exhaust from our refrigerators and air conditioners,” suggests Racin. If this is the method of cooling, the dragons are doomed: they will not be able even to breathe fire, not to freeze to death.