10 Magical Game Of Thrones Details Explained With Science

9. Giants Are Basically Cannons

Giants always seem to live in the coldest places in fantasy worlds. Whether or not this was on purpose, the science really does back this up.

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.