GoT Fan Theory Of The Day: Is Westeros A Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland?

I actually don’t think this one really has spoilers but who frickin knows so just beware.

What’s up, children! This theory is batshit insane! A perfect way to start our Monday as we inch closer and closer to the premiere date (2 weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

Basically, this theory comes from a Youtuber, Preston Jacobs, and it’s verifiably nuts. Essentially, the theory posits that Westeros is actually a post-apocalyptic society. The “long night” was actually a nuclear winter, and the Wall was actually built by a super technologically advanced society, NOT by magic:

The video is ten minutes long, and if you don’t have that kind of time, let me summarize the most compelling points.

1. The technology used to create gigantic structures like the Wall and other castles is no longer in use, and the knowledge of how to create them is lost. How does a society regress like that unless something traumatizing happened?

2. All the legends of the time when these structures were built has been lost and re written by maesters centuries later. No one knows what actually happened. When they say the Wall was built by magic, is it possible that they might just have been built with technology? After all, to a medieval society, most of our technology today might seem like magic.

3. A nuclear holocaust explains why some of the planet is uninhabitable, like the Red Waste that Daenerys wanders through over in Essos. Also, a nuclear winter can last for 20 years. In the show, Old Nan tells Bran that there came a Winter that lasted a “generation”. 20 years might not be a generation in today’s standards, but people didn’t live that long back then, so that part could check out.

4. George R.R. Martin actually wrote a science fiction novel titled In The House Of The Worm where a society was totally wiped out and then, when reborn, regressed to medieval times. Could the twist in Game of Thrones be that it’s not set in the past, but extremely far in the future?

I honestly think this would be a dumb twist and I don’t really know what it would do except make us re-examine everything we thought we knew about Westeros. It just seems like a cop-out, like gee, I don’t know how to end this, let’s make it a post-apocalyptic society! I wouldn’t be thaaat surprised if this is how the books end, but I will riot in the streets if they do this to the television series. Stuff like this straight up irritates me. It would cheapen all the emotional investment we all have in this world, these characters, this story if you add a weird sci-fi layer. Maybe that’s just me, but… yeah, idk, fuck this theory.

Plausibility is 3/10 (it would be a biased zero, but because of the other novel and the fact that the books may well end this way and no one would be that surprised I popped it to 3) and spiciness is 1/10 because I am biased and think this is fucking stupid. The theory is well thought out, Preston Jacobs did a great job, I just personally hate it. So. Overall, 2/10