Scientists decode how to survive in

Melbourne: Staying loyal leads characters of the popular TV series Game of Thrones to an early death, say scientists who analysed over 300 deaths in the show to decode who is more likely to survive the next season. The research, published in the journal Injury Epidemiology, shows that characters were more likely to survive if they switched their allegiance. For example, Tyrion Lannister avoids death by switching allegiances between the houses Lannister and Targaryen.

Researchers at Macquarie University in Australia, evaluated the deaths of all important Game of Thrones characters across seven seasons of the show.

The risk of death was also greater for characters that were ‘ lowborn’ ( not a Lord or Lady), compared to those that were ‘ highborn’. “The risk of death is high among characters in Game of Thrones,” Reidar Lystad, injury epidemiologist at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation.

“By the end of the seventh season, more than half of the characters had died — 186 out of the 330 characters we included in this study — with violent deaths being the most common by far,” said Lystad.

“While these findings may not be surprising for ◗ regular viewers, we have identified several factors that may be associated with better or worse survival, which may help us to speculate about who will prevail in season,” he said.

Researchers found that the majority of deaths occurred in Westeros ( 80.1 per cent), and the most the final