This chart shows the vampire and human population at the beginning of each month during a 29-month period. This chart shows the vampire and human population at the beginning of each month during a 29-month period.“Vampires feed on human blood, which causes the victim to suffer not only from blood loss but also from the indignity of turning into a vampire themselves. Each feeding therefore decreases the human population by one and increases the vampire population by one.”
I’m no fan of horror, but even I know that’s not how it works. Just because a vampire feeds on you does not mean you die, much less that you become a vampire yourself. There are variations on the myth, of course, but every version I’m aware of distinguishes between victims fed upon, victims killed by the feeding, and finally victims that are turned into vampires after feeding. Usually the humans need to drink the vampire’s blood, or something, before they die in order to convert. Otherwise they just die.
Even if this is not true of all vampire stories, it is true of most of them, which makes this study irrelevant, wasteful, and frankly stupid.
Yes, but the Vampire rule book is different in every Vampire tale told.
Most versions have vampires sucking their victims dry and only rarely biting their victim to create a new vampire intentionally or occasionally by accident.
Some versions have Vampires getting so bored after a century or two they commit suicide by taking a walk in the sun, as most versions have Vampires unable to take part in human events because they can’t draw attention to themselves and they can’t work days.
Then again, in some tales, Vampires can go abroad by day but they have no superpowers at such times.
In some Vampire tales they have to feed nightly on humans or die. Some have them able to get by on animal blood and some have them only feeding rarely.
But most most Vampire tales have them being discreet and only feeding every so often and only creating new Vampires on rare occasions. Some have them able to reproduce sexually like normal humans.
On every level, complete nonsense.
“A much weaker claim is that vampires don’t necessarily have to turn their victims into vampires sine they can kill them before draining their blood. That method, however, would still decimate the human population—it would just take a few years longer.”
Here, at last, the article sorta addresses my problem. Badly. Vampires do not kill their prey before draining their blood, because they do not drink the blood of the dead. Moreover, saying “vampires don’t necessarily have to turn their victims into vampires sine they can kill them before draining their blood” implies that humans turn into vampires by having their blood drained, which is false.
The central problem with this study is that it ignores the fact that feeding and converting are two seperate concerns for the vampire. Conversion is a conscious act, usually done out of loneliness, unconnected to the drive to feed. The presence of vampires, therefore, would in no way endanger the human species as a whole, unless vampire culture deliberately made that a goal. But I don’t see why they would, since they have no drive to do so. They’re solitary types.
1. Amateurs
2. Real math means calculus
Vampire Population Ecology (in a small Californian community)
And yes - there is a stable solution.