Now while I am a big fan of physicists debunking the pseudosciences, this guy has made some erroneous fundamental assumptions. His argument, as summarized on LiveScience.com: Efthimiou's debunking logic: On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was 536,870,911. If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by Feb. 1, 1600. A month later there would have been four, and so on. In just two-and-a-half years the original human population would all have become vampires with nobody left to feed on.There's a huge flaw with this logic. Barring stakes and sunlight, vampires are immortal: yes. Vampires feed off the blood of the living: yes. Everyone who gets bitten by a vampire, becomes a vampire: no.
They become dinner.
And if vampires could stand sunlight, they'd be brunch. They wouldn't necessarily become other vampires.
In order for a vampire to turn a mortal into a vampire, the vampire would have to suck the blood from the mortal until the mortal was near death, then the mortal would have to drink blood out of the vampire. This is consistent in the vampire lore from Stoker to Whedon. And in more recent novel The Historian, the victim would have to be fed upon at least three times for conversion.
Or as Buffy explains it: "To make a vampire they have to suck your blood. And then you have to suck their blood. It's a whole big sucking thing. Too much sucking for my taste."
And common to all the vampire mythology, vampires are extremely selective when it comes to whom they convert. After all, as immortals they are going to spend the rest of their lives with these people around, and they'd want to be pretty choosy about the company they are going to have to keep.
That, and the whole sucking thing is very sexual. Not everyone is going to be bitten by a vampire. There just aren't that many pretty people to go around.
Mmmmm...salty goodness.
1 comment:
How did I know this was going to end with a buffy reference?
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