And if they get me take this spike to my heart
Physicists Prove That Vampires Could Not Exist
Two physicists have published an academic paper where they demonstrate, by virtue of geometric progression, that vampires could not exist, since they would almost immediately deplete their entire food supply (a.k.a, all of us).
Here is the paper in question: Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality by Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi
Firstly, I think their entire premise is flawed. The paper assumes that every human bitten is killed and turned by the bite.
After one has stuck his fangs into your neck and sucked you dry, you turn into a vampire yourself and carry on the blood-sucking legacy.
So, the first month one vampire bites one person, turning them. The next month two vampires bite two people, then four vampires bite four people, and so on until eventually everyone has been bitten and you run out of humans. That's simple math. Although they didn't factor the human birthrate into their calculations, they do note that it never reaches a level that would make a difference to human survival in the long run.
If you accept the assumption that vampirism spreads through every bite, their conclusion is quite correct.
We conclude that vampires cannot exist, since their existence would contradict the existence of human beings.
However, it would be more accurate to say that, given these circumstances, vampires cannot exist. A lot of vampire stories do work like that; Blade, Salem's Lot, even Twilight (although in Twilight humans who've been bitten are either killed or turned, not both, so it doesn't fit their assumption exactly).
Often, though, being turned is not as simple as just being bitten. Usually, turning a human requires some sort of effort on the vampire's part, with draining the human then feeding him vampire blood probably being the most common. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles works this way, for example. Even in Bram Stoker's Dracula, arguably the most well known vampire story, Dracula feeds Mina his own blood.
If vampires must do more than simply bite someone to turn them, then it's logical to assume that the vampires would not be turning every human they feed off of, and would probably only turn a few. Thus, the human birthrate could potentially compensate for the increase in vampiric numbers, allowing humans and vampire to coexist.
Secondly, Efthimiou and Gandhi don't include any sort of mortality rate for vampires in their calculations. There's no accounting for the possibility of humans fighting back against the vampires, something that occurs in a vast number of vampire stories, literary and folkloric.
Vampire Population Ecology by theoretical ecologist Brian Thomas calculates the population dynamics of Buffy the Vampire Slayer using theoretical understandings of predator-prey population dynamics.
What we get is an equilibrium human population of 36,346, and an equilibrium vampire population of around 18.
He then determines if the equilibrium is stable, i.e. can it ever actually work or will natural changes in the vampire population keep equilibrium from existing? Thomas ran the model using various initial population sizes to see if they eventually moved towards equilibrium or away from it.
The following graph shows human population sizes on the horizontal axis and vampire population sizes on the vertical axis. Each line represents a trajectory through time, and any point on a line represents a combination of human and vampire population sizes - a step, if you will, in that beautiful dance between Buffy and the Minions of Evil. Notice that wherever we “start” the trajectories, they all spiral in towards our equilibrium state, indicated in the center by an asterisk.
The spiral pattern is referred to as a “stable focus”, and it indicates that the ecological system in Sunnyvale is probably fairly tolerant of the ebbs and flows of vampire activity. Of course, there is always a possibility that some combination of events (such as, by way of illustration, the Apocalypse) that would bump this system out of its comfy little trough, and then all bets are off.
So, depending on what initial assumptions about humans and vampires you make, it's possible to prove both that the existence of humans precludes the existence of vampires and that vampires could coexist with humans. Efthimiou and Gandhi only proved that vampires could not exist within a particular set of parameters.
Also, I am a huge dork.
Two physicists have published an academic paper where they demonstrate, by virtue of geometric progression, that vampires could not exist, since they would almost immediately deplete their entire food supply (a.k.a, all of us).
Here is the paper in question: Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality by Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi
Firstly, I think their entire premise is flawed. The paper assumes that every human bitten is killed and turned by the bite.
After one has stuck his fangs into your neck and sucked you dry, you turn into a vampire yourself and carry on the blood-sucking legacy.
So, the first month one vampire bites one person, turning them. The next month two vampires bite two people, then four vampires bite four people, and so on until eventually everyone has been bitten and you run out of humans. That's simple math. Although they didn't factor the human birthrate into their calculations, they do note that it never reaches a level that would make a difference to human survival in the long run.
If you accept the assumption that vampirism spreads through every bite, their conclusion is quite correct.
We conclude that vampires cannot exist, since their existence would contradict the existence of human beings.
However, it would be more accurate to say that, given these circumstances, vampires cannot exist. A lot of vampire stories do work like that; Blade, Salem's Lot, even Twilight (although in Twilight humans who've been bitten are either killed or turned, not both, so it doesn't fit their assumption exactly).
Often, though, being turned is not as simple as just being bitten. Usually, turning a human requires some sort of effort on the vampire's part, with draining the human then feeding him vampire blood probably being the most common. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles works this way, for example. Even in Bram Stoker's Dracula, arguably the most well known vampire story, Dracula feeds Mina his own blood.
If vampires must do more than simply bite someone to turn them, then it's logical to assume that the vampires would not be turning every human they feed off of, and would probably only turn a few. Thus, the human birthrate could potentially compensate for the increase in vampiric numbers, allowing humans and vampire to coexist.
Secondly, Efthimiou and Gandhi don't include any sort of mortality rate for vampires in their calculations. There's no accounting for the possibility of humans fighting back against the vampires, something that occurs in a vast number of vampire stories, literary and folkloric.
Vampire Population Ecology by theoretical ecologist Brian Thomas calculates the population dynamics of Buffy the Vampire Slayer using theoretical understandings of predator-prey population dynamics.
What we get is an equilibrium human population of 36,346, and an equilibrium vampire population of around 18.
He then determines if the equilibrium is stable, i.e. can it ever actually work or will natural changes in the vampire population keep equilibrium from existing? Thomas ran the model using various initial population sizes to see if they eventually moved towards equilibrium or away from it.
The following graph shows human population sizes on the horizontal axis and vampire population sizes on the vertical axis. Each line represents a trajectory through time, and any point on a line represents a combination of human and vampire population sizes - a step, if you will, in that beautiful dance between Buffy and the Minions of Evil. Notice that wherever we “start” the trajectories, they all spiral in towards our equilibrium state, indicated in the center by an asterisk.
The spiral pattern is referred to as a “stable focus”, and it indicates that the ecological system in Sunnyvale is probably fairly tolerant of the ebbs and flows of vampire activity. Of course, there is always a possibility that some combination of events (such as, by way of illustration, the Apocalypse) that would bump this system out of its comfy little trough, and then all bets are off.
So, depending on what initial assumptions about humans and vampires you make, it's possible to prove both that the existence of humans precludes the existence of vampires and that vampires could coexist with humans. Efthimiou and Gandhi only proved that vampires could not exist within a particular set of parameters.
Also, I am a huge dork.