Well, it’s been determined that vampires do not exist. According to Collission Detection, scientifically it just couldn’t be feasible.
Apparently it has to do with basic math.
One of the most totally fun areas of publishing in recent years has been the emergence of books that probe the scientific bases of fictional universes — like The Physics of Star Tre or The Science of Star Wars. Thus I was tickled to discover a paper called “Ghosts, Vampires and Goblins: Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality”, authored by Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandi (PDF here). Among their conclusions? Vampires can’t exist.
Why? Because they’d quickly depopulate the earth. To prove it, the scientists do some calculations by picking a random year in history — 1600, specifically — and imagining what would happen if one person suddenly appeared on earth. They assume, for the sake of argument, that a vampire needs to feed “only once a month”, and that in the course of feeding, the vampire turns its victim into another vampire. They note that the global population of humans was 536,870,911 in the year 1600.
Then the calculations begin.
I find this all to be highly amusing. Math disproves vampires. I have never seen a vampire although I’ve met a few fun vampires in my life, who such the joy out of a room. I guess they don’t count though, just the bloodsucking variety.
Who knew.
Photo from here and Hat Tip to Huffington Post
Newscoma 
The Onion’s quip about this was priceless. Something like:
“The one I feel sorry for is The Count — destroyed by the numbers he loved”
That’s funny.
A friend of mine from high school shared my love of occasionally telling people preposterous things, just constantly pushing to see how far it went before they caught on.
So when I was a senior, I was flirting with this incredibly cute, but not overly bright cheerleader. She said “Shawn told me you guys are vampires. Is that true?”
I said “Is this your way of telling me I should tan more?”
She said “You are out in the sunlight, aren’t you?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“If I drove a wooden stake through your heart, would it kill you?” she asked.
“Gee, I dunno. Would you survive having a piece of wood driven through your heart?” I asked her.
“I guess not,” she said, looking at her feet.
At that point, I decided that, cute though she may have been, I wasn’t all that interested anymore.
Thanks for ruining that one, Shawn!
HA HA made me laugh!
HA!
Saw this at HuffPo and it delighted the hell out of me. Math rules!
So do you, and I suck for not commenting lately. Teaching is too time-consuming! I miss my intertubes! I miss my Newscoma!
Parents and teachers alike told me I would need math for something…now I know what…to disprove the existence of vampires. I can sleep easier now knowing both of these things. Thanks!
who ever said that vampires turn their victims into other vampires?
Eventhough Lestat is obviously not my real name, I choose for this introduction to keep things simple. I take it you ‘die-hard Vampire fans’ wil understand it.l
Back on topic: Using math to prove Vampires don’t excist? How human! That’s all I have to say.
Yours always,
‘Lestat’
Going by myths that say vampires drink blood once a month, and once the blood is drunk that human turns vampiric, makes no sense.
You can’t just make up a theory, say it’s true, and then disprove it.
Obviously who ever wrote that didn’t pay attention to anything that didn’t fit into their ‘theroy’!
And I agree with Lestat, hence my name, how human!