Vampires don't fare well with math, Credit: Solofotones
Bad news for Otherkin who think themselves to be vampires: according to University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou, it's mathematically impossible:
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.
If mortality rates were taken into consideration, the population would disappear much faster. Even an unrealistically high reproduction rate couldn't counteract this effect.
"In the long run, humans cannot survive under these conditions, even if our population were doubling each month," Efthimiou said. "And doubling is clearly way beyond the human capacity of reproduction."
So whatever you think you see prowling around on Oct. 31, it most certainly won't turn you into a vampire.
If I remember my differential equations (and I don't), there is a point where a contagion like a disease peters out as the population thins and comes in less contact. This is why, despite what the movies suggest, the faster a disease spreads, the quicker it will die out, whereas something with a long incubation period can infect many, many more people before the symptoms show up.
In this case, however, the less contact with the living, the less food for vampires to feed on, until they starved. Perhaps this is why predators have a stead supply of prey: the less prey, the less predators, which means more prey, thus more predators. So, you reach an equilibrium.
Regardless, there is clearly not an equilibrium between vampires and humans.
Right?
(cue Twilight Zone music...)
Comments
Well, the good professor is failing to take into account that not all vampires would turn humans. Of course there are a lot of different myths about how one becomes a vampire, with the two most popular being, 1) get bitten but not killed, or 2) a blood exchange. Most vampires in movies just kill to feed and don't turn their victims. Thus, it is the professors calculations that don't add up.
lol, I must be really bored to comment on something as inane as how realistic it is for a fictitious creature to actually exist. Perhaps, however, not quite as bored as the physics professor who actually wasted his time making those calculations.
:)
Hate to break it to you but that math only applies to the fictional vampire. Modern vamps are just normal humans who need a little extra something to function at full capacity, and they don't bite. Even if they did, it wouldn't turn the bitten person into a vamp. They'd just get a hickey.
BTW many vamps don't consider themselves to be otherkin as vampirism is often considered something physical while otherkin is mental/spiritual/etc.
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