Plausible Vampires

[gamer]

I was thinking of writing a story about vampires but I wanted to keep my vampires somewhat plausible while I'm not specifically looking to create a hard scifi style story but I would still like to keep the various laws of physics intact and not just go with what looks cool. So the things I would like to discuss in this thread are more plausible portrayals of popular vampire powers like shapeshifting, super strength, super speed, and so on. Their blood drinking problems and how much blood would it require to feed a full grown highly athletic man, and I will think of other things to discuss as well.

[spaceviking]

With something like Vampires I don't think you are ever going to have a rational explanation. The best you can do is define their abilities and be consistent.

[PainRack]

Rabies.

Makes them wild, irrational, wants to bite. Just say that adrenaline boosts their strength/speed/reactions, and for some reason(say nanobots/alien parasite), blood boosts this further.

Of course, this does mean your vampires aren't really vampires, but more 28 days later zombies.

[Purple]

Well for the blood drinking at least you could claim that what ever effect gives them their powers also messes up their digestive tract so they have to consume pre digested nutrients (blood) to survive. Although in that case blood transfusions would probably be preferable to drinking it.

[Revy]

I'm doing a web serial with a vampire character. In my case the vampire is outright supernatural, but I did look into real life vampire bats to get some ideas. For example, vampire bats can sense heat in order to locate the best spot to bite (bloodflow = heat). Their saliva has chemicals to prevent blood clotting. Things like that. You could try looking into other blood sucking animals as well, like certain insects and leeches.

Edit - not sure if it's even remotely plausible, but maybe your vampies can feed on blood in order to extract telomerase from their victims, allowing them to stay young. If they don't feed then they start to suffer from the effects of ageing, and they have to drink human blood because the enzymes in animal blood isn't compatible.

[evilsoup]

Why on earth would you want to do this?

...
I guess the aversion to sunlight and need to drink blood could be down to some virus, or possibly a parasite. I suspect it would take a lot of blood to fuel a human, so maybe some freaky stomach-worm could drive them to do so, while the host still eats regular food to survive.

The lack-of-reflection thing is obviously impossible, as are the various superpowers. Biologically, at least: if you want to chuck sufficient advanced technology at it, pretty much anything becomes possible. Except maybe shapeshifting. But then you're more talking about supersoldiers, or possibly some kind of nanotech abomination.

If you are writing a story about vampires, though, you shouldn't really worry about scientific plausibility. What function do you want them to serve in the story? Unstoppable monsters? Creepy night-bound things? Sparkly love-objects? When you have that decided, then you can fill in whatever handwave you want to put in (I'd go with 'magic' personally )

[Grumman]

If you're worried about how much blood it would take to sustain a human, you could just have vampires that must drink blood but need not only drink blood. The especially psychotic ones might do it anyway, of course,

That said, I'd go with Evilsoup's approach - a coherent literary purpose is more important than scientific accuracy.

[Batman]

If gamer wants to worry about scientific plausibility that's his/her right. Whether or not it's important to the writer (for whatever reason) matters too.
That being said, if you want anything even close to traditional vampires, forget about plausibility. You might find a way to explain the need to drink blood and the mind control powers (pheromones, perhaps) and if you don't go the 'instantly bursts into flame' route the problem with sunlight is easy enough but there's no even halfway realistic explanation for their shapeshifting (leave alone the mist form) or the lack of reflection (which shouldn't work as it is). I can-barely-see man-to-wolf working on soft SciFi style shapeshifting (though it's going to be one hefty wolf for your average adult vampire) but there's no way a 75kgr plus bat will be able to fly, especially if it's the same size as ordinary bats (mind you, I love the Discworld workaround for that ). The invulnerability to pretty much anything but fire, a wooden stake through the heart and depending on setting, silver bullets are out too. Some regenerative abilities might again be possible Soft SciFi style but again, nothing close to traditional vampires.
The question is why do you want 'plausible' vampires. 'Because I want plausible vampires damnit' is a perfectly valid answer, this being your story and all, but as others have said, just because what you eventually come up with (which, again, isn't going to be much like the classical vampire) may be semi-plausible doesn't necessarily have any impact on story quality.

[Johonebesus]

For one take on "plausible" vampires take a look at Peter Watts' Blindsight, though his vampires still have a some pretty unlikely traits.

As others have said, an aversion to sunlight and a modest increase in strength are doable, but superpowers like flight or metamorphosis not so much.

[Ultonius]

Pheromone-based mind control could be used as a basis to explain traits such as lack of reflection and fear of crosses as exaggerations or distortions of real vampire vulnerabilities. If the vampires look obviously non-human, but use their pheromones (and perhaps some kind of vocal hypnosis) to convince their victims that they are attractive and should be obeyed, they would be vulnerable to their true form being revealed in a reflective surface. Similarly, a religious object such as a cross could be used by a victim as a focus for their concentration, allowing them to throw off the effects of the pheromones.

[Batman]

That makes absolutely no sense? Vampires are visible to the human eye and thus reflect light, and thus will show up in reflective surfaces like mirrors. No amount of mind control will change that. In fact it would be stupid for them to try to implement that even if they could. There's exactly zero advantage in not having a reflection but it, surprise, massively aids in identifying you as a vampire.
Well technically I could come up with a few scenarios where not having a reflection would be an advantage. Scenarios purposely designed to see that it would. Realistically, the 'no reflection' thing is all drawback with no benefits (and shouldn't work to begin with, as I mentioned earlier).

[Purple]

If vampires are capable of that kind of mind control why would they not just turn their reflections on and off at will depending on the circumstances thus rendering the point moot? And before you make up some reason think of this. You are about to make up another extra magical rule to justify how your magic works.

[evilsoup]

Holy reading comprehension failure, Batman!

Ultonius wasn't saying that not having a reflection would be an advantage, but rather was saying that the vampires could have some kind of hypnosis, and maybe seeing them reflected in a mirror renders that ineffective; and that this would enter mythology as a weakness and eventually somehow turn into 'vampires don't have reflections'. Now I don't think that makes sense, but the pheromones idea is interesting.

[Batman]

Um-no? I would explain why vampires would tend to avoid reflective surfaces. It doesn't do beans about why they apparently don't show up in them.

[gamer]

Pheromone mind control sounds good as for the turning to mist and casting no reflection it will probably make sense to just say those abilities are just outright fabrications as i can't think of anyway that will possible. Feeding would be....interesting. I calculated that a vampire the size of an adult male human will probably have to consume almost a gallon of blood a night to stay healthy also it might make more sense to have a different kind of mouth to absorb more blood. 2 relatively small fangs that function as hypodermic needles may not be so effective maybe they could tear the victim's throat and then use a sort of "leech tongue" to drain blood quickly, and maybe be equipped with fangs that inject a neurotoxin to paralyze prey and spit that prevents coagulation.

[Batman]

Out of curiousity, what did you base those calculations on, given there are no human-sized blood-feeders on this sorry excuse for a planet?

[gamer]

Out of curiousity, what did you base those calculations on, given there are no human-sized blood-feeders on this sorry excuse for a planet?

I just did an extremely basic calculation based off of how many calories in a pint of blood, now I could have went with things like vampire bats and leeches but that would simply be insane with vampire bats eating half their weight in blood. Regardless vampires will certainly be big eaters especially if you factor in their increased physical performance and regeneration which would require an even higher metabolism

[Ahriman238]

A while back there was a book called Peeps with this (semi-plausible vampires) as a premise. In that book, vampirism was the result of a parasite/symbiote that granted superhuman strength and reflexes, allowing primitive man to survive an age of horrible monsters. The 'pure' strain still works this way with almost no negative consequences.

The far more common 'corrupted' strain of the parasite turns whoever is infested into superstrong, sex-crazed, blood-sucking cannibals. Sexual contact can spread the parasites offspring. It also has a side effect known as the Anathema, actually the first symptom to develop, it flips the appropriate chemical switches in the brain to make the host desperately hate and fear that which it once loved, like religious icons or sunlight. This has the evolutionary advantage of getting the 'peeps' (parasite positive, the politically correct way of saying vampire) away from society, and people who can recognize them or the transformation they're going through. A lot of a vampire hunter's job in the book is researching a peep's favorite things, crosses no longer being universally reliable, so he has talismans in the form of Beatles songs or what have you.

In that book, there are also carriers of vampirism, who just get really horny so the parasite can be spread around.

Another possibility is that they lack the ability to properly produce something normally found in blood. Blood cells, clotting agents, or simple plasma.

[B5B7]

Most versions of vampires do not have shapechanging ability. If attempting to create a realistic vampire then you would omit this ability, as realistically it would require massive energy and some unnatural capability to rearrange its organs and skeleton, etc.

[Sea Skimmer]

Some kind of massive massive, constant iron deficiency might provide a plausible reason for why blood drinking is essential. Simply drinking blood for nourishment makes no sense for a large ground dwelling creature, if you can break down blood like that then you'll be able to break down other things ad you'd never have a rational reason to evolve to drink blood. A creature which simply does not manufacture its own blood cells, but can use the blood cells of other creatures would also be a possible explanation.

Shape shifting... yeah no discussion on this can have a point. Superior speed and strength are possible, humans aren't the top of either category, but it depends on what you really want out of that, and how you intend to portray the vampires as existing.

[avatarxprime]

Your best bet for "plausible" vampires that are capable of superhuman feats would be to stick with older depictions of them. It takes days for them to turn (gives time for bodily changes), they are active only in bursts (lots of white muscle vs red muscle for explosive burst of power but low endurance), spend most of their time sleeping (again, low endurance) and things like that. You can check out this site for ideas. I found that a while back when looking at the idea of "scientifcially plausible" vampires. The site goes with the idea that vampires run a metabolism that relies heavily on magnesium and thus need to drink blood in order to steal our hemoglobin since actually respirating our way would be dangerous. Similarly, they avoid the sun since they don't want to explode. This conveniently explains why they turn to dust since they have a tendency to spontaneously combust.

[Ultonius]

I was going with the idea that the vampires can use their hypnotic abilities to make your brain ignore what it sees when you look directly at them, but can't change their reflection, since to your brain, that's a completely different image. This would lead to them avoiding reflective surfaces when hunting, which gets distorted in folklore to them avoiding reflective surfaces because they have no reflection. They would also be vulnerable to being caught on camera, or seen from a great distance, particularly through binoculars.

[jollyreaper]

I was thinking of writing a story about vampires but I wanted to keep my vampires somewhat plausible while I'm not specifically looking to create a hard scifi style story but I would still like to keep the various laws of physics intact and not just go with what looks cool. So the things I would like to discuss in this thread are more plausible portrayals of popular vampire powers like shapeshifting, super strength, super speed, and so on. Their blood drinking problems and how much blood would it require to feed a full grown highly athletic man, and I will think of other things to discuss as well.

First question: are they supposed to be natural or engineered? I think engineered is silly because anything they could build into a person to make him better, be it implants or biowank, there's no need for a blood component. And if you try to explain it as a natural virus you get into all sorts of other impossibilities concerning biology and physics.

As a matter of personal opinion, I don't think you can really get away with trying to explain vamps, weres, or zombies in a story. "There's a rational scientific explanation!" No, pretty much there can't be. At least with magic you can say that there's weird shit we don't understand and the thought that humans might be incapable of thinking our ways through it is pretty scary.

Second question: what are you intending to do with them in your story? Are you going to try to stay away from supervamp wank and make them more interesting characters with strengths and weaknesses rather than superman with fangs?

[jollyreaper]

That makes absolutely no sense? Vampires are visible to the human eye and thus reflect light, and thus will show up in reflective surfaces like mirrors. No amount of mind control will change that. In fact it would be stupid for them to try to implement that even if they could. There's exactly zero advantage in not having a reflection but it, surprise, massively aids in identifying you as a vampire.
Well technically I could come up with a few scenarios where not having a reflection would be an advantage. Scenarios purposely designed to see that it would. Realistically, the 'no reflection' thing is all drawback with no benefits (and shouldn't work to begin with, as I mentioned earlier).

I like the idea of invisibility being a kind of visual amnesia. "You see me but your brain is deliberately preventing you from recognizing me." In this case, a vampire wouldn't be visible when looked at directly but can be seen in a reflection! So some people might carry mirrors to scan a room or use cameras with the view finder out.

To keep the power from being too twinkish, a vamp might have to really focus and only handle one or two targets at a time. So if he's sneaking through a room and has the two guards covered, a third one coming back from the can might walk right in and see the vamp passing through and sound the alarm. If the vamp panics, the other two will suddenly take notice; if he doesn't, there will be some confusion wondering if the third guy is nuts.

[dworkin]

Size of a bear (not you Yosemite), tentecles, telepathy, builds 100ft tripods and drinks the blood of englishmen. And have taken their flu shots.

Now they were some scientific vampires. A lone surviving martian trapped in rebuilt London would be a very scary thing indeed.