90
votes
How to politely coexist with a vampire?
A HUG in your life: a guide to workplace harmony
Your team is about to welcome a new colleague from the HUG (Haematophagous, Undead and Ghoulish) community. You may be apprehensive about this change ...
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89
votes
Accepted
How does vampire-dad keep the masquerade to his daughter
By having him claim a long list of medical conditions
Photosensitivity
There seems to be a medical condition for everything under the sun. In this case there are a number of medical conditions where ...
- 7,670
68
votes
Accepted
Why would vampires require human blood?
Immunology:
The need for human blood is not, really, about food. It's about antibodies.
The vampire's immune systems have come to function in a completely different way from human immune systems. This ...
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66
votes
What possible scientific reasons could there be for a vampire to only be killable via wooden stake to the heart?
It's due to the nature of vampires, and their regenerative state. If a metal or other non-organic substance is thrust into their body then over time their regenerative abilities will push it out. Even ...
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65
votes
How can changes in personality/values of a person who turned into a vampire be explained?
The mind and body are less separate than most people seem to think. Changes to body chemistry can greatly change how, and even what, we think:
Alcohol is well-known for its disinhibiting effects and ...
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64
votes
Accepted
What possible scientific reasons could there be for a vampire to only be killable via wooden stake to the heart?
Now, a few answerers have claimed that the stake need not be wooden. While this may be true in the traditional vampiric lore, we exist only to answer the specific question here.
Why Wood
Vampire ...
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63
votes
Accepted
How can my town be public knowledge while still keeping outsiders out?
The answer to this is very simple: make the entire town into a gated community. Encircle the whole place with a fence and have guards on the gates who are or can pass for human. The guards would ask ...
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62
votes
How does an immortal vampire king hide his vampirism and immortality?
The idea of the king is immortal, the appearance of the king is unchanging. Because that's the mythos of the king.
Replace the crown with a mask
The mask is the king and the king is the mask. The king ...
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60
votes
Accepted
What justification can I give for why my vampires sleep specifically in coffins?
Least Likely to be Broken Into
Sure, you can cram yourself into a trunk, or build a huge chest where you could stretch out and sleep comfortably inside... but then what? Your house/castle/lair has a ...
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57
votes
Accepted
Where could a vampire get blood without harming people?
Since you say it doesn't have to be human blood, they would just straight up buy frozen animal blood by the bucket at supermarkets like nobodies business. No need for any fancy subterfuge or ...
54
votes
How would a young girl/boy (about 14) who never gets old survive in the 16th century?
Find a normal person whom they can trust with their secret and become that person's "apprentice" or "assistant". Using this, their chaperone could get any number of high-paying jobs (doctor, etc.) and ...
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53
votes
Where could a vampire get blood without harming people?
However, it turns out most of the “blood” in rare meat is myoglobin, and that the blood is drained from the animal at the slaughterhouse before it is butchered and sold.
and
Blood from ...
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48
votes
Accepted
What would happen if a refrigerated bag of human blood was warmed up in a normal kitchen microwave?
Ask a Blood Banker:
If we are to assume that the vampire wants the blood to be in something like the native functional state (otherwise the vampire could simply live off of meat), then this is a ...
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47
votes
If vampires existed in modern society, how could they not be well known by science and the public
The problem is with the conception of vampires as these hunky sexy kung-fu doing young folks. Even Dracula had a little bit of this stuff, with the vampire hunters chasing around his carriage and ...
- 306k
46
votes
How does vampire-dad keep the masquerade to his daughter
He works night shifts.
Now I know you said he doesn't have to work, but he could choose to work as a way of maintaining the masquerade:
Night shift workers generally have nocturnal sleep patterns ...
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44
votes
Accepted
Why would vampires sire vampires of lesser blood than they have to?
As Sir Terry Pratchett put it, 'humans raise their successors, vampires raise their competition'.
Raising a lot of vampires of high rank increases the chance that they will be able to overthrow you. ...
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43
votes
How does an immortal vampire king hide his vampirism and immortality?
Every Decade or So He Poses As His "Son"
Every twenty to thirty years an old man "retires" from the public life, passing power to his heard-of, but rarely seen "son". The king does a good enough job ...
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41
votes
Silver needs to make contact with the skin to be effective, but vampires are wearing armor. What now?
What you need are medieval squirt guns
Just stir powdered silver into the water first. Or, if you're less for the silly, clouds of powdered silver should do it. If the goal is not really to chop up ...
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40
votes
Accepted
Why would a language created by humans lack both the /s/ and the /z/ consonants?
TL;DR
There do exist human languages, and not even exotic languages spoken by a handful of illiterate people in remote jungles, which do not have /s/ and /z/. It's not something fantastic, and it ...
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39
votes
Accepted
Would a vampire still be able to be a practicing Muslim?
Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.
In the case of eating forbidden food, the Qur'an offers an out for those who really did not want to eat it, but were compelled to by hunger. The Islam stack exchange ...
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39
votes
What justification can I give for why my vampires sleep specifically in coffins?
Assume that your culture has a strong taboo against tampering with corpses, or with closed coffins. One simply does not do that unless one is the undertaker with the explicit go-ahead of the priest.
...
- 120k
37
votes
How to design an advanced deadman's switch for the "vitality impaired"?
Measure brain activity.
Most variations of vitally impaired citizens which try to maintain at least a minimum of scientific plausibility either have an active brain or something which replaces the ...
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37
votes
Accepted
How would vampires avoid contracting diseases?
The Vampire Virus is ferociously territorial.
However, another immune cell specialises in killing cells that have a
reduced number of MHC class I molecules on their surface – this cell
is a ...
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35
votes
Accepted
How can changes in personality/values of a person who turned into a vampire be explained?
Survivor Bias
All vampires who refused their change, and fought against drinking blood, died. Early.
As a result, there is a strong survivor bias here: only those vampires who adapted to drink blood ...
- 3,383
34
votes
How can a 15-year-old vampire get human blood?
She has transfusion dependent anemia.
source
Her blood is low. Doctors can't figure it out! She does not seem to have an inherited disease like sickle cell. Her marrow is not normal but she does ...
- 306k
34
votes
Is there an Evolutionary advantage for 10% of my mammalian species from the Homo genus to have Von Willebrand blood-clotting disease?
They are a recovering species
The affliction isn't an advantage. The Homo Haematophagus is simply recovering from a large wipe out event. Afterwards the genetic diversity is so low that there is too ...
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33
votes
Accepted
If vampires existed in modern society, how could they not be well known by science and the public
Increase the noise to signal ratio
How many people think that Elvis lives? Or Jimmy Hoffa? Or that Neil Armstrong didn't land on the Moon? Or that the 9/11 terrorists came from Iraq? Or that there is ...
- 120k
33
votes
Accepted
Would it be reasonable that vampires cannot drink just any blood type save O-?
Only if they aren't digesting it
Blood types must be considered in a blood transfusion to avoid rejection by the recipient's immune system. However, if a vampire, or human for that matter, were to ...
- 13.8k
33
votes
How to design an advanced deadman's switch for the "vitality impaired"?
Hollywood effects
In modern films, many undead creatures die spectacularly, because it makes for good cinema, and hey, why not. Since these are your vampires/ghouls/zombies, you can make their death ...
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33
votes
Why would vampires sire vampires of lesser blood than they have to?
Too many generals, not enough privates.
Alpha vampires tend to be jerks. They usually have a chip on their shoulder because they are not cambions, and they are always jockeying for position, scheming ...
- 306k
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