How strong and fast vampires really are?
Vampires seem to be a popular topic nowadays, as, perhaps, it was throughout a number of centuries. In Steamit I noticed a couple of people writing about them. Once I also wrote about a vampire myself. Gentle Look But her role in the story was tangential or rather, a vampire bite and a subsequent blood drawing weren't a self-purpose of the story, but rather a mechanism.
Currently, I am writing a script where vampire theme is heavily used. Since the described story is directly dependent on vampire’s powers, I was trying to determine the extent of their strength and speed in our literary reality. Let me narrow it down to the following: Assuming vampires would exist in our life, how much power or strength (in physical units) would they be able to exert. I need to know that because it’s hard for me to write about something or someone when I have no clue about its physical parameters. Imagination needs a hook to grab for something.
Say, in one of the movies, Superman was holding a wing of a broken bridge.
Since the weight of a bridge is roughly 80,000 lbs, we can have some estimate of Superman’s power.
When it comes to a vampire, the reference I found asserted that a vamp could snap a neck between their fingertips before you could even blink.
Snapping a neck requires on average 200 foot-pounds of torque = 200 lb on the distance of 1 foot. If vamps can do this with their fingers, and assuming the length of a finger to be 3 inches, a vamp can generate 800-pound worth of pressure in his fingers.
How can I estimate the overall strength from finger strength? A well-known Russian arm wrestler Denis Cyplenkov, who can bench press 595 lbs, can crush walnuts with his fingers.
Browsing through yahoo answers I determined that we need around 250lb of pressure to crush a walnut. Thus, extrapolating from the available information, we can conclude that a vamp can bench press (800 * 595)/250 = 1904 lb, which is over the current bench press world record 1210 lbs Let’s not forget we are comparing an average vamp vs the human champion. An average, a man can probably bench press around 200 lb. Thus, (again in average) a vamp is 9 times stronger than a human being. Not measures up to Superman, but still.
As far as speed is concerned I found a reference that a vamp can outrun an explosion. Typical detonation velocities in gasses range from 1800 m/s to 3000 m/s. Usain Bolt record 9.58 only allows 10.45 m/sec. That means that, at the very least, a vamp is 172 times faster than the fastest man. Wow. If Superman is faster, than not by that much.
Now with that I can already work with.
freaky horror
lol
If we go back to the folk tales of southern Europe that existed prior to the popularization of Vampires by Bram Stoked, we will find no mention of vampires having any particular abilities. Their sole attribute was an extreme resistance to death, and a high degree of cunning seemed necessary to their survival, but in the folk tales they almost always used a dagger to cut the throat of their victims.
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ColdMonkey mines Gridcoin through generating BOINC computations for science...
That's true. When we deal with literary reality you are basically on your own as a writer. However, we should gear toward the perception of the audience. If you write for, as you pointed out, the pre- Bram Stoked audience, we would write the script in a different way than we would do that in post- Bram Stoked era. More so, once you’ve chosen the “fake reality” in your literary work, you should just stay with it and be consistent. In the script that I am writing the supernatural abilities of vampires play the key role in the plot. Thus, I tried to define them for myself based on their “upper limits” of literary imagination.
Nicely worked out, but I have a spanner to throw in. You've not worked out how strong or fast a vampire is, you've worked out how weak and slow they aren't.
The parameters you've used haven't tested the limits of their strengths or speeds, only what they can achieve as a minimum. The real test is finding their limits.
Thank you for reading and responding!
The lower limit is also a very useful number. IF, say, 5 people are set to fight a vampire, it’s almost a certainty that they will fail. Also for a person, it makes no difference whether a vamp is 170 or 200 times faster because human senses are unable to detect the difference. :)
There is no explanation, justification or consensus on the strength of vampires. All of this super-powered vampire stuff is only in hollywood productions.
Originally, vampires are no stronger than humans.
They were only monsters who had a dark abyss where their heart should have been. So, they would constantly crave the essence of humans...
Davis Aurini explains it pretty well here
Now you have everything from about 2x as strong (buffy) to 10x as strong and way faster than a human. (sparkly vampires)
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I think I already answered this to another user. Since we are dealing with fictional creatures all opinions are equally valuable. But for the script that I write their supernatural abilities are just as important as super powers to Superman.