10 Seconds to Fatal Blood Loss?
I was watching my new favorite show Blood Ties and saw for about the 5000th time something that annoys me immensely. On every TV show or movie with vampires the vampires suck on someone's neck for like 5 seconds and bam they're dead!
Okay, now this has always seemed pretty dumb to me. I mean I have given blood, and they tap a vein and it takes them twenty minutes to fill up a bag with a pint of my blood. Granted I have crappy, little veins that don't like giving blood but still. So we have to figure that vampires would be biting into the jugular vein which is closest to the surface in the neck. The artery is right below that, but chances are if they were biting into the artery they'd be killing them every time. So if we accept a world in which vampires don't have to kill to live then we have to assume they are biting the jugular vein. Venous bleeding is relatively slow. It's a flowing wound not a spurting one like an artery. So here is what I found out when I went looking for how much blood it takes to kill a person.
" The adult body contains approximately 5 to 6 quarts of blood (10 to 12 pints). The body can normally lose 1 pint of blood (usual amount given by donors) without harmful effects. A loss of 2 pints may cause shock, a loss of 5 to 6 pints usually results in death."
Okay, so you have to lose like half the blood in your body before you die. I would think that would take quite some time! We have to take into account how much anyone can swallow at a given time even if the wound is pumping that fast. I'm thinking it would take me at least a minute to drink a pint of anything even gulping as quickly as I could.
So after my research I have decided it would take about five minutes for a vampire to drink enough to kill someone. Now if there are any vampires out there who know that's not the case then feel free to let me know. ;) Second thought, never mind I don't wanna go there! Although I suppose you could put someone into shock fairly quickly and then they could die of that...
Anyway, I know this is all silly, and they don't have vampires drinking for long periods of time in movies and tv because quite frankly it'd get a little boring. Kinda like that stupid dance scene in the 2nd Matrix movie. I mean that thing just went on and on! A girl can only watch so much gyrating dancing before she gets bored! Even when it is mixed in with snippets of sex.
And you're all thinking...Wow Lesley contemplates this stuff for much too long...I kinda worry about her. Hey! I write books with vampires! If I don't contemplate these things then who's going to ;)
Okay, now this has always seemed pretty dumb to me. I mean I have given blood, and they tap a vein and it takes them twenty minutes to fill up a bag with a pint of my blood. Granted I have crappy, little veins that don't like giving blood but still. So we have to figure that vampires would be biting into the jugular vein which is closest to the surface in the neck. The artery is right below that, but chances are if they were biting into the artery they'd be killing them every time. So if we accept a world in which vampires don't have to kill to live then we have to assume they are biting the jugular vein. Venous bleeding is relatively slow. It's a flowing wound not a spurting one like an artery. So here is what I found out when I went looking for how much blood it takes to kill a person.
" The adult body contains approximately 5 to 6 quarts of blood (10 to 12 pints). The body can normally lose 1 pint of blood (usual amount given by donors) without harmful effects. A loss of 2 pints may cause shock, a loss of 5 to 6 pints usually results in death."
Okay, so you have to lose like half the blood in your body before you die. I would think that would take quite some time! We have to take into account how much anyone can swallow at a given time even if the wound is pumping that fast. I'm thinking it would take me at least a minute to drink a pint of anything even gulping as quickly as I could.
So after my research I have decided it would take about five minutes for a vampire to drink enough to kill someone. Now if there are any vampires out there who know that's not the case then feel free to let me know. ;) Second thought, never mind I don't wanna go there! Although I suppose you could put someone into shock fairly quickly and then they could die of that...
Anyway, I know this is all silly, and they don't have vampires drinking for long periods of time in movies and tv because quite frankly it'd get a little boring. Kinda like that stupid dance scene in the 2nd Matrix movie. I mean that thing just went on and on! A girl can only watch so much gyrating dancing before she gets bored! Even when it is mixed in with snippets of sex.
And you're all thinking...Wow Lesley contemplates this stuff for much too long...I kinda worry about her. Hey! I write books with vampires! If I don't contemplate these things then who's going to ;)
Comments
My vampires don't drain blood to kill, they cut off the heard and pierce the heart or burn...and if it is a human, they snap the neck or cut them...*shrugs*
hehehe