EVIDENCE OF THE NON-EXISTENCE OF VAMPIRES
October 31, 2006

We are relieved tho report that a straightforward application of high
school algebre has driven a stake through the heart of the Dracula
myth.

As portrayed in countless Hollywood remakes, humans turn into vampires
when one bites you in the neck and sucks your blood.  In a recent
academic paper, Costas Efthimiou, a theoretical physicist at the
University of Central Florida, assumes the first vampire appeared in
1600 AD, about when the myth emerged in Europe.

When this first vampire bit someone, he would have created one new
vampire, thus doubling the world's undead population.
They would have infected two more humans, and so on.

Even if vampires fed only once a month, this doubling effect (a
geometric progression of ratio 2) would have wiped out the entire human
population, estimated at 540 million at the time, in just 30 months.
Then the vampires would have starved.

This means any vampires (or zombies, for that matter) wandering your
neighborhood tonight are relatively benigh, and may be deserving of
candy.

... Could you kill a vampire with a sunlamp?
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12