Scott Bowen - The Vampire Survival Guide: How to Fight, and Win, Against the Undead

T he nitty-gritty of survival tends to reshape a persons view on life. Not every adaptation that you develop will be likable, but knowing that youve got what it takes to make it through seriously bad times should give you a bit of confidence and frankness about what you might have to do in the future, in times of renewed vampire attack and other kinds of civil unrest.

But what now? Is this how its going to berandom vampire attack on any given night? While a period of widespread, large-scale vampire uprising might not occur again for a number of years, individual vampires or small groups of bloodsuckers can occupy a region or county and quietly stay at work.

So, yes, this is how its going to be for a while, because this is how history and the planet work.

You can think of it in Biblical terms, as if this has been a plague of very big, bad locusts, or think scientifically, as if this has been, literally, the spread of a virulent disease that will burn through its active phase and then be found in small occurrences for a number of years, only to arise again.

Once this uprising is quelled and theres a chance to take stock, all things vampire-related in America will soar: university studies, TV dramas, and numerous anti-vampire lotions, sprays, and nutritional supplements. Economic studies on the impact of the vampire uprising will occupy many bright minds. New lines of mood-affecting drugs will be introduced to treat vampire-related paranoia and depression due to blood loss. Entire research wings of the Christian, Judaic, and Islamic churches will be dedicated to anti-vampire study and efforts. Faith-based vampire-hunter teams will verge on vigilantism. The goths will have to form their own defense leagues.

Where does all that leave you? Most people will get back to the regular life that was so badly disrupted for those many months. But there will be a few Americans drawn to what might be termed vampire interdiction. If you earned a reputation in your neighborhood as a vampire killer, and you found your work and your adversary more than intriguing, perhaps you experienced something of a calling.

Start your own vampire-hunting business? Get a degree in vampire forensics? Become the foremost vampire artistprofiler, helping create highly detailed portraits of the mostwanted bloodsuckers for American intelligence services? There are a number of ways to go now that the threat of widespread vampirism has returned to North America.

Whatever you do, dont forget that life changes at sundown. Keep an eye out for the odd footprint in the yard, the scratch in the wood of the cellar door, the pallid face in the window at night...

Chapter 1

The Nature of the Beast

M any Americans will take little interest in vampires beyond wanting to know how many might be lurking about and how much ammunition is in the cupboard. But knowing your enemy isnt a bad idea, especially when youre up against one so strange. Vampires dont have many exploitable weaknesses, but they do have traits that might play into defensive strategies.

A Quick Guide to Vampires and the Vampire Uprising

• Vampires can feed on any kind of blood but derive greatest pleasure and nutrition from human blood.
• Vampires cannot turn into fluids or gases, or wolves, bats, or any other animals. They are not shape shifters. They cannot fly. They cannot travel through time. They are not minions of Satan, as they are no more certain the devil exists than we humans are.
• Vampires do not live forever, in the sense of to the end of the earth, but they can live for several millennia. Few, however, actually do.
• Vampires can function during the daytime but will suffer skin burns in direct sun and will die if trapped in sunlight for hours.
• Vampires come in all human shapes and sizes, skills, interests, and intelligences.
• Vampirism is caused by a virus that becomes active through its chemical interaction with vampire hemoglobin. A vampire must first infect its victim with the virus and then feed its own blood to the victim to initiate transformation into a vampire.
• The vampire virus is terrifically primitive , harkening back to some partially animal state of human development (this accounts for the often infernal explanation of the origin of vampires). Thus, vampires possess animal-like strengths and skills: They are extremely quick, quiet, and stealthy.
• Vampires can survive on small amounts oxygen for extended periods and can slow their heart rates dramatically, enabling them to rest without feeding for significant periods when blood is scarce.
• The vampires senses of hearing, smell, and taste are acute, allowing them to know when humans are near through heat signatures, slight vibrations, and scent. They feel pain but are troubled by only the worst injuries or disorders.

The Underlying Cause

Various literary, religious, and folkloric traditions trace the origins of vampirism to demigods, demons, or demonic possession. Other traditions trace the origin of vampires to the difficulties and pains of childbirth. But numerous modern-day considerations of evidence gathered over centuries suggests some kind of systemic physiological disorder caused by a gene-altering virus. The susceptibility to this disease seems to be inherent in humankind, as vampirism is a phenomenon in many cultures around the world. Most likely, the virus responsible for vampirism evolved along with humans.

Vampirism and Disease

No one has ever pinpointed the location of the first case of vampirism, which would be akin to pinpointing the first case of smallpox. As recently as the 1960s, researchers suggested the collective of metabolic diseases called porphyria may explain vampirism, though this has since been debunked. A trait of extreme porphyriasensitivity to lightand the highly speculative notion that sufferers of the disease would drink blood to fight the symptoms (porphyria can be treated with injections of heme) suggest some parallels to vampirism, though hardly in any sufficient way to make it synonymous with the attributes of vampires. During various periods in Europe, tuberculosis and the plague were thought to cause vampire symptoms. But neither of these proved true, although vampires have done their best to exploit the camouflage of an epidemic. (Friedrich Murnau, the German director of Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens , transplanted the Dracula story to Bremen in 1838 to coincide with a historical outbreak of the plague in the city.)

Random Question: Can vampires turn my dog into a vampire dog? (Because I think that would be really cool.)